Portia Tree

Thespesia populnea Origin: India Improvement status: Wild Seeds per packet: ~20 BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED Life cycle: Perennial Also called Pacific rosewood or Indian tulip tree, portia tree is a tropical mallow-family tree with a wide distribution and similarly wide range of uses. This plant, with its shiny round leaves and hibiscus-like flowers, is familiar to most people who live in a tropical coastal area, because its floating seeds and ocean currents have dispersed this plant literally around the world. Botanists still debate its native range (some think it shouldn't be considered native to the Americas, but others disagree), but it seems likeliest that it originated somewhere between Hawaii and India in either the Pacific or Indian Ocean. It was also likely a "canoe plant", spread intentionally by Polynesian sailors as they made their way across the Pacific from Asia to South America.EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman first knowingly encountered this tree in the mounta