Revfad Blog

Pittosporum tobira’s sticky seeds

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by

David Faden
in

Back in April, I wrote about Pittosporum tobira, hoping to put a few facts into my memory.

One thing that “stuck” with me a little: that the genus name refers to them having sticky seeds. Now that the seed pods are popping open, the source of the name seems clearer:

Sticky orange brown seeds from Pittosporum tobira.

Seed pods popping open on the shrub:

Pittosporum tobira seed pods on the bush
Pittosporum tobira seed pods on the bush

One thing I wonder about: despite it being recommended in this 2017 handout from the California Invasive Plants Council [PDF], I see that Pittosporum tobira seems to be spreading pretty prolifically. Is it really not invasive?

Pittosporum tobira sprouts
Sprouts like these are popping up all over the place.

At least the sprouts are pretty easy to pull.

A Pittosporum tobira seed pod surrounded by sprouts.
A Pittosporum tobira seed pod surrounded by sprouts.

(I release theses photos into the public domain. These works are marked with CC0 1.0, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.)

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