I doubt you will find one elsewhere in Oklahoma. I did a search for you, and the closest nursery I could find was Weston Gardens in Fort Worth. They list Sophora affinus as an ornamental tree that they carry. Don't know how far south in Oklahoma you live, or whether or not you would want to call them to see if they have any still in stock. While they do have winter hours, beginning November 1st, they are open year round it seems. Unfortunately they don't sell online, and you would have to make a trip to the nursery.
Looks like a lovely little tree. I have a small native tree I am growing, Ptelea trifoliata, or Hop Tree, because it is a larval host plant for the Giant Swallowtail butterfly. It is native to Oklahoma, but sometimes it can be difficult to find native trees locally. I had to order mine from a native plant nursery.

I have a lot of native plants, because generally, that is what the butterflies like as far as larval hosts and nectar, too.

There are a couple others that you might want to consider if you can't find this one, such as Caelsapinia gillesii (Bird of Paradise; beautiful flowers all season; gets about 10' tall; drought tolerant); Desert Willow (gorgeous blooms; drought tolerant; gets about 20-25' tall); and Mexican Buckeye (very pretty blooms in spring; about 15' tall mature; drought tolerant).
Good luck finding your tree!

Bustani Plant Farm carries the Bird Bird of Paradise. All 3 trees are carried by Weston Gardens.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Sophora affinus or Eve's Necklace

Darwin,

I've never seen Eve's Necklace in a nursery in southern Oklahoma where we live, but have seen it plenty of times in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.

Just about any nursery in north central Texas that carries native plants (and there are many there) will have Eve's Necklace. Wichita Valley nursery (linked below) in Wichita Falls, TX, has a great selection of native plants including Eve's Necklace and its location is convenient for folks in the southwestern quadrant of Oklahoma.

In the D-FW metro area, you can find Eve's Necklace at place's like Green Mama's and Redenta's, both of which always seem to have much more reasonable prices than Weston Gardens. I like Weston Gardens and love their demonstration gardens across the street from the nursery, and I appreciate their wide selection of native plants, but their trees tend to be very pricey.

Eve's Necklace is available via internet/mail order from several retailers too.

I am pretty sure I have seen Eve's Necklace at some of the native plant sales held in the Dallas-Fort Worth area every spring, and in particular, at the native plant sale at the Heard Museum in McKinney. It seems to be grown much more commonly in north central Texas than in Oklahoma and that likely is because its cold hardiness might be sort of "iffy" from central OK northward.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Wichita Valley Nursery

Susan and Dawn
Thank you very much for your information.... Iwill look up those other trees. I do like desert willow and have a white form of it in a 5 gal pot ready to plant. I did not find any mail order sources for Eves necklace on my search so I will have to look some more. I did manage to pick some seed so I have that as a last resort. In fact I have been picking seed of some natives and plan on growing some out in pots for people looking for these plants. I also found what I beleive is a mexican plum which to my reading is a beautiful little tree which does not sucker. Not sure if anybody has one of these to tell me more about it ?
I like plants which attract birds as well as butterfies.
Thanks again
Darwin

I'd love to have a Mexican Plum tree some day. It is a great "shrub" for birds, but is also a larval host plant for the beautiful, big Tiger Swallowtails. So, it should serve you well. I have a Prunus serotina, or black cherry, also native to Oklahoma, that is also larval host for Tigers and other butterflies, as well as Liriodendron tulipifera, also host for the Tigers.

I have grown quite a few natives from seed, lots of milkweed for the Monarchs, False Nettle (no stinging hairs) for the Red Admirals, Amorpha fruticosa (Silver Spotted Skipper and Dogface Butterflies), Cephalanthus occidentalis (Buttonbush) for the Cecropia silk moths. Also grow lots of other natives like Passiflora incarnata (Gulf Fritillaries), Black Willow aka Salix nigra, for the Mourning Cloaks and Viceroys, Senna hebecarpa for the Sulphurs, native Pipevines for the Pipevine Swallowtails, Zizia aptera for the Black Swallowtails, Baptisia australis (Wild Indigo Duskywing), Native honeysuckle, Lonicera flava, for the Snowberry Clearwing sphinx moths, Virginia Creeper for several species of sphinx moths, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii (Turk's Cap) for the hummingbirds, and many more.

There is a couple who sells native plants at various Farmer's Markets in the state. While she generally doesn't get too far south of Norman, she did get to Ardmore last year. Her plants are wonderful, and she includes some trees and shrubs in her plant list. I think her actual nursery is in Seminole, and it's possible you could make an appointment with her, not for sure, but I'll link you to her website. She might know of a place to purchase Eve's Necklace, too. Marilyn and Ken are both very helpful.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Wild Things Nursery

Darwin,

You're welcome. I've linked one source of Eve's Necklace below, and I know I've seen others but don't remember who or where.

If your work with a landscaper, you might be able to an Eve's Necklace tree from a wholesaler like Nurserydirect.com who sell to landscape contractors but not directly to individuals.

Regarding Desert Willow, ours is about eight or ten years old and has reached a height of about 15' despite growing in slowly-draining and dense red clay. (It prefers more well-drained soil than we have here, but I planted it anyway and so far it has survived.) It is one of the last trees to leaf out in spring but is lovely and attractive to wildlife.

Regarding Mexican Plum, they are native on our property and we have 15 or 20 of them, mostly scattered throughout our woodland acres, especially back in the back part of the property that we avoid in summer because it heavily populated by copperheads.

They are lovely, non-suckering trees that can attain an ultimate height of 25-35' although it takes them quite a while to grow that tall. Our tallest ones are in the woods, where I believe they've "stretched" and "reached" to find sunlight. The trees that are not in heavy woods and who don't have to search for sunlight tend to be happy to stay at about 15' and have a lovely rounded form. They are a cloud of very fragrant plum blossoms in spring, blooming slightly later than cultivated plum trees we've planted, and their fruit are small but tasty, although useful only for wildlife or for making jelly due to the small size of the plums.

We moved a small 3' to 4' tall Mexican Plum sapling from the back of our property to the front yard about 4 or years ago, and it is now about 15' tall with a crown that spreads about 10-12'. It sets a good crop of plums every spring although they sometimes get nipped back by a late freeze. Mexican Plum doesn't sucker like the Chickasaw, Hog or Sand Plums do.

Our property is mostly wooded, so we have acres of native trees, including the black cherry trees that Susan mentioned. They grow like weeds here and probably are one of the reasons we have so many butterflies all summer long.

Chaste Tree (Vitex agnus castus) is another native tree that is very attractive to butterflies and other wildlife. It has a natural tendency to grow in a more shrubby manner, but some people prune them up tree-form. I tried that with ours, but it is relentless about wanting to be more spreading and shrubby, so I gave up the pruning and am letting it grow the way it wants to. Ours is currently about 15' tall with a spead almost as wide, having shaded out the former sunny butterfly bed that used to have lots of zinnias, cosmos and other sun-loving flowers for the butterflies. Ours has purplish-blue flowers but there is a pink-flowered form as well.

Roughleaf Dogwood and American Beautyberry are two other natives that are lovely in a landscape setting and attractive to wildlife.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Sophora affinis at Historictrees.org

Darwin,

Give Kentucky Coffeetree (Gymnoladus dioicus) a look-see also. It has very nice filtered shade and lovely dark green summer foliage. It produces brown pods, but i'm blanking on whether it's monoecious or dioecious , so you may be able to select a male cultivar if you don't want the pods. It's a great all around tree and does wonderfully here.

-Matt

Susan and Dawn
Thanks again for the info .. I will check out those web sites and email the one. Susan if I am successful getting some of these seeds to grow I will gladly share them with you... I think its very important to share and give back to nature. esp since most of us just seeem to take for this earth and not give back.
Dawn I am glad to hear about the Mexicana Plum and its habits from someone who has them growing and glad to here about the no suckering habit.
I live out in El Reno so alot of the trees that like the eastern part of the state do not always do well for us since we are kinda on the dividing line between eastern and western Oklahoma.... so I have to do some research on them.
Thanks
Darwin

I'll for sure give them a try, Darwin. I post here frequently and usually have native seeds as well. I grow a lot of natives from seed. If you see anything you're interested in, let me know. I agree, sharing seeds is so rewarding.

Susan

Matt,

We have some naturalized Kentucky Coffee trees here along our road (but not on our property) where they tend to grow in fencelines that are a mass of bird-planted natives. I like them and they are incredibly drought-tolerant, almost what I'd call droughtproof. In our two worst drought years here (2003 with a little under 19" of rainfall and 2005 with a little over 23" of rainfall) which both were "Exceptional Drought" years, they were about the last plants to show drought stress, with the only plant that was later than them being the prickly pear cacti.

If I ever plant a Kentucky Coffee Tree, I'll choose one with no seed pods because the naturalized ones here drop seed pods all over creation.

Believe it or not, we've planted so many trees on the once treeless portions of our property that I have to be careful now about planting any more or I'm going to shade all my veggie and fruit growing areas, a problem I'm already having on the western and northern edges of my veggie garden. I'm already having to transition some understory areas from grass to ground covers because those areas now are too shaded for grass. This is fine with me because my ultimate plan has been to shade out all the areas around the house where bermuda grass grows so we don't have to deal with mowing it twice a week for the rest of our lives.

We have kept one native grassland area west of the landscaped home-garage area open for the deer and other wildlife, so that would be one place I could plant a tree or two, but I don't want to shade out all the native grassland either.

Our 'civilized' parts of our property where the house, garage, yard and gardens are was just a long, narrow open area of long-fallow farm land in between two large wooded areas. When we cleared the brush before building the house, all we kept was 1 large pecan tree, 1 large post oak and a few cedars. We later removed the cedars after we saw what high-risk trees they are in grassland areas where wildfires are somewhat common and, in some years, frequent.

At first, we sat here and roasted all summer long in full sunlight while we waited for our tiny trees (most were transplanted from the woods as 8-12" seedlings) to grow. After a dozen years, though, and with native trees that have made amazing growth since we planted them, the yard area is fairly shady nowadays. I'm afraid that from now on, I have to be really careful about planting more trees or we'll end up being too shady and having to remove trees.

Darwin,

We are on the dividing line too, in Love County which sits right along I-35 with the area east of I-35 seeming more lush and green most of the time (with higher rainfall), compared to the area west of I-35 which seems significantly drier most years (and has several inches less of rain each year) and not nearly as lush and green, especially in dry years. (Our specific place is west of I-35, though not by much.)

And to add one important point about trees making good growth---when we moved here, we deliberately choose to transplant teeny-tiny seedling trees from our woodland to the open grassland where we built the house. I believed our trees would grow better and be healthier if they had a root system that was equal to their top growth. We dug the tree seedlings as carefully as we could. In general, we moved oak trees, and a couple of native persimmons and one Mexican Plum and they had 8-12" of topgrowth and the rootball was 12-15" 'tall'. I don't think we started planting trees until 2001 after moving here in 1999 because 1999 and 2000 were severe drought years. We have a two-story house, and almost every one of those teeny-tiny trees are now as tall as the house, and most of them are taller than the house. I am positive we would not have had that kind of growth if we'd started with containerized trees that had a lot of topgrowth in comparison to the small root systems.

Our tallest oak tree is a red oak that grew from an acorn 'planted' by a squirrel. I believe it popped up in the shrub bed on the south side of the house in 2002 or 2003. It is easily 4 or 5' taller than the seedling red oaks we transplanted from the woods around the same time or the year before.

For anyone interested in propagating native plants, I highly recommend an almost-600 page book by Jill Nokes called "How To Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest". It is an amazing book, and mine is old and dogeared and well-worn.

Two books I found very helpful when I was trying to figure out what all the native plants on our land were back after we bought this land in 1997 are by Doyle McCoy and are: "Roadside Wild Fruits of Oklahoma" and "Roadside Trees and Shrubs of Oklahoma". I bought both of them at Barnes & Noble in the OKC area (might have been the one in Norman) in the late 1990s. They were published in 1981 and I don't know if they are still in print, but they have been invaluable in helping me identify all the native plants here.

Our house is in a slightly more hospitable area than yours, but not by much, and I think it is only more hospitable because of its proximity to the Red River. Love County is a transitional county, sitting right in the middle of south Central OK and it varies greatly in rainfall with higher rainfall in the eastern portion of the county (ave. of 42" per year) and much less rain in the western portion of the county (ave. of 38" per year). We're right in the middle. I would imagine the western end of our county is very similar to the El Reno area, and it always amazes me how much drier the western portion of our county is.

We were out in the western end of our county a couple of weeks ago and even though we were only 15 or 20 miles further west than our home, it was significantly drier and the native plants were 'short' compared to those same plants at our house. So, even though we and they can grow the same exact native trees, they are going to get a lot larger in our part of the county than at the western end of the county, and I think there is an important lesson there. However, they also have sandy soil in the area where we were, and we have red clay that holds water better so I'm sure that accounts for some of the differences in plant growth. It is much harder for young trees to survive/grow during extended periods of drought in fast-draining sand than in clay.

I noticed, for example, that the further west you go, the shorter the oak trees. There's also a lot more native cacti out there than here and slight differences in the native grasses....theirs are undoubtedly the more drought-tolerant ones. I noticed they have large stands of sand lovegrass out there that get huge. We have scattered bits of lovegrass here at our place in clay but it doesn't grow as large in the dense clay and it doesn't compete well with taller prairie grasses here like it does further west.

We all can learn a lot from native plants compared to more exotic imported ones. At first I tried to plant a lot of landscape plants like hostas and hydrangeas, and they really didn't grow well here in our soil and with our frequent summer droughts. That caused me to quickly convert to native plants, which only made sense. There aren't many non-natives I'll plant any more because they just don't tolerate recurring drought as well.

With clay soil, it is even more difficult, though, because I have to select plants that can handle a drought year with 19" of rainfall and temps in the 100s for a long time but which also will tolerate a wet year with 50" of rain, and sometimes 6 to 9 to 12" of rain or more in one day. (Our record one-day rainfall is 12.89" and the soil stayed saturated for weeks.) It can be hard to find plants that tolerate both extremes. Natives, I have found, do tolerate them and that's why that's mostly what we plant on our property. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to look at our property during the drought years and realize that the native plants handle it a thousand times better than the non-native ones.

Dawn

Dawn,

I wish I had that much space! There's so many great native trees out there and i have absolutely no space for them. I'm stuck with a silver maple, some callery pears, and a few common hackberries. I'm just waiting for the silver maple and pears to break in our next big ice storm so I can replant with some more interesting trees.

Darwin,

I almost forgot...check out the recent publication "Putting Down Roots." It's put out by OSU and is full of native and oklahoma proven trees. It's available online and at public libraries and your local county extension for free.

-Matt

Here is a link that might be useful: Putting Down Roots

Matt
I know Kentucky Coffee tree even from when I grew up in South Dakota it grew up there quite well in zone 4. Yes there are male and female trees but there is no way to tell which one is which unless you purchase a grafted plant. Even a female plant can lack seed pods if there is not male around to pollenate with it.
This tree is even considered an energy efficent tree because it leafs out late in the spring and drops it leaves early when planting to shade your house. I love this tree and it would be my fist choice but it gets big for my spot... and it even grows native close to where I live. This is a great..great.. great... tree and should be planted more but the nurserys do not sell it because it is considered an ugly duckling when it is small.
Dawn this tree should not be a problen in your grass area as it produces only a filtered shade and grass is suppose to be able to grow under it. This is the type of shade I was wanting and thought the Eves necklace would be sim but smaller growing. Thornless Honeylocust also gives this type of shade and I planted alot of it when I lived up north where they do very well but here to my understanding they are short lived and do not hold up well in ice storms.Dawn you also gave me alot of info to think about and I appreciate it very much.
Thanks everybody !
Darwin

Kentucky Coffee trees are about the most drought-tolerant tree I've ever seen here. Even when we had drought classified as D-4, 'Exceptional Drought", by the U. S. Dought Monitor in 2005-2006, it did very well and probably showed less drought stress than anything else.

I just don't have room to plant much of anything unless I take out something else because our property is heavily forested.

Dawin, I don't want grass. I want everything but grass. In our very heavy, very dense red clay soil, bermuda grass is the bane of my existence and seeks to creep into every cultivated bed we have, whether that bed contains vegetable plants, fruit plants, or ornamental shrubs, perennial flowers, ground covers, etc. My goal is to shade it out around the house so that by the time Tim retires, he won't have to mow it twice weekly for the rest of his life. I thoroughly hate bemuda grass. Also on the list of grasses that make me crazy are Johnson grass and crab grass.

We have honeylocust, although it is the thorned type, and they are so very invasive. We try to keep them away from the 'civilized' portion of our acreage, although we've left them growing on the southern edge of the woods 100 yards or so from the house.

One boring day when I don't have enough to do, I'll try to post a list of the most common natives (or strongly naturalized) plants we have here on our property. It is simply astounding how many different kinds of plants peacefully co-exist in the 'wild' areas of our acreage, although we do strive to remove some invasive and unwanted ones that get too close to the civilized areas. For example, we try to keep poison ivy away from the civilized areas although we leave it in the wild areas since it is a very important food source for the wild things. We also remove cedar trees every winter that pop up on the 3 or 4 acres closest to the house. Otherwise they'd take over every inch of ground.

Near the back of our property, beginning about 150 yards from the house, we have a forest of cedar trees that are very old and very tall. There is a huge lack of diversity in that area because very few plants can grow in their heavy shade or compete with them for water. We'll never remove those old, majestic cedar trees but neither will we let cedars take over the rest of the woodland. The wildlife needs the more diverse woodland area that we have on the rest of the property because it provides many more food sources, although the cedars do provide good cover for some birds in winter.

Dawn

Dawn
I think you must have a great looking place.. I truely love mature cedar trees they are very majestic when allowed to naturally and have that wind swepted look. One reason why you would lack of diversity in that area other than the shade is as the leaves fall from the trees they contain a chemical in them that inhibits seed germation so for the most part no seed will germate and grow around them but if you planted plants in there that are shade tolelert they may grow ?
On your locust I wonder if you have black locust instead of Honeylocust as Black locust are quite invasive and can spead by seeds or the trees can sucker, These trees will have very pretty white or pinkish purple flowers in late spring/early summer. Honey Locust will not have showy flowers and does not sucker and by thorns you will diffently see them as I have seen tree trunks have great big masses of thorns 3-8" long projecting from them and they will have big seed pods like the Kentucky Coffee tree. But th thornless and seedless types can make a truely beautiful tree casting filtered shade.
Got to run
Darwin

Orchidtrader,

We have a beautiful place IF you love native plants, including native grasses and wildflowers. Our woods are terribly dense and overgrown and I've tried to remove invasive plants and keep a path cleared through the woods so we can walk thru them in the non-snake season. During snake season I stay out of the woods, though, because we have a lot of copperheads and several kinds of rattlesnakes, including western diamondback, pygmy and timber rattlers. The timber rattlers really scare me more than the others.

The old cedar grove is at the back of the property, so I wouldn't plant anything there because it is about 1000' from any source of water, and it is too snakey for me to really care what grows there. A herd of deer lives back in that area more or less year-round, and it has a major "deer trail" through it where not only deer but also coyotes, bobcats, coons, possums, skunks, armadillos, ring-tailed cats and a few other wild critters, including an occasional wild pig, travel through our property. It is not a real people-friendly area because it is closest to the river so there is a very large copperhead population back there. Our neighbor whose property sits west of that area fights copperheads the way most folks fight house flies....no matter how many he kills, more keep coming. He also has found it incredibly hard to garden because of there being so many more deer closer to the river where he is. The front of our property where we live is much more civilized. We jokingly refer to the back of the property as the Oklahoma Outback.

If, on the other hand, you prefer neatly manicured, tidily-groomed park-like settings with a carpet of green grass, then we don't have much of that. Our only neatly mowed and weed-eated area is the lawn right around the house. It took me a couple of years to "train" my husband to cut around the wildflowers when he mows the pastures, but I finally succeeded as he gained an appreciation for the native forbs. We wouldn't mow the pastures at all except it is necessary to do it in the warm season to keep snakes down and it is necessary to do it in late fall in a bad drought year in order to slow down wildfires. Since this is not a bad drought year at our house, we're letting the back pasture stay tall for the wildlife but we have cut a wide path through it for us and the dogs. I haven't seen a snake in about a week, but sometimes they're out and about as late as Thanksgiving if we have some warm days so we always like to have a nice wide path cut through the pastures and woods so the dogs and people can see the snakes before they step on them.

I'll have to look at the locust trees when they bloom this spring to make sure I know which ones we have. I don't remember showy flowers, though, and some of the older trees have the big masses of thorns you described on the trunks, so I think they are Honeylocust. We orginally cut down all the young honeylocust trees but they kept coming back and we finally just left them alone. The area that they occupy is on the southern edge of the woods a good distance from the house, and sits near the edge of a small spring-fed swamp.

We bought this piece of property because we wanted to live in a rural area with native plants and wildlife, but every now and then I feel like we got more than we bargained for because it can be hard to peacefully coexist with some types of wildlife that pose a threat to the safety of humans and/or domestic animals.

Dawn

Dawn,

There a couple of ways to tell a Honeylocust from a Black locust. The honeylocust tends to have smaller leaflets than the Black locust, though if you don't have both on your property, that won't really help you. The easiest way to tell them apart is their bark. The honeylocust bark on the trunk will have upturned margins, whereas the black locust will have a braided bark with orange lowlights underneath. Unfortunately, they both have thorns and pods, though the honeylocust pods will be larger than the black locust and one will have paired thorns at the node, though I can't remember which one. ;) Hope that helps.

-Matt

The Oklahoma Proven Plants for 2011 have been determined!

New Oklahoma Proven Plants selected

By Tracey Payton
Published: Today

The Oklahoma Proven Plants for 2011 have been determined. What is Oklahoma Proven, you ask? They are plant selections chosen by experts in the horticulture field that have shown to perform well in Oklahoma�s climate, which as you know can be unforgiving. We recommend these plants to residents new to our harsh growing conditions, as well as businesses and experienced gardeners alike. Each year, a tree, shrub, perennial and annual are chosen for Oklahoma Proven status. On some occasions, a Collectors Choice also is selected.

The tree for 2011 includes varieties of the American Elm (Ulmus americana): New Harmony, Valley Forge and Princeton. These varieties of American elm are a few that are shown to have resistance to Dutch elm disease, which decimated our charming elm lined streets beginning in the 1960s. All the varieties mentioned are broadly vase shaped with dense canopies and beautiful yellow fall foliage. However, Valley Forge is upright and arching while New Harmony has arching and somewhat drooping branches. American elms can handle numerous soil conditions, including salts used for melting ice, air pollutants, drought and a wide range of soil pH.

The shrubs selected for 2011 include varieties from the Abelia Collection (Abelia x grandiflora): Kaleidoscope, Little Richard and Rose Creek. These smaller varieties of Abelia are becoming popular in the landscape. All of the varieties mentioned stay small, around 2-3� wide and 3-4� tall. Kaleidoscope has bright red stems and lime green leaves tinged with yellow. The leaves of Kaleidoscope won�t scorch in the sun, may have fall color that ranges from deep orange to red, and soft pink buds turning to white flowers in late spring. Little Richard is evergreen with glossy green leaves in summer that turn pinkish orange in fall, and white flowers that bloom from summer to the first frost. Rose Creek is another evergreen having red stems, new growth turning from pink to dark green then purple come fall and small white flowers encompassed by rosy pink sepals. These compact forms of Abelia can be used successfully in containers, as an accent hedge or plants, in a grouping or as foundation plants. Hummingbirds and butterflies are attracted to these plants, adding another benefit to incorporating them into the landscape. Abelias prefer sun or part shade with a well drained and more acid soil.

Giant Coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima) is the perennial selection for 2011. I couldn�t be more excited about this native choice, as it is one of my favorite plants. Giant Coneflower has large grey blue foliage and flowers with bright yellow petals and a dark inner cone. One reason I love this plant is the flowers are born in early summer above the foliage quite a bit, and get this: are 5-6� tall. Giant coneflower is native to the eastern part of Oklahoma, but does well throughout the state. It will do well in moist or dry soils once it is established. This coneflower will thrive in full sun, but could also tolerate some late afternoon shade. Deadheading, or removing the spent blossoms, will encourage another flush of blooms in late summer. Giant Coneflower works best as a border or planted in masses. It is a great addition to native beds, woodland areas or the cottage garden.

The 2011 annual plant selection is Pink Crystals Ruby Grass (Melinus nerviglumis) variety Savannah. As most warm season grasses, it thrives in full sun and heat and will survive in areas where other plants may scorch. Another benefit is unlike some grasses it only grows 18 to 22" tall. Pink Crystals Ruby Grass is a cute ornamental grass with traditional glossy green to blue foliage. In late spring it has bright pink blooms with silky white hairs. In addition, the flowers keep their color and can be used in flower arranging. Pink Crystals Ruby Grass is a great addition if you need something to fill in small areas of the flower bed, as a border or to add height to container plantings.

The Silver Linden tree (Tilia tomentosa) is the Collectors Choice selection for 2011. This is a lovely large shade tree that can get 50� to 70� tall. It is tolerant of the urban landscape, high pH soils, pollution, and can be more heat tolerant than other types of Linden trees. The Silver Linden makes a great street tree or a nice addition for a large Oklahoma yard. The leaves are a nice dark green on the surface and silvery beneath, which offers an interesting contrast when the wind blows. In addition, small, fragrant white flowers will attract bees in late June or July and the leaves may have yellow fall foliage. Some cultivars may be selected for your desired effect, such as brilliant fall color or better performance.

I hope you will consider incorporating one or two of these selections into your own landscape. For information on other Oklahoma Proven Selections by year, call our office at 321-4774 or visit oklahomaproven.org.

Tracey Payton is a horticulture extension educator.

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma Proven Plants