The plant is a split-leaf philodendron. We had these in our home when I was growing up. They are poisonous, but only if you (or your cat) eat them. Here is a link that might be useful: Split-lef philodendron

No, there is no tax savings on the car. We legitimately spend more time in FL than in MD to qualify for Florida residency. FL has no income tax and that makes a difference when you are retired. We just don't want to have to buy the car in Florida and then have to drive it to Maryland. We keep a car in both locations and always fly back and forth. We do not have to worry about forwarding mail because we have two adult children - not EXACTLY children---aged 36+) who live in another level of our Maryland home and take care of the house and family pets when we are not here. I appreciate the replies. Thank you.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4846312_grow-pineapple-plant-pineapple-top.html?ref

o, thank you floral for this post. I'm grateful to the others, too, but it's pretty clear that they are all Paulownia-dislikers from the start. Now, I have many C. siliquastrums-what a beautiful tree!-but part of the motivation for my wanting a P. is it's speedy growth,and the fact that it can get very tall. See, one of the probs with my site is that effing south-western sun, that is just too ferocious in July and August; I honestly am not too sure that the roses would object all that much to the shade. AND , remember, the land slopes sharply down towards the south-west as well, so that blistering sun is frying my garden up until about 7:30 PM in summer. Placing a tall tree strategically could actually block the sun by blocking out part of the actual sky, if you get what I mean. I have some mature oaks that do just that in part of the garden, but they are placed at the bottom of the slope and are growing too far off to the western side to be of help to the central garden. I don't think a cercis could get that tall,and they don't grow all that quickly. The other thing about the morphology of my land is that,with the sharp slope, I think it is quite possible that the morning/early afternoon sun would still hit the roses; the shade would arrive once the sun was pretty high in the sky. I guess I'm also thinking that I could play with things a bit; prune the tree so it'd sort of grow like a tilted beach umbrella, with most of it's canopy oriented to the south-west. My mature oaks actually do tend to grow sort of like that anyway (growing towards the dominant sun) Actually, if I could be sure of it's hardiness, I probably would go for a jacaranda, but I'm afraid it might be just a bit too cold for them here. The other thing abou paulownia that tempts me is sort of ..it's vices! Since it does self-sow easily, if I find that my idea does not work and the mother tree provides too much shade, I can girdle the mother tree and get rid of it and save a seedling for planting elsewhere, if I so desire. Since they grow so fast it won't be the loss of a huge investment of time and labour. The idea of the debris it provides is welcome to my organic-matter-hungry land. Hearing that it blooms in April is not the best of news,since from the pictures I see on Internet when it is in bloom it provides only very dappled shade; coupled with the open. graceful habit of a mature tree that would be perfect for the roses. However, I did find a blog or some such http://www.siteandinsight.com/tag/paulownia/    ; this lady writes about seeing them in flower in the area of Ferrara in May. Perhaps the ones in London bloom earlier because they are in the shelter of buildings, etc. In any case ,my land is very open, out in the woods,at about 600 meters above sea level; my roses bloom well after the ones in the city of Prato have started, so a paulownia might bloom later for me as well. But as I said before, if the idea does not work out as I hope,I'm not so sure it'd be such a big problem or loss to remediate it.