Does anyone have this growing on their land? I was trying to buy one but I cant find any online except one that wanted 25 bucks with shipping for an 8-12 inch tree. I figured since it was native, someone might have a patch of them. I want to start using the soap berries to clean our clothes. I have super interesting trades. Most of them are not listed.
Soapberry Tree
I have several babies that come all around the back of my yard because they sucker from trees in the back. But, they are hard to dig because they are not very well rooted by their selves. You have to dig deep and I can't get through digging a few up. If you are ever happen to be up in my neck of the woods and want to come by and dig one up, just drop me a message.
Thanks. If I visit my brother I will look into that.
Sounds good. You can have as many as you can manage to dig. :-)
I am a fool. I found about 20 on my property today. I had no clue that they were Soapberries until I started researching them.
I googeled them a coupla years ago and bought about 60.00 dollars worth . That's enough for twenty years supply . They had the seeds taken out . I didn't know they were native to Tex . digger
Are you sure those aren't chinaberries ? They look alike to me . digger
Several years ago I was hunting way out by Woodward Ok and found many strange trees growing which I learned were Soap berries I brought home some seeds and now I have one growing ,Please send pix and more info ''
Soapberry and chinaberry trees are closely related. Too bad the chinaberries don't produce anything useful. They are overpopulating their welcome here. But the spring blossoms are lovely.
Well, I'd better back track. I have read several sources in the past that lumped them together. However, this article classifies them in different families -
http://boernestar.com/articles/2007/10/16/news/life/life10.txt
This message was edited Sep 26, 2009 6:30 PM
Soapberry trees look very similar to the Chinaberry except the berries are amber colored and transparent. You can actually see thru the berry and see the seed. I brought this up today at a local farmers market and many people said "duh". I was apparently the last to know.
Here is the listing for it on Daves. If you look at the Chinaberry listing, the berries are yellow and not transparent.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/62411/
Here is a link to the wildflower center, a very interesting and useful tree. I have three that I started from seed.
http://wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=SASAD
Also it is a larval host for the Soapberry hairstreak butterfly.
I'm sitting here this morning kicking myself . It may have been a soapberry tree that I mercilessly had cut down thinking it was a chinaberry. I'll be back in that area in a week or so and see if it sprouted again this last spring . we were clearing two lots on the coast near Rockport Tex , which is close to the area said to host the soapberry , so I may have murdered a good tree instead of a overgrown weed (as I remember the chinaberry from my childhood ) I remember the trunk was beautiful wood and asked the largest not be put on the burn pile .
The mystery deepens . I'll try to post an id in a coupla weeks when I get to see if anything is left to look at of my stumps and sprouts . I hope I didn't spend money for the berries , then kill the goose that laid the golden egg .