This lovely little tree sprouted up in a planter type area by my front door a couple years ago. I finally decided to pull it out because I didn't feel comfortable having it so close to the house. It's in a pot now awaiting transplant. I'd love to know exactly what it is so I can be sure I give it a good new home in the yard. Thank you for your help everyone!

It looks like a Golden Rain Tree.

Maybe gymnocladus?

DaisyI said:

It looks like a Golden Rain Tree.

Thank you for replying, Daisy! You're right, it does look like it could be a Golden Rain Tree. But I'd really love a second opinion; I know there are quite a few varieties of trees with varying degrees of similarity. I'm going to look at some more pictures. I'm mostly seeing adult trees, which is a bit tricky to compare to my little skinny kiddy tree. I also looked briefly at a site that said they grow in zones 1-9 (or something), which he pointed out is vertically right down the middle of the country. But I doubt that'd have to necessarily exclude California. Here's a few more shots.

mike_k55 said:
Here's a few more shots.

Is this a shoot with several leaves attached?
Or is it a single compound leaf?

Have a look at Chinaberry.

I'm having difficulty matching your pics to my golden chain trees.

I suggested Golden RAIN tree (Koelreuteria paniculata)

DaisyI said:I suggested Golden RAIN tree (Koelreuteria paniculata)

Oops, sorry bout that.

Stone, Gymnocladus has the right leaf arrangement but has a smooth leaf edge. Koelreuteria paniculata has the leaf arrangement but with a toothy edge. Mike's tree has a very toothy edge.

Mike, there are Raintrees in California. Calflora is the best reference for California plants. Haven't you ever noticed that the world stops at the California state line? No one outside the state acknowledges CA and no one in CA acknowledges the rest of the country. (Native Californian speaking so nobody take offense).

https://www.calflora.org/cgi-b...

By my observation, anything that grows anywhere will grow somewhere in California.

stone said:
Is this a shoot with several leaves attached?
Or is it a single compound leaf?

Have a look at Chinaberry.

I'm having difficulty matching your pics to my golden chain trees.

Please forgive me, but I'm not very versed in plant terminology! I had to look up what a compound leaf is. I think they are each compound leafs stemming off from a single branch. I was trying to see if I could do a search based on the number of leafs on each compound leaf (am I even saying that right? lol). It didn't really work out too well for me.

I'm going to take more photos to try to make the full structure of the tree clearer. Right now I have it tied to a pillar in the backyard because it's a skinny thing and it wouldn't stand a chance against the strong breezes we get during the day.

I just looked at a whole bunch of Chinaberry pics, and they do look like they could be cousins, but the leaf numbers and shape is off. Here's a pretty decent pic, and they just don't match up.

DaisyI said:Stone, Gymnocladus has the right leaf arrangement but has a smooth leaf edge. Koelreuteria paniculata has the leaf arrangement but with a toothy edge. Mike's tree has a very toothy edge.

Mike, there are Raintrees in California. Calflora is the best reference for California plants. Haven't you ever noticed that the world stops at the California state line? No one outside the state acknowledges CA and no one in CA acknowledges the rest of the country. (Native Californian speaking so nobody take offense).

Thanks, Daisy, I'll check that out right now. And you're right about California and the rest of the country haha. But that might have to do with the fact that California is practically a country of its own.

Another thing about growing in California is that many annuals like the weather enough to forget that they're annuals.

Unfortunately, many of the perennials forget to be perennial too.

My Golden Rain Trees have leaves with more ragged borders, but otherwise it looks the part.

Has Koelreuteria bipinnata been ruled out?