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In Season: Carrotwood
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
Carrotwood seeds are carried everywhere and often, by birds. The seeds pose a danger to mangrove forests, which they can crowd out with their vigorous growth habits.
HARRIET HOWARD HEITHAUS
This carrotwood tree looks like many that were imported to Florida as decorative landscaping trees in the 1950s and '60s.
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About this time of year it’s not hard to find this tree, which can be trimmed into a nice compact canopy, with shiny evergreen leaves and golden, grapelike pods of bright orange seeds. Pretty, yes?
Get rid of it. Please.
It’s carrotwood (Cupaniopsis anacardioides), and while you’re protesting that you’ve had it in your yard forever, it has lovely yellow flower clusters in spring and it’s the best groomed tree you own, its seeds are being carried everywhere by birds. Your neighbors, and probably you, are constantly plucking carrotwood seedlings out of your gardens, and its progeny go way beyond annoying. They’re dangerous to the state’s natural woodlands.
Carrotwood is listed as a Category 1 invasive exotic in Florida, capable of altering plant communities by crowding out the natives in them. It has the potential to overrun spoil islands, beach dunes, hammocks, marshes, mangrove and cypress habitats, scrub, coastal prairies and coastal strands, according to the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council. Mangrove forests are particularly vulnerable.
It’s illegal, under state law, to even own this tree without a permit. The plant was added to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Florida Noxious Weed List in 1999.
Carrotwood
• Common name: Carrotwood
• Botanical name: Cupaniopsis anacardiopsis
• Pronunciation: koo-pan-nee-OP-sis an-nuh-kar-dee-OP-sis Common name: Carrotwood
• Family: Sapindaceae
• USDA hardiness zones: 10A through 11
• Origin: Australia, Irian Jaya (Indonesia) and Papua New Guinea
• Uses: None; according to the IFAS Assessment of the Status of Non-Native Plants in Florida’s Natural Areas (Fox, et al. 2005), carrotwood is prohibited for use in Florida.
• Availability: none here from nurseries and garden centers
• To learn more: Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, www.fleppc.org; or National Park Service, www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/cuan1.htm
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What if it holds the cure for cancer?.Lol
#1 Posted by Naplesheart on June 27, 2008 at 10:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)
So why is it in a nice picture on this story. Cut the darn thing down.
#2 Posted by theabyss on June 28, 2008 at 10:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
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