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My Stunning Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia)
It is virtually sweltering here today! It is so hot!!! Actually looking at the gauge confirms that it is 43 deg Celsius which is around 109.4 Fahrenheit. There is no where to hide…ugh…except within the confines of a cool dark house and the most powerful fan money can buy.
It’s pretty loud in here then as you may imagine, the fan noise competing over the kids watching ‘Fraggle Rock’ on tv. Oh, Fraggle Rock is back? It does seem so.
A quick escape out into the heat to check the mail led me past this stunning beauty by my front gate
Dwarf Orange Flowering Gum (Corymbia ficifolia). This is a grafted specimen and only grows to around 3 or 4 metres where they usually can get up to 15 metres in their natural habitat. It is a West Australian species and the flowers are so symbolic of long hot Australian Summers.
The bees love it too!
You can grow this tree from seed but it does not grow ‘true to type’, which means that the flower colour can vary greatly from the parent plant. In fact, seed collected from a red flowering tree may even turn out to have white flowers or pale pink. The grafted species ensure you will retain the colour you desire, whether it be intense red, bright pink or this superb orange. They are usually grafted onto the rootstock of the Spotted Gum (Corymbia maculata), as it is a very hardy and adaptable species.
This particular tree was given to me about six years ago from the guy who grafted and grows them. He has a native plant nursery that specialises in the production of these beautiful grafted gums.
You can even grow these trees in a really large pot or tub. A half wine barrel is ideal.
I have just recently bought a red one and a pink one too to plant out in my front garden. I had never got around to planting a tree each for my children so these two will be their trees.
Oh and by the way, can you believe apart from getting waylaid by such a stunner, by the time I got to the mail box it only had bills for me?
Time to hit the beach….
