Each month our editor, Laura Lukes, highlights an outstanding plant, an interesting insect, a fun place to visit, a new technique, or helpful tool.
Desert Willow Chilopsis Linearis
About eight years ago the Master Gardeners planted a Desert Willow (Chilopsis linearis) in the Demonstration Garden. This is a beautiful small tree prized in dry gardens for its showy and fragrant blossoms which cover the tree in the long, hot days of summer. When many native bloomers are past their spring glory and entering semi-dormancy to protect against heat and drought, the Desert Willow is just getting started. It does best in full sun, and will become leggy and thin in part shade. It’s extremely drought resistant and will succumb to root rot if not planted in a well-drained, seldom-irrigated location.
The Desert Willow is native to the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico; its native range in California is restricted to the arid southern portions of our state, primarily San Bernadino and Riverside counties. However, anywhere that’s hot, sunny, and dry, and not above 5,000 feet in elevation will support this hardy tree, which has a life span of 40 to 150 years. Where it occurs in nature, it creates the feeling of a small oasis in the middle of dry desert washes. As a landscape specimen, it adds a lush look to the native, drought-resistant garden during the heat of summer.
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