Carrotwood

Problem Species

Southern California Coast

388 cities

Carrotwood (Cupaniopsis anacardioides) is an evergreen tree from Australia with glossy, dark green compound leaves and small orange-yellow fruits that split open to reveal black seeds wrapped in bright orange arils. It was sold widely in Southern California during the 1970s through the 1990s as a tidy, low-water landscape tree before anyone understood what it would do in the wild. It's now banned for sale or new planting in many California counties, and if you own one near open space or a canyon, you should know you may be sitting on a regulatory problem.

Lifespan

In cultivated landscapes, carrotwood typically lives 50 to 80 years. Specimens in favorable conditions can persist longer, and once naturalized in the wild, individual trees show no signs of early decline.

Mature Size

Typically 20 to 35 feet tall with a canopy spread of 15 to 25 feet. In ideal coastal conditions with no competition, it can push closer to 40 feet tall.

⚠ Problem Species

Why it's a problem: Invasive - banned in many CA counties, aggressive seeding

Care & Maintenance

Once established, carrotwood needs almost no supplemental water and tolerates poor, compacted, or sandy soils in full sun. Do not fertilize it. Feeding this tree encourages more fruiting, which means more seeds, which means more seedlings showing up in places you don't want them. It handles coastal conditions, including salt air and wind, without complaint, which is a big part of why it naturalized so successfully along the Southern California coast.

Common Issues & Threats

Invasive seeding: Birds eat the orange arils and scatter seeds into canyons, native habitat, and neighboring properties. You can find carrotwood seedlings sprouting a quarter mile from the parent tree, and they establish quickly.
Root damage: Carrotwood has shallow, aggressive roots that lift sidewalks, crack driveways, and infiltrate irrigation lines over time. Trees planted close to hardscape will cause structural damage well before they reach full size.
Regulatory and legal exposure: In San Diego County and several others, you may be required to remove carrotwood if it is within a certain distance of natural open space. Before you prune, sell, or do anything with this tree, contact your county ag commissioner to understand your obligations.

Pruning Guide

Pruning for clearance and structure is fine, but do it in late winter before the new growth flush. Here is what most people get wrong: they assume cutting the tree back hard will reduce the fruit problem. It does not. Heavy pruning during or after fruiting season just triggers more vigorous regrowth and does nothing to reduce seed dispersal. If reducing spread is your goal, the more useful move is removing fruit clusters by hand before they ripen and open.

Did You Know?

The name carrotwood comes from the orange heartwood visible when you cut through a branch, which really does look like a carrot. What surprises most homeowners is that this tree was not an accident or an escape from botanical gardens. Nurseries actively marketed it through the 1980s as a responsible, drought-tolerant choice, and it ended up in thousands of planned landscapes for exactly that reason. The traits that made it a good product are the same traits that made it a successful invader.

Where Carrotwood Is Found

Carrotwood is common in 388 of the US communities we cover, across 1 climate regions.

Hardiness Zones 1-9

Redlands, CA Zone 10a Turlock, CA Zone 9b Baldwin Park, CA Zone 10a Rocklin, CA Zone 9a Dublin, CA Zone 9b Redondo Beach, CA Zone 11a Lake Elsinore, CA Zone 10a Walnut Creek, CA Zone 9b Eastvale, CA Zone 10a Yorba Linda, CA Zone 10a Davis, CA Zone 9b Lodi, CA Zone 9b

... and 376 more cities

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