So there I was earlier this week, on the way to see a client in Wellesley, MA, and I passed this huge colorful streetside show:

Trees with colorful flowers? Think about it: How many of them bloom early in the Spring? All those pink cherries. Those pink or yellow magnolias. Rosy-pink "redbuds"? Those lavender paulownias?


And then, the dogwoods come out, and so all the trees thereafter have white flowers only? Stewartia, catalpa, fringe tree, franklinia. Think about it: A tree that blooms later than May and doesn't have white flowers?


Only two, I think: Mimosa (pink blossoms, ugh) and the other one here on that Wellesley streetscape: Goldenrain tree.  Ugh, what a sticky-sweet name, and way too similar to yet another early-Spring yellow-flowered tree (Golden-chain tree, laburnum) plus a climbing rose (Golden Showers).


Let's flip over into the Latin:Kohlreuteria paniculata. Thank you, Mr. Kohlreuter whoever you were. "Paniculata" means that it has big panicles of flowers. Does it ever:

I had never gotten this close to the flowers before—get a load of my grimy man-of-the-earth fingernail!—so I was surprised to see the orange-red flare at the base of the petals.  The pollen is orange-red too—nice coordination!—and the petals are folded back to expose it completely.


Kohlreuterias in my experience are fool-proof as long as they're planted up a slope, even a tiny one.  They lose their confidence if surface water doesn't drain right away.
Sun and heat are welcome, and the trees are drought-proof too.   So tough they can be used as street trees.


We'll take another look at kohreuterias later in the season: As if these unique flowers weren't enough, they mature to colorful inflated pods by August.


In the Fall we'll confirm if the tree gets good Fall foliage.  The branching and bark are very satisfying in the Winter too.  A four-season tree then?  Very possible, and very essential anywhere (Zone 5 - 9) it's hardy.

Foliage foliage foliage. Flowers are fun, but foliage is where the garden's sustained interest lives. Plus foliage can be fabulous in itself.
Wrede's elm has small bright-yellow leaves on vertical new stems. Perfect for a gray day as well as a sunny one. You can let the elm revel in its inner-elmness, to become a big soft-yellow shade tree. Here's the lovely one at Wave Hill.
Pull up a chair, indeed.
What a warm beauty the tree is.
If you have acres to fill, not just a garden, why not plant a grove of Wrede's? Plant each one thirty feet from any of the others in a loose grid. And then, a hundred feet away, plant a purple-leaved beech. Or (hey, this is why you have all that acreage, right?) plant three purple beeches in a triangle a hundred feet on a side. Make sure the trunk of any beech is no closer than seventy feet to the trunk of any elm: You don't want anyone's elbow into anyone's armpit fifty years down the road.
For the next century and more, your gold & burgundy arboreal show will be famous.
But if you're like me, gardening on "only" ad acre and a half, you can keep the Wrede's shrub-sized indefinitely, pruning back each Spring. The new growth is particularly yellow, as well as vertical.
Here's my youngster, only this Spring old enough and big enough for some training-wheel pruning.