Best planted in full sun with regular summer watering. More tender when young but mature trees are hardy to short duration temperatures to 20-25 degrees F. Protect from the wind and is best in deep loamy soils. A bit variable but when happy it is one of the showiest of ornamental trees and its flowers are very attractive to bees.

Calodendrum capense is native to a large area of south eastern Africa from the equatorial highlands of Kenya south through Tanzania, Zimbabwe to the coastal forests from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town in South Africa. The name of the genus comes from the Greek words 'kalos', meaning "beautiful" and 'dendrum' or 'dendron' meaning "tree". The specific epithet means "from the Cape" as it was here that this tree was first described Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828), a pupil of Linnaeus and called "the father of South African botany" first saw it in flower at Grootvaderbosch in South Africa. The tree was named "Cape Chestnut" by the William Burchell because of the resemblance of the flowers and fruit to the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). Peter Riedel chronicled that Dr. Francesco Franceschi (Orazio Fenzi) first noted this plant already growing in Santa Barbara upon his arrival in 1895 and was offering it for sale in his nursery by 1900. Riedel wrote in his Plants For Extra-tropical Regions that "It is undoubtably one of the handsomest flowering trees we have and should be employed more as a streetside tree." This plant does seem to like some warmer temperatures and grows best a little ways from the coast with the largest specimens noted in such places as Santa Paula, Pasadena and at the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. We grew this beautiful tree from 1986 until 2004 and still have a beautiful specimen on the nursery grounds along Hollister Ave that regularly has people inquiring about it. Unfortunately, this plant in the citrus family is a listed host of the Asian Citrus Psyllid, which is a carrier of the deadly (to citrus) huanglongbing citrus greening disease and for this reason its movement around California is subject to the same quarantines as citrus, which likely will make this beautiful plant increasingly hard to find in any nursery. 

The information displayed on this page about Calodendrum capense is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.