Flowering Tropical Trees 
After six years I essay a new catalog mostly to help Florida folks get better 
acquainted with the hundreds and hundreds of beautiful trees that they can grow in 
their gardens. Some 400 different kinds are described briefly here, including many 
of the world’s finest, and all of them (and plenty more) are growing in my garden in 
Stuart, Florida. But these are not all by any means; the world tropics offer at least 
3000 different showy-flowered trees that are worth attempting to grow in our remark- 
able climate. You and I are engaged in a great experiment and there is no limit on 
how beautiful we can make our Florida landscape. 
Which trees among this great wealth of material available to us, are going to be 
most successful in Florida, is one of the things we are going to have to learn. What 
the soil, moisture and other requirements are for each particular plant, I have no 
more idea than you, except what I learn by doing. No book tells you the answer. 
You are engaged in this experiment with me, and I am much interested in getting 
reports from you on hardiness, soil needs, etc. 
An important feature of this catalog is the array of splendid photographs I have 
collected to enable you to visualize what we are talking about. I wish I could get 
other pictures to illustrate the many, many trees I describe only with feeble words. 
Then you could know how beautiful they are and you would want to grow them all! 
You are always at liberty to visit my garden. Many things are marked, but they 
can mean little without a guide, and I work five days a week as a newspaper publisher 
and am free to “play” in my garden only on Saturdays and Sundays. About June 1 
every year I disappear into the Great Smoky Mountains until October, and the trees 
have to fend for themselves. So if you want to talk to me about trees, come any 
Saturday or Sunday. Or write me and I'll ship what you want or answer your 
questions if I can. 
My 1947 catalog is still available and in this 1953 edition I have avoided dupli- 
cation of many long descriptions. I had to abandon the previous arrangement in 
which trees were grouped by the color of their flowers; I found that too many of 
them had a wide variation in flower colors. Tabebuia, Bauhinia, Plumeria, just to 
mention a few, all run the full course of the rainbow from red to violet. So the 
order of this catalog is what you might expect if you were walking in the garden with 
me and we talked of trees — first one and then another. Some of the happiest hours 
of my life have thus been spent with David Fairchild, Walter Swingle, Alfred Hottes, 
Adolph Jordahn, Jeff MacBride, John Gifford, E. J. H. Corner, Hugh Evans, Peter 
Riedel and many others. I salute these men for at their feet I have learned much. 
I only hope my study of trees reflects credit on my instructors. 
EDWIN A. MENNINGER. 
