Tulip tree

Value to bees

Nectar

Very high

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Major honey crop — yields a surplus in good years

Which bees, and why

Worked heavily by honey bees during the flow. The flowers are large and open and present no access difficulty, but they are high in the canopy, so the activity is audible rather than visible from the ground.

Worth knowing

A heavy nectar source and a moderate pollen source, concentrated in a narrow late-spring window.

Flowering

In flower

May to June (northern hemisphere)

Roughly three weeks, and the tree must be mature — seedlings take fifteen years or more to flower.

When nectar flows

Copious. A single flower can hold a visible pool of nectar, and the flow is heavy enough that Appalachian beekeepers treat it as a principal crop.

Year-to-year variation

Yield depends on temperature during bloom and on the density of mature trees. Because the flowers are high in the canopy, a poor flow is often not noticed until the hives are weighed.

What it does to the honey

Dark amber to almost red-brown, with a strong, distinctly mineral and slightly smoky character and a long finish. It is one of the darkest and most assertive American monoflorals, and it is regularly mistaken for a honeydew honey.

Growing it

Conditions

Deep, moist, well-drained soil in full sun. It is fast-growing and eventually enormous, which rules it out of any small garden.

Size

25-45 m tall, and among the tallest eastern North American hardwoods.

Native range

Eastern North America, from southern Ontario to Florida and west to the Mississippi.

Suits

Large gardens

• Give it room — this is a forest tree that reaches forty metres.
• Do not expect flowers for at least fifteen years from seed.
• It is intolerant of drought and of root disturbance once established.

What it looks like

A very large tree with a straight clean trunk and distinctive four-lobed leaves that look as though the tip has been cut off square. The flowers are tulip-shaped, 5-6 cm across, greenish-yellow with an orange band at the base of each petal.