PlantFiles: Yellow Geiger, Muyuyo
Cordia lutea

This is a lovely small tree or large shrub with interesting sandpaper leaves just like the Geiger Tree. I have seen medium growth- mine was purchased in a one gallon container in 1998 and has attained a height of eight feet with similar canopy (I am training it in a "tree form") spread in seven years.

I bought mine at Fairchild Tropical Gardens after having seen a huge specimen on the grounds there. It needs to see more use in landscapes as it does truly bloom all year long. I can't recall a time when it is not blooming and it has minimal leaf drop.

Actually, the tree associated with Captain Geiger is, in fact, the Orange Geiger, Cordia sebestena. Also, in a recent lecture at a Florida Native Plant Society meeting by Roger L. Hammer (author of several Florida Keys/Everglades botanical field guides), I learned that recent anthropological digs in South Florida have provided incontrovertible proof that Cordia sebestena was present in South Florida LONG before the first European arrived here.

Cordia lutea is, however, an extremely nice flowering tree. At a young age, it blooms much more profusely and is much more densely branched than Cordia sebestena (which usually takes its time to become a full, vibrant flowering tree).

At the end of April, 2004, I purchased a very small one-year-old tree which was only about twelve inches tall. In two month's time, the little tree has shown good growth, although it is supposed to have a Medium growth rate.

Although the Cordia lutea is usually listed for Zone 10-11, it is growing just fine here in coastal Louisiana (Zone 9a).

The striking yellow blossoms are supposed to appear in clusters on the branch tips most of the year. I do not yet know how mature the tree must be to bloom.

It is native to the northern coast of South America, Yucatan, the West Indies, and the Florida Keys (although it it is considered by most to be a native tree, most likely it was introduced).

Audubon wrote of this tree in his Ornithological Biography, Volume. II, pages 443-447, and 448, of seeing the Geiger tree in Key West in a private garden opposite a Dr. Strobel.

Historians, using Key West records, have been able to document that Dr. Strobel's neighbor was a Captain Geiger. The Cordia tree thus became part of Key's history when the tree took on the additional name of Geiger tree. Named after Captain John H. Geiger, who built his home on Whitehead Street in Key West, the name "Geiger tree" is likely of local origin inspired by Audubon's engraving of Captain Geiger's beautiful flowering Cordia tree with white-crowned pigeons sitting in the branches.

I am very pleased with this tree, and hope to acquire its close relation, Cordia sebestena, the red-flowered version.