PlantFiles: Gold Medallion Tree
Cassia leptophylla

After seeing these beautiful trees around UC Irvine (zip 92612, about 5 miles inland), we planted two in Dana Point (92629, 1 mile inland) 5 years ago. One is in the parkway strip in somewhat heavy clay soil and rare watering; the other is in the lawn in amended soil with frequent but shallow watering. Both are magnificent, blooming like crazy in early summer and holding their flowers through early-mid fall. We leave the seed pods on for additional visual interest through winter, but may trim them off next year. Both trees keep most of their leaves year-round, and maintain a nice shape with little-to-no pruning needed. Only clean-up we do is picking up fallen seed pods. We haven't had luck (yet) with seed propagation.

After many months of searching the web to identify this plant, I finally found it on this website. Thank you Dave's Gardens! I purchased the plant at a local nursery when it was very small.The nursery had it identified as a Candlestick plant which is what I was looking for. I bought 3 of them and planted them at the base of an Live Oak tree. That was last year. Much to my surprise, this spring, the plant took off and is now 8ft tall and loaded with flowers. Because it was planted among my candlestick plants I knew it was diffinitely not the candlestick I thought I had purchased. It is an amazing plants with beautiful yellow orchid like flowers. This past winter was mild and the Cassis leptophylla did very well in the ground. I will do cuttings and raise them in my greenhouse over the 2012 winter in the event Central texas has a harsh winter. As they say in Texas, if you don't like the weather, wait ten minutes and it will change!!

These trees are everywhere in Santa Barbara/Goleta and we recently purchased one and put in in the ground about a week ago. Updates of it progress may be forth coming.

We love this tree so much we are getting another, its about 10' tall and last year we had about 20 clusters of flowers. This tree is all around Disneyland really and looks real nice. We live in 92683 and need one more on the other side of the driveway. From what we have seen they are not messy, shady and green all year.

Not sure why, but this trees is very slow to fill out. I have a small number of short branches at the top on a long narrow stalk. I have it staked due to this, and I expected much faster growth. It gets regular water. Perhaps that is too much!

Not only is this a great tree, the dry pods are musical! Take two and rattle, scrape, and clack them together. A lot of fun with kids, and if they break, the seeds are separately encapsuled, so it's not a mess.

These are growing at Epcot at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Such a dramatic burst of color.

I planted this tree in Carbon Canyon, Chino hills, California 91709, it is a glorious specimen. For the 1st 3 years it contained only from 3 to 5 flower groups, but on the 4th year, right before our move to Norhtern California it was the envy of the neighborhood with 6 full flowers. our weather pattern was rather cold in winter, with some frost with days down to 20 degrees, in summer temperatures could easily reach 104 degrees. It received water from our sprinklers, I did not take any special care and wish to plant one in our new home in Castro Valley, Ca 94546, Hope to hear if this will grow well here.