South Texas Eucalypts

[ahosey01]

Are eucalyptus common in cultivation in south Texas? They’re everywhere in Arizona and California.

[Xerarch]

They are here but not nearly as common as they are in AZ.

[ahosey01]

36 minutes ago, Xerarch said:

They are here but not nearly as common as they are in AZ.

Interesting.  Been thinking about avenues into the nursery trade and markets that are untapped.  I like eucalyptus and the climate in much of south Texas seems like a neat median between the dry climate of Arizona, where one assortment of eucalyptus does well, and the wet climate of Florida, where another assortment of eucalyptus does well.  I like hearing that they’re not super common.

Edited December 18, 2021 by ahosey01

[Swolte]

I know of very few specimens of old age in my area. Neglecta have been doing ok. A friend of mine told me he grew a Nicholii over a decade ago and it was the envy of the neighborhood for several years until it mysteriously declined. I am growing two E's (a nicholli and a silver dollar) for now but they are still small so I can't comment from personal experience yet.  

[Xerarch]

I actually saw an E deglupta for sale here in a nursery, would be pretty sweet but too large and too guaranteed to die. 

[ahosey01]

I think E. kruseana, microtheca, sideroxylon, leucoxylon, rudis, torquata, camaldulensis, grandis, robusta and probably Corymbia papuana and torelliana along with some snow gum cultivars would all do well there.  This is, of course, speculation.

[ahosey01]

Forgot to add E polyanthemos.

[Xerarch]

I would personally love a papuana if I could find room for it, loved them in AZ, there are supposed to be forms from Australia that are hardier than from New Guinea so have to make sure to get the right ones. 

[ahosey01]

7 minutes ago, Xerarch said:

I would personally love a papuana if I could find room for it, loved them in AZ, there are supposed to be forms from Australia that are hardier than from New Guinea so have to make sure to get the right ones. 

Your guy for that is Paul at the Australian Outback plantation.  I planted one here in 9A and he’s not even marginally concerned it won’t work.

Edited December 18, 2021 by ahosey01

[Xenon]

E. camaldulensis hybrid was mass planted in a major freeway interchange in Houston about 20 years ago and several other spots near the international airport and Galveston. You can imagine what a 30 year freeze does to mature trees pushing 100 feet. Not pretty! 

IIRC, the most common one in the extreme south is Corymbia citriodora. 

 

[Xerarch]

21 minutes ago, Xenon said:

E. camaldulensis hybrid was mass planted in a major freeway interchange in Houston about 20 years ago and several other spots near the international airport and Galveston. You can imagine what a 30 year freeze does to mature trees pushing 100 feet. Not pretty! 

IIRC, the most common one in the extreme south is Corymbia citriodora. 

 

Do you know how those Corymbia citriodora fared down there?

[ahosey01]

26 minutes ago, Xenon said:

E. camaldulensis hybrid was mass planted in a major freeway interchange in Houston about 20 years ago and several other spots near the international airport and Galveston. You can imagine what a 30 year freeze does to mature trees pushing 100 feet. Not pretty! 

IIRC, the most common one in the extreme south is Corymbia citriodora. 

 

Surprising to me.  Absolutely no damage to the ones (camaldulensis) here in photos just barely post 2007 freeze where Wickenburg hit 17F.

[Xenon]

5 minutes ago, Xerarch said:

Do you know how those Corymbia citriodora fared down there?

@richtrav the thread you've been waiting for!

[Xenon]

Just now, ahosey01 said:

Surprising to me.  Absolutely no damage to the ones (camaldulensis) here in photos just barely post 2007 freeze where Wickenburg hit 17F.

Yeah that's the difference in our climates. Not much winter hardening when you go from 60 degree nights to 15 degrees in the same week! It's a lot more like FL than AZ, even in the far south with the lower rainfall. The summer heat and humidity is intense too, think flaming hot sauna instead of oven. 

[Xerarch]

2 minutes ago, Xenon said:

Yeah that's the difference in our climates. Not much winter hardening when you go from 60 degree nights to 15 degrees in the same week! It's a lot more like FL than AZ, even in the far south with the lower rainfall. The summer heat and humidity is intense too, think flaming hot sauna instead of oven. 

I've been surprised by the euc damage here, again for camaldulensis I know for sure the huuuuuuuge ones at Boyce Thompson in AZ have seen teens with only minor damage 

[richtrav]

2 hours ago, Xenon said:

@richtrav the thread you've been waiting for!

Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah I’ve tried a euc or two down here, if you could only plant one try that blue form of microtheca sold in the Arizona nursery trade, it takes the cold and soils well and doesn’t get huge if something goes terribly wrong (and it usually does eventually). The one in the yard came from Arizona Tree Farm in Phoenix and it had (gasp) leaf spotting from the freeze. Standard issue microtheca/coolabah isn’t as hardy, I think a good hundred plus years of selection in the North American Southwest has paid off to some extent. 

Camaldulensis is far and away the most commonly used euc here, the northern forms do the best but are more sensitive to cold. They get massive and are very expensive to take out or, perhaps even worse, just prune out the large tops of the trees that froze while leaving the living parts intact. But some red gums had very little damage this year, including one near the Brownsville post office that froze back to the main trunks in ‘89. It would be a good one to clone (good luck), it wouldn’t come true from seed and doesn’t get chlorotic. The red gums that used to be in Houston were a clone called SC-25 from the old Simpson Timber Company in California, they were used a lot in the ‘90s for soil cleanup in SE Texas and TXDOT decided to plant some out on the freeways. They don’t do particularly well in the cold and like all red gums they can break in the wind.

There are some obscure species here and there that did variably well, one that had almost no damage was what Bill MacWhorter had told me was pilligaensis but it’s only a single tree in Weslaco. It’s not particularly vigorous but it hangs in there. There is also an unknown species in Brownsville that almost certainly came from Morris Clint. There are two of them near the convention center and they had little stem damage. I don’t have a clue which one it is - and I probably gave him the seed. It has an unusual rounded crown atypical of a eucalyptus.

Anything that’s now in the genus Corymbia did terribly, from papuana to citriodora to tessellaris or torelliana and deglupta, all had bad freeze damage and trunks that are left are badly cracked on their north side. They’d be better off cut to the ground but some like citriodora will often die if you cut them off too low. I have one ptychocarpa in the yard, it froze down and came back, I love it but it quickly yellows up with the alkaline irrigation water.

I also have one of Paul’s papuanas in the yard (it’s probably the one from the Alice Springs area) and it froze to the ground but is coming back well. At first several trunks were coming out but it self thinned down to a single trunk. It likes the soil but I give it no water. Another nice one Paul sells is victrix, I had one in a 15 that died back several feet but is coming back well. I’ve been torturing it with my terrible well water and it takes it as well as the Boulia bottlebrush, which is impressive. Even if his victrix froze down it should come back as a nice small euc with a white trunk. He also sells the Silverton red gum, it looks nice and takes alkaline soil better than most red gums but like all red gums can be a pain if you ever have to get rid of it. The bluish red gums floating around the Valley are probably the Flinders Ranges form or maybe an occasional survivor from Simpson Timber. 

As far as the “hardy” ones like the snow gums, they just can’t handle the heat. We also tried a lot of the Western Australian ones and they can’t handle the humidity, kruseana and woodwardii and salmonophloia and sargentii are all really beautiful trees but they won’t make it, they’ll often die in the pot before they even can get planted. Somebody had a scraggly erythrocorys at a small golf club near Alamo about 15 years ago but it died back little by little and eventually went away (he had really alkaline soil but loved eucs, which he solved by drilling iron pellets into their trunks every year). Now in Laredo some of those might have a chance, some like salmonophloia are able to survive in Longreach QLD which is humid but not too humid. The soil in Laredo is also more suited for eucs. One we did have some luck with was thozetiana, it’s a beautiful wispy euc like a little citriodora; we got some seed in back around ‘08 and it grew very well but was a bit tender. Seed I brought back from Queensland in habitat in ‘16 did not have the same vigor, I’m guessing Nindethana got theirs from somewhere else (sadly they don’t export any more). 

Back about a year ago while covid was raging but before the freeze I had been fantasizing about going to Western Australia around now (late 2021), there might be some things from the NW part of that state that could live here. But between the generally bad performance of Australian plants in the freeze and Australia’s very late reopening I abandoned the idea, another trip to Argentina would be vastly more productive. Still, there are some things up around Karratha or the Cape that should be tried. For example there’s a little mallee from the limestone hills way up there with attractive shiny leaves that is worth a go, I forget the species name, Nindethana would be the ones that would have carried it and they don’t ship any more. That area gets little rain and no frost but has the tropical humidity, so you could only expect stuff from there to be root hardy and you’d have to stick to the areas with alkaline soil. I’ve tried a few really nice things from there like Acacia coriacea pendens and it made an attractive billowy shrub until it just died from root rot one day (the same happened to an Atalaya hemiglauca this year). One Australian plant that has done very well here is Melaleuca bracteata. 

If you want some Eucalyptus porn I can get it, but fair warning a lot of it isn’t going to be pretty.

 

[Silas_Sancona]

10 hours ago, richtrav said:

Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah I’ve tried a euc or two down here, if you could only plant one try that blue form of microtheca sold in the Arizona nursery trade, it takes the cold and soils well and doesn’t get huge if something goes terribly wrong (and it usually does eventually). The one in the yard came from Arizona Tree Farm in Phoenix and it had (gasp) leaf spotting from the freeze. Standard issue microtheca/coolabah isn’t as hardy, I think a good hundred plus years of selection in the North American Southwest has paid off to some extent. 

Camaldulensis is far and away the most commonly used euc here, the northern forms do the best but are more sensitive to cold. They get massive and are very expensive to take out or, perhaps even worse, just prune out the large tops of the trees that froze while leaving the living parts intact. But some red gums had very little damage this year, including one near the Brownsville post office that froze back to the main trunks in ‘89. It would be a good one to clone (good luck), it wouldn’t come true from seed and doesn’t get chlorotic. The red gums that used to be in Houston were a clone called SC-25 from the old Simpson Timber Company in California, they were used a lot in the ‘90s for soil cleanup in SE Texas and TXDOT decided to plant some out on the freeways. They don’t do particularly well in the cold and like all red gums they can break in the wind.

There are some obscure species here and there that did variably well, one that had almost no damage was what Bill MacWhorter had told me was pilligaensis but it’s only a single tree in Weslaco. It’s not particularly vigorous but it hangs in there. There is also an unknown species in Brownsville that almost certainly came from Morris Clint. There are two of them near the convention center and they had little stem damage. I don’t have a clue which one it is - and I probably gave him the seed. It has an unusual rounded crown atypical of a eucalyptus.

Anything that’s now in the genus Corymbia did terribly, from papuana to citriodora to tessellaris or torelliana and deglupta, all had bad freeze damage and trunks that are left are badly cracked on their north side. They’d be better off cut to the ground but some like citriodora will often die if you cut them off too low. I have one ptychocarpa in the yard, it froze down and came back, I love it but it quickly yellows up with the alkaline irrigation water.

I also have one of Paul’s papuanas in the yard (it’s probably the one from the Alice Springs area) and it froze to the ground but is coming back well. At first several trunks were coming out but it self thinned down to a single trunk. It likes the soil but I give it no water. Another nice one Paul sells is victrix, I had one in a 15 that died back several feet but is coming back well. I’ve been torturing it with my terrible well water and it takes it as well as the Boulia bottlebrush, which is impressive. Even if his victrix froze down it should come back as a nice small euc with a white trunk. He also sells the Silverton red gum, it looks nice and takes alkaline soil better than most red gums but like all red gums can be a pain if you ever have to get rid of it. The bluish red gums floating around the Valley are probably the Flinders Ranges form or maybe an occasional survivor from Simpson Timber. 

As far as the “hardy” ones like the snow gums, they just can’t handle the heat. We also tried a lot of the Western Australian ones and they can’t handle the humidity, kruseana and woodwardii and salmonophloia and sargentii are all really beautiful trees but they won’t make it, they’ll often die in the pot before they even can get planted. Somebody had a scraggly erythrocorys at a small golf club near Alamo about 15 years ago but it died back little by little and eventually went away (he had really alkaline soil but loved eucs, which he solved by drilling iron pellets into their trunks every year). Now in Laredo some of those might have a chance, some like salmonophloia are able to survive in Longreach QLD which is humid but not too humid. The soil in Laredo is also more suited for eucs. One we did have some luck with was thozetiana, it’s a beautiful wispy euc like a little citriodora; we got some seed in back around ‘08 and it grew very well but was a bit tender. Seed I brought back from Queensland in habitat in ‘16 did not have the same vigor, I’m guessing Nindethana got theirs from somewhere else (sadly they don’t export any more). 

Back about a year ago while covid was raging but before the freeze I had been fantasizing about going to Western Australia around now (late 2021), there might be some things from the NW part of that state that could live here. But between the generally bad performance of Australian plants in the freeze and Australia’s very late reopening I abandoned the idea, another trip to Argentina would be vastly more productive. Still, there are some things up around Karratha or the Cape that should be tried. For example there’s a little mallee from the limestone hills way up there with attractive shiny leaves that is worth a go, I forget the species name, Nindethana would be the ones that would have carried it and they don’t ship any more. That area gets little rain and no frost but has the tropical humidity, so you could only expect stuff from there to be root hardy and you’d have to stick to the areas with alkaline soil. I’ve tried a few really nice things from there like Acacia coriacea pendens and it made an attractive billowy shrub until it just died from root rot one day (the same happened to an Atalaya hemiglauca this year). One Australian plant that has done very well here is Melaleuca bracteata. 

If you want some Eucalyptus porn I can get it, but fair warning a lot of it isn’t going to be pretty.

 

  GREAT information Rich.. Would have never thought Eucs would be so picky down there. Imagine Argentina ( maybe parts of Brazil.. ) would offer up lots of interesting newer options for S. TX. ( and likely here as well )  On a similar note,  Remember years ago,  how the older Sunset Gardening books mentioned how South Texas might be a good place for stuff from parts of Africa.. Always wondered how true that was..

[richtrav]

Argentina yes, absolutely, it’s by far the best place outside of North America to look for well adapted plants. In fact a lot of our native plants evolved down there and I could list a good number of things that are doing great and sailed through the cold. Palo santo is probably my favorite, though very slow. Brazil, mmm, not so much, the few parts of the country that are hot and semi-arid with alkaline soil are way up inside the tropics. 

Africa has had mixed results, Acacia galpinii has done really well here, so has Combretum erythrophyllum but almost nobody has it (very hardy for an African plant by the way). There has actually been a fair amount of material tried from there.

 

[Silas_Sancona]

8 minutes ago, richtrav said:

Argentina yes, absolutely, it’s by far the best place outside of North America to look for well adapted plants. In fact a lot of our native plants evolved down there and I could list a good number of things that are doing great and sailed through the cold. Palo santo is probably my favorite, though very slow. Brazil, mmm, not so much, the few parts of the country that are hot and semi-arid with alkaline soil are way up inside the tropics. 

Africa has had mixed results, Acacia galpinii has done really well here, so has Combretum erythrophyllum but almost nobody has it (very hardy for an African plant by the way). There has actually been a fair amount of material tried from there.

 

Interesting, ..The " Palo Santo " you're referring to, is that Bursera graveolens? or something else.. ( that Bursera is the only tree i could think of which is commonly referred to as Palo Santo.. ) Pretty neat if that has done well for you.. Been on a hunt for it to add to my collection of the Genus. 

I'd have figured there might be a few areas in say the Cerrado ..or nearby, which might contain things that might be adaptive to either there in S. TX or out this way.. But, can see how the area might not be quite far enough removed from pretty much warm, frost free winters down there.  See a few, rarer things from Argentina and Chile in Botanical Gardens here, but know there's much more that really hasn't been grown much, if at all.  Kind of like the area of Sonora just south of here.. 

Seems African Acacia do pretty good here, unlike Coral Trees from there( or anywhere else it seems, lol ). All of mine ended up frying in our summer heat, even when provided all day, high canopy shade.  Being in pots probably didn't help, but have yet to se any growing in the ground either, except for our native Erythrina sp. 

  Bolusanthus speciosus would be another potentially great landscape tree.. Campus Arboretum in Tucson has one or two that have done quite well, but no one grows it..

[JeskiM]

Well I can't speak much to South TX, but I can at least attest to my experiences in Central TX (Georgetown).

I started playing with Eucs. a few years ago.  Was first attracted by the Snow Gums (Pauciflora) and started with liners and 1g.  They did fine most of the year, except summer, they would never survive to the end of the summer.  So then I tried then in the ground, with the same results.... typically they would die by end of summer and when I pulled them out the soil was bone dry too.  I decided this past year to try two more for one last time.  Only this time I went to a larger pot and kept the watering up.  Both of them survived through the summer in the pot and are putting on growth. I will likely pot them up to a bigger pot early this spring.

I have tried two other species in the ground (heavily limestone). I have tried Dalrympleana and Camaldulensis.  Both of them went in the  ground three years ago. from liner pots and about 1 foot tall.  The first year they did not grow. The second year they grew up to waist high.  Then in Feb. of this year they froze down to the ground and rre-sprouted from the lignotuber. As of right now they are about as tall as they were from before the big freeze.  

I have started several E. Victrix from seed and they are still in pots (1g and ~ 2 ft tall) and have been growing really well. I plan to plant them in the ground this spring.  The only issue I have seen was that in the in the hottest patch of summer they would suddenly brown up all of the leaves and a week later send out another flush of leaves. This has happened the last two summers. So the moment I see the leaves brown up I hit them with water. 

I did find an small E. Saligna at the local H-E-B this past spring and I threw it into a 3g pot and that thing grew like crazy and is now nearly 3; tall  It will also be going in the ground in early spring.

My take going forward here is that the most cold hardy varieties are risky in our heat and dry. Finding species that can tolerate pH levels near 8.0 is also limiting. So I have decided to focus on only species that have lignotubers so that when the crowns are lost to cold I know that they will at least come back and hopefully get a few years of growth on them. I doubt there are any species that could get very large here, so I have at least settled and accepted that I can indeed grow them (somewhat) to at least a large shrub....but that's fine.

-- Matt

 

 

[Silas_Sancona]

21 hours ago, JeskiM said:

Well I can't speak much to South TX, but I can at least attest to my experiences in Central TX (Georgetown).

I started playing with Eucs. a few years ago.  Was first attracted by the Snow Gums (Pauciflora) and started with liners and 1g.  They did fine most of the year, except summer, they would never survive to the end of the summer.  So then I tried then in the ground, with the same results.... typically they would die by end of summer and when I pulled them out the soil was bone dry too.  I decided this past year to try two more for one last time.  Only this time I went to a larger pot and kept the watering up.  Both of them survived through the summer in the pot and are putting on growth. I will likely pot them up to a bigger pot early this spring.

I have tried two other species in the ground (heavily limestone). I have tried Dalrympleana and Camaldulensis.  Both of them went in the  ground three years ago. from liner pots and about 1 foot tall.  The first year they did not grow. The second year they grew up to waist high.  Then in Feb. of this year they froze down to the ground and rre-sprouted from the lignotuber. As of right now they are about as tall as they were from before the big freeze.  

I have started several E. Victrix from seed and they are still in pots (1g and ~ 2 ft tall) and have been growing really well. I plan to plant them in the ground this spring.  The only issue I have seen was that in the in the hottest patch of summer they would suddenly brown up all of the leaves and a week later send out another flush of leaves. This has happened the last two summers. So the moment I see the leaves brown up I hit them with water. 

I did find an small E. Saligna at the local H-E-B this past spring and I threw it into a 3g pot and that thing grew like crazy and is now nearly 3; tall  It will also be going in the ground in early spring.

My take going forward here is that the most cold hardy varieties are risky in our heat and dry. Finding species that can tolerate pH levels near 8.0 is also limiting. So I have decided to focus on only species that have lignotubers so that when the crowns are lost to cold I know that they will at least come back and hopefully get a few years of growth on them. I doubt there are any species that could get very large here, so I have at least settled and accepted that I can indeed grow them (somewhat) to at least a large shrub....but that's fine.

-- Matt

 

 

Growing up surrounded by pretty much -everything Eucalyptus-  would never plant 99% of them, lol..  Get too big,  shed wayy too much ...Chemical compounds that leach from the roots / leaves .. kill almost anything that tries to grow beneath them..  and many are very dangerous in storms due to weak wood. Some can even randomly shed limbs, just for the heck of it.

  Ever seen a 100' Blue Gum catch on fire? ..let alone a grove of them?  " Not pretty " would be the understatement of understatements. Imagine living among, or nearby. There's a good reason Euc. wood burns very hot.   Can find and grow many other things with nice ( or even more attractive ) looking bark, flowers, leaves, etc.. w/ out near as much hassle..

That said, C. paupana, C. ficifolia, E. formanii, ..and a few of the short, kind of shrubby- looking sp.  which are unique / behaved / possess strong enough wood are worth growing where possible.. 

As far as growing them goes, can still hear this being repeated over and over, even decades later " ...Never leave Eucs in X sized containers for long.. They hate it " " ...Plant out as soon as possible " "... Avoid purchasing larger than a 15 gal "  ( This last shred of advice echoes advise when purchasing most trees as well. )