Sunday, November 1, 2009

By robin robinson Key West Garden Club

The Key West Garden Club has harvested a crop of frangipani from the branches of its members' trees. Seven different varieties of frangipani will be featured at the Garden Club sale on Nov. 21 and 22, including Aztec gold, Key West red, dainty pink, candy stripe and white. The prize winner of this group is Plumeria pudica.

The P. pudica is desired because it behaves differently than the normal plumerias. It does not lose its leaves in the winter, and it blooms glorious white flowers all year long. This year-round capacity to bloom is a plus for the snowbirds who are not here in the summer to see the usual lush frangipani flowers, but arrive in the winter and are greeted by the tree's bare branches.

The tree is shaped differently than other frangipani as well. Sometimes it is called the "umbrella frangipani" because it can be pruned to look like an umbrella. If left to grow naturally, it matures into a pleasant, inverted-triangle shape approximately 8 feet tall and 5 feet wide with heavy, dark-green foliage. To encourage branching, prune three or 4 inches off the ends during January or February. It will quickly grow back.

The leaf shape looks odd as well. Sometimes it is called the "fiddle leaf" because its leaves look like a violin with the small section at the top, splaying out to form spoon-shaped lobes on the bottom.

The P. pudica bloom does not have the heady odor that comes from the other varieties of frangipani that have been used in perfumes and oils. In fact, the name frangipani comes from a perfume maker in Italy who used to use it to perfume her gloves. The flower creates a slight fragrance at night when the tree is trying to attract pollinating insects.

Frangipani is in the Apocynaceae family, and like many of the other plants in the family, it is poisonous. It is important that gloves are worn when harvesting a frangipani branch to start a new tree, as the sap is a skin irritant. After cutting off the branch, the white sap oozes from the cut end and must dry up before the new tree is planted. Native Americans used this sap as a poison.

Five-petaled flowers bloom on the ends of each branch. Because of this growth pattern, sometimes this tree is called "bridal bouquet." Think how lovely it would be to cut the flowers off, dry the stem and put it in a dirt-filled pot for a table centerpiece or as a gift to a friend.

Do not overwater any plumeria. All winter it likes to be bone dry. If overwatered, black fungus will grow on the tips of the branches. If there are sections where the branches are soft, cut them off before they infect the rest of the tree. Too much water promotes a susceptibility to mealy bugs, mites and frangipani caterpillars.

This native of Panama, Colombia and Venezuela is an excellent specimen tree. Two of them planted at an entrance would provide glorious flowers all year long. Examples of the P. pudica can be found on either side of the trash container in front of the Garden Club.

The Garden Club will have more than 40 plumeria for sale at its November sale, with some starting at $10.

Stop by the Garden Club to see the unusual Halloween flower arrangements. The Garden Club is open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The club welcomes volunteers to pull weeds, propagate and play in the sandy soil from 9 a.m. to noon Mondays.

Key West Garden Club's master gardener Robin Robinson was a columnist at the Chicago Daily News and syndicated by Princeton Features. Her book, "Peeling the Onion: Reversing the Ravages of Stroke," can be found on Amazon.com. This column is part of a series developed by the Key West Garden Club. Visit http://www.keywestgardenclub.com.