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snasxs

A very tall every green tree with tons of red flowers?

snasxs
11 years ago

Hmm ... The leaves look like Magnolia ...

{{gwi:421488}}

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Comments (32)

  • Konrad___far_north
    11 years ago

    Not sure,..could it be a crepe myrtle?

  • aquilachrysaetos
    11 years ago

    That is really beautiful but it's definitely not a Crape. Foliage reminds me of Azalea but the flowers don't.

    Do I spy a nursery tag on that?

  • Iris GW
    11 years ago

    As usual, if the original poster would kindly give some information on the location of this plant (often she posts pictures from Asia) or where she got the picture from it might help with identification.

  • snasxs
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Yes, Esh Ga is right. The pictures were taken in Canton botanical garden. I will check to see the name.

  • snasxs
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Ok Esh, more pictures for our ID.

    {{gwi:421493}}

    {{gwi:421495}}

    {{gwi:421497}}

  • eahamel
    11 years ago

    I have no idea what it is, but I WANT ONE!

  • snasxs
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    bboy, could you estimate the family?

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    11 years ago

    do you have the name or not??? inquiring minds want to know..

    if you dont.. try the name that plant forum.. and link us over there.. or come back and tell us .. life will not be the same.. if we dont know ... lol ..

    ken

  • gardener365
    11 years ago

    My original thought was that the buds look like Camellia.

    The leaves in the first set of photos don't correspond to the leaves in the second set of photos, that's just my opinion though as obviously, the flowers do.

    It's going to be Camellia or Rhododendron 'related', at a minimum.

    Dax

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    I wouldn't count on that last statement being the case at all, too many structural dissimilarities are present. It is not exactly like anything I remember seeing before. If Canton is in a subtropical area, which I think it may be then this plant could be any of a vast number of tropical plant species (most wild plants are tropical in origin) including a great many not familiar to cold climate gardeners.

    And since China contains the world's largest temperate flora it is still plausible that some new, completely different temperate species could still be brought out of a remote mountain valley or off a steep, never or seldom-disturbed cliff and displayed to western eyes for the first time.

  • alley_cat_gw_7b
    11 years ago

    Maybe, callistemon citrinus.

  • alley_cat_gw_7b
    11 years ago

    OR....Brownea Grandiceps.

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    Those are both quite different from this.

  • snasxs
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    bboy, what did you do to my pictures :-)

    Do you have Hamamelis virginiana?

  • snasxs
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    {{gwi:421499}}

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    11 years ago

    Wow, that is freaky. Looks like double helleborus flowers stuck into a Daphniphyllum. I almost wonder if it will prove to be in the Malvaceae...there's lots of strange tropical stuff in that family that looks nothing like temperate mallows.
    I spent some time looking into Magnolias and Ericaceae. There are a few non-white magnolias but they are mostly known now...the obscure tropical magnolias that aren't in cultivation yet, aren't in cultivation for a reason. Nothing to look at in many cases. There are spectacularly weird tropical Ericaeae, but their flowers all look like fancy variations on blueberries/Pieris. It's hard to believe a Vireya could look like this.

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    11 years ago

    Come on...someone must know!?

  • pineresin
    11 years ago

    No idea. But I'd not call it 'very tall' - to me, that means over 50 metres tall. Which this isn't!

    Resin

    PS "If Canton is in a subtropical area"

    It's tropical, not just subtropical: at latitude 23N, just inside the Tropic of Cancer (same latitude as Havana in Cuba).

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    Yes, I looked afterward at the web site of the garden to see if this plant was shown on it. I wonder when the same poster comes up with these kinds of pictures if the sites they lift them from has the botanical names shown in English characters somewhere.

    It would sure help if they posted where they got them.

  • lcadem
    11 years ago

    Some google-fu yielded the following solution:
    Rhodoleia championii

    It is of the Hamamelidaceae

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    11 years ago

    THANK YOU! Your google-fu impresses me!
    That's a hell of a witch hazel. UC Berkeley doesn't appear to have one, so that's pretty darn rare. Of all the RGBE multisite search sites, only the botanic garden of Smith College has one, under glass obviously.

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    It's in the 2002 Hillier manual, which has it marked (and described) as tender and says it was "First introduced in 1852".

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    11 years ago

    Thanks, my ancient first American edition Hillier's says "suitable for the very mildest gardens" which makes makes me surprised not to have seen pictures of it at Tresco, and the fact it was introduced so long ago and later by Kingdon Ward makes it surprising it isn't in cultivation in the Bay Area at least.

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    Maybe nobody ever brought it here. Or it died out. Or some specimens are present but you don't know about them.

    Many attempts to introduce garden plants to North America are first made on the East Coast, where most of the people are. If something can't live there it may be lost without ever having been seen out here.

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    11 years ago

    You have a point there about plants in the Commonwealth world and their first introduction to the US. I found an obscure reference to Charles Sargent growing Senecio pulcher, presumably under glass, in Boston around 1910. It was almost 100 years before Annie's Annuals reintroduced it to the parts of the US (Bay Area, PNW) where it could be easily grown. I believe it had always been cultivated in the UK in those intervening years.

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    The late Marvin Black, former municipal arborist for Seattle called the phenomenon something like "the usual East Coast courtesy stop".

  • Embothrium
    11 years ago

    Shows recent offerings of the genus in Britain.

    Here is a link that might be useful: 2 records for âRhodoleiaâ

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    11 years ago

    The late Marvin Black, former municipal arborist for Seattle called the phenomenon something like "the usual East Coast courtesy stop".

    LOL that's a good one. I'll remember that.

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    9 years ago

    I recently have seen this plant or another species of Rhodoleia in a nursery. It is supposedly proving to be at least zn 8 hardy in North Carolina. You can expect to see it offered some time in the next few years.

    This post was edited by davidrt28 on Mon, Aug 4, 14 at 14:25

  • georgeinbandonoregon
    9 years ago

    this species and the supposedly hardier r. henryi are available from several nurseries including woodlanders in south carolina and cistus in oregon. the tenderness factor may be at least partially due to tender lowland provenances being initially collected when the plant was first introduced. newer selections from higher elevations may be somewhat hardier than the old ones.

  • Dave in NoVA • N. Virginia • zone 7A
    9 years ago

    Nurseries Caroliniana seems to be offering Rhodoleia henryi 'Scarlet Bells'.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Nurseries Caroliniana

    This post was edited by dave_in_nova on Tue, Aug 5, 14 at 10:05

  • davidrt28 (zone 7)
    9 years ago

    George, thanks, I didn't know it was already listed by those nurseries. Dave...yep, that's the link that was in my last post! I didn't see it at NurCar but that's where it came from.