About a year ago when we were walking by the lake I picked up some berries on the ground under one of the trees and stuck them in a pot. This is the result, it is about a yard high and made it through the winter. It seems to get some small violet flowers (very small) and has a very sweet smell for a time in the spring (mine didn't, but the big one by the lake does). The problem is, I don't know what kind of tree it is. If any of you know the name of it please let me know, I don't know what range it has, but I'm in central Florida so it tolerates heat and as I said it made it through the winter and we did have some freezes this year. 
Yesterday was overcast and drizzly, but I wanted to take a picture of my bottlebrush. It isn't a good picture, but you can see that it is absolutely full of pretty red bottlebrushes.
5 comments:
I just love that bottle brush tree. I had never heard of that before and it is just magnificant!
I am going to send your blog ref to a biology professor here at the University and see if he can identify your tree.
Happy Stitchin,
Teresa
Hi Candace,
Your bottle brush tree is fabulous! I can't help you on your little plant, it's fun that you have grown it from berries.
Valerie
This is the information I received from the Biology professor here at the university. One of my friends has a Chinaberry tree and the seed hulls are very hard and already have alittle hole in them, so perfect for stringing into necklaces and bracelets and whatever you want.
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It’s almost certain that it’s a non-native tree called a Chinaberry (Melia azadanach). It’s from Asia and is a member of the mahogany family. The thing puts out tons of small fragrant flowers and, later, lots of small fruits. The fruit and the seed in each one are poisonous but some people use the seeds as beads because they are so shiny.
As for the bottlebrush tree, it’s an Australian species in the genus Melaleuca. It will indeed grow around here. They are available from some local nurseries but they can also be obtained from on-line sources.
Loving your Amy's Passions colors! Also can't wait to hear what the name of the little plant is..it is looking good!
How exciting to have grown a plant from a berry, I hope you've got somewhere big enough to plant it. It sounds like a fun tree to grow. Your bottlebrush tree is fabulous, I hadn't realised that they grew outside of Australia, but of course there's no reason why they shouldn't.
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