Delonix regia
Royal poinciana, flame tree, flamboyant, poinciana: native to Madagascar, where it is now threatened in the wild, it has become one of the most widely planted ornamental trees in tropical regions around the world. Its scarlet-red flowers are so dense that they completely cover the canopy, transforming the tree into a living flame.
Characteristics:
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Spectacular flowering: clusters of scarlet-red flowers cover the tree during the warm season.
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Umbrella-shaped growth: up to 10 meters tall, with a widely spreading canopy that provides beautiful shade.
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Light foliage: finely divided bipinnate leaves with a fern-like appearance.
Precautions:
- Strictly tropical tree: it tolerates no frost. In mainland France, it must be grown in a pot and overwintered indoors in a heated room or in a greenhouse. Flowering in a pot remains exceptional and requires a great deal of patience.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: very sunny, with as much heat and light as possible.
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Soil: light, sandy, and well-drained. It tolerates poor soils—as a legume, it fixes nitrogen from the air itself—but absolutely cannot tolerate stagnant water. A potting-soil and sand mixture works well in pots.
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Method: no cold stratification—on the contrary, a heat treatment should be applied. The seed coat is extremely hard: soak the seeds for 24 hours in warm water (lightly scarifying them with a file improves the results further), then sow them 1–2 cm deep in a deep seedling pot, in spring or summer, at 25–30°C. See how to sow your seeds.
Planting advice:
- Plant in the ground only in frost-free areas. Elsewhere, use a large, deep pot and bring it indoors as soon as temperatures begin to drop, placing it in a bright room above 15°C.
- It is remarkably well suited to bonsai, thanks to its fine foliage and rapidly thickening trunk—see our guide creating a bonsai from a seed.
Care advice:
- Water regularly during summer growth, then reduce watering considerably in winter during its dormant period, when it loses its leaves.
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its nectar-rich flowers are highly appreciated by pollinating insects within its growing range.
- As a legume, it fixes atmospheric nitrogen and naturally enriches the soil around it.
Uses:
- Ornamental tree planted singly or in rows in frost-free areas; grown in pots or as bonsai in cooler climates. Pair it with palms, bougainvilleas, or hibiscuses in a tropical garden.
Symbolism:
The flamboyant is associated with passion and prosperity. In many tropical regions, its flowering marks the arrival of summer and the end of the school year—in Vietnam, it is even called “the schoolchildren’s flower.”
Harvesting your own seeds:
Its spectacular woody pods can reach 60 cm in length. Harvest them when fully dry on the tree, open them, and store the seeds in a dry place: their hard seed coats give them a shelf life of several years. See storing your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Volcanoes of Auvergne, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
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