Paulownia Trees.. Anyone have one? Opinions?

[Scott Hildenbrand]

Just wondering what people think of them. Stumbled onto them and on further searching seems to be a LOT of hype around them.

Wondering about first hand opinions.

I'm in 6B, SW Kentucky, BTW.

[D. Staples]

Invasive species.

[David Hare-Scott]

Very close to being declared a noxious weed here abouts. Grows very fast - fine. Make zillions of seeds - not so fine.

David

[Buderschnookie]

I just moved into a new-to-me home that had two of these monsters in the front lawn- just huge 60+ year old behemoths. It cost a small fortune to have them taken out, the stumps ground w-a-y down, and new topsoil brought in. Despite our efforts at eradicating the beasts we are now battling root shoots from the root fragments- and we had them ground down and out with very wide margins. The trees are noxious, dirty, and aggravating and I curse whomever planted them in my yard to start with. Every day for the past few months I am out there removing root shoots- hundreds of them and more pop up every day. I keep a hoe on my front porch.

They might be an appropriate species if you have blank acreage that needs some tall trees pronto, but in 99.9% of situations I would say to just run the opposite direction of them. Once there they will be next to impossible to eradicate. Beware.

[Scott Hildenbrand]

LOL... Ok, so there is an evil behind the hype. That's what I figured.

Shooting off of left over root stalk, reminds me of the Purple Plum we removed from our old place. It's on our list of hated plants. The dang thing is STILL putting out new growth even though it's been months since we cut it out. Luckily not our home anymore so it's not mine to mess with. :)

Every summer it'd turn the yard purple with new grown coming up from root stalk, up to 30' away from the main plant. Mow it down and it leaves a sharp stick just waiting to skin a bare foot.

This is a good reminder to check more sources than just these sites where you might find a pretty plant with alot of hype behind it.

[Kay Lancaster]

Horribly invasive, brittle-wooded species. And then there's the 11 million seedlings.

It would probably be more fun and less trouble to take up a hobby like bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon than dealing with all the seedlings. Or rolling naked in poison ivy.

Kay, dealing with the aftermath of the former owners' former Paulownia

[Scott Hildenbrand]

Sounds almost as fun as Kudzu.. :D

[Scott Hildenbrand]

I'm glad I asked you all instead of going to other sources. Place I'd have checked before I thought of you all would be the USDA site.

they don't list this as invasive. Odd..

[AlanG]

Invasiveness aside, it's basically a boring, run-of-the-mill, single-season tree (YMMV).

Speaking of mill, the Japanese prize the wood highly, and many large commercial growers have made big bucks exporting the wood.

[Kay Lancaster]

Yup, also had a nice crop of scotch broom (got that under control), english ivy (more work needed), poison oak (beaten back) and himalayan blackberry (needs more work). They also planted willows and irrigated them. Sigh. Oh, and then there's the deer. Lotsa deer. And the doug firs they let grow under power lines. Did I mention the rocks?

Shall we have a party?

Now that I've got some of the native species untangled from the weeds, it's looking better, though.

Kay

[Scott Hildenbrand]

I'll take the rocks... Need to do some landscaping..

We did have english ivy by the side entrance.. All over the place. I think I've got it taken care of except some that's entrenched in the Monkey grass.

Really we were not too bad off with the problem landscaping of past owners.

[Jangchub]

I have a Paulownia kawakamii and I definitely did grow rapidly. From a shoot to a 40 foot tree in three years. It does drop a lot of pods, etc, but so far as I can tell has not been noxious in my growing conditions. The P. tomentosa is somewhat more noxious. Paulownia is a hardwood and I wouldn't describe it as being brittle. It is a very valued crop in Asia for building with and making furniture with.

So, I think it depends on the variety.

[jason111]

Just been reading with curiosity on the Paulownia tree. In the past have grown alot of these and yes it does depend on the variety. Th tomentosa is listed on the invasive species list and it does drop i seeds everywhere. They have lots of names, Princess tree, Kiri tree empress tree which are all the tomentosa variety. There are severa varieties and the elongata is certainly not invasive as I several acre that will be soon harvested for the lumber and have never had a proble with them. Yes they are extremely fast and I have 12"-15" diamete trees right now after 7 years. My acres look so beautiful in springtim with all the flowers which I will miss for a growing season when the are harvested. Hope this helps you a little further. I am certainl not an angry grower of Paulownia. Doing your homework is important. Jaso

-- jason111

[Jim Kingdon]

It is a few clicks from the home page, but from there you can get to:

something is invasive depends on the definition of invasive, your location, and which list you are working from. I'm not really aware of a master list (although most sources from a given region tend to agree on which plants are causing the biggest problems for natural areas).

[Jangchub]

This has been my experience also. People stop and ask what that tree is and believe me, if there were an invasive species in my yard I'd get it out. I did have to remove the sumac because of this reason, as well as the Mexican elderberry.

Do you have the lumber milled for you or do you just sell the logs?