Ivory Curl Tree Buckinghamia celsissima

Ivory curl tree settles into a dense, glossy, rounded head, small to medium in gardens, though it grows as a rainforest tree in far north Queensland. The flowers are unmistakable: long cream spikes that curl and arch out of the canopy through the warm months, loud with bees. It is a familiar street and garden tree through Brisbane and the northern rivers, and it works equally well as a tall informal screen rather than trained on a single trunk. New growth flushes pink to bronze against the dark mature leaves.

Subtropical siting for ivory curl

Warmth and shelter matter more than anything else. Young plants are damaged by frost, and through the cold wet winters of the southern states the tree sulks and the flowering suffers, so outside the subtropics keep it in a protected position with a warm wall behind it. Soil wants to be free draining and on the acidic side, improved with compost and mulched. It handles coastal gardens well enough provided it is out of direct salt wind. For a screening line, set plants around 2 m apart and let them grow into each other. In a lawn setting, keep turf and mower damage away from the base while the trunk is still thin. The mistake that costs people the flowers is pruning habit. Buckinghamia carries its flowers on growth made that season, so a hedge sheared on a regular cycle through spring loses the buds before they can form and you end up with a wall of leaves and nothing else. If flowers matter, cut once a year after flowering and leave the summer growth alone.

Ivory curl, golden penda and murraya

Golden penda is the direct competitor, planted for the same purpose in the same streets. The penda is bolder in flower and denser in habit; ivory curl is cream rather than gold, more open in the head, and it will put up with a cooler, less tropical garden than the penda tolerates. Where the requirement is genuinely a hedge rather than a tree with a screening habit, murraya clips harder and holds a flat face far better, though it gives scent in flushes rather than a canopy. Pick ivory curl when you want a small flowering tree that can also be kept as a thick screen.

Cutting it without losing the flowers

Prune once the last of the cream spikes has browned off, taking the flowered wood back and shaping the head then rather than in spring. For a single trunk tree, select a leader early and remove the lower laterals over two or three seasons. Buckinghamia sits in the protea family, so feed it with a low phosphorus native fertiliser in early spring and skip the general purpose NPK blends that suit most exotics. Mulch well, keep the mulch off the trunk, and expect the oddly lobed juvenile leaves on young plants to give way to the simple adult leaf as the tree settles. Container plants do better on smaller, more frequent doses of fertiliser. See more native plants.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 12 sizes, from 140mm up to 1000L, priced from $17.95 to $3309.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to Australian native trees.