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| Photo Credit: David L. Morgan |
| Lantanas mix well with other foliage and flower types. |
Here is a plant whose time has come – lantana. Tough, ever-flowering, attractive and demanding little attention, this tenacious shrub (which acts more like a perennial in its non-native range) fits the bill for homeowners who want to enjoy the simple life. Put the plant in the ground, lie back and watch it flower. If you live in USDA Hardiness Zone 7 and higher, you can eliminate pruning, most pest control and deadheading from your schedule of horticultural chores. Lantana is a low-maintenance gem of a plant, and a delight for the time-challenged gardener.
A member of the vervain family (Verbenaceae), the most popular lantana species is the native Lantana camara, along with its many cultivars. L. montevidensis, the weeping or trailing lantana from South America, is used as a landscape plant worldwide. Many commercially available cultivars are hybrids of these species. It’s the fast-growing properties of lantana that makes the plant so popular. These beauties spread their long stems and bright colors throughout the landscape quite fast. But, it’s the same vigor and ability to adapt that make lantana species invasive in south Florida and some other tropical and subtropical locations. Herbicides are used to control their spread there. (FYI – the common herbicide glyphosate stops lantana dead in its tracks.)
Lantanas are showy with their many clusters of small flowers in bright colors. Some blooms are solid, such as the all-white selections and the popular yellow varieties, while others are multicolored. The small bouquets of blossoms, hardly more than an inch wide, often change color as each individual flower opens, then ages. Color combinations may include white and purple, yellow and pink, yellow and orange, and pink and magenta.
Some gardeners may not take to lantana’s richly aromatic scents right away, but the beauty they impart to the landscape is undeniable. In addition the bright blooms, the plants sport small, 1-4-inch-long, medium-green leaves that are rough to the touch, often hairy and opposite on the stem. The square stems may reach several feet in length, particularly among the trailing varieties. Lantanas adapt remarkably well to many soils – even somewhat boggy ones – and thrive as desert plants, too. In unreplicated experiments in the Morgan garden, we’ve found that flowering is directly proportional to watering, particularly those we have in containers. When irrigation is scarce, the plants survive, but they recess into floral seclusion.
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