Hardiness zones:
Sunset 7-9, 12-24
USDA 9-11

Landscape Use: Accent, informal hedge, multiple trunk small tree, screen, large specimen in indoor atriums with high levels of natural light

Form & Character: Evergreen shrub to small multiple trunk tree with a rich, dark cinnamon brown bark characteristic, loose.

Growth Habit: Evergreen woody perennial shrub to small tree, moderate growth to 4 to 20' depending on amount and frequency of irrigation and aridity of climate.

Foliage/texture: Nearly willow-like linear to lanceolate leaves to 4", very viscid with a varnished appearance, trunk has nice, shedding to shredding, dark cinnamon bark, stems weak and brittle; medium fine texture.

Flowers & fruits: Plants are dioecious, flowers inconspicuous in winter. Fruit on female plants are pendant appearing like small Chinese lanterns, first light green then fading to pink of burgundy. The three parted seed pods have several small rounded black seeds.  The fruit are very ornamental.

Seasonal color: Pinkish colored fruits in early spring. Foliage of purple leaved cultivars mostly in winter.

Temperature: Tolerant

Light: Full sun, quite shade intolerant

Soil: Hopseed bush is tolerant of most soil textures, BUT it is a requirement that whatever soil it is growing can not be chronically wet. A fast draining soil is an essential requirement.

Watering: Watering needs are variable depending on eventual desired size. More water = larger size to eventually arborescent (tree like) in form. Less to no water = small rounded shrub. Here is an unirrigated hopseed bush at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Pruning: Minimal pruning requirements.

Propagation: Seed, softwood cuttings.

Disease and pests: Texas root rot in poorly drained when soils are wet and warm (above 80^oF) during August and September.

Additional comments: Hop seed bush is a versatile Arizona native shrub or small tree. The cultivar 'Purpurea' has purple foliage during cool weather, but the foliage change to mostly green during hot weather. The cultivar 'Saratoga' has deep purple foliage year round. It is a superior purple-leaf cultivar, but is surprisingly less common in plant nurseries.

Dodonaea is a genus of about 70 species of flowering plants with a cosmopolitan distribution in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate regions of Africa, the Americas, southern Asia and Australia. By far the highest species diversity is in Australia.