White Cedar Tree

Melia Azedarach

The White Cedar (Melia azedarach) belongs to the Mahogany family and is commonly known by many names including, chinaberry tree, Pride of India, bead-tree, Cape lilac, Persian lilac and Umbrella Tree.

White Cedar is native to Australia and South East Asia.  It is a beautiful shade tree with a dense canopy that is extremely drought tolerant.  It grows from north Queensland through to the south coast of New South Wales, but it has also become naturalised in other areas of Australia, including the Kimberley region of Western Australia and southern parts of South Australia.

There aren’t many plants native to Australia that are winter deciduous, yet this is one of them.  In Spring, when the new glossy leaves emerge, the tree starts flowering and can continue to do so into the Summer months.  The flowers have a delicious chocolate-like fragrance and they grow in pretty starry lilac and white clusters and the foliage is also a lovely feature; this is a very pretty tree and a delight to sit under.

Apart from its drought tolerance it thrives in a wide variety of soil types, is quite frost tolerant and has been categorised by some as being fire retardant.

The White Cedar is a popular ornamental street tree with a small rounded canopy spread of 10m or more and up to about 6 - 20m in height under the right conditions. The tree can live to anywhere between 20 – 40 years and its foliage transitions from a dark green to a pale yellow in Autumn.

Many parts of the tree appear to be toxic, although not the fleshy part of the fruit which  birds are highly attracted to and they help disperse the seed. This makes the trees quite resistant to termite damage and their poison does protect them from grazing mammals and some insects. Despite this, white cedar has been widely used as a medicinal plant by indigenous cultures, especially for intestinal parasites. The seeds have been widely used to make beads by indigenous peoples in Asia and Australia, and hence why in some places the tree is referred to as the Bead Tree.

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