Sinningia Species, Argentine Hardy Orange Gloxinia, Hardy Red Gloxinia

This plant works well for me in part sun. It is carefree and has gotten quite large --3' high, 4' wide. It died back last year after a ...Read Morehard freeze but came back quickly. It blooms all summer and fall. The leaves have a nice texture. I do deadhead a little.

Really cool plant! Developes a huge bulb. Mine is 6 years old and the bulb measures well over 20 inches in diameter. When it starts dr...Read Moreooping, cut it off all the way to the bulb. It is a great hummingbird plant. My friend grows his in hanging baskets and hangs them in the garage during the winter. The birds come right up to it.

There must be a way to use this hardy, year round blooming plant in the garden that escapes me! It flops - no way do those tall stems st...Read Moreay upright without support, and the flowers are just so cool dangling from the bloom stalk as it swoops off to the horizontal. I can see it in a rock garden drooping gracefully over a low rock wall.... On the coastal plain though, it's sure tough to show it off under Big Sky (finding a rock here is a shocking, unsettling experience), so mine stays in a pot.

The plant is very easy from cuttings and FAST to bloom. Don't feed it, it'll just chuckle at you, and like most of the gesneriads, the stems get too weak with food. It probably would not be the thug that Sinningia tubiflora is in the garden as it seems not to stoloniferize so rabidly, but I haven't tried it there.

It is a self sower, but is not too obnoxious about it.