Odontonema strictum, Mexican Fire Spike: hot color in the shade

 If only I'd known about the shade deal when I planted it! In 2007, I sited it on the se facing back wall of our large shed. It was bleached and miserable for years. For the past few years it's been shaded by an elderberry, an avocado, a volunteer Simpson's Stopper, draped by the natives Coral honeysuckle and Virginia creeper. I finally saw many plants at Kanapaha Botanical Garden, growing in varying degrees of shade but all happier than ours. A lightbulb went off! Anyway, as I used to tell design clients, "shade happens", and it happened to us and the Firespike is happy.  

It looks like a hummingbird plant and it is. Once in a while I pull out a chair, sit across from it, and watch them zoom back and forth from the Coral honeysuckle and this plant. Butterflies flit among and between both plants. 

There are a few families (plant) that seem to be disproportionately represented in our garden. The Ginger family, the Heliconia family, the Pea family, the Acanthus family, I'm sure I've forgotten a few; sorry. Firesticks is in the Acanthaceae, along with Brazilian plume, Ruellia caroliniana, Brazilian mask, and a handful of others. It's a tropical family, and in fact, there are occasional problems with winter burn or even dieback. The pink odontonema burns half of the time. But here's the thing; They are all so wonderfully colorful in bloom, that we put up with an occasional need for season regeneration. 

 

Brazilian Plume, Justicia carnea loves the heat

It actually is native to Brazil, an evergreen in warmer places than Central Florida. For us, in USDA zone 9a, it gets very unhappy in the winter, enjoying neither cold (lows occasionally at or a bit below freezing) nor drought. It barely rains from November to June. When the rains return though, and temperatures push into the 80's and 90's, new leaves cover the plant and it flowers. Ours flowers, usually three times a year. 

I read that it's an evergreen that it reaches five feet tall with large leaves. In four years, ours is staying about two feet tall, mostly defoliates every winter, and has never had leaves more than two inches long. That size works for us as it stays nicely below the screen porch windows.  

Despite preferring ideally warmer temperatures than ours, I grew it successfully in zone 7a just north of the Washington DC. It died to the ground in winter but came back in late spring until finally succumbing to a severe cold spell.