This plant may be available to buy
Click the banana to see
|
Screw-Pine click pic to enlarge |
|
Zone 10 Screw-Pine is not a pine, but a tropical tree. Best used as a free-standing specimen with plenty of room, Pandanus utilis grows to 25 feet but also grows as wide. Its habit is to branch in tiers with its top in a pyramid shape Many of the species are native to our favorite source for special plants, Madagascar, and New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Nature must love this look because there are 650+ other species of Pandanus besides Pandanus utilis
Here is one very cool New Guinea Pandanus
click pic to enlarge Not a "pine" and not a woody tree, Pandanus is more closely related to palms, grasses and some orchids
click pic to enlarge The roots are significant with many brace roots
click pic to enlarge increasing in number & size & width over time
click pic to enlarge You may have seen the screwipine's fruit/nut in elaborate floral arrangements
click pic to enlarge Also the leaves are used in arrangements used for their tropical look and long, pointed affects. We saw this variegated Screw Pine at Fairchild Tropical Gardens
click pic to enlarge What you probably have never seen is the inflorescence of the Screw Pine. The nuts are not the seeds. The nuts open into a cascade of pollen rich fiber. First here's the tree
click pic to enlarge Here are some pictures of Screw-Pine in bloom:
click pics to enlarge This tree wants full sun, is not fussy for soil content and is not salt tolerant. Keep soil on the moist side and feed well, often There are three main negatives to using screw-pine in a landscape One, it's adult size of 25x25 can easily take over a home landscape. Even in commercial settings, the screw-pine must be planted 15 or more feet from any pedestrian walk, building or road Second, the leaves shed actively so they are a nuisance to collect off lawns Third, they seed easily, even into lawn grass, so new screw-pines will appear by the hundreds from the soil after flowering and need to be removed or killed Otherwise, Screw-Pine looks great in proper settings
click pic to enlarge The one big negative is that Lethal Yellowing (the same disease that has killed so many coconut and other palm trees in Florida) also attacks and kills the Screw-Pine |
