Posted by Richard TX on 2/16/2010, 6:23 pm, in reply to "Re: The cams in SA look OK"
72.48.107.46
Yes they interest me quite a bit, I still think the Australian acacias, callistemons and melaleucas will ultimately have more potential for Texas but a few eucs may become more common here one day. Unfortunately the two west Australian species you mentioned fared poorly in this winter's freeze. The one standout looks like it will be E. camaldulensis 'Silverton', it did very well even in areas that dropped to the 10-12F range.
E. microtheca has been a bit of a disappointment, I don't know why it can take more cold in Arizona and the SW than here, at first I thought it was just that they couldn't take our sudden snap freezes well but they still did worse than camaldulensis (especially Silverton) even with this year's more than ample hardening. Same with amplifolia, given its alpine origins I had high expectations.
Right now I'm looking more at acacias (for ornamental use at least), craspedocarpa looks good, so does pendula (though it appears to have root fungal issues). Stenophylla generally fared poorly but there is quite a bit of variation and hopefully some better strains can arise - right now I'm using seed off of trees which took the teens in Arizona and they did seem to do better in containers down to the mid-20s than randomly grown plants from the AZ trade. Aneura has lots of promise, it has good generally cold tolerance as a rule, I think the trickiest part will be to figure out the best adapted provenances for here.
There are some grevilleas and what looks like a Calothamnus that also did extremely well in Austin this part winter, they are worth investigating further.
Still, Australian plants are a challenge for Texas, it's both the cold and the very fast drop in temperatures that give the plants fits here. A few will find their place in our horticulture (especially for Laredo) but it's certainly much harder to find well adapted Australian plants suited for the long haul here than, say, Argentine plants.
Message Thread
« Back to index