Princess Tree

The lavender-flowered tree from the 'fastest growing tree in the world' ads. One mature princess tree sheds millions of tiny wind- and water-borne seeds onto cliffs, riverbanks and burned ground, and cut stumps sprout back. Connecticut prohibits its sale.

How to recognize it and why never to plant it: lavender foxglove flowers on bare April branches, huge opposite fuzzy heart-shaped leaves, pecan-shaped capsules, and velvety tan flower buds held all winter - on a fast, brittle, seed-throwing tree.

You should not plant princess tree — recognizing it is the useful skill, and it is one of the easier trees to name in any season. In spring, upright clusters of pale purple, trumpet-shaped, sweetly fragrant flowers open on completely bare branches in April, before the leaves. In summer, it carries enormous opposite, heart-shaped leaves, typically 6 to 12 inches and up to two feet on sprouts, densely fuzzy on both sides and slightly sticky, on stout twigs with hollow or chambered pith. In fall, tight clusters of pointed, pecan-shaped woody capsules dry from green to brown. In winter, the clincher: clusters of small velvety tan flower buds, formed the previous fall and held all winter, alongside last year's split capsules. Nothing else in eastern North America looks like that.

The usual confusion is with catalpa, which also has big heart-shaped leaves and showy flowers. Catalpa's flowers are white with yellow and purple markings and open in June, after the leaves; its leaves are nearly hairless and often held in whorls of three; and its fruit is a long, slender bean-like pod, not a hard capsule. Paulownia's biology is what makes it a landscape problem rather than a garden nuisance: extremely fast growth, high light demand, tolerance of poor and raw soils, prolific tiny seed carried by wind and water, and vigorous sprouting from roots and cut stumps. It is also short-lived and brittle. Fast, showy, and brittle is a bad trade in a yard; fast, showy, and seeding twenty million times a year is a bad trade for the region.

How it spreads: dust-fine winged seed carried by wind and water onto any bare mineral ground - roadcuts, riverbanks, burned forest, rock outcrops - plus vigorous sprouting from roots and stumps whenever the tree is cut or damaged.

Princess tree spreads by seed, in quantities that are hard to picture. Each woody capsule holds on the order of two thousand seeds; a mature tree carries thousands of capsules; the seeds are tiny, dry, and finely winged, so they ride the wind for long distances and float on water, which is why river corridors and flood-scoured banks fill with them. They need bare mineral soil and full light to germinate, so they colonize exactly the places disturbance creates: highway roadcuts and shoulders, gravel and rail beds, landslides and slips, recently burned forest, timber-harvest openings, riverbanks after a flood, and the thin soils of cliffs and rock outcrops. Seedlings grow so fast that they are competing with native regeneration within one season.

It also spreads and persists vegetatively. Cut a princess tree and it answers with a dense ring of sprouts from the stump and roots — the classic reason a single removal turns into a multi-stemmed clump that flowers and fruits again in a few years. Fire and cutting both stimulate it. This is why control has to reach the root system rather than just the trunk, and why the seedbank has to be watched for several seasons after the parent is gone. Clones marketed as sterile or low-seed hybrids show up periodically in the timber-plantation pitches; the Callery pear story — cultivars sold as sterile that cross-pollinated and seeded a continent — is the reason to treat any such claim with real skepticism.

Control and replacement, not care: pull seedlings, never simply cut a tree (the roots sprout), use cut-stump or basal-bark treatment on-label in the dormant season, take out seed-bearing trees first, and follow up for three years.

Control scales with size. Seedlings pull by hand in moist soil — get the whole root, and check monthly through summer, because a first-year seedling can be waist high by August. Saplings and trees need the roots killed, because the one thing that reliably fails is cutting: a cut princess tree sends up a ring of vigorous sprouts and comes back as a thicket. The standard approaches are a cut-stump treatment, with herbicide applied to the fresh cut surface within minutes, a basal-bark application on stems under about six inches during the dormant season, or a foliar treatment on regrowth in late summer to early fall. Whichever you use, choose a product whose label lists the site you are treating — woodland, non-crop, right-of-way, home landscape — and follow that label exactly, including protective equipment, buffers near wells and open water, and any grazing or replanting intervals. The label is legally binding, and it is also the only reliable instruction sheet for the product in your hand.

Sequence the work: take out the capsule-bearing trees first, because they are the seed source, then work through the saplings, then keep after the seedlings and sprouts for at least three years. Bag and bin fruiting cut tops rather than piling or chipping them, especially near a trail or a stream bank. Large trees near buildings are arborist work — the wood is brittle and the crown is heavy. Then plant something better in the gap: for fast native shade, tulip tree, sycamore, river birch, or hackberry; for the big-leaf, tropical look, northern catalpa or bigleaf magnolia; for spring flowers on a small tree, serviceberry, eastern redbud, or fringetree. Your extension office or a native-plant society can narrow that to your soil.

Not a food. Its timber is genuinely prized in East Asia - the hook in every grow-it-for-profit pitch - but the US plantation math rarely works, and ecologically it is a net loss that colonizes exactly the rare cliff and riverbank habitats.

Princess tree is not a food plant, and this catalog does not treat any part of it as edible. It has a real economic story instead: kiri wood is genuinely prized in Japan and China — extremely light, stable, and slow to burn, traditionally used for chests, sandals, and the sound boards of instruments, and traditionally a tree planted at a daughter's birth to be made into her wedding chest. That is the fact every grow-paulownia-for-profit pitch is built on. What the pitch leaves out is that the premium sits in East Asian markets and grading standards, that US smallholder plantations have a long record of disappointing returns, and that in the meantime the trees are seeding the countryside around them.

Ecologically it is a clear net loss. It supports very few native insects compared with the oaks, hickories, and birches whose seedlings it outraces, so a stand of paulownia is close to empty as far as the local food web is concerned. Its favored ground is what makes it worse than an ordinary weed tree: it specializes in bare, raw, sunny surfaces, which includes the cliff faces, rock outcrops, shale barrens, and scoured riverbanks of the Appalachians — some of the most botanically distinctive and least replaceable habitats in the eastern United States, where rare plants persist precisely because those sites are harsh and open. A fast tree that colonizes them is not filling an empty niche; it is closing one.

Introduced from China in the 1840s as an ornamental, and famously spread along rail lines when its seed was used as packing material in crates of Chinese porcelain - then revived by twentieth-century timber speculation.

Princess tree reached North America from China in the 1840s, an ornamental prized for its spring bloom and its extraordinary speed. Its most-repeated origin story is also its best: nineteenth-century shippers packed crates of Chinese porcelain in paulownia seed, which is dust-fine and springy, and as the crates were opened and dumped along wharves and rail sidings, the seed spilled out and took root. Whether or not that accounts for every early population, the pattern it describes — paulownia running along rail corridors, road cuts, and disturbed ground — is exactly how it still moves.

The second wave was economic. Beginning in the 1970s, high prices for kiri logs in Japan set off a run of paulownia plantation ventures in the United States, complete with investment pitches, and the tree was planted deliberately across the mid-Atlantic and Southeast. Most of those ventures disappointed; the trees did not. Today princess tree is on invasive-plant lists throughout the region, Connecticut prohibits its sale, and land managers in the Appalachians spend real money pulling it off cliffs and riverbanks. The lesson is a familiar one in this catalog: a tree sold on speed, beauty, and a promised payout, whose bill arrives as seed spread over an entire watershed.

Confirm it (lavender April flowers on bare wood, huge fuzzy opposite leaves, pecan-shaped capsules, velvety winter buds), never just cut it, treat stumps on-label, prioritize fruiting trees, and replant natives.

Is this princess tree or catalpa? Princess tree flowers lavender in April on bare branches and fruits in hard, pointed, pecan-shaped capsules; catalpa flowers white with yellow and purple spots in June, after the leaves, and fruits in long slender bean-like pods. Paulownia leaves are fuzzy on both sides and opposite; catalpa's are nearly hairless and often whorled in threes. How do I identify it in winter? Clusters of small velvety tan flower buds held on the twig tips all winter, alongside split brown capsules — unique in eastern North America. I cut it down and now there are twenty of them. That is root sprouting, and it is what cutting alone always produces. Cut low and treat the fresh stump immediately, or basal-bark small stems in the dormant season, using a product whose label lists your site and following that label. Which trees do I take first? The ones carrying capsules; they are the seed source. Is it poisonous? No — it is safe to handle and to have around children and pets. The hazards are brittle limbs and seed spread. Should I grow it for timber? No. The wood is genuinely valuable in East Asia, but the US plantation pitches rarely pencil out and you would be seeding an invasive across your region. The ad says the clone is sterile. Treat that claim the way the Callery pear taught us to: cultivars sold as sterile are how that invasion started. What should I plant instead? Tulip tree, sycamore, river birch, or hackberry for fast shade; northern catalpa or bigleaf magnolia for the big-leaf look; serviceberry, redbud, or fringetree for spring flowers.

Hardy through roughly zones 5-9 and worst in the mid-Atlantic, Appalachians and Southeast, where it colonizes roadcuts, burned forest, floodplains and rock outcrops; cold winters kill it back in the north and it needs bare, sunny ground everywhere.

Princess tree is hardy through roughly zones 5 to 9, and its invasion is concentrated in the mid-Atlantic, the Appalachians, and the Southeast — Pennsylvania and Maryland south through Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas — with expanding populations in the Northeast, the lower Midwest, and parts of the Pacific Northwest. In the coldest part of that range, hard winters kill young stems back and slow it down, so it behaves more like a scrappy sprouting shrub than a timber tree; in the warm center of its range it grows without check.

What it really tracks is not temperature but disturbance and light. Its seed needs bare mineral soil and full sun, so its map is essentially a map of raw surfaces: highway construction, logging openings, burns, floods, landslides, and the natural rock outcrops and river scour that mimic all of those. That means it arrives fastest wherever land is being cut, cleared, or flooded — and that more frequent wildfire and heavier storm flooding both hand it new ground. Wherever you are in its range, the guidance holds: do not plant it, learn the winter buds and the lavender April bloom so you can spot it early, take out fruiting trees first, and treat the roots rather than simply cutting.