I first learned about tulip trees when I attended college at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. In my plant identification class we learned the nitty-gritty details of classifying trees by their bark texture, leaf shape, arrangement of branches, flowers and so on.
There were two trees in particular we learned about that stuck with me. One tree was the gingko tree, which I’ll save for another day, and the other was the tulip tree. One spring day our class went on a field trip to see the flowers of the tulip tree that line one of the major streets next to the university’s campus Quad (S. Mathews Ave near Davenport Hall).
What a sight! I’d never seen a tree with a flower quite like it!
Each flower was about two inches across and greenish yellow with orange markings at the bottom.
Years later, when a tulip tree came up for purchase at my local garden club’s annual plant auction, I knew I had to have it. Lucky for me, nearly nobody in the room knew about the tulip tree and that it will flower May to June (attracting hummingbirds), have lively yellow-colored leaves in fall and the seeds provide food for birds and squirrels.
Can you believe my luck!? Now I have a spectacular tree, that didn’t cost much, growing two feet taller each year in my back yard. One day this hardwood tree might grow up to 90 feet tall.
Are you familiar with this tree? Help others find one! Tell us in the comments where you’ve sighted a tulip tree in a park or public place.
P.S. The scientific name of the tulip tree is Liriodendron tulipifera. It’s also known as tulip poplar and yellow poplar.
Thank you for this delightful post and your blog. We had some tulip trees in E Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I always thought that their name came from the silhouette of their unique leaves, which almost looks tulip-like. However, I now believe they are named for their flowers, especially since liriodendron means “lily tree.” We see very few of these tulip poplars here in the Midwestern prairie land. Disease has claimed our elms, ash trees, and our horse chestnuts; and now our Norway and field maples’ leaves greet autumn not with bright color but with large black spots that kill them. Sad.
Hi, Rosemary. Thanks for sharing more info about tulip trees. I’m thrilled to hear that you know them from growing up in Pennsylvania. It is sad that so many of our trees were lost to disease and pests. These instances shine a light on the importance of tree diversity in our communities. As we replace ash, elm and other lost trees, the new goal of communities is 5:10:15. A community should have no more than 5% of a species, less than 10% of a genus, and no more than 15% of the same family. (Tulip tree is in the Magnoliaceae family.) If a neighbor already has a specific tree, then we should challenge ourselves to ‘go out on a limb’ and plant something different.