PACHIRA FASTUOSA HYBRIDS 
Grown frem seed in cooperation with 
FAIRCHILD TROPICAL GARDEN 
Coconut Grove, Florida 
Robert H. Montgomery, Director of the Fairchild 
Tropical Garden, writes: 
The floral sensation of the winter was the use we made of 
red and white pachira blooms. We picked them about dark, took 
them to dinners and parties and placed them in tumblers. In due 
course they opened and the result in every case was startling. 
I have never known any flowers to attract as much attention 
coupled with admiration. At a dinner dance of the Bath Club 
we had 30 or 40 and during the evening some hundreds of people 
concentrated their attention on them. And many wanted to obtain 
trees. 
We crossed the red with the white; they grow fast and 
bloom early. The hybrids we have raised come red or white but 
Dr. Fairchild thinks there is a good chance of something different. 
Dr. David Fairchild, President Emeritus of Fairchild 
Tropical Garden, writes: 
Many strangers stop each year at “The Kampong” gate to 
ask what the striking tree is which stands close to it and is 
covered with beautiful deep rose pink flowers. 
The whole look of the tree is unusual, I might almost call 
it modernistic. It is never solidly covered with foliage, but the 
leaves are large and handsome. When they come out late in 
Spring the wine red young leaves are beautiful with the pale 
green of the trunk; almost as beautiful as the flowers. 
The leaves begin to drop with cool weather and by Christ- 
mas the tree is bare. Soon the picturesque fiower buds begin to 
form. They resemble giant acorns set in their cups. For some 
time they grow slowly, then with spring, in March, they enlarge 
suddenly. Almost overnight the acorn elongates into a columnar 
bud as long as one’s finger. The flower bud usually points straight 
upwards and is composed of five brown, strap-shaped petals stuck 
together. Watch them closely and you will notice some evening 
that they burst open, the long petals curling back, revealing a 
bundle of rose pink stamens 3 inches long, each) stamen tipped 
with its golden anther, loaded with pollen. The next morning 
these long, rose-colored stamens are standing free from the flower 
in a mass that resembles more than anything else a shaving brush. 
In South Florida we now have both the rose pink variety and 
one with pure white stamens, but just where the white sport 
originated I have not discovered. It has a delicate ethereal beauty 
of its own. 

Available in gallon cans after Nov. 1, 1944, at $1 each 
EDWIN A. MENNINGER, “The Flowering Tree Man” 
