Golden Chain Tree

Day 235: This is a Golden Chain Tree (Laburnum), not to be confused with Golden Rain Tree (Koelreuteria). It is part of the Family Fabaceae (legumes), not Sapindaceae (soapberry), placing it in the same botanical "box" as peas and Scotch broom as opposed to the one containing horse chestnuts and lychee. Now, have we got this straight? Stop calling Golden Chain Tree by the wrong name! Mine happens to be a weeping variety with droopy branches as well as dangly inflorescences, and it was one of my "must-have" plants for my yard. It took me a decade or more to find one I could afford, and the contortions we went through to arrange transportation from the nursery where I bought it on a fall close-out sale were hilarious. It was in an enormous pot, for one thing, and given the size of the pot and the height of the tree, the distance between the footwell in front of the passenger seat of my car and the back window meant that we had to carefully bend the top of the tree to get it inside. There wasn't much room for me in there as I drove it home with leaves tickling my ears, only to face the challenge of manipulating the pot (heavy!) out of the car and over to the "$200" hole I'd dug for my $20 tree. That was my father's advice showing: whatever you paid for the plant, dig a hole worth ten times the amount to plant it in. Okay, the rich soil I bedded it in didn't actually cost $200, but there should be bonus points for backache. My hard work paid off. My lovely Laburnum is now covered in pendent golden chains.

Golden Chain

Day 247: The Golden Chain Tree is in bloom. This was one of the items on my priority list when I bought my home over thirty years ago, but I had trouble finding one I felt I could afford. Most of what was available came in huge pots, so large that I knew I couldn't get one into my car or, more importantly, get it back out again and to the spot where I wanted to plant it. Then one day as I was nosing around in one of my favourite garden stores, I came across a weeping variety at a reasonable price. Big pot or not, the tree just fit in the back of my car with the branches filling the passenger seat and only slightly bent down against the front windshield. It was something of a challenge to heft the pot out the rear hatch and roll it into place. My father had insisted that if you bought a $5 tree, you should put it in a "$50 hole" to ensure its survival, so I set to digging and filling, using store-bought garden soil to bed it in. Daddy's wisdom paid off. It's still not very tall, but it blooms reliably, and the weeping habit enhances the effect of the golden chains of pea-shaped flowers which give this Laburnum its common name.

Golden Chain

Day 244: A Golden Chain tree (Laburnum) was high on the list of plants I wanted to add when I purchased my property over thirty years ago. At the time, the only "landscaping" (a term I use quite loosely here) consisted of a yew hedge, a sickly lilac and a flowering tree I could not identify to save my soul. I went so far as to take a sprig of the Whatzit Tree to a master gardener who was likewise baffled, but that's another story. My quest for a Laburnum was stymied by prices well out of my budget, and little by little, the yard filled in with other more affordable shrubs and plants. Still, I kept dreaming of a Golden Chain, and while wandering around a nursery six years ago, I spotted a weeping version among the closeout items. With the nurseryman's strong-armed help, we managed to wrestle the pot into the back seat of my car, and painstakingly bent the branches to fit against the back window without breaking any of them. When I got home, I dug the proverbial $50 hole for my newest acquisition. It's not much taller than it was that day, but it produces cascades of beautiful, fragrant golden chains to brighten my walk out to the mailbox.