Shade - Ironwood

Ironwoods are resilient, long-lived native desert trees. Along with mesquites and palo verdes, Ironwoods make up the primary tree components of our arborescent desert. Ironwood functions as a “nurse plant” and a “habitat-modifying keystone species” of benefit to many other species of flora and fauna. These are slow-growing evergreen to semi-evergreen, medium to large sized, multi-trunk trees. The leaves are small, round, and gray green. The light gray bark on mature trees is very attractive, but they do have numerous, sharp recurved thorns. They take some time to develop, but when mature they usually have a stately or grand umbrella shaped canopy. With regular landscape irrigation they grow more quickly and tend to sucker more, which can create more pruning maintenance, which is not ideal because of their sharp thorns. When possible, trees should be given periodic deep or long watering during the growing season, rather than frequent shallow watering. Like other native desert trees, they have the capacity to thrive with natural rainfall alone, but with little water their growth rate is slower, which is not ideal, so finding a balance of watering to growth rate is important. Container grown Ironwood trees can be small in stature, but they will grow steadily once planted so respect spacing requirements avoiding overcrowding or planting them too close to structures or in tight spaces.

Scientific name:  Olneya tesota

Mature size:  up to 30 ft. high & wide

Sun:  Full sun