Paulownia Tomentosa
We first fell in love with these trees when we bought one at the PCYC markets in Toowoomba over 2 decades ago.
We called it the ‘big leaf’ tree when we first bought it because the leaves appeared to be as big as elephant ears. This is a deciduous tree, meaning it looses it leaves in the Winter and in the Spring it grows amazing clusters of purple trumpet shaped flowers. Other common names include the princess tree, empress tree, or foxglove-tree. It is a FAST growing, drought tolerant and frost hardy, hardwood tree in the family Paulowniaceae, native to central and western China.
Not only are the clusters of purple trumpet flowers spectacular to see, a pleasure to smell, with their beautiful fragrance, they attract a range of native parrots and birds who feast on them in the Spring.
As we learned more about these trees, the more interesting they became. Over the years we saw many plantations of them, read promotional campaigns about farming them for timber, and even how the leaves provide good feed for cattle when drought is prominent.
A lot of people lost a lot of money investing in these trees for timber. Even though the growth rate of these trees is spectacular, the market of the timber never seemed to grow in Australia. I believe because it was a light type of hardwood better suited to carving than structural building.
So we promote the tree as a fast growing summer shade solution which attracts amazing birdlife in the spring, creates mulch from the leaves falling in the Autumn and adds options of feed supplements in the summer and pre & post summer months.
We believe all these attributes contribute in making this tree ideal for the small farming operation. You can create beautiful fragrances with its flowers, enjoy the changes of seasons and watch in splendour the growth rate of the tree as it goes literally reaches for the stars before your very eyes.
We harvest these trees for strategic planting around our own operations and can offer them for sale to those who would also like to enjoy the magnificence of these amazing trees.