Hey, Carol. I'm impressed that you know such detail about the freezes. You gotta be one hard-core gardener. I think the lowest we got here was 27 degrees for most of one night and then the other night was maybe around 29? A few degrees and a few hours can make a significant difference. The Hamilia Patens or Firebush is quite sensitive to below-freezing temps. What happened with mine is that we hadn't experience such a hard freeze in something like seven years? So the plants just kept on growing, 24-7 every day of the year. They had completely taken over one large portion of my yard that sits in back of the swimming pool. The Firebush is a thug where I live. It has to be worse further south. I tolerate them only because they produce flowers that attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Pretty much all of my plants came back, or tried to, (I have killed off a number of them.) I don't recognize the leaves that you photographed. They may be from your orchid tree. You might think of looking at other parts of your garden to see if there are more like them. I would be tempted to pull one leaf out to see if it is attached to a fairly developed root structure. Trees usually throw out a pretty extensive root system before they show much greenery on top.

There are a lot of half-truths in this thread, and some plain misinformation sprinkled in. First, the idea that certain fertilizer types promote root growth is a fallacy. If anything, fertilizing a new transplant, or one that has been in its permanent home for just a year or two or three, will actually retard root system expansion. One way to think of this is that the roots are "looking" for nutrients, so a heavy-handed approach where too much of these nutrients are placed in the root zone actually causes less growth, not more. Then, there's the staking of young plants: Tree saplings develop something called reaction wood in response to being buffeted by the wind. Stake it tightly to some rod or stick and you've eliminated the opportunity for this to happen. Doesn't mean no stakes ever, but especially any items tied tightly so the trunk can't move around are to be avoided...and anything used must come off after the first year. Then there's the idea that somehow by pruning, we can mold the plant into a shape it's not otherwise genetically programmed to adopt. While there's a dab of truth in this one, it is the wrong road to take. Somebody up above at least stated the obvious-that young plants need all the foliage they can have to produce their food via photosynthesis. And that same process causes chemicals called auxins, developed in growing shoot tips, to send signals to the roots to grow. Constantly messing with this process just confuses things. Very basically stated, if you want a tree that produces mostly an upright growth habit, select a species or cultivar of a species which is genetically programmed to grow in that fashion. Trying to beat a horse into an elephant is bound to cause frustration, and the same applies here in the plant world. Now this is not at all to say one should never prune their trees. I myself have pruned perhaps a half-million plants in my time! But there are proper techniques here, just as one wouldn't try to carve a turkey without a clue what they are doing. Very generally, a moderate program of "raising up", which simply means removing lower branches can be done, but gradually please. If one is impatient and tries to do this all at once, the very likely response by that plant is to sucker like mad. Basically, when plant parts are removed, the plant responds by trying to reestablish those plant parts. So go ahead and take all kinds of branches off your tree....and the tree will simply start a bunch of new branches. We call those new branches suckers, and many of them will grow right straight up through the tree canopy, rubbing against other more well-placed branches, or throwing the crown balance off, or competing with the main leader. These are all undesirable outcomes. Pruning trees is not simpleton stuff. Why anyone would undertake it without knowing what they're doing is beyond me, except for the monkey see-monkey do factor. Let's not do our gardening by that method! +oM

dsstroud, unfortunately, they are a deciduous tree and very messy. They will also get HUGE if you let them. You can't change the nature of the tree, so either change your attitude or chop it down. Not being smart, just that's your only choice. That reminds me of a story of when I was working at a garden center. A woman called and said that the tree we had sold her was dead. My boss went out and it was indeed leafless, but then, all Jacarandas are leafless in the winter. He tried to explain to her that it was deciduous and would come back out and bloom in the spring, but she was all upset and made him dig it up, so he brought it back, cleaned up the roots, stuck it into another pot, and resold it. Then there was the woman who walked in and said she wanted a bush that bloomed all year, only got 4 feet tall and never had to be pruned. I told her the silk flower and plant store was about 3 miles down the road. She didn't like things that grew out of control, and said very haughtily that she refused to prune anything. I told her that this is Florida, everything grows out of control here, and she needed to just buy what she liked and hire a gardener.

Yea, I saw that. Hong Kong Orchid Trees don't produce seeds though. Only options are cuttings and air layering. i've heard that air layering is easier than propagating by cutting - but that both are extremely difficult.