There's something very special about this tree and, more particularly, the flowers.
First, I'm the one who named it "Blushing Star." I'm not proud of that, but I can't change it and expect to find the four shots in archives in alphabetical order according to height.
Brachychiton (kurrajong, bottletree) is a genus of 31 species of trees and large shrubs, native to Australia (the centre of diversity, with 30 species), and New Guinea (one species). This tree at Ruth Bancroft Garden is about 45 feet tall, and is peculiar in a couple of ways.
All species are monoecious with separate male and female flowers on the same plant. The flowers have a bell-shaped perianth consisting of a single series of fused lobes which is regarded as a calyx despite being brightly coloured in most species. The female flowers have five separate carpels that can each form a woody fruit containing several seeds. The flower colour is often variable within species. Eastern forest species drop their foliage before flowering but those of the drier regions carry the flowers while in leaf.
This is part of the eastern (Australian) species because this tree drops it foliage first and then flowered ... and flowered, and flowered. The tree was never all flowers. Rather, there would be branches that are 12 feet long or more, and the flowers would pop up in bunches of three, four or five all along the branch.
If you take a look (view large) at these flowers, the outside are five petals, and they are fuzzy. The leaves have already fallen, and that can be confusing when you see bunches of "petals" if you don't know that those are the flowers. Now, the trick is to find a single or, better, double and triplet by themselves at the end of a branch when there is no wind. And that's what we have here: three open waxy flowers with closed and open fuzzy petals. When I first saw them, I thought that what you're looking at in the middle were seed pods! The tree bloomed for about three months and every time I'd pass it, there were leaves on the ground signifying that there should be flowers and buds above.
Pollinated by everything!
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