Awesome Joolie

I was puttering around the front yard this afternoon when I noticed the profusion of seed pods hanging from the leafless redbud tree. I'd had moderate luck in getting mountain laurel* seeds to grow and stunning success in planting the red yucca**, *** seeds my coworker Sarah gave me. So hell, let's plant some redbuds!

According the the Wildflower Center, you can conduct a test to see which seeds are capable of sprouting.

As in a witch trial, the ones that sink are good and the ones that float are bad.

^{"And this isn't my nose; it's a false one!"}

Unlike in witch trials, the good ones were then carefully pulled out of the water and roughed up with a piece of sandpaper.

I have them in the freezer now and will wallop them with boiling water and a long soak before I go to bed.

I really hope these sprout. I want to plant a bunch of these so I can have pretty little redbud trees all over the yard, and I want to give some away, and I just might plant some more on a neglected strip of dirt here and there.

^{Photo by Marcia Cirillo, Creative Commons}

They are great little trees for Austin--drought tolerant and attractive. They like a range of light conditions, and of course their hazy pink blooms light up the city for about two weeks every spring. The blooms and the immature seed pods are edible too, although I haven't tried that beyond popping an exploratory flower into my mouth last spring. I don't remember it tasting like much, maybe a little fruity and a little perfume-y.

^{*AKA the grape Kool-Aid tree, for its fragrant spring blossoms that just smell...purple.}

^{**Not really a yucca, I just learned.}

^{***I should really give the Wildflower Center some scratch one of these days. Their plant database is indispensable.}