Crape Myrtle
Lagerstroemia indica
A crape myrtle was planted on April 26, 2026 in the northwest corner of the Baldwin Park. See here for its Wikipedia entry.
Crape myrtles are deciduous trees growing to about 20 feet tall. The flowers bloom in late summer and our specimen will have dark red flowers. The bark has winter interest in that it is very thin and mottled.
Crape myrtle on its planting day April 26, 2026.
Crape myrtle Factoids
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Our new tree species, Lagerstroemia indica, is in the genus named for Swedish merchant Magnus von Lagerstrom, a director of the Swedish East India Company. Fellow Swede Carl Linnaeus was dishing out these names in the 18th century and is responsible for the scientific names of plants and animals that replaced confusing common names. The indica species name refers to its origins in India, where Lagerstrom had collected plants for Linnaeus.
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The crape myrtle, like our southern magnolia and sweetgum, is thought of as a southern tree. As the world warms, these trees feel at home in more northerly latitudes. Philadelphia has a single planting zone: 7b, per USDA’s plant hardiness zone map released in 2023. The lower the number of the zone the colder the winters and plantings should be chosen for more cold hardiness. The crape myrtle is suitable for zones 6-10.
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Our crape myrtle is a cultivar called Black Diamond® which means that it is a "cultivated variety" and the ® means it is patented. A variety is a naturally occurring plant that looks different from the parent plant, what Darwin called a "sport." Since plant varieties occur naturally, they cannot be patented. A cultivar is a “cultivated variety” specifically selected from genetic mutations or cross-bred by humans and has different characteristics from the parent plant or plants. They are patentable.
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The Friends try to plant native species in the certified Level I Arboretum in Baldwin Park, but the crape myrtle has become such an iconic symbol of the American South that we felt a welcoming tree to emigrants to Philadelphia from the South was appropriate.
Crape is a fabric, often of silk, that is multiply pleated. This image from here shows a crape bonnet that was worn in Victorian times for one year after the death of a close loved one. An attached veil would cover the face.
One of the great pleasures of a daily walk through Baldwin Park is interaction with the plants. Get up close. Examine the flowers as they progress from bud to flower to seed. Here in July the six pleated petals of our crape myrtle are seen surrounding the multiple straight and curved anthers bearing pollen. The central straight filaments topped with yellow anthers carry food pollen that is not for reproduction, but to feed the bees that pollinate this flower. The curved filaments are tipped with anthers that bear the reproductive pollen. When a flower has different types of male parts or stamens (filament plus anther), it demonstrates heteroanthery (see outside link here).
Each petal is born on a thin stalk. The green stigma which receives the pollen is in the center.
Botany 101 Bonus
One of the most visited web pages on the Friends of Matthias Baldwin Park website is the page on mushrooms and lichens. There is certainly a nice selection of mushroom species in the Park, but they don't dominate the landscape by any means. Folks may be curious about the recreational use of mushrooms and just checking out local availability.
If you say the word "indica" to the average 15 to 30-year-old in Philadelphia they will immediately recognize the term as one of the two common types of weed, Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. Sativa has a higher THC to cannabinoid ratio and is used to get a high. Indica has about a 1:1 ratio of the two psychoactive drugs and is used more for sedation. Most of the weed sold in dispensaries now is a product of hybrid forms and has a range of THC concentration. Some argue that sativa and indica don't deserve the Linnaean scientific dichotomy as separate species but are just varieties of the same species. Our classifications don't matter to the plant. Even Darwin recognized the ambiguous distinction between species and varieties in the first chapter of his 1859 book The Origin of Species.
In both our crape myrtle and in cannabis the species epithet indica merely means that plant is native to India.