Just noticing the tulip trees flowering in parks around town and finally the other day my neighbor's young (20ft tall?) tree flowered for the first time.

In a spot large enough for it I love these trees. My neighbor's is planted a bit close to his driveway but with the car washing and other maintenance we do there the tree is proving itself to be fast growing and very tolerant common of suburban polutants.

Articles I read on them say the flowers are born on the higher reaches of the plant where they're difficult to see. In my observation the large open grown park specimens always have low enough flowers I can grab and look into. Guess if you prune them to look like a lollipop with a 40ft stem the flowers will be a bit high to get a good look at though.

These trees are seem happy in moderate shade so they could be planted as a replacement tree near a declining giant in a yard.

They grow fairly quickly, my neighbor's is getting maybe 3 feet a year not in a perfect spot, keeping ahead of my metasequoia.

The older ones I've seen in parks do not appear to loose branches as often as fast growing local sycamores or cottomwoods do.

Next place I move of large yard I help design I'm going to plant one of these. Might even go with the 'Aureomarginatum' variety listed at hort.uconn.edu to get even greater summer round interest.

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