Bottle Tree

Kurrajong is what Australians call it at home; the English "bottle tree" nickname borrows from Brachychiton rupestris, its barrel-trunked cousin, but this species keeps a slimmer, upright shape its whole life. Three planted specimens map here, all in old botanic and garden collections rather than in the wild. Caserta's, in a Bourbon queen's English Garden, has reached thirty-five metres, roughly twice the height the species usually manages. Barcelona's grows half-hidden in the wooded part of the Torre Girona gardens, the one tree here a visitor actually has to go looking for. Valencia's is a garden's second bottle tree by name only, sharing a nickname with an unrelated species and nothing else.