Please. Just no. I've seen what it can do. YOU can't contain it if you get it started; it WILL get away from you.

What cuz'n rhizo said...."I wish that you would spend a few days a year volunteering in a State or National park near you, helping to clear and mitigate the damage caused by some of these plants you want to propagate because you like them."

Well if you found it at that CVS then that means it must able to survive and reproduce there. Toss that thing in the trash where it belongs!

They are not a problem here according to the native plant society. I am looking for serious advice. They are commonly used in landscaping around the area, and they are an attractive medium-sized tree. The one I obtained the cutting from was a stump-resprout from one that fell over in a storm.

You have been given very serious advice.

They are not an attractive tree, they have a terrible branching pattern and they are ugly IMO. Just like Mimosa, you won't see them in the yard of a well kept home around here, they are considered "trash trees".

I am in Texas and I fight these evil trees on a weekly basis. Please do the state of North Carolina a favor and throw that cutting in the trash!

Mimosa are not trash trees, neither are the tallow. I just want to know how to propagate the cutting. These are NOT an invasive. Here they have a beautiful pyramidal crown when left unpruned. I have a mimosa tree and I consider my yard "well kept".

I've told you how to prepare the cutting....vinegar and a blender.

In the Houston area,
Chinese tallow trees account for a full 23 percent of all trees, more
than any other tree species and is the only invasive tree species in the
14 most common species in the area.[8]
The Texas Department of Agriculture lists Chinese Tallow as one of the
24 most invasive plants, and includes Chinese Tallow in a list of
Noxious and Invasive Plants which are illegal to sell, distribute or
import into Texas.[9][10]

Amazing. Did not know it was that bad a problem.

treehugger, I don't know if they have a "terrible" branching habit, based on this picture:

DeerNaraJapan - Triadica sebifera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More 'quirky' to me. A bit like Mulberries. Maybe they periodically dieback in parts of the south it gives them a poorly branched look?

In any case there are many other better plants to try to root from cuttings.

It has also caused the near extinction of one bird species so far, and decrease in numbers of others. From the USDA site about this nasty tree:

"In Texas, the introduction of tallow trees has
produced large-scale conversion of much of the upper
coastal prairie to woodland (Bruce et al. 1995).
Presettlement vegetation was dominated by little
bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and other
typical prairie species. The new, anthropogenic
woodlands are essentially monospecific stands of
tallow trees with some native tree species. Besides
altered species composition, Chinese tallow
woodlands have altered ecosystem processes. Their
primary productivity is higher, and ion concentrations
in the soil have been changed (Bruce et al. 1995).
Tallow tree woodland is expected to either persist as
a novel, stable, exotic vegetation type or to gradually
give way to a novel type dominated by native species
(Bruce et al. 1995). Regardless of which scenario
takes place, this species has supplanted naturally
occurring prairie where it has invaded.

Associated animal species are dramatically affected
by such habitat modifications. Attwater’s prairie
chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri), once
abundant in the coastal prairie of Texas and
Louisiana, is near extinction due to loss of habitat.
Other bird species dependent on coastal prairie
habitat are dickcissels, mottled ducks, and a large number of neotropical migratory songbirds including
five critically imperiled species. Data indicate that a
dramatic decline has occurred over the past 25 years
in grassland bird species (Knopf 1994)."

.....

Another party, posting on Garden Web from my area used to dismiss concerns about butterfly bush, complain about the "weed police" and so on. Last time I visited their former place of employment a butterfly bush infestation had gotten going in a stream bed there, perhaps originating with plantings that had been made elsewhere on the grounds.

One of the beefs about this shrub is that it forms thickets along rivers here, displacing native plants and interfering with access. Local retailers continue to sell it, although some recently introduced cultivars are being depicted as sterile.

I am not in texas or louisiana, and theses "problems" don't apply here. They are a nice tree that provides interesting flowers, seeds, and fall color. Davidrt is correct, they do sometimes have dieback which is why the one I took the cutting from fell in a storm. Rhizo, I get your humor but not helping at all. In all seriousness, I just want to propagate the cutting. Maybe I should use seeds instead?

Davidrt, they don't die back here, even when it got down to 12F a few years ago I didn't notice any damage to them. For some reason here in the US they do not have the straight trunks like in that photo, they're usually crooked with numerous forks.

I will say that Tallow trees do not like dry sandy soil, because there are some areas here where they are somewhat absent. Generally, in areas where you see Longleaf pine, Southern Red Oak, and Blackjack Oak, you won't see too many Tallow trees. In more moist areas (like my property) where you see Water Oak, Slash pine, Sweetbay, and Red Maple, you'll notice the Tallow trees trying to take over.

Everyone around here calls them Popcorn trees, because of those white seeds that show during the winter.

Logan Johnson, who said anything about trying to be humorous?

You try it and post your results! I am not that dumb.... LOL

Logan: you have been given every chance to mend your ways by many different people. Nothing seems able to penetrate your wall of egotism and ignorance. At this point, I totally agree with rhizo. Banning you from this and other Gardenweb forums is apparently the only way to keep you from continuing on with your reckless stream of misinformation. How this can be achieved is unclear, but it's time to find out how it can be accomplished.

BTW Logan I hope you take these has kindly words of advice, and not some kind of attack. The world needs people interested in plants and gardens, and I commend you for following through with your hobby. You just need to go about your participation on this board in a smarter way.

David, some of us are quite confident that Logan is not the youngster in the pictures, but an adult.

Ok well, I hope not because in that case there really is no excuse...and like any other persistent WWW message board troll, he or she should be banned. I really hadn't given it much thought until now, though I am aware of course that people can 'fake' themselves online. But I assumed that if a person were grossly misrepresenting himself, he would already have been banned. In fact, the way the "pro" tag was dropped made me wonder if someone had been put into contact w/his parents via an ISP...and _found out_ he wasn't a grown up? Maybe houzz needs to be contacted again about him - I assume it already happened once before.

If everyone posting falsehoods here is to be chased off the forums will soon become largely depopulated.

Embo - I don't think that's true at all. Far too cynical a take. First of all, if someone inadvertently posts a falsehood, that's far different from a pattern of repeated trolling. The "hive mind" will deal with correcting falsehoods. It cannot fix a persistent troll. I feel that luckily, or through the hard work of moderators, Gardenweb has managed to be a very productive and positive online community. And for many years. We've never devolved into fights about climate warming or similar banalities that have infected some other gardening discussion areas. Hopefully "the system" such as it is, can continue to work. If Logan really is who he says he is, and I suppose that's up in the air now, I don't want him banned, yet, but I do think he should learn to post in a more grown-up way.

Cannot agree that postings on the forums I look at repeatedly have a history of a high degree of accuracy dominating. In fact the opposite is probably more characteristic, so that people like me who post modern information may be argued with ad infinitum. Try pointing out to rose hobbyists here for instance that amending of planting hole back-fill is a long dis-proven practice and seeing what ensues.

Good sources for research based findings about gardening and landscaping practices are the print publications of Carl E Whitcomb (Lacebark Inc), the print publications and web pages of Linda Chalker-Scott, and the Gardening Professors blog.

Wow.

I wasn't trying to start a flame war. I will just try the seeds instead.

Another fine idea, logan. Take the seeds, toss them in a blender with a cup of vinegar.........

Tallow tree growing out of a clump of Box Elders, what a hot trashy mess. If you zoom in you can see the Box Elders actually have a straighter trunk than the Tallow tree.

Here tallow isn't invasive! We don't have mild enough winters for them to be an invasive.

Logan, if you won't let anyone here influence your thinking, who does influence you?

Sometimes plants learn to adapt to marginally colder temps, this is why Kudzu and Mimosa are expanding north. If you were able to get the cutting from stump sprouts, that proves that at least the root system is able to survive there.

Embothrium: There is a world of difference between healthy debate and the kind of misinformation Logan/Caldwell Home and Garden puts out. Discussion that includes skepticism about some purportedly scientific studies, contradictions between experience - sometimes decades of it - and "modern information", to cite just two examples, is one of the strengths of Gardenweb. In general, posters are polite, willing to consider alternative points of view and genuinely interested in helping others and learning new things themselves. Logan seems motivated entirely by the desire to promote himself and seemingly cannot resist comment, no matter how ill informed, unethical or wrong headed.

I'd also suggest that emotional investment can run in more than one direction. Labeling something a "a bogus garden practice" because it does not conform to currently accepted standards of modern information is risky. I used to have a tattered copy of a Popular Science article that appeared in the 1940's. The entire thing, complete with quotes from the greatest experts of the time, was devoted to the wonders of DDT. A Golden Age of Agriculture was about to dawn, diseases were to be eradicated, life enhanced in every corner of the globe. As kids, we used to gambol in the clouds of DDT sprayed up and down our suburban streets. Our parents were unconcerned because they had been assured that it was perfectly safe by the very best of "modern information". Today we have a world wide proliferation of persistent environmental chemical contamination, imperfectly understood effects of many different forms of radiation and a host of other issues all of which, we are assured by experts using the best of modern information, are nothing to worry about.

cecily, good idea. lets just forget this bs ever happened.

This thread has evolved in a somewhat crazy way but that's what GW is all about.

I deleted my response to Logan, because he saw it, upvoted, and hopefully "took it to heart".

Mainegrower, your response is one of the best I've ever seen concerning what some have recently dubbed "scientism" - as pertains to gardening or agronomic culture, specifically. It's fine to present present whatever "modern information" is available; i.e., whatever current research shows. It's also fine to discuss that further and provide apparent counterexamples; which can then be dissected. Agree that is what historically has gone on at GW! Though it is amuses me that Embo still has to fight with hole-amending rosarians! Just a thought: since HT roses never get very big anyhow...is it conceivable they really do see long term benefits of hole amending on some especially impoverished sites because they are essentially amending most of the root zone of the plant anyhow? Well, I don't mean to belabor the point. I'm glad he's trying to let them know what the current research shows. I visit the rose forum about once a year so I wouldn't know! I have a couple but they aren't my cup of hybrid tea - pun intended!

Chinese Tallow is in fact in the NC invasive list, it's just currently at Rank 3.

http://www.ncwildflower.org/plant_galleries/invasives_list

I can can see it turning out to be a real problem, especially in the eastern end of the state.

My husband grew up in Texas, near Houston, and had one of these trees in his yard. I just asked him what he thought of it and his exact words were " It's a pain in the @ss tree and nothing kills it". Overall, he didn't like that tree at all.

He said it was a very beautiful tree. He just would never plant one because of what a pain it is to manage, It damaged the foundation of his childhood home. It made the house unlevel, where they then had trouble shutting their interior doors. His mom had to pay thousands of dollars to get the foundation repaired.

He and his sister used to pick the seeds off the leaves and throw them at each other. He has a lot of childhood memories with that tree....good and bad.

ilovemytrees, I won't be planting anywhere near structures. alabamatreehugger, isn't rank three the "watch list"? I want this as a temporary tree, to provide some interest until some of my CM's and live oak (starting it this spring!) gets large. They are very short lived trees here, usually dying after 15-20 years.

Just my opinion but I would never plant anything that was on a local invasive list.

From what I remember in SE Texas, tallows reseed promiscuously, so Logan's neighbors should have plenty of seedlings to share with him (if they don't, then maybe it isn't an invasive tree in his climate, at least not yet). There are numerous hardy small trees with good fall color and better habit that are suited to NC.

"what some have recently dubbed "scientism""

The term "scientism" gives me gas. Invariably it's used by woo-prone people who hate it when science debunks their nonsense.

*say, can anyone tell me how to root an Ailanthus cutting? :)

Ailanthus is a genuine problem here. The watch list is a list of plants that are being watched to see if they become invasive. If you think the tallow is so terrible, give me a suggestion of a different tree, maybe that I can also obtain for free

For some reason we don't have Ailanthus down here in my area, but from everything I've read about its behavior, Tallow tree is pretty similar. If you try to cut one down they send up suckers like crazy, sometimes 20' from the stump. The leaf surface is waxy, so if you try to spray the suckers it just beads up and rolls off. The only success I've had here is basal treatment using Remedy and diesel, and even then sometimes I have to do it twice.

Theres all kinds of trees you could use in zone 7 for fall color... maples, Blackgum, sassafras, persimmon, some oaks, etc...

I want a medium-sized short lived tree to do me until my live oak and several CMs start growing. We don't have a tallow tree problem in our area.

What I'm trying to say is that even if the top of tree gets killed back by cold in your area, the roots can live for decades, and they are hard to kill. As soon as the top gets killed back, you'll have suckers coming up everywhere.

Logan, here's something you should consider for next summer. It's the Native Plant Conference @ Cullowhee sponsored by WCU. I have attended in the past and its great. I met many knowledgeable people and will always remember one of the fieldtrips to Biltmore. You are gonna learn a lot and make new contacts (I would keep your fondness for Chinese tallow and autumn olive under your hat). Really, give this some thought, don't write back and say you can't do it, you can apply for student aid. Lodging, meals, fieldtrips registration can all be taken care of if you qualify. You're gonna be exposed to a whole new side of things you've never seen before, its barely two hours away.

sam, I am willing to look into that. I have actually been to biltmore somewhere around 30 times and I get a lot of inspiration from their botanical gardens. I am open to alternatives, just something similar. I am looking for:

short lived (15-20 years)

fall color

medium sized (around 30-40ft mature height, and I realize they don't stop at that)

get for free or really cheap (native/invasive growing on a roadside or cheap $5-$8 tree)

flowering would be a plus, but not necessary

sam, is that tree in the picture sourwood? I used to have one until the former neighbors "trimmed" it. I have tried to transplant three, none survived.

One of my favorite trees! I have two. Oxydendrum arboreum. Awesome red Fall color....... while they're blooming! The one pictured is just about to change color.

Plant a catalpa! They grow like nobody's business. Or Tulip Poplar, ditto.

I like them as well, miketann. Catalpa and tulip poplar don't meet my needs.

If you can do without red fall color find Betula populifolia. It's similar to Tallow in looks except it has yellow fall color and better bark, it's also not very long lived.

Treeguy, I may use your suggestion in another spot, it would be perfect!