In article ,
"Willow" wrote:

I've been thinking of planting a tree or two similar to a couple of trees
that grow accross the road from where I work. I've been told that they're
Australian Native Christmas trees, however they don't look anything like the
pictures I've seen. The trees near work are about 5 metres high, deciduous
with red/orange flowers with a black center. They're large & are in
full-flower before the leaves begin to form. The leaves are fairly broad &
although the tree has a fairly dense habit, it still allows some filtered
light through. I hope that's descriptive enough.

http://www.anbg.gov.au/christmas/christmas.html

is a list of native "Christmas" plants with pictures. Your description
doesn't match any of them. It does sound a bit like the Illawarra Flame Tree,
which is illustrated at: http://www.anbg.gov.au/stamps/stamp.686.html . The
Illawarra Flame Tree has very distinctive black boat-shaped seed pods, about
15cm long. Does this sound right? And where are these trees exactly?

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

I don't regard myself as a fanatic. I just have handy milk dispensers.
-- Lee, misc.kids