"No Kalmia in Los Angeles."

Well, maybe if you are right on the coast and import a big pile of acidic soil...but, no, probably not. Not to mention it doesn't look remotely like a Kalmia!

In a zn 10 climate like LA there are a million things this could be, but if you don't like it, get rid of it! Unless you have some reason to believe the prior owner of the house was a collector of the rare and unusual, it almost certainly isn't.

My super quick guess was Diospyros lotus but if people like Embo and Sara who are more familiar with subtropical trees than I am*, didn't recognize it as such, I'm assuming it wasn't. ;-)

* - not to mention the LA gardener!

"However, the tree is pretty ... dull. So I'm unlikely to keep it. Hate getting rid of something that I don't know enough about."

Precisely the approach that got the ONLY Cedar (Cedrus libani) in my city pulled out...it was still in the young rapidly growing scarecrow phase.

"My gardener has two degrees and used to be the main horticultural expert at one of the larger nurseries in the L.A. area before he opened his own business."

With detail of the tree (& your gardener definitely has access) and training/experience (which he apparently has), it is fairly easy to narrow down a tree into Family, then Genus. Species can be more difficult, especially for more uncommon specimens but if one looks at the 'most likely' candidates (ie. not the species on the brink of extinction), a match can usually be made.

It is also unlikely that a very uncommon or unusual tree would be planted in your yard if it didn't have a compliment of features that made it sought after. The likely scenarios then are...it is a relatively common tree with no special qualities OR an uncommon tree with features that you are not yet aware of.

Better photos and we can help.

Until then, I'm thinking Michelia figo 'Port Wine'

In general when I hear gardening degree and expert I am skeptical.

Heck, when I called into the local radio garden hot line talk show and announced our Metasequoia giveaway the host who soent decades working at MOBOT asked "are those hardy here"? Guess he missed the grove of 80 plus footers at MOBOT.

Then there is the "leave the burlap and wire on club.

I'm a narcissist (did I spell that wrong lol) but I seldom assume ppl know more than me.

Oh, take it from an Immigration Ban and white flight hater, here day laborer probably gives an image of an imported hispanic male. Some of the posters are from north and east of me though where my railroad time makes me think there are fewer latinos.

I keep looking at the photo with fresh eyes and just can't get a handle on it. I thought at first Magnolia and see that Smivies had the same idea, but a Magnolia would be a rather bizarre thing to plant in LA. There are lots of Southern Hemisphere trees like Syzgium (lilly pilly tree) that one would be likelier to find there. Maybe this is Myrtaceae, though. (Shh...don't tell anyone or I'll lose all of my credibility...I have a degree in botany....FYEO). ;-)

I thought it looked like a magnolia, and was going to post that, but then I reread the original post and the flowers didn't mach the typical garden magnolia. Also really does sound a lot like kalmia. (Which could explain why your gardener didn't recognize it).

Wait until it blooms the post pics of the flowers with close-ups of the leaves. It's too late in the year to plant a replacement anyway...Once you know what it is you can decide if you want to keep it ad plant a replacement in Fall.

Count me in with the magnolia-looking club - that was my first thought also but was put off by the "red" flowers description. 'Red' and 'magnolia' just didn't compute but realize that many have very subjective interpretations of color........'red' may indeed be a deep maroon or wine color. And Michelia figo and other banana shrubs are pretty darn common in SoCal.

Still need to see closer details of leaves and buds to confirm and a flower could cinch the deal :-))

Ok let's try for Magnolia then! As a working hypothesis, at least.

The weird rank growth is what throws me off, I think. Saw a few lilly pillys on my trip and most of the ones you see in AU gardens are controlled and shrub like. Have not seen subtropical magnolias look this way, very often! People want the foliage and flowers down at eye and nose level, if nothing else!

That's why I thought of something like Persimmon, that often look like this when seen as roadside weeds around here.

But I suppose a number of plants could grow this way if shaded in the right way and given plenty of fertilizer and (in Socal) supplemental water.

"but a Magnolia would be a rather bizarre thing to plant in LA" is that true though? I thought in certain older neighborhoods they were something of an iconic tree, inspiring PT Anderson's 1999 film. That's plain old M. grandiflora, of course.

Yes, there are lots of magnolias in coastal southern California. Evergreen and otherwise.

http://www.arboretum.org/explore/living-collection/

http://www.huntington.org/uploadedFiles/Files/PDFs/magnoliastudyday.pdf

yeah I didn't realize that until GG noted it. This isn't very coastal; it's in Central LA, but that may not mean much. I have a friend who has several lilly pilly trees near here that sort of look like this and are 'free form' but I think that the leaves are smaller.

If it was just plopped in to sell the house, it should be something very common and sold at most big box stores. Maybe try the "name that plant" forum on GW, post a pic and say where you are and your gardening zone. Post a close up of the leaves on a background that makes the leaves easy to see well.

Sorry that I dropped out - somehow, I couldn't post. I've included pics of the trunk and leaves, which look very much like avocado tree leaves and less like magnolias. The trunk is so thin and tall, and the foliage is all at the top - reminds me of a gangly teenager.

The leaves definitely look magnolia-like, certainly too large to be a kalmia. However, I am pretty sure no magnolias have red flowers. The bark does remind me somewhat of magnolia also.

If you were only going off memory, you wouldn't be entirely wrong if you said Magnolia figo 'Port Wine' had small red flowers

Well maybe it IS an avocado! The leaves sure look like it, especially the veining.

I think the leaves are too small to be magnolia figo. The leaves look a little too shiny (could be the photo/lighting) to be an avocado.

Oh yeah I forgot about the red flowers....

Interesting...leaves are much glossier with less prominent venation than Avocado and Avocado has white flowers.

yes those red flowers keep tripping me up. They make the M. figo cultivar the best guess so far. Stephen is there any chance that you are mis-remembering the color of the flowers? Have you Googled the 'Port Wine' cultivar and looked to see if the flowers resemble those that you observed on your tree?

No, the flowers were definitely a beautiful medium and vibrant red. Smallish, about the size of a quarter, with (I think) four or five petals. In a cluster of around three flowers each. I remember because it surprised me - I even looked to see if an opportunistic creeper had gotten into the tree, but no. The leaves are very glossy, and as you can see from the pic, they can take on a reddish tinge as well. New leaves are almost chartreuse, they're so yellow/green. It's a fast grower, too. So far, no fruit - and the flowers are definitely not like an avocado nor a magnolia. Maybe it'll surprise me in a couple of months and suddenly bloom with entirely different flowers! I'm just surprised that these trees made it through our very rough, rainy and stormy winter, given their very thin trunks. But they're doing very well and growing like weeds.

@Sara Malone. No, it's definitely not the Port Wine magnolia. If I had seen flowers like that, I would have immediately known it was a magnolia. These flowers are small and the petals are almost a neon reddish color on both sides. I'll definitely bring a cutting to my local nursery again. But the last time I did that, two nurseries were stumped! Having never seen these trees in So Cal before, I think the gardener who planted them must have gotten them from an unusual source.

It's a long shot, but what about photinia? New, red growth is a characteristic of frazer photinia, but it has clusters of white viburnum-like flowers, not red.

@Logan - photinia was a really good guess, but that has to be trained to grow like a tree, as it's usually a bush. And it only has white flowers. I love photinia - we have quite a few in my neighborhood. Those new leaves are brilliantly crimson, whereas my trees have brilliant yellow/green new leaves. I'm actually shocked at the rapid growth of both these trees, now that we have summer weather. They seem to love the sun, which might be a clue as to where they come from. I'll take a cutting in to the local nursery tomorrow, when they have a full staff.

I'm thinking paw paw. It has a maroon flower. It looks like the paw paw trees I see here in the Missouri Ozarks.

"I'm thinking paw paw. It has a maroon flower. It looks like the paw paw trees I see here in the Missouri Ozarks."

I grow and sell paw paw trees (assuming you mean asimina triloba). The flowers are purple, and the leaves are most definitely not glossy.

Leaves don't resemble pawpaw...but everyone is trying to think outside the box!

Well, I just noticed that one of the trees now has little clusters of baby flower buds beginning to pop out, so I think we'll see the flowers soon. That should really help identify these trees. I'm getting a bit concerned about them, due to their really rapid growth, but I just don't think they'll get too large, given the very thin trunk.

Take a close up of the buds. That may help. This is quite the puzzle!

Was there cauliflory? Meaning flowers coming right out of the trunk? Various tropical Malvaceae do that, including cocoa trees. (which I don't think it is) That someone bothered to plant something with such small flowers in a crowded LA residential garden only furthers the mystery. And small red flowers - far fewer things it could be that the vast universe of small white flowers!

Surely one of the most interesting challenges we've had in a while. Again, small red flowers is such a mystery...I felt somewhat newly empowered by my trip to AU and quickly double checked the Malvaceae from there I already knew about, like Brachychiton and Lagunaria. Close but no cigar!

I admit I've been googling since I responded 24 minutes ago! I thought of the insanely rare Gomortega tree of Chile. Knew the leaves were bold and evergreen, did not know what the flowers were like. Almost surely not to be found in the US at all. (But not surprisingly, some devoted-to-the-rarest horticulturalists in the UK somehow got seeds and are raising and trying to grow along their mild S & SW coasts.) By dumb luck a promising picture of another, completely unrelated rare tree appeared in the google image search results. This one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiospermum

Hmmm... it does look like it, davidrt. Maybe you're solved the case.

Wow.

It doesn't have red flowers, unless they turn red eventually? Any which way, it seems to NOT be a common tree from a big box store.

Well, it won't be "wow" unless Stephen says my guess is correct. I'm sure there are still other things it could be, and I have a vague memory of seeing something vaguely matching Stephen's description on the flickr pages of a collector of native Brazilian plants. Years ago...I'd have no idea how to find it again. (or maybe that was a wow of "Wow, there are some real plant geeks on this forum". But I only knew about Gomortega through contact with people who are much bigger plant geeks than myself! And I mainly happened to remember it because it's an amusing plant name, sound like a minor character in a Munsters reboot haha. Not because I ever thought of growing it - no chance of a zone 9, cool-summer demanding tree growing here. They are impressive looking though, and produce a supposedly delicious fruit.) Anyhow if I am right I'd give most of the credit to google images, just for inserting a picture of bold, laurel-like foliage w/tiny red flowers, in with the other pictures I was viewing.

What an interesting plant to know about regardless...long lost Aussie relative of our native Calycanthus! The wikipedia article is a hoot: though lost, then rediscovered, then lost again. Up to five cotyledons per seed...

Yes I was 'wowing' the geekiness and the tree and really, how far afield the search led. And Poaky, yes, they become reddish with age, per the description. I think that without a photo of the flower or maybe the buds, the ID will continue to be elusive.

Maybe it's bboy's moniker -- Embothrium coccineum -- Chilean fire tree. But I don't think the leaves are a match & also assume the bad boy would know.

people who are much bigger plant geeks than myself

Ones who weight 200 lbs. or more?

Seems like a joke that would only seem funny to someone with Asperger's...clearly "big" is used as an idiom beyond physical weight.

Embothrium - the genus - has much smaller leaves.

It looks like a Longan tree to me.

Doesn't Longan fail the red flower test?

Yeah, it's definitely not Longan.

I know my question is no help, but, does Longon even do well in LA? Or anywhere it's dry? They do great in Florida where it's wetter. I'm zone 6, so i can't grow one, just wondered.

A surprising variety of plants from wet summer subtropical climates will grow in summer dry California, provided they are sufficiently watered. The converse is generally not true. You're not going to find any Lyonothamnus in Hong Kong!

cf: LYCHEE Fruit Facts

I'm guessing Lychee can live in California, but not Florida? Sorry, my ADD stopped me from making sense of the Link you provided. I know nothing about Hong Kongs climate. I read that Lychee likes moist soil, that's where my mind stopped. I'm guessing the Lychee can be supplementally watered if in a dry climate, but, would not like Floridas plentiful rain? I'm guessing that's your point? I would imagine a plant that can't take Florida may not like the humid air and could have a fungis problem too. I hope I am not too far off from what you're trying to say.

I grew lychee nuts in South Florida.

A dedicated gardener willing to go the extra mile can grow lots of exotics that other folks in the same area cannot. I bet a collector lived here.

Or a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers club.

You can eat the fruits of the Lychee too, if I'm thinking of the some plant. They are white fruits, right? They are canned and you can get them in Asian grocery stores and sometimes regular stores. Those and Longons are on chinese buffets. I picked Longons and took them home when I was in Florida a few years ago. They are great fresh, but, don't keep well on a 19 hour drive back to Pa from Florida. I wanted my dad to taste them fresh, not just canned. We cut the bad parts off, I can see why they aren't in stores like fresh apricots and peaches etc. Lychees have a nice delicate flavor. I never had a fresh one, just canned too.

FWIW, hate to be a bumper but having now encountered Idiospermum pics and descriptions a couple times on another social media platform, I am pretty sure that's what this is. For one thing, it evidently has circulated among botanical gardens in the US, and the upper echelons of the horticultural cognoscenti (subtropical clade LOL), for some time. Makes me wonder who the plant collector was that the OP purchased his house from and what else was in that garden!

Hey OP have you gotten any fruits yet? The leaves REALLY look like Longon to me. The fruit would be an orange color and a;lot like a peach but much smaller, maybe a tiny bit smaller than or the same size as an apricot. It's an asian fruit, so, it would be like your gardener had thought.