OK, I went out on the Web and did a little research on the trees listed above, plus I am familiar with a few of them. FYI a meter (“X m”) is a yard plus 3 inches. Here is what I found (or didn’t):
Bottle Tree — couldn’t find anything about this one.
Foothill Palo Verde – thin-stemmed, mostly leafless desert large bush. Ornamental and pretty but no shade from this one.
Australian Willow (extremely slow grower)
Bradford Flowering Pear -50-60 ft tall, crabapple-like fruit, short-lived (25 yr), can be brittle
Brisbane Box – a kind of eucalypt, up to 50 ft tall, flowers + little hard seed-capsules
American Sweet Gum – drops the stang little “gum balls”. I almost sprained my ankle on one of these “balls” by stepping on it on a lawn. They act just like giant ball bearings underfoot. Don’t even think about stepping on one barefoot (SPINY).
Desert Willow – 1.5 to 8 meters, light & lacy desert bush/mini-tree. Pics I found online looked similar to a lighter, airier pepper tree.
California Sycamore – prone to a fungus which makes the first batch of leaves fall off. They regrow but it’s kind of sad-looking. Sycamores back in Michigan get this too. I call it “the Sycamore Curse”.
Holly Oak – (Mediterranean) – tree 20-27 m tall, can be clipped into a hedge
Non Fruit-Bearing Olive (“don’t really provide much shade”- JustLurking.)
African Sumac — couldn’t find anything online
Madrone – native to north of here, doesn’t grow quite this far south in the wild. Interesting red-vs-grey peeling bark. 10-25 meters tall.
Orchid Tree – 10-12 m tall, scented flowers, seed pods
Gold Medallion Tree – 20-25 feet tall, fast-growing, spikes of yellow flowers
Crape Myrtle (very popular) – I like the tall vase-shaped variety we have at work (~30 feet). They look great with the leaves off or on– as long as you don’t let some idiot “gardener” ‘top’ them!!
Aristocrat Flowering Pear— didn’t find info on this one specifically
Tipu or Tipu Tipuana — http://www.myvalleynews.com/story.php?story_id=31304
very fast grower, 25 feet in just a few years, 40-50 feet mature. Good shade. Messy, drop lots of flowers and pods. Invasive roots? Shallow anyway. Lacy, fernish leaves.
“Rick Wilson says :
We have two Tipuana Tipu trees in our La Mesa, California back yard. They’re about 45-50 years old, and they are enormous (at least 80 feet tall and wide). Every June, they blanket our backyard with what seems like millions of tiny orange yellow flowers. When the wind blows, it looks like it’s snowing cheese popcorn! We constantly have baby trees starting underneath these two big trees.
One of the most interesting things about these trees is that, when you trim a limb off of a Tipuana tree, they emit blood-red sap. It literally looks as if you’ve cut off a human limb.
Subsequently, my fiance won’t let me trim these trees very often, because she says it looks like they’re bleeding!”
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What about mesquite? They are small trees/large bushes with lacy, airy foliage, and the seed pods are edible (I’ve munched on one once– quite tasty).
