Hi elfi I see your trees still have not flowered, I realise this is probably a silly question but are they in the shade as they need full sun to flower. Also one of my books states that Poinciana do not flower till their seventh year, but more often at ten to twelve years and sometimes later, so there is time for them yet as by that age they would be a decent size tree. Hope this helps. ...Cheers..MM.

elfi, I wouldn't stress - they'll flower if and when they want to. You're not necessarily doing anything wrong. There is one in our garden which I am told has been there for well over 30 years, and "it never flowers." The 6 measley flowers it had at the top last year supported that, I thought.

This year it does have a lot more, but only on the north-eastern and south-western sides of the tree...... strange. Over the 15 months we have been here we have added a fair bit of organic matter to the dry dusty soil that was here, and have scattered several applications of CK77 over the entire garden. I'm not sure whether the tree finally decided it was old enough to flower, or our feeding the soil, or the copious amounts of Winter rain we had this year.

Don't give up hope on yours just yet.

Hi Elfi,MM & Liatris,
Sorry but you are all guilty of over fertilising, proding and poking at your trees,trying to make them do things they were and are not ment to do. Poinciannas can not be made to flower more than the surrounding soil and weather conditions will permit. The more you fertilise and water the more lush green growth, soft wood inside the trunk of the tree the less the tree can support all that extra lush growth, equals no flowers. The poor trees you are misstreating trying to force flowering will never produce a good tree. It takes time and no extra fertiliser, maybe a little extra water in very dry times to get the best results,(flowering) This our driest year in 100 years has produced the best flowering for many years. I wish you well in your quest for plenty of flowers, but you cannot force mother nature, no matter how hard you try. Good luck. Peter r

I dont know about 'leaning it against the trunk', but I have been told that hitting the base of a non-fruiting/non-flowering tree with a hammer gets results. I believe that its along the same lines as the 'no fertiliser / no extra water' regime - tree is put under stress and immediately starts trying to propagate.

A plant flowers to reproduce itself, so by putting a plant under stress it will often make an extra effort to reproduce before it dies. This is why you sometimes see a poor withered plant with a beautiful flower and during long droughts trees in the bush will flower. If you see plants with new growth (not flowers) during a drought, in an area that doesn't receive watering, it is usually a sign of decent rains coming.

My poincianas are flowering at the moment but are also putting on a lot of new growth so the flowers are hard to see under the leaves.

Will the Delonix regia "Poinciana" grow in Melbourne?
I realize it is a tropic /sub t. tree from Madagascar.
But has anyone tried? If so, what were the results?

Hi All,
please don't hit your trees with hammers or axes, as this will only do more harm than good, it will only give borers and dry rot another place to fester in your tree. Please sit back and relax, leave trees alone.If you do not have a nice one, take a drive or bus and go see them now in all their glory. Thay are at their best right now around Brisbane. Good luck. Peter r
Or I'll report you all to RSPCT. :)

Raudam, my gut feeling is that keeping a poinciana alive in Melb will be hard. I think:

You won't be able to buy a plant in Melb, so you'll have to grow it from seed. You'll need hothouse conditions to get the seed to germinate. (Maybe a mini-greenhouse.)

If it grows, it will have to be in a pot up against a sunny wall in a location where you can shield it from the double-whammy of Melbourne's winter cold and rain. (Assuming that Melb's summers don't kill it off, with those climatic rollercoaster days!)

You won't get it to flower, not without professional-level greenhouse conditions where you can control temperature *and* light. (I assume it would flower in those conditions.)

I suppose you're tired of everyone telling you to try Caesalpinia pulcherrima instead (aka dwarf poinciana, peacock flower, Barbados pride, Barbados flower-fence)? It's supposed to be able to grow OK outside of the sub/tropics and, even if it does die back in winter, should return in spring. It's smaller than the Delonix, and doesn't have that beautiful horizontal out-of-African silhouette of the Delonix. I've got a yellow-flowered form (C. pulcherrima 'flava') growing in a pot, awaiting transplant to the garden in autumn. (See link below.) It's very pretty, but the common variety has a more vivid flower colour (orange and yellow, instead of pure yellow). The foliage of both is soft and lacy, very pretty even without flowers.

(I've got a small pot of poincianas--very tatty after the summer storms and hailstones--growing as rough-and-ready bonsai. My problem is space, not climate, as people tell me my yard is too small for a poinciana. See link below for a pic.)

So, your chances aren't good ... but that's only a challenge to an enthusiastic gardener! Hopefully someone who's tried growing poincianas in colder climes will be able to provide more info. Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: Potted poincianas

Will small Poincianas grow in a bonsai pot, maybe someone has tried it, tree is 3 year old now, thanks

plenty of examples on google images, suggest go to a bonsai site https://www.google.com.au/search?q=poinciana+bonsai&rlz=1C1CHMO_en-GBAU666AU666&espv=2&biw=1188&bih=847&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjht9zwv8fQAhXKk5QKHdiqDG0QsAQIGw

Hi I'm sorry to disappoint keen poinciana growers but I threatened my tree many times over the years with the axe and it didn't work, it is now 20 years old and has only ever had the odd flower this year it has finally produced a lot of flowers and looks like it should. It grew well and is very large as our neighbours up higher than us built about the time I planted it and were fertilising their lawn so it got away to a good start but that didn't help it to flower until now.

Poinciana flowers well with harsh conditions and neglect. When grown in or near gardens where they get irrigated or fertilised they put on good growth but very poor or negligible flowering.