Posted by fayeroe on April 19, 2009, at 11:56:03
Penta
This tropical plant offers red, pink, lavender, and white blooms all summer long. It can bloom in full sun or shade and is a great container plant. Place a few pentas on the patio along with firebush and lantanas and you will have butterflies and hummingbirds all summer. Pentas do not qualify as a xeriscape plant but they are worth a little extra water. Pentas attract hornworms so keep your eyes peeled for the voracious caterpillars. The hornworm moth is a spectacular night feeder but one caterpillar can put a penta out of action for 5 or 6 weeks. Perhaps the solution is to plant enough that you can let one or two get stripped bare by the hornworm.I bought three. They were inexpensive. My patio needs more flowering plants so I am putting them in three pots and will put them by a light purple something or the other. :-)
Last year the butterflies came for the zinnias, plumbago and the lantana. Lantana grows everywhere in Austin. In ditches, etc. I don't think that you could kill it. I buy it at the end of the season. 75 cents a container.
poster:fayeroe
thread:891580
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090331/msgs/891580.html