One of the worlds most beautiful trees favoured both for its fine dark yellow panicles or racemes of yellow flowers and its delicate layered folliage .Perhaps the trees most striking feature is its leopard like bark which it exfoliates at certain times of the year.Depending on location it can be semi deciduous with beautifully fine attractive pink to reddish new regrowth which gradually darkens to green.
It is the leopard skin trunk however which mostly appeals.It does grow into quite a large tree,but is ideally suited as a street tree with many tall,slender examples on display in the streets of Brisbane.
In more open settings it can be much more spreading although is more upright than the poinciana,whose foliage may appear similar at a distance.
Leopard Trees are remarkably hardy and allow other plants and grass to grow underneath although the hard seed pods can play havoc with the shins if struck by a mower.The hard flat rounded black seed pods can be broken open with a hammer and the seeds will germinate readily with some basic seed raising techniques.
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