Cercis occidentalis western redbud

Cercis occidentalis bloom prior to leafing out. John Rawlings, 20 Mar 2006

Not as popular in horticulture as the eastern redbud, likely due to the seed pods’ tendency to cling on to the bare branches through the winter, sometimes in remarkably dense clumps that have blackened. These attributes seem to depend on the individual tree, however, offering potential for the selection of more suitable cultivars.

Western redbud nevertheless provides a splendid show of magenta flowers that appear in March, around the same time as the eastern redbud’s. Heart-shaped leaves soon follow, rounded or notched at the tips. A distinct vein is visible close to one edge of the flat brown pods. Professor Ron Bracewell used to collect the hard smooth seeds by the hundreds; a bowl of them to run your fingers through was at least as therapeutic as a string of worry beads, he said.

The most conspicuous examples on campus are on the Lomita Mall side of Varian Physics and buildings south of it. Some between the McCullough and Moore Materials Research buildings, on the west side, have the most dramatically persistent seed pods. Others flank the Galvez Mall entrance of the Center for Education Research. Many, some with substantial trunks, are between Ng House and Schwab Residential Center, with a few western redbuds and one early-blooming Chinese mixed in.

A clump of four on the southwest corner of Santa Teresa Street and Lomita Drive was reduced to one when the New Guinea sculpture garden was relandscaped in 1994; eastern redbuds have come and gone at that spot since then. A western redbud is at 300 Lowell Avenue, Palo Alto, to the right of the driveway.

Name derivation: Cercis – ancient Greek kerkis for C. siliquastrum, meaning a weaver’s shuttle, a reference to the shape of the pod; occidentalis – western.