Meet Cordia Boissieri, commonly called Anacahuita or Mexican Olive. The good people of Nuevo Leon have chosen it as their official state flower. This is an ornamental tree, a member of the borage family, reaching as high as 30 feet, and supports a symmetrical crown ranging from ten to 16 feet across. It has dark, soft ovate leaves that can range from three and a half to seven inches long, and two to three and a half inches wide.
The evergreen C. Boissieri has lovely white flowers that are shaped like funnels or trumpets. These flowers have yellow throats, are two inches across, resemble crepe paper and bloom throughout the year. Their beauty makes them good candidates for funeral flowers. The fruit, or drupe, of the plant resemble olives and are yellow-green, almost an inch long. They may be sweet, but you don’t want to eat them raw, as they are slightly toxic and cause dizziness. However, you can make a perfectly safe jelly from the fruit. Syrup derived from the fruit is often used as a cough medicine or an organic dye for cloth. The leaves are a folk remedy for the relief of rheumatism and pulmonary illness. The desirable wood is used in carpentry, and is also kindled in fireplaces. The Wild Olive Tortoise Beetle makes its living off of C. Boissieri.
C. Boissieri is drought-tolerant, and is a favorite highway planting. The sweet fruit attracts birds, deer and cattle, and butterflies like to visit the blooms. If you travel north from Nuevo Leon into Texas, you’ll see C. Boissieri all the way up to Austin, at which point the winters become too cold to avoid die-back. The plant thrives in USDA hardiness zones nine through 11.
Many people value C. Boissieri as a landscape plant. It can be trained as a shrub or a tree and can be grown on a patio in a container or planter. It needs full sun exposure including reflected heat. You only need to water it twice per month once it is established, though you can water more frequently when the plant is young to promote growth. The plant adapts to most different soils as long as the drainage is good. You can propagate C. Boissieri via seeds or cuttings. You may have to spray the plant if you want to harvest the fruit. The plant is quite useful in parking lot buffer strips and along residential streets.