# Empress trees - toxic or not?



## grindylo (May 15, 2014)

Does anyone know about them? Wikipedia has a blip that says that they're used for forage in some places. It isn't on any lists I know of.


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## SalteyLove (Jun 18, 2011)

Sorry, I'm not familiar with them, but hopefully this will bump your post up for someone else to see!


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## Serenity Woods (Apr 2, 2012)

I'm afraid I don't know the answer either, but if they are the trees I am thinking of, they also go by the name "Paulownia". You could try searching on that.


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## catharina (Mar 17, 2016)

Paulownia tomentosa, formerly p. imperialis. I'll look. Such pretty purple flowers but it can be sort of sucker-y.


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## catharina (Mar 17, 2016)

Me again--take a look at todaysfarmer.ca where an article on this tree says studies show it's good fodder for stock, except horses, & has 21% protein. 

This tree seems to be the focus of a series of fads, for lack of a better term. In the 70s it had a sea-monkey type mystique with ads in the back of magazines for "instant shade" & pretty flowers. Some people were later sorry they planted it because it was kind of weedy & suckery & it spread. Then, it was going to help reclaim strip mined land in the South--kind of like Kudzu. Also the Japanese were supposedly paying a lot for the lumber--though I didn't think the wood of really fast growing trees was usually worth much. Now it's deemed invasive in many places. The new-new thing is carbon sequestration with plantations of coppiced trees. If you go that way, maybe enough goats & they'd do the coppicing for you! Being that you do live in the South, I'd really look into things very carefully before planting, considering this tree's history there.


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## grindylo (May 15, 2014)

Thanks! Catharina, that was some cool info! I hadn't read about it's profitability but it makes sense since they grow so quickly. Our house has been here since the 60's though we've only lived in it for four or five years. At some point someone planted an empress tree or two next to the deck. We thought it was a hardy weed for the first couple years. It came up like an extra vigorous sunflower. One year we just left it and it turned into a tree! It's well above the house now. There are actually two but one of them we still cut down and it looks like a bush at the moment. They could be attached by a runner. Anyways, I was impressed and wanted to plant a few for the goats to munch on if they aren't toxic.
At 21% protein, do you think they're okay even if they're "too rich for horses?"
Edit: I guess that's fine. Probably great for young ones. There's a branch that needs trimming so I'll see how they like it.


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## catharina (Mar 17, 2016)

Hi --sounds like you were coppicing them without knowing it!! Did they bloom when you did that? If they didn't, the only way they could take over is by those runners/suckers, so that's good. Let me know how the goats like it--I could really use a good fast fodder source. I'm getting seriously intrigued here! The flowers are so cool looking & I love anything with giant leaves. My horticultural friends would probably give me a pass to grow it for fodder purposes!  Paulownia isn't even invasive where I live but it's looked down on in serious horticulture--I think a lot still has to do with those ads for Miracle Flowering Shade Trees or whatever they called them! Plus they'll come up in cracks between concrete, etc. Still, I've always secretly wanted one! 

I don't know why they're bad for horses--I know too much protein does similar things to horses & goats, but a horse person would know if horses are more delicate or not in that regards.

I doubt anyone ever made any money selling the wood to the Japanese-what I read made it sound like one of those get rich quick schemes where the only one who got rich was the person who sold everyone else a bunch of seedlings to start their business! Those kind of schemes were more common back then. Another was earthworms. The ad offered you a business opportunity with them & a starter batch of special "hybrid" worms for an inflated price, with the promise to buy back at a generous price all the worms your business produced once they reached 4 inches. The catch turned out to be that the worms would never ever grow to 4 inches. That species' mature size was only 3.5 inches, so there were a lot of folks with home made signs in front of their houses selling fishing bait!  Then there was the rabbit pyramid scheme...

So, let me know if the goats really like it.  Nurseries here don't sell them but I bet they're online!


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