Strawberry Snowball Tree; Deciduous Magnolias

祝贺大家新年好! 祝贺大家新年好! Deciduous Magnolias are having a prime 2013 in Southern California.  All the trees I've seen have been loaded with flowers and look (and smell) glorious.  Photobucket
The above tree is in the neighborhood.  At the Huntington this past weekend, with a big Chinese New Year Celebration going on, there were several dazzling examples as well. 

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Other trees at the Huntington were still asleep:
Photobucket
Not far away, a dying Coast Live Oak is under attack by a Monstera deliciosa:
Photobucket
Equaling the glory of the Magnolias, a Strawberry Snowball tree, Dombeya cacuminum was in full bloom for our visit, engulfed by a cloud of joyful bees.  The tree has a lovely elongated oval shape... 
Photobucket
...while the flowers are reminiscent of Bougainvillea: 
Photobucket
Dombeya cacuminum is from Madagascar.

Comments

  1. Strawberry Snowball...nice, new to me. Maybe the extra chilly weather you had in So Cal explains the great bloom on Magnolia soulangeana? Your shots of those soft, huge petals against the blue sky are perfectamundo.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Or the unfortunate lack of rain the past few weeks gave them a chance to bloom without getting brown and mushy from rain. I'd rather have the rain! :( It was a beautiful day to be looking skyward, at any rate.

      Delete
  2. It's so ironic that I often check your site to learn about new/interesting plants, but for the past 2 weeks I've been searching the internet like crazy to identify the name of the Dombeya tree. I saw it at the Upland Nursery in Orange a few weeks ago and fell in love with the red-orange glow provided by its canopy but completely forgot its name. I remembered that it rhymed with kumbaya, so I looked for all kinds of red flowering tree that started with B, and the results were disappointing. At one point I almost convinced myself that it was a Butea (Bu-tee-ya?)Anyways, next time, I'll just search your site. Thank you for your wonderful blog!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Upland, haven't been there for a while. Always some interesting plants. Got our big Dasylirion there (it was small at the time).

      Happy to be of help!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Always interested in your thoughts.

Any comments containing a link to a commercial site with the intent to promote that site will be deleted. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.