Women’s Tongue Tree (Albizia lebbeck)

I actually like these trees though many people tend to think of them as weeds and would not have them in their yard.

The tree usually has a nice shape and is constantly changing. Right now, flowers are starting to come out - lovely delicate flowers that are like a bowl of fine pale yellow strings. Each flower really only lasts a a day, but new ones open as old ones yellow and die off.

Then the seed pods come out, and when they first form they are green and quite soft, and it is at this stage that wild parrots come to feed on the seeds. In the dry season, the tree is absolutely covered in dry seed pods interspersed with mature dark green leaves. The sound of the wind (dry season is usually very windy) blowing through the tree and shaking the thousands of seed pods creates quite a dramatic and noticeable sound, hence the tree’s name.

Then all the new young leaves start to come out - this is when the tree is most vulnerable. I have seen a mature tree that used to grow about 100 feet from my back door have a swirl of wind remove every single leaf off of the tree. It never recovered and is now a dry stump on which I grow orchids.

The dry season is also when the island tends to get bush and cane fires - everything is tinder dry and there is high wind to carry the flames, and most years the bush behind my home gets burnt - the fire comes down from the east and burns hundreds of acres of sugar cane and bush. We’re used to it as it happens almost every year.

Last year, the fire came early in October, and it not only burnt the bush, but the flames “walked” across the mowed grass to burn an exposed root of a mature Women’s Tongue Tree. That also killed the tree.

So though Women’s Tongue Trees grow quickly and easily from wind blown seeds, they are actually quite delicate. Thankfully, there are still mature ones growing in the bushy areas behind my home, and fast as some die off, new ones emerge.

If you’d like to read more about Barbados, and life and living on the island, you might like to read my blog, “Things Barbados”.