Description
Tamarix – Tamarisk – Tamarisk Salt Cedar –
This fire adaptable, long tap root genus in the Tamaricaceae family, consists of 50-60 deciduous tough shrubs and small trees. Found from coastal sites and dry or marshy, often salt rich areas inland, from Western and Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean to Eastern Asia and India. They are grown for their attractive, feather foliage, consisting of small, overlapping scale or needle like leaves which have salt secreting glands, and their plum-like often leafy racemes of small white or pink flowers, from March to September. The bark of young branches is smooth and reddish brown, as it ages it becomes brownish-purple, rigid and furrowed. They are useful for a shrub border in an inland garden, but may also be used as a windbreak or hedge in an exposed coastal area, and for growing on light, sandy soils.
Grow in full sun, in well drained soil in coastal areas, or moisture soil inland. Shelter from cold drying winds in inland gardens, in coastal areas, they are resistant to strong wind.. Prune regularly, or they may become top heavy and unstable. Cut back young plants almost to ground level after planting.
Prone to stem borers.
T. ramosissima – T. pentandra – Five-stamen Tamarisk – Late Tamarisk – This deciduous shrub or small tree from Eastern Europe to Central Asia grows 10-15′ feet tall and wide, and perhaps the most widely grown. From arching, red brown shoots it produces, blue-green pointed, narrow, lance shaped leaves , to 1/8″ long. In late summer and early autumn, 5 petalled pink flowers are produced in dense racemes, to 6″ long, on new shoots.
Zones 3-8
