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| Close up of hummingbird-attracting flowers |
If you are looking for a great drought tolerant plant that stays green and looks super healthy all of the time, think about getting Justicia sericea. I am very impressed with the performance of this plant in my La Mesa garden. My garden is in USDA Hardiness Zone 10b, and I have well drained sandy loam soil. You probably know this, but I love hummingbirds! This Peru-native is a great hummingbird plant and it blooms almost non-stop in full sun. This, like many of my favorite plants, is in the Acanthaceae. Justicia is the largest genus in the Acanthaceae with 600 species from tropical areas in the world. This particular Justicia has anti-inflammatory properties. It was introduced by my friend Warren Roberts from UC Davis. It blooms more heavily in the cooler months, but still blooms in the summer. True red open tubular flowers that look made for hummingbird heads to slide into cover this plant most of the time. Flowers have an easily recognizable bilabial corolla with a three-lobed bottom lip and two stamens. You can see this in the photo. It barely gets water--ever. What is so impressive is how it looks in spite of no water. This non-woody shrub is lush-looking and maintains an almost surreal symmetry, even after five years. Its beautiful rounded form requires no trimming. I was going to go outside and get the dimensions for you, but it is dark out--oops, so I shall have to depend on my memory. It is approximately 3-4 feet across and 2.5 feet high. It is also so green and lush there is no "dead stuff" to prune out. Attractive bright red flowers never need deadheading, they self-clean and fall off with no lingering discolored aging blooms. You either see flawless blooms or no blooms at all, just pleasing opposite dark green elliptic foliage. I have never done anything to this plant except plant it. Now here's the weird part, for such a wonderful plant for Southern California, you would think it is in the Sunset Western Garden Book, but it's not!
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| Justicea sericea 'Inca Queen' |
Thank you for this post! I have Justicia 'Inca Queen' in my Brentwood (the NorCal city ;-) not the SoCal area) and as you wrote, it looks beautiful year round with minimal tipping and almost no water! Wanting to share it with some of my design clients, I was surprised that no-one is growing it commercially. Fortunately, I have some shoots popping up this year that I can dig up!
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