Red Cassia – Cassia roxburghii

General Landscape Uses: Excellent as a medium-sized ornamental specimen tree, free-standing focal point, or tropical shade tree. Its graceful weeping habit makes it highly effective for framing properties, planting along spacious driveways, or integrating into the canopy layer of large tropical landscape designs. Ecological Restoration Notes: While highly valuable for urban forestry, biodiversity support, and reforestation within its native paleotropical range, it should be utilized strictly as a cultivated ornamental in regions outside its native range (such as South Florida). Description: A stunning, semi-deciduous to evergreen tropical tree characterized by a broad, spreading canopy and distinctly arching, drooping (weeping) branches. The trunk is typically greyish-brown and smooth when young, becoming slightly fissured with age. It features feathery, pinnate compound leaves. Dimensions: Height 15 – 30 ft.; Spread 20 – 35 ft. Growth Rate: Fast to moderate Native Range: Indian subcontinent, primarily Southern India and Sri Lanka Native Habitats: Thrives naturally in tropical dry deciduous forests, low-elevation woodlands, and open riverine thickets. Soils: Highly adaptable. Prefers fertile, organic-rich loams but successfully tolerates sandy, gravelly, or light clay soils, provided there is excellent internal drainage. Nutritional Requirements: Moderate Salt Water Tolerance: Low Salt Wind Tolerance: Moderate to low Drought Tolerance: High Light Requirements: Full sun Flower Color: Pink Flower Characteristics: Scented, 5-petaled blossoms featuring prominent, long, curved stamens. The flowers emerge in dense, compact clusters (racemes) clustered along the undersides of the weeping branches. Flowering Season: Late spring to mid summer Fruit: Long, rigid, cylindrical woody seed pods (10 to 18 inches long) that turn dark brown to black when ripe. The pods are internally partitioned into cells, each containing a single smooth, flat seed embedded in a sweetish, dark pulp. Wildlife and Ecology: The abundant nectar-rich blooms serve as an excellent food source for bees, butterflies, and other native pollinators. It also acts as a larval host plant for various sulfur butterfly species (family Pieridae). Horticultural Notes: Grown from seed Comments: