Lyonothamnus floribundus A. Gray

Modern name

This species is represented in cultivation in Britain by the following variety (for typical L. floribundus see the remarks below):

var. asplenifolius (Greene) Brandegee L. asplenifolius Greene – An evergreen tree 30 to 50 ft high, of slender form, with a red-brown peeling bark; young shoots glabrous. Leaves opposite, pinnate, 4 to 8 in. long, made up of three to nine leaflets. Leaflets stalkless, 2 to 41⁄2 in. long, 1⁄2 to 5⁄8 in. wide, cut up into hatchet-shaped segments 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 in. long by incisions reaching to the midrib, veins set at right angles to the midrib, dark green and glabrous above, paler and downy beneath. Flowers white, 1⁄4 in. across, produced numerously on terminal paniculate corymbs 3 to 6 in. broad; petals five; stamens fifteen. ‘Fruit of two woody, glandular, four-seeded parts, splitting on both sides’ (Eastwood).

Native of the islands of Santa Catalina, Santa Cruz, etc., off the coast of California; not yet found on the mainland. Although the typical L. floribundus differs from this variety only in foliage (its leaves being simple, oblong, lanceolate, and either toothed minutely or not at all) it is far from being so ornamental a tree. But between it and var. asplenifolius there is every intermediate state. So far as I know, the fern-leaved variety is the only one introduced to this country. A tree raised from seed sent to Kew in 1900 grew to be 20 ft high in a corner facing east outside the wall of the Temperate House, where it attracted much admiration for the beauty of its fern-like leaves, its luxuriance and graceful habit. It was so much injured by the cold winter of 1928-9 that it did not recover its health again. A taller specimen at Borde Hill in Sussex was cut in the winter of 1962-3 but later recovered. The arrangement of the leaves opposite each other on the twig and their distinctive shape make this tree easily recognisable in the rose family. So far as is known it has not flowered in Britain.

‘On Santa Cruz Island, perhaps the most satisfying of all sights are large stands of Lyonothamnus. It grows high up the canyons and in those protected places is able to attain its full beauty. The foliage is fem-like and very lovely, and the small white flowers borne in broad terminal panicles, overspread the top branches, so that when a colony of the tree, cupped in the hollow of a hill, is seen from a vantage point above, the aspect is of a sea of creamy white upon green’ (L. Rowntree).

From the Supplement (Vol. V)

var. asplenifolius. – The bark is more accurately described as stringy. It is not correct, as stated in the first printing of the present edition, that this never flowers in Britain. Mr Hollinrake wrote in July 1975 to say that a plant at Ottery St Mary in Devon was flowering freely and this was the fourth year it had done so. It was received from Messrs Hillier in 1966. It has also flowered at Knightshayes in the same county and at the Hillier Arboretum in Hampshire. On the other hand, a plant at Borde Hill in Sussex grew for more than thirty years on a sunny wall and never flowered.

Genus

Lyonothamnus

Other species in the genus

[No species article available]