I just finished a walk/jog with my dog and I came across a pile of tree trimmings a few blocks away.

In south Florida trees are trimmed just about all year around due to our climate. I usually see ficus, oak, palms, umbrella trees, fruit, citrus and other tropicaltrees. However, this time I noticed something different.

We are home to some great tropical trees. Many of the popular tropicals were once imported from the caribbean and Central America. Some are great for stick making and others due very poor. One tree that has always been hard to collect because nobody wants to trim them areflanboyant rees. These are fantastic very large canopy trees that put on a show every year with thousands of 4" red flowers. The bigger they are the more brilliant the bloom.

We have sections of streets, many blocks long covered, with these trees and people from all around the world spending good money to take tours to see Flamboyants with they are in full bloom.

Anyway, this is the first time I saw trimmings form the Flamboyant tree with lengths of limbs in the right shape that would be great for walking sick, hiking staffs and even even wizard staffs.

I have never work this wood for hiking sticks yet. Now I will get a chance to see if it works well and proved great material for making a walking stick. I collected 2 limbs about 13 feet long (two trips). Tomorrow I will go back from some more if the pile is still there.

The first image is of the tree in bloom (yes they are blooming now). The tree in the image is just a young one about 30 feet high and a canopy of about 50 feet round. It is not the one that was trimmed. The one that was trimmed was about the same height but three times the size around (still not full grow) and the limbs I plan to use for a walking stick ranged 11' to 15' feet long with a 1" to 3" girth (thickness of the limb).

I plan to strip of the bark and start to let them cure tomorrow. I will let you know how it turns out!