The butterflies love this plant - and the scent is wonderful. If someone could be so kind to identify and give me care instructions. Thanks
Please help identify
Is the scent lemony, kind of like Pledge? It looks like a lantana, especially the leaves. If so, this plant is EASY - you can't kill it. It needs minimal water, will grow like crazy and come back every year. I cut mine back in the winter but I know others who don't. If it is lantana, be careful when handling it. The leaves usually give me hives and make me itch pretty bad. They are rather oily and strong. But I'm allergic to everything!! =) You may need to keep it pruned back - lantana can take over. But I love it and so do the bflys!!
Really? Lantana? I thought it was Heliotrope. The 2 scents are very distinct. Heliotrope has a 4" flower here in Indiana and Lantana has a one-inch flower. BUT since you are in Louisiana, you are probably better off with Texas Greenie's advice.
Here is a write up of Heliotrope just in case:
http://www.flowerscentgardens.com/heliotrope.htm
Suzy
You're right, it looks just like your heliotrope picture. I have some trailing lavendar lantana that looks very similar. The leaves match more than the flowers so you're probably right on the heliotrope, Suzy.
I have never seen a purple or lavender Lantana....we just don't have it, and I didn't even know it came in that color, so for all I knew that pic could have been Lantana!
The colors are plain yellow, yellow with some pink, and a NEW one I bought this year that has some dark orange or red in it. WOW! LOL! I saw a photo of some beautiful solid bright red Lantana on this forum (Florida poster) and about died -- it was soooooo gorgeous! We have nothing at all like that available at the garden centers. :((
Suzy
ebhuval - You plant is definately Heliotrope!
I have a thing for Lantana. Especially since the butterflies seem to love it! It must be a very good nectar plant for them! :-)
I have about 6 different cultivars in my yard. There is a lavender trailing Lantana. It blooms profusely here in the early Spring. And the scent from the flowers is very nice. Here is a photo of the blooms. (It does bloom year round, but doesn't put on the show like it does in Spring!)
There is the shorter mounding red Lantana. (It ocassionally gets some yellow blooms in there like you see in the photo.) This is like a dwarf lantana as most get really big.
Ebhuval, it's a beautiful plant.
I so love lantanas. Unfortunately, they are annuals for me.
I also have the solid yellow lantana.
There is the pink and yellow blooming lantana.
The one that grows huge in my yard is the red, orange, and yellow Lantana.
And the last one I have is yellow with orange throats.
I know that there is a white cultivar. And many variations of the above.
Probably more than you wanted to know! :-)
Beautiful photos, Becky! I have a thing for lantana, too. Nothing in my yard attracts as many hummingbirds and butterflies and moths and bees to it as the lantana. And when it's full of berries, the Mockingbirds and BlueJays are all over it. I love that plant!
Carla
sniff-sniff It's an annual for me, too. Becky, yours must have been the solid red one I saw posted here....LOVE IT!
Suzy
Carla and Suzy - Thanks! Lantana is probably a tropical plant which is why it doesn't do well in the northern states during winter. Mine dies back too when we get really low temps, but it comes back gangbusters in the Spring. The purple trailing one seems to like the colder temps! Go figure.
Suzy and billyporter - Have either of you thought of growing it in a pot and bringing it in during winter? Two of mine are in pots. I just planted 2 others in the ground this year after spending a year in a pot. And the fifth one I planted directly in the ground when I bought it. I have seeds for most of them but have never started Lantana from seed, so I don't know how easy it is to germinate. If you are interested in seeds, d-mail me.
Now that I have a lighted plant stand I may consider trying to overwinter one. I'll have to look up how easy it is to start seeds. Some things are too hard and I just buy the plant. Thanks for the idea! Those are all gorgeous!!
Love that purple heliotrope. Had no idea it came in purple...I've only seen white out here. It's a real butterfly magnet.
Love the lantana photos too. Dare I mention lantana horrida (the one that blooms yellow and orange grows wild out here. Seems everywhere the birds poop out the seeds plants grow. We see it all along the barbed wire fences and under trees. Lovely stuff...but for some odd reason I don't see many butterflies on it...perhaps because of it's abundance? Yet, I have one lone bush in my yard and it gets butterflies...go figure!
~ Cat
Lantana seeds are very easy, but they are slower than molasses to germinate. I just planted out 1 of 5 I had that germinated about a month ago after being sown in early March. They are Yellow/pink. I am not counting on them even blooming this year, but I wanted to see how big they'd get.
There is a big thing about soaking them in H2O2 solution until they germinate, but they didn't seem any faster doing that than just sowing them on a heat mat. The fastest thing is to take 12-14" cuttings...Becky, I'll hit you up next spring for your red one, so don't go trimming it and throwing away the cuttings!
There is something about Lantana that makes us not want to bring it inside, but I can't remember what it is. Aphids? Scale? Some sort of pest or disease that would spread to other plants, as I recall. I definitely would give it a google before I brought it inside because although I can't remember what it is, I do remember it's somehting very bad :)
I'll take a picture on mine tomorrow and show you what $3.95 and $4.95 will buy up here :))
Suzy
Suzy - Here is what I read about overwintering Lantana:
Problems:
No serious insect or disease problems. Watch for whiteflies and spider mites, particularly on overwintering plants.
Uses:
Annual bedding plant. Containers. Houseplant.
I also read that:
Cultivars generally do not come true from seed, however, so cuttings may be taken in summer from favorite plants for overwintering.
Becky, I took some pictures today, and while I was looking around I took a picture of my "rare" Lantana. Not rare at all, just not common up here.
Suzy
If the butterflies and hummers would ever bother to check, there is a lot of stuff here for them! This is a closeup of another flower.
Suzy
I feel your pain, Suzy!
You have some nice looking Lantana! I do like Lantana. It has a weird smell and can be a skin irritant, but it does seem to attract some very lovely creatures to my yard!
You are trying to entice more butterflies...... I'm trying to get hummers to visit my yard! I have tons of hummer nectar plants! No hummers! But I do have butterflies because I planted a butterfly and hummingbird garden around my entire backyard. I got half of what I was hoping to attract! :-) Do you get hummers?
This message was edited May 17, 2007 4:42 PM
Yes I usually have hummers, but not this year. My current thought is they came in March when it was 80 degrees and got caught in the week long cold snap when it was below freezing for a whole week in April. Thats the only thing I can think of because the dichlostemma is blooming now and they were very enamoured of it last year and this year -- nada!
Another theory I had was they came and noticed I washed my windows. Last year they methodically went from window to window collecting spider webs that had collected. A LARGE quantity a spider webs LOL! I would see and hear them crashing repeatedly into the house (not the window itself, the spider webs are where the window frame meets the house) It was very strange until I realized what they were after.
If my Asiatic lilies bloom and I have no hummers, this in about 2 weeks, I will certainly revise my theories because they LOVE lily nectar.
All of the plants I mentioned need a cold winter, BTW.
The butterflies are an afterthought. I had a lot last year and looked themup only to realize I have a lot of the host plants, but not that many nectar plants. Hence all my questions...
Suzy
Suzy - I think that weird, out-of-the-blue cold snap put a dent in a lot of gardens and the creatures that normally show up during this time of the year. Perhaps they will show up soon or this summer sometime. I hope many of them didn't freeze to death. It is a bit alarming that many folks have said the same thing that you said about the lack of creatures in their garden beds this Spring.
I have at least one ruby throat. He's been here a few weeks now. Luckily the wild (common) columbine is out at the same time so they can eat. I don't do the feeders anymore.
Suzy, I think my neighbor overwinters his lantana pots dormant, in his unheated (but not freezing) garage. In spring, he brings them out, gives them a good watering, and they spring into action!
I started some heliotrope from seed, but apparently not early enough... no blooms yet. I can't wait for it to bloom! I think the butterflies and I will all get drunk on the scent, LOL.
I did heliotrope from seed one year. Now I buy the plants if I want them. It took forever!
I really screwed up my indoor seed sowing -- things that I thought would take a long time, didn't, and naturally, the opposite happened. Good thing I kept records on the DG Diary or Journal or whatever it is. I will make more mistakes next year, but hopefully not the exact same ones. LOL!
Billyporter, I have a 'Buffet Supreme" planted out for the little hummingbeggars and all *he* wants is the feeder. Lazy bum! I wish I had more than one, but I guess one is better than none, eh?
Suzy
critter - All my Lantana died to the ground this winter and my big old bush in the back was nothing but dead branches and stems. I cut off all the dead wood literally to the ground. I figured that it was a goner. Not so!! The minute the weather started warming up and it got a little rain water it seemed to grow inches overnight! It's about 2 foot tall now and is also spreading outward even more. I can't believe I'm going to have to prune that puppy already! I think once Lantana has it's roots established, it bounces right back as long as it isn't exposed to freezing temps for too long. I also heavily mulched the ground around the trunk, so that also probably protected it during the cold snaps we had here. It got into the upper 30's several times and it dropped it's leaves the first cold snap. But the butterflies are all over it now and they even roost in it overnight. :-)
I've never grown heliotrope, but it sure has some lovely purple blooms. Very nice looking plant!
well, phoo, I guess next time I'm in a nursery greenhouse with blooming heliotrope for sale, I will just have to succumb to temptation! I think mine has been about 8 or 9 weeks from seed at this point... it looks great, but it's only 3-4 inches tall and no blooms....
Critter, I forgot to say -- my garage freezes...found that out this winter when it was only zero, so if it got really cold (as cold as it should) it would definitely freeze. I need to figure out a place that stays 40 degrees (and isn't the refrigerator!) for things like Lantana and dahlias. I left Caladiums in a plastic bag filled with dry-dry potting mix and left them down the basement and they did fine, but I think Lantana would want to grow at those temperatures.
Becky, it's the scent of Heliotrope that drives us to try to grow it....like vanilla, I think would be the best description. Or lemon-vanilla? Delicious, however you describe it.
Lantana is easy and fairly fast from seed, BTW. I didn't start mine early enough, but if I had started it when I started some of the things I started too early, it would be blooming now ;)
Suzy
Suzy - Funny you should mention Heliotrope's scent. I think I received some seeds in the Victorian Mother's Day seed swap. I have intentions of planting most of those seeds this weekend. (Probably tomorrow.) Thanks for sparking my memory! :-)
Ug. Major Zone Envy and it's not even winter! If I started those seeds now, I would maybe get some bloom by the beginning of October, maybe not. It woud be a total waste of time since the 1st frost is about Oct 14.
You? You get to start seeds year round and it's not FAIR!
Suzy
P.S. You know I'm kidding, but it might help if you talk about how hot and humid it is in July & Aug LOL!
Pretty pics of lantanas. I had no idea there were so many different colors...
Perhaps someone can tell me how a verbena (like 'Homestead Purple') compares with lantanas in the Butterfly garden?
Also, do you pinch them or prune them back a bit when they are new --mine are in small 4 inch pots with 2 or 3 one foot long stems. Should I cut these back to get a bushier plant? I want to put them in the BF garden, not in hanging baskets.
( I think verbena might be a bit more hardy in our area...at least I think I over-wintered it in our attached garage 2 years ago...)
Thanks. t.
T - I cut my Lantana back every other month during the growing season. They grow rather fast.
Suzy - Hot and humid in July and August????? How about right now. I have to do any gardening either early morning or late afternoon because it is so hot! And some of my plants think so too! AND ...... the weeds grow quicker than the garden plants do! Lots and lots of weed pulling! Ugh!
Feel better now?? LOL!
Tabasco, Butterflies love it. Verbena in the right spot comes back every year for me in zone 5a. I had some on the east that got plenty of roof run-off and was sheltered from the north winter winds. We redid the bed and I moved it to the front yard. I've struggled to keep the original plant because I didn't know exactly what it was. I bought Homestead and it's the same. (Sigh of relief.) I don't do anything to it. Just water when it seems dry. It smells like honey to me.
Taken a few days ago.
thanks, becky and billy,
I'll get some homestead for the BF garden. It will grow in a pot, won't it?