Machilus yunnanensis Seeds | Yunnan Machilus
LATIN NAME: Machilus yunnanensis
COMMON NAME: Yunnan Machilus
Plant Profile
Machilus yunnanensis is a large evergreen tree of the laurel family, twenty to thirty metres tall in the forests of Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou, with a straight trunk, grey-brown bark and leathery lance-shaped leaves. The new growth flushes red before it hardens to green, which is why the tree is planted along streets in Kunming and Chengdu.
The flowers are small, yellow-green and held in panicles at the ends of the shoots in spring, and the fruit is a dark blue-black berry about a centimetre across, taken by birds as soon as it ripens in autumn. The bark is used in local medicine and the timber is sold under the same name as other laurels.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus is close to Persea, the avocado, and the fruit has a similar oily flesh around a single large seed. The seed is rich in fat and loses viability quickly if it dries, which is the main obstacle to raising the tree from seed on any scale.
Timber from Machilus is traded as nanmu, a name that covers several laurel genera and carries a high price in Chinese furniture. The wood is fine-grained, pale and resistant to insects, and old-growth trees are protected, which is why plantation material matters more than wild supply. The wood is also worked for tea chests and for the small boxes sold to tourists, and the sawdust is said to repel moths, a claim that has never been tested properly.
Uses & Benefits
The tree is used mainly for timber and as a street and park tree in subtropical China. The fruit is edible but thin-fleshed and not worth collecting, and the bark and leaf appear in local medicine rather than in the national pharmacopoeia.
For a garden, the appeal is the red new growth, the dense evergreen canopy and the fact that the tree tolerates air pollution and hard paving. It needs space: a mature specimen is a forest tree, not a courtyard one, and the fallen fruit stains paving. Fallen fruit should be swept up in autumn, since it stains and attracts wasps.
Growing from Seed
Sow the seed as soon as the fruit is cleaned, in a shaded nursery bed, since drying kills it within days. Germination takes four to eight weeks at 25°C, and the seedlings need shade for their first summer.
Young trees grow steadily rather than fast, and they transplant best at one or two years, before the taproot becomes established. They want deep, moist, acid soil and shelter from cold wind; established trees take light frost but not prolonged freezing. Plant with a generous mulch and keep grass away for the first three years. Street plantings are usually raised from seed in nursery beds and lifted at one year, when the taproot is still short.
Our Take
A fine subtropical shade tree with red new growth and useful timber, best planted where it has room to become the forest tree it is.
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