Golden Penda Xanthostemon chrysanthus

Golden penda holds a dense, compact crown on a single trunk, which is why it reads as a tidy tree rather than a spreading one. The flowers are the reason to plant it: large golden heads made up almost entirely of stamens, held above glossy evergreen foliage, with new growth flushing bronze to deep red behind them. Flowering comes in flushes across the year rather than one narrow window. Through south east Queensland it is a standard street, carpark and courtyard tree, and honeyeaters find it fast.

Growing golden penda north of the frost line

Its home is the wet tropics of far north Queensland, and frost is the line it will not cross. That is the one failure worth stating plainly: in Canberra, Melbourne or an inland frost hollow, a bad winter will finish the tree outright, and no amount of shelter or fleece changes it. Through Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and the coastal north of New South Wales it performs reliably. Give it a deep, free draining soil enriched with compost and keep a thick mulch ring over the root zone, off the trunk. It handles humidity and summer storms without complaint, which is more than many exotic flowering trees manage in the subtropics. Think about what sits underneath before you dig, because spent flower heads drop in quantity after each flush, so a garden bed or lawn under the canopy is easier to live with than a pool surround or pale paving. As a street or driveway tree, allow room for the crown to fill out on both sides rather than crowding it against a wall.

Golden penda, ivory curl and leopard tree

Compare it with Buckinghamia celsissima before you order, because the two get planted for the same job in the same suburbs. Ivory curl carries cream spikes in summer on a looser, more open head and puts up with a wider range of subtropical sites; golden penda gives you the heavier colour and the tighter shape, and it is the more frost sensitive of the pair. Leopard tree answers a different brief again, being a large shade tree for acreage where bark and canopy matter, not a contained flowering specimen. Pick golden penda when the plant has to earn its place in a courtyard or a narrow verge and flower while it does it.

Pruning between flowering flushes

Prune once a flush has finished rather than on a fixed date, taking the spent heads and shortening the growth behind them. That keeps the crown dense and sets up the next round of buds, since flowers form on new wood. Formative pruning is worth doing early: choose a leader and lift the lower branches gradually if you want clearance underneath. Feed in early spring and again after the main summer flush with a controlled release fertiliser suited to natives, spread over the root zone, and top up mulch each year. Established trees in reasonable soil need very little beyond that. More warm climate options sit in flowering plants.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 9 sizes, from 140mm up to 1000L, priced from $24.95 to $2199.00 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.