Tabebuia rosea

About This Tree

BIGNONIACEAE (Trumpet Creeper family)

The pink flowers of Penang Sakura.

Tabebuia rosea, also known as the Pink Trumpet Tree or Penang Sakura, is a Central American tree. It is a fast-growing tree, up to 25 metres high with a long trunk with rough bark topped by a rounded spreading crown. It has characteristic leaves which occurs in leaflets of five. Its old scientific name is T. pentaphylla meaning five-leafed. This species mass flowers beautiful, trumpet-shaped pink flowers every year during the dry season. It is a nice scene when the roads are covered with pink to white flowers, and it feels like autumn in Japan. Fruits are long pods which split open to release winged seeds that rotate like a propeller to slow their descend, aiding dispersal.

Scattered flowers of Tabebuia rosea.

Common Uses

T. rosea is an important source of timber in Mexico and Central America. This is one of the most common and showy of the flowering trees of the New World tropics, often planted along the street and roadsides. This tree is also useful as a shade tree.

The mass flowering can be seen from far! Main Library parking area.

Interesting Facts!

• The name Roble de Sabana, meaning “savannah oak”, is widely used in Costa Rica in Spanish, probably because it often remains in heavily deforested areas, where people appreciate its intense flowering periods and because of the resemblance of its wood to that of oak trees.
• It is the national tree of El Salvador.

Sometimes kingfishers can be seen perched on the branches of the trees that line Sungai Pantai, flowing past the Library.

References:

http://www.worldagroforestry.org/treedb/AFTPDFS/Tabebuia_rosea.PDF

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=277898&isprofile=0&

http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/discovernature/sci_p2/JCUDEV_015501

http://uforest.org/Species/T/Tabebuia_rosea.html

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