GAThere’s nothing like having a tree with a name you can’t pronounce.
When I first got my ylang ylang tree (Cananga odorata) as a small plant from a fellow master gardener who grew it from seed, someone told me it was pronounced “lang lang.” Since then, I looked it up and learned it’s pronounced ee-lang ee-lang. In Tagalog, one of the languages of the Philippines, ylang ylang means the “flower of all flowers.” Confused? Just call it the Chanel No. 5 perfume tree.
The oil from the ylang ylang flower is used to make Coco Chanel’s classic perfume, and that’s all you really need to know about it. It is not a beautiful tree, and its flowers are almost unnoticeable. But when it’s in bloom, it will make your yard, and perhaps your neighbor’s yard, smell like the runway at a French fashion show. The scent is strongest from dusk to dawn.
The trees are fast growing and easily cultivated from seeds, if you get to them before the birds do and have the patience to wait several months for them to germinate.
It gets big, as tall as 80 to 100 feet in Southeast Asia, so I’m glad I didn’t plant that little sapling under the utility wires. I’ve also read in our gardening zone (Zone 10), they are more likely to stay in the 30- to 40-foot range. I am hoping that is accurate, but it will probably be a few years before I’ll know for sure.
My tree has been in the ground about four years and is probably 15 feet tall, and listing to one side, courtesy of Hurricane Wilma. But since the branches are often described as brittle, I am glad I still have it.
It took it a few years to bear flowers, and I pretty much forgot about them. But then one evening I was walking down my driveway when I was stopped in my tracks by a fabulous cloud of perfume.
The flowers are not flashy, and you only notice them if you follow your nose. The petals are long and thin, and start off green, but gradually turn yellow. They bloom on and off all year.
I am not crazy about the overall look. Its branches droop almost to the ground, so I occasionally snip some of the longer trailing ones. I throw some palm fertilizer on it in March, June and October when I am making the rounds. But for the most part, I don’t do anything to it except take a deep breath when I walk by.
You can usually find them at Jesse Durko’s Nursery in Davie (954-792-2297), Living Color Garden Center in Fort Lauderdale (954-985-8787) and Excelsa Gardens in Loxahatchee (561-790-3789), but call and check first. There is also a dwarf version. If you really love Chanel No. 5, but can’t afford to spritz your yard with it, the ylang ylang tree might be the way to go.
