Monday, December 24, 2007

Lipstick plant (Aeschynanthus) Red flowers

Merry Christmas to me !! As I was fighting the crowds in Walmart yesterday I came across the most beautiful Lipstick plant. I couldn't pass it up as I don't have this particular one.
The leaves and flowers are much larger than any lipstick plant I have. The leaves are almost 2 inches across and almost 4 inches long. The flowers are a couple inches long as well.

Inside the mouth of the flower is quite stunning as well. The flowers are just so perfect looking. I am finding that aeschynanthus is quite easy to take of. It can suffer a lot of neglect. I let mine go pretty dry before watering them. I don't fertilize it very often. All of the ones I have are in an East or South window, and they love it.



Here is a close up of the mouth of the flower. Inside it is a pale yellow with red stripes.


Now I don't live in the warmest place, so taking the plant from the store to the car was like running a mini marathon. Gotta keep the plant warm, gotta keep the plant warm.....lol. The temperature outside was about 15 degrees below zero (Celsius). In this pic you can see the damage from the cold. I have cut off the ends that were damaged so now it looks quite good. I am hoping that it won't continue to blacken. It was only in the cold for maybe 2 minutes total.

1 comment:

Wicked Gardener said...

Wow- every now and then you find a real gem at Walmart. It would never occured to me that so much cold damage could occur from the car to the house. Hope it warms up soon!