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A tester (tropical buffs only)
Inglezinho
Posts: 568
I have a large Flamboyant Tree ( Caesalpinia pulcherrima) which is dying from drought. What would be your solution:
1. Cut it down and plant a seedling at the base.
2. Plant a vigorous climber - ie.Thunbergia grandilflora - to grow through it.
3. Plant a vigorous Passion Flower ie. Passiflora quadrangularis to grow through it.
4. There is a Thunbergia erecta nearby. Train it it to grow up the trunk.
This is one is tough....
Good luck.
Ian
Everyone likes butterflies. Nobody likes caterpillars.
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These trees are very tolerant of drought so it may be something else that is causing it to suffer. Is it not possible for you to keep it watered? If its beyond help I would be reluctant to plant any climber up it as ultimately the weight of the climber would bring it down and its thorns may restrict your access to the climbers to keep them under control. You must be living somewhere warmer than the majority of the members of this Forum.
i hate to see climbers up dead trees, they always look like climbers up dead trees
In the sticks near Peterborough
Cut it down and plant a new one but make sure it has access to enough water. I love Flamboyant trees and you are so lucky to be able to grow them.
I'd love to know how you get "access to enough water"! It hasn't rained here at all for over 2 months... Thank you for your suggestion though.
I thought this would produce some entertainment. I'd really love to know how you water a 15 meter tall tree, Ladybird...;-) "Access to water" Ceres. Well there's the rub. If you knew how hard water is to come by here...
The tree is technically still alive as it still has a few shoots, but it didn't flower well last year and will be worse this. It could be just old age, I don't think these live very long. I'm not really into euthanasia though.
At the moment 2 has my vote, partly because I have just had to guillotine another Thunbergia grandiflora that was growing through another tree and gradually smothering it. I won't say cut it down because that would have been impossible. It looked absolutely fabulous,however, Nutcutlet, and flowered for nearly all year round!
It's a whole different ball-game here. This is jungle. Climbers are completely rampant...Thanks for the excellent response though. Keep them coming. Ian.
BTW Does anyone know why Thunbergias (several of them ) are called "clock vines"?
Hose pipe. Simples!
Caesalpina is a common shrub in the Languedoc, in France where I garden part of the year. I think they are fairly short-lived - at any rate they get tall and lanky quite quickly. They grow here where we have at least three very hot months of drought before the autumn rains come in October and everything springs into growth again. They come quite easily from seed.
I would hate to see anything growing through it, but would sow seed and then replace it once the new plants were big enough.
Passion flower is a definite no no - it strangles anything and anyone that gets in it'sp[ath and is almost impossible to erradicate as the seeds lie dormant in the soil seemingly for ever.
We do not know how hard water is to come by in your part of the world because we do not know exactly where you are. Brazil is a big place.
Ceres,
It's hard to come by in most of Brazil except when it's flooded.... There is no public water in our area, I pump most of what we use from a local lake. The rest comes from a well - when it's not dried up. If I told you where we lived, would you be any the wiser...?
G Granny,
Thank you for you're interesting response. I didn't realise Pride of Barbados/ Mexican Peacock Flower would grow in the S of France. Do passion flowers grow there also? I used to have a Blue Passion flower ( Passiflora caerulea) in England. It did OK but occasionally got hit by late frost. The fruits were not edible,however. I grow passion flowers wherever I can. It's easier to rip stuff out than plant it and it won't grow!
I'm confused
a couple of days ago you were gardening in Lincolnshire "Field Maple (Acer campestre). It is the perfect habitat for many species of nesting birds.We have a couple in our hedge at the garden bottom in Lincs."
Your biog says that you've "... gardened all over the world apart from UK. ..." (my underlining)
and yet yesterday you were advising authoritatively on the edibility or otherwise of British fungi.
It's very hard for us to make meaningful comments on your tree unless we know where it is.
Or if this is a rather odd sort of quiz, what's the prize?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.