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Exbucklandia populnea |
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| | Just as last year's leaves are starting to look tired, fresh new ones are pushed out in mid-March |
| Family |
hamamelidaceae |
| Life cycle |
tree (Z9)  |
| Flowers |
red |
| Size |
to 50' |
| Light |
sun-part shade |
Evergreen tree in the witch-hazel family from southeast Asia. New leaves unfurl with bronze tones from large flattened stipules. The reddish flowers are similar to those of other plants in the family, small and not particularly showy. We were attracted to the duck's foot look of some of the leaves on the small tree we bought at a local nursery. They don't really look like the leaves I've seen of this species in online photos, so I'm reserving judgment as to what exactly we have until it grows a bit more and I can see its true habit and leaf form. That's assuming the tree proves hardy enough to survive in our garden – so far so good, it survived our significant freeze in January 2018. By mid-March, shiny new leaves were pushing their way out, and within two weeks, our tree had shed nearly all of its older leaves, which had started to look rather tired. Unfortunately, those new leaves started looking rather weather-worn themselves before too long, and by mid-summer our little tree started dropping its leaves; it looked progressively worse until by mid-September it was barren, probably gone for good. Not sure what did it in – the regular Houston summer heat, the month or so of dry weather we had, or something else altogether. In any case, I won't try again in this climate zone.
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| | New leaves have replaced last years' foliage, late March |
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| | Expired, mid-September |
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This plant used to grow in our garden, but it slipped away... About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Exbucklandia populnea
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| S. O Mahony | Nov 20, 2017 | Greetings - This wonderful tropical-looking tree is not, in fact, tropical. I have seen it in the flesh only twice, in temperate climates - in the South Island of New Zealand and on the southwest coast of Ireland. Both these places are in Climate Zone 9, having occasional light winter frosts.
Good luck and happy growing!
Thanks for weighing in. Neither of those places is anything like steamy subtropical Houston, so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. |
| Jason Smith | Dec 26, 2018 | It is a tropical/subtropical plant in the wild(even if cultivated in Ireland and NZ). There are several trees cultivated in Florida doing fine, including a decent sized one in Orlando. I suspect it wasn't the climate that was the problem for yours... |
| mark an drews | Nov 29, 2022 | i saw an exbucklandii north of here in Canton GA and i got one from a nursery in Aiken SC ... i think it will survive here but i'm not positive... do you have any experience with the cold hardiness of this plant.... we get down into the teens here at times but for only a few days at a time.. since things are not normal though we have not gotten into the teens in the past few years... let me know your experience.
My specimen survived a Houston winter without problems, but succumbed the following summer, most likely due to heat. So I don't have much of a read on cold hardiness. |
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