UBC Accession #33451-0539-1997 Photo by Daniel Mosquin April 16, 2004 A frustrating plant to try and capture - the flowers hang down from the branches.
I recently got two Melliodendron from a company in Europe. The flowers look very different from those that I saw on the photos of the UBC Botanical Garden. Please look here. What confuses me even more is that the fruit which developed on one of my plants last autumn (sorry, no photo) looked much like that of Melliodendron (at least what is described as Melliodendron in the Flora of China). Seems to me that Melliodendron in the UBCBG and in Europe may not be the same plants. In fact, the flower of the UBCBG Melliodendron reminds me of a flower of what is available here as Sinojackia xylocarpa (see, e.g. here . Does anybody know more about this? Thanks.
This couplet from the Flora of China Key to Styracaceae confirms for me that what UBC BG has is Melliodendron: The flowers from our plants are almost always solitary (and this can be seen in the photographs). As for what's been sold to you as Melliodendron, it's not. It reminded me on first glance of Pterostyrax, if that's any help.
Thank's a lot. Yes, I also thought that your plant is Melliodendron because of the solitary flowers, and I first also thought that my plant could be a Pterostyrax. However, the fruit on my plant looked completely different than of the Pterostyrax I know. I wait for autumn to take a photo of the fruit.
In the meantime, things have become more clear. The plants that I have are Pterostyrax, probably Pt. corymbosa. Some other people here have also tried to find out more and it seems clear now that all plants sold in the Netherlands as Melliodendron actually are not Melliodendron but Pterostyrax. The "real" Melliodendron seems to be present in some nurseries in Belgium and definitively in Ireland. Unfortunately, they don't sell to the continent so there seems to be no chance in the near future to get this plant in Germany.
Maybe go to Ireland to buy it? Once you have a specimen, in most cases you can then transport it round the EU without problem.
You can buy it in Belgium at Damien de Vos. http://www.damiendevos.be/ The nursery is specialised in not-common plants and trees.
Accession 033451-0539-1966 May 13, 2011 Photos by Wendy Cutler This is a different accession from the one originally posted here (tree was acquired a year earlier). And it's blooming a month later than the first posting in this thread; two months later than the posting the following year. I don't know how long the blossoms last. Daniel commented how hard it is to photograph the flowers - trying to get this skinny little tree to show up is even trickier.
These trees from the garden are the subject of POTD today, at http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/potd/2012/02/melliodendron-xylocarpum.php. Daniel's photo in the article was taken around the same time as I took my photos, but the plant in his photo is a much pinker colour. Douglas Justice posted a comment in the POTD article with an excellent photo of the very "curious looking" fruit.
Wendy, I photographed a different plant. The one by the meadow near the entrance to the Canopy Walkway has the pinkest flowers.
I wonder if this is the tree that goes with the original posting. We managed to lose the label photo, but I did photograph the nearby road sign - Upper Asian Way and Sherriff. [Edited: Nadia found her photo: seems to be the right accession - the year is just off by one!] These are almost finished blooming now. In fact I was hoping to see them, but took no interest in that tree until Nadia found the name, and then we started noticing the few remaining flowers.
There's no way I could better that photo of the fruit that Douglas posted in the POTD comment, but there may as well be a fruit photo here, so here's a photo from the original accession in this thread. The seed-collection photo is from the tree around the corner from the south end of the Meyer Glade (or maybe it was a bit west of that). Douglas pointed out to us the Melloidendron very close to the admin building, which is a good-looking tree growing in full sun, but we could find no fruits on that (we were told it didn't flower this year).
It took quite a while but finally I got a small plant that looks like the real thing. Is there any experience regarding the hardiness of Melliodendron in Central Europe or other regions outside the euoceanic regions?
I doubt that there's much experience to-date. What is your climate like? There is a specimen growing in the interior of British Columbia that is subject to a more continental climate than other sites in North America to-date. It is not performing spectacularly, but surviving the last time I saw the plant a few years ago.
Thanks for the information. My climate zone is 7b/8a, in the summer, it's the warmest part of Germany, normally not too dry. Fall and early winter is normally mild, with marked frosts ofter no earlier than around New Year's eve. However, temperatures may drop to around -12 °C later in January/February, with but very few days with maximum temp below 0 °C. Lowest temp in recent years was - 18 °C for several nights three years ago but that was a once in 50 years event. E.g., Trachycarpus fortunei just survive without protection in sheltered places, Daphne bholua is on the edge of hardiness.
Well, given that your temperature regime is similar to ours here, and your precipitation is somewhere in the middle between our specimens and the one surviving in the interior, I would hope that the plant will perform for you.
I'll let you know - in a few years, hopefully. Average Juli temp is 20 °C, average over the year is 11 °C. Precipitation is by and large evely distributed over the year, around 800 mm, with maximum in summer.
