Where does Flamboyant tree (royal poinciana) come from?
The flamboyant tree comes from Madagascar, where it grows wild only in the dry forests of the island's west and north. It lined streets across the tropics long before science learned, in the 1930s, where it grew wild.
A mystery solved in 1932
Botanists named the tree Poinciana regia in 1829, and from the 19th century it was grown throughout the tropics. Yet nobody knew where it grew naturally. Only in 1932 did the botanist J. Leandri find a natural colony on the west coast of Madagascar. Kew now describes it as restricted to the island's western dry forests: north and west of the Bemaraha massif, and in the dry forest around Antsiranana as far south as Daraina.
A shade tree for the tropics
The tree grows fast and spreads an umbrella-shaped crown, which made it a favourite shade tree for streets and parks. Its scarlet flowers are about 10 centimetres across, the upper petal blotched with white or creamy yellow, and its woody pods can grow more than half a metre long. It has collected many names on the way, among them flamboyant, flame tree, royal poinciana and gulmohar. In some places it has run wild, and in parts of Australia it is counted as invasive.
Why people think of the Caribbean
In the Caribbean the flamboyán is a familiar sight. It is the national flower of St Kitts and Nevis, it appears in many Puerto Rican paintings, and the Puerto Rican town of Peñuelas is nicknamed El Valle de los Flamboyanes. Even the name poinciana comes from a genus named after Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, a French noble who governed St Kitts. Yet its only native home is Madagascar, where its forests are badly fragmented by slash-and-burn farming, charcoal-making, grazing and fires.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · powo.science.kew.org ↗ · florida.plantatlas.usf.edu ↗
