Cordia sebestena Seeds | Geiger Tree

Small round-crowned coastal tree with rough dark leaves and clusters of orange-red trumpet flowers — Geiger tree (Cordia sebestena): Boraginaceae, Florida Keys and the Caribbean

LATIN NAME: Cordia sebestena

COMMON NAME: Geiger Tree

Plant Profile

The Geiger tree is a small, round-headed tree of the littoral, rarely more than eight metres, with a canopy dense enough to cast real shade and leaves rough as sandpaper. The flowers are the point: tubular, flaring into five creased lobes, in a hot orange-red that holds its colour in full sun, held in loose clusters at the ends of the branches for much of the year in the tropics. Each flower lasts a day. They are followed by ovoid, fleshy white fruits, each containing a single stone, which are edible but bland and mostly left to the birds. The tree grows on coastal hammocks and limestone from the Florida Keys through the Bahamas and the Greater Antilles to Central America, and it takes salt wind, salt spray and drought without complaint.

Science & Biotechnology

Cordia is a large tropical genus in the Boraginaceae, and it has been reorganised more than once: the American species with fleshy fruits have been moved between Cordia and Varronia, and the boundaries are still argued over. C. sebestena sits in the group with large, showy, bird-pollinated flowers, a syndrome that has evolved repeatedly in the genus. The rough leaf surface is caused by stiff, mineralised hairs, which discourage herbivores and reduce water loss; the same hairs make the leaves unpleasant to handle and give the tree its sandpaper feel. The fruit is a drupe with a hard, thick-walled stone, adapted for dispersal by fruit-eating birds and by crabs on the shoreline. The wood is hard, heavy and close-grained, and it takes a polish, which is why it has been used for small turned work for centuries.

Uses & Benefits

In warm coastal cities this is one of the most reliable flowering trees available, planted along streets, in parking lots and on sea walls where nothing else will take the wind and the salt. It is also used as a dense screen and a small shade tree in gardens, and it responds well to pruning, which is unusual among the showy tropical flowering trees. The wood is valued for carving, tool handles and small turned objects, though the tree is too small and too slow to be a timber crop. The fruit is eaten in some places, usually cooked or made into a preserve, but it is not a market fruit and the flesh is thin. In Florida the tree is the subject of local legend, named for a Key West carpenter, and it is planted as a specimen in older gardens there.

Growing from Seed

Sow fresh seed, which loses viability quickly, in a sandy mix at 25 to 30 °C; germination is usually within three to five weeks. The seed has a hard stone and benefits from a day of soaking before sowing, and the seedlings are best potted on young, because the taproot resents disturbance. Grow them in full sun and a free-draining compost, and water steadily through the first season. Plant out in a sheltered but sunny spot on the coast, with room for the crown to spread, and stake the young tree for its first two years against wind. It is not frost-hardy below about minus two, and it prefers a limestone or shell-based soil. Light pruning after flowering keeps the crown dense and stops the tree from becoming top-heavy.

Our Take

One of the best small flowering trees for a salty, windy coast, and it asks for almost nothing once the roots are down.

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