The Dynamite Tree of Flamingo Gardens

A ripe sandbox tree pod detonates on its own, no touch required, throwing its seeds up to thirty metres and cracking loud enough to startle anyone standing nearby, which is how the tree earned its other common name, the dynamite tree. This one has grown to over four metres round the trunk and above thirty metres tall, standing on the west side of the children's garden at Flamingo Gardens in Davie, and the Florida Forest Service records it as the state's Champion Hura crepitans, the largest of its species measured anywhere in Florida. The trunk carries a second warning most visitors notice before any pod goes off: rows of short conical spines cover the bark from base to crown, a defence against animals that might otherwise climb or gnaw it. The pale sap running beneath that bark is caustic enough that people in parts of its native range once used the crushed bark and seeds to stun fish in still water, which is thought to be where the genus name Hura comes from. None of this makes the tree unusual for a botanical garden; sandbox trees are planted worldwide as ornamentals for their glossy leaves and sheer bulk, sap and spines included. No planting date survives for this specimen, so its age is unrecorded. What is on record is the girth, wider than most sandbox trees anywhere in the state get to grow.