Monday, October 16, 2017

Texas Star Hibiscus

Gardening this year has been the best so far in this house. Several plants are well established, and they have put on a grand show. Among these is my Texas Star Hibiscus. I planted this about four years ago. Every year it gets about a foot higher than the previous year, and this year I enjoyed a wonderful profusion of blooms on the plant. I kept dead-heading spent blooms until about mid-July, and I let the last big wave of blossoms go to seed. I have not propagated any of these from seed, but if any readers would be interested, please leave me a comment with your mailing address. I won't publish your comment, but will mail you several seeds, and hopefully you can get at least one plant from them. I'd start them indoors in a sunny place in the winter, if possible. Also, if you're much north of Texas, I don't know how well these would do. They are a heat-hardy/water-thrifty perennial, and the plant dies down to the ground every winter, and puts a new set of canes at springtime. I like the look of the canes, so I let them stay up over winter and snap them off at the ground in spring. Also, unless you have tons of space for them, I would only plant the healthiest specimen to start with.
I first saw a Texas Star Hibiscus at a wonderful nursery in McKinney called The Green House, and they never watered theirs, and it came back year after year. Theirs was a massive stand of canes - probably several dozen canes, around 10' tall, with hundreds of blossoms through the summer. It was magnificent. My current plant will probably need a handful more years to get that tall, but it is on its way.

By the way, the purple plant in the right corner in the shade is a variety of Agastache (hummingbird mint) that I obtained from High Country Gardens. I just purchased that one this spring, and I was amazed at how quickly it established, filled out and started blooming. True to its name, it was a favorite with the hummingbirds, to my delight. :) I took this photo early in the morning when there was shade from trees across the street, but this stand of plants is around a boulder and gets full sun most of the day.


2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Very nice!

phlegmfatale said...

To the folks who have sent me their addresses, your seeds will go out with the mail tomorrow. Please let me know next year how these turn out for you!

Also, I still have enough to send out quite a few more packets, so just let me know!