On Feb 1, 4:13 pm, "jim" wrote:
On Feb 1, 6:50 am, wrote:

My wife has a bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) in a pot and, boy, does that
thing grow SLOW! It's doing all right now though.
Richard Nacamuli
Richard L. Nacamuli

I have one that was planted 30 years ago - it is a small tree that has
now reached a height of about 11 feet.

I suppose it depends on growing conditions and climate; I grew up with
a pair of trees in the American southwest that were over 70 feet tall.
The man who planted them back in 1912, though, also expected them to
grow slowly. We know this because although by the 1970s they had far
outstripped every tree in the neighborhood, you could still tell that
when they were originally planted it had been as "gatepost" shrubs on
either side of an entry walkway!

They are somewhat slow, yes, but I would say, considering their
density (biomass) to size ratio, they really are average growers; the
leaves are large and thick for a Mediterranean-climate plant, and they
populate the branches quite thickly; the branches ramify quite readily
as well.

There's a hybrid that grows faster and has leaves almost twice as
large as common Laurus nobilis; it is Laurus x 'Saratoga' and is
supposed to be a cross of L. nobilis and L. canariensis; in addition
to being quicker it is still quite suitable as a culinary herb,
although it is less suitable for clipping than plain old L. nobilis.

Haakon

BTW, everyone focuses on the leaves of these plants, but early on I
fell in love with the trunks of older bays (as exemplified by the tall
ones mentioned above). They are like cold, grey marble...a cross
between the noble trunks of beech trees (Fagus) and the serpentine
erotic trunks of the various banyans (Ficus)--neither of which are
related to the bay laurel.