More and more, homeowners are searching for small-scale flowering trees since space on most suburban lots today is limited, and there is little room for oaks, beeches, and maples.
Cornus Kousa
Almost every gardener is familiar with our native flowering dogwood, but few know the gracefully-branched Cornus kousa with its creamy-white bracts, which appear in early June. Mature plants reach 20’ feet in height.
Like our native species, this exotic will thrive in full sun or partial shade and deserves greater attention from gardeners who enjoy unusual plants—the variety C. Sousa chinensis.
Introduced by E. H. Wilson, it has somewhat larger leaves, and the creamy bracts are less conspicuously pointed. When allowed to branch from the base, the plants take on the aspect of large-scale shrubs.
Golden-Chain Tree
Visitors to the British Isles are always enthusiastic about laburnum or golden-chain tree, familiar in gardens and sometimes seeds into the hedgerows.
Many old specimens found along the Eastern seaboard were started in their new homes from seeds gathered in Europe—this graceful tree with its pea-like, yellow, pendulous racemes and soft.
Green foliage is rapidly becoming a favorite, and deservedly so. Young specimens need careful staking since they are shallow-rooted and the stems are soft.
Borers sometimes plague this tree, and the trunk should be examined periodically until a sturdy stem is developed.
It is easily pruned after flowering so that it maintains a shapely appearance. The long, flattened pods which follow the flowers suggest another common name, the bean tree. The form generally offered is Laburnum water (Rossi).
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