Full sun. Semi-evergreen in warm winters, with delicate fernlike foliage, fragrant yellow puff blooms and a spreading, vaselike shape. Young branches are fully armed with white thorns (the name is a Nahuatl term for “many thorns”) but these become less obtrusive as the plant matures.
Fast-growing and drought-tolerant, huisache provides easy, breezy shade and has been widely cultivated for perfume-making and as an ornamental. It’s often one of the first tree species to invade abandoned farm fields, so many Texans are more familiar with it as brush than as a specimen tree.
Origins: Texas, Mexico and Central America
Maintenance
Huisache branches out low on its trunk, but early training can produce an upright, patio-friendly habit. Remove dangling “face-slapper” branches as needed; cut them back to the nearest limb.
