Yellow Poinciana Peltophorum Pterocarpum

Everyone calls it the yellow poinciana, and it is not a poinciana. Peltophorum pterocarpum carries ferny bipinnate foliage on a wide spreading crown, rusty brown velvety buds that open to bright yellow flowers through summer, and flat winged pods that ripen deep copper. It drops its foliage briefly before the new flush, so it is deciduous rather than evergreen. It occurs naturally along the coast of northern Australia and through southeast Asia, and it is a park, avenue and large garden shade tree for the tropics and warm subtropics.

Yellow flowers, copper pods

It belongs in the warm north: Cairns, Townsville, the Queensland coast and the warmer parts of the subtropics, where the wood ripens properly and the flowering is reliable. Frost knocks it about, which rules out the tablelands and cold inland sites. Soil can be a wide range, coastal sand included, and it copes with salt laden wind, but the crown wants an open position with room on every side of it. The failure mode is proximity. Planted near paving, pool surrounds, driveways or services, it lifts concrete with heavy surface roots, drops flowers that go slippery underfoot on hard surfaces, and follows those with a long fall of pods and leaflets. In a lawn, a park or an open verge that same litter is irrelevant and the shade is worth having. Decide the position on what surrounds it, not on the size of the tree you are planting today. Wind deserves a thought as well, because the timber is not especially strong and a tree left with crowded co-dominant limbs will eventually drop one, which is a genuine hazard over a car park or a play area.

Room to spread, and what happens without it

White tamarind is the sensible alternative when the space is tight: evergreen, mid sized, an even crown and very little litter, which is why it goes into car parks and courtyards where this tree would become a maintenance bill. Choose the peltophorum when you have park scale room in a warm climate and you want the summer flower and a broad canopy over it. For shelter rather than shade, and in colder districts than this tree will take, river she-oak is the workhorse. In a big tropical garden the two share the work, with the peltophorum set well back for canopy and the tamarind closer in, where litter would otherwise be a nuisance. Larger containers across the range sit in mature trees.

Shaping heavy limbs early

Prune young. Set the branch height you want early, remove tight narrow forks while they are still small, and hold a single leader through the first years, because mature limbs are heavy and a bad union will fail in a storm eventually. Work in the drier months rather than the wet season, when cuts stay damp and colonise easily. Established trees should need only deadwood removal and clearance pruning. Feed in spring with an organic based complete fertiliser over the root zone, mulch out towards the drip line, and keep that mulch clear of the trunk. Sweep fallen flowers off paths and paving during the flowering flush, which is when the surface turns slippery.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 6 sizes, from 200mm up to 400L, priced from $29.95 to $2749.00 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 when to plant in Australia.