Longwood Graduate Program in Public Horticulture's photostream

The X Chiranthofremontia lenzii floral display continues from the spring into early summer. Its species name honors the second director of the Rancho Santa Ana BG, Dr. Lee Lenz.

(photo credit: Felicia Yu
Location: Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden)

This hybrid combines the traits of its parents in other ways as well. It can attain a height and width of 20-30 feet, less than the 50ft. mature height of Chiranthodendron but larger than Fremontodendron, which is most often a shrub/small tree. Its leaves are also halfway between the compact, tomentose leaves of its flannelbush parent, which is adapted to the dry southern California climate, and the broad, thin leaves of its monkey hand tree parent, which hails from the cloud forests of southern Mexico and Guatemala.

(photo credit: Felicia Yu
Location: Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden)

X Chiranthofremontia lenzii is an intergeneric hybrid in the Sterculiaceae family (or the Malvaceae, depending on who you ask). Its blooms combine the long five-finger stamens of Chiranthodendron pentadactylon (monkey hand tree) and the golden yellow color of Fremontodendron californica ‘Pacific Sunset’ (California flannelbush).

(photo credit: Felicia Yu
Location: Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden)

Though they won’t knock your socks off like a Japanese flowering cherry, the little blossoms of Acer rubrum still serve as heralds of springtime. Around mid-April, red flowers start erupting on naked branches, painting the woodland edges with a subtle red glow.

Photo Credit: Rebecca Pineo
Location: University of Delaware Botanic Garden

For the aspiring botanist, red maple can be hard to distinguish from silver maple in the winter and early spring. Both have reddish twigs and buds, smooth gray stems, and are often found growing side by side. One distinguishing difference is the fruit. Though both disperse like helicopters, the red maple does it with decidedly a red aura, contrasting with the light green samaras of the silver maple. Before the fruit arrives, though, one of the handiest i.d. tool is the fetid aroma of a crushed silver maple twig. The red maples smells more like…well, your average tree.

Photo Credit: Rebecca Pineo
Location: University of Delaware Botanic Garden