Pretty. Love the closeup

mine's blooming too. So sweet. Do you eat the berries ? AND.... used to be, when you commented, you would also receive emails about other comments on the same thread. But I'm not getting any messages when everyone is posting about the swap.

Patty, I noticed also that I wasn't getting all the comments posted to the swap thread and wondered if it was just me.

Everybody coming to the SA swap be sure and check the thread for the latest postings.

I've tasted the berries, but they are rather bland, not like acerola vitamin C taste that I expected which are made from Barbados cherry fruit.

I read that Barbados cherries are planted around school yards on tropical islands and in Central America to provide the children with vitamin C. The high ascorbic acid ones may be a different variety.

Very nice. I always thought it grew like a tree

There are varieties that do grow as a single trunked tree. Bossy, that would be right up your alley!

I used to attend weekly meetings at a home in Austin and was interested to observe a tall Barbados cherry tree over a period of two or three years in one of the front yards. Then late one winter it was gone and replaced by another kind of tree. I assumed it froze.

I am getting the emails about the swap so double check your settings just in case.

Your Barbados cherry shrubs look great, Roselee. I have two of the standard size Barbados Cherry and one dwarf in a big container. If you saw them you'd probably think they were not established, but one is from 2004, another from 2007 and the dwarf from 2013. In my garden they freeze back to stubs in bad winters, take ages to regrow, bloom, then are whacked by winter again. A better gardener would probably take them out but in a good year, the scent is so lovely!

Our experience was also freeze back to stubs and slow recovery after an unusually cold winter with a pair we tried in Houston; figured they would not stand much of a chance left unprotected outside in north Texas. Thanks for the photo reminder of how lovely they can be.

Now I'm wondering if some cultivars are more cold tolerant depending on the original growing location of the stock from which they were propagated.

All of my plants were purchased about 15 years ago from Chip's Hill Country Gardens (now under new management) and have gone through many winters without significant damage.

Chip did his own propagating so it's likely that all the plants he offered were clones.

Annie, I just went out to sniff my Barbados Cherry blossoms and I don't detect any scent at all making it all the more likely that various cultivars with different attributes, such as cold tolerance and scent, are being offered by the nursery trade.

Rosemary cultivars such as 'Hill Hardy' and 'Arp' were selected for their greater cold tolerance. So certainly possible for Chip to have been doing a similar thing with dwarf Barbados cherry. It seems to be listed as hardy only to zone 9 on many sites, but the entry in the TAMU native shrubs list says root hardy into 8 with a late (mid-June) return. Claims there are even some reliable survivors in the Dallas area - though I can't recall seeing any. At least now I'll be looking.

Actually, there are reports of fairly reliable return from roots all the way to northern Oklahoma (Bustanii Gardens).

You're just making me feel bad, Roselee. While planting them from 4" pots, I didn't expect mine to be that big in two years, but I did expect them to be bigger than when I planted them. If they don't make some serious strides next year, they'll get the old shovel pruning.

I'm thinking you just have the touch seeing as how several of us have struggled with them.

Mara, just came across this thread and it set me to wondering how the Narrow-Leafed Goldshower fared.

It died. It didn't come back from winter;..... or I might have dug it out planting something else.

Very nice- Nursery tags and catalog pages just show the fruit- Had I known what the flowers looked like I would have been interested in them long before now.