Texas Mountain Laurel

Oooh that smell.
Can’t you smell that smell?
Oooh that smell.
The smell of death surrounds you.

Now that I’m out of that place Amy Winehouse won’t go and El Paso plant life is starting to wake up again, let’s bring this blog back to life with a post about those fragrant, purple flowers you smell throughout the city.

If you see the flowers on a large shrub or small tree with glossy green leaves like the one at right you are looking at Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora secundiflora). If, on the other hand, you see the flowers on a vine climbing up the fence, across the carport, up the telephone pole, and continuing on utility lines a half mile down the street you are most likely looking at Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis); you would think it to be aggressive if the homeowner hadn’t cut it to the ground last year.

For most of the year Texas Mountain Laurel is a non-demanding evergreen shrub doing what non-demanding evergreen shrubs do—being a pretty glossy green without any complaint regarding the heat or lack of rain. In our hot, dry desert environment that alone is enough to make it a highly desirable landscape plant. But wait there’s more. For a few weeks in spring the plant is covered with lilac-esque purple flowers, and those flowers have a pungent grapey fragrance. Now how much would you pay?

The unfortunate thing is you might have to pay quite a bit in both time and money for a specimen because Texas Mountain Laurels are slow growing and do not transplant very well. Being the cheapskate that I am, I intend to start a shrub or two from seeds using Bob Harms‘s protocol. In about 10 years or so, I should be able to show off a picture of it in an honest March or April Garden Bloom Day post. For now, I’m going to cheat on those things.

Another downside, that grapey smell just may be the smell of death; the seeds are highly toxic. But ripe seeds are very hard and are encased in an even harder outer pod that will probably keep an accidental ingestion from causing lasting harm. To be truly safe, a gardener can remove the seed pods shortly after flowering, and that may be the only maintenance this wonderful shrub needs.