Northland
Every autumn the Dombeya ’Pink Cloud’ blooms along my driveway like, well a pink cloud
Russell Fransham on dombeya
The pale-pink blooms hang in loose, hydrangea-like heads among light green foliage that looks remarkably like abutilon leaves. This is not surprising, as they are cousins; both belonging to the huge mallow family along with hibiscus, hollyhocks and even breadfruit and kapok trees.
The dombeyas are a complex lot of flowering shrubs and trees spread between the eastern side of southern Africa and Madagascar as well as the nearby Mascarene islands (Mauritius, Rodrigues and Réunion). Joseph Dombey, a botanist and plant collector to the last king of France in the years leading up to the French revolution in 1789, gave his name to this large genus of glamorous flowering trees and shrubs. He seems to have been quite a lad, leading a colourful life during a tumultuous time – and managing to survive with his head attached. Many hybrid dombeyas have been created by breeders since Monsieur Dombey’s time.
One of these is ‘Pink Cloud’ – alternatively, the Mahot rose or Cape wedding flower – now one of the most popular flowering shrubs in African gardens and indeed everywhere in the subtropics. Its soft-pink autumn blooms last until early June in New Zealand and are a major source of nectar to bees and butterflies as temperatures drop. Beekeepers could do well growing these as a late-season food source for their hives at a time when nectar flow is low. One of its parents is Dombeya
burgessiae, which hails from Natal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
There, it grows in forest margins and is said to be a favourite food of black rhinos. I’ve got it growing happily here by the driveway right beside ‘Pink Cloud’ but so far, fingers crossed, the rhinos haven’t spotted it. Burgessiae’s flowers are more vivid than its pale and interesting offspring, having a vivid splash of cherry red at the centre of each pink bloom. It flowers from April to August, long after ‘Pink Cloud’ has finished its display. Its more lanky growth responds well to a serious chop in spring to keep it compact and blooming right through winter. Speaking of nectar flow, nothing beats the amazing flush of nectar that dribbles from Dombeya
cacuminum in early spring. Originally from Madagascar, in English it is known as the strawberry snowball tree. I have one of these planted by my driveway too. It reached 7m high in just six years and now every spring it erupts with a breathtaking display of strawberryred, papery flowers in pendant bunches. The local tui spend September leaping and squabbling through its branches, hanging upside-down to slurp the nectar that drips from the flowers. If cars park beneath the tree their paintwork gets plastered with the sticky stuff. And honey bees swarm through the flowers in huge numbers over the four or five weeks of abundance.
Its phenomenal growth rate when young makes it a bit big and frankly a bit messy for most gardens, but it is a handsome farm tree that would need protective fencing from stock for only a couple of years. That rollicking few weeks of the spring “Birds and Bees Party” pays its annual rent wherever its planted. Back in the garden, Dombeya ‘Pink Cloud’ is one of the best screening shrubs available here in the North. Its naturally dense, rounded growth is evergreen, reaching 3m or 4m quickly, so it is very versatile as wind-hardy, roadside screening. Although damaged by frost, it quickly recovers. A drawback is that the flowers don’t fall off when they finish in mid-winter, remaining brown against the foliage, so for me this is a good incentive to cut it back annually when the flowers are done, so I can maintain the size I want for privacy and wind protection. I have maintained my specimen here at about 2m high at flowering time for 25 years by cutting it back to 1.5m in late winter.
I have always presumed that being a hybrid it is sterile, as I’ve never seen seeds on it. But I wonder: maybe the rhinos get them? ✤