Hi, Just wondering if it is worthwhile to carry over lantanas as it is with fuchsias and geraniums or whether it would just be best to start over next Spring. Thks, D
I consider mine a short lived perennial. I just pruned mine radically last month. I have some wild lantana in pink and orange, but also nursery grown yellow. They will grow back. In fact, mine are flowering again, but not heavily. I think I have one from five years ago that just bit the dust this fall. Completely xeric, mostly sand, full sun. It's not like they are pampered by me.
It just hits freezing once in a while. Last few winters, I didn't even see any frost and I'm off to work at 5:30 AM. A sustained freeze is noteworthy, not to mention a serious cost to the citrus and fern industries. No citrus groves in Daytona area anymore, but there are some nurseries that have in-ground stock. The lack of remaining groves is not a real estate issue. It's due to freezes. Wild lantana is ubiquitous. You can see stands of it along pastures or rimming roads. It seeds prolifically.
What a shocking surprise to read about your weather. All these years I had the impression that Florida was a retirement haven for the heat seeking gray haired who basked in the sun 24/7/365! I even had the weird impression that philodendrons grew wild there ROFL!!! Your climate sounds as tho it is approaching what ours is up here at the 49th parallel. Last winter we had about 4 ft of snow.....so look out! Thanks for that info, D
We do have philodendrons of various species growing, escaped, but not rampant. It's not uncommon to find old houseplants that have grown monstrously large in peoples' yards. Monstera, Philodendron selloum, Syngonium, Spathyphyllum, aglaeonema, sansevieria, Epiprenum aureum, Alocasia, Colocasias, Xanthosom, Musa, Strelitzia, Dracaena, Ficus, and Carica papaya can all persist in neglected areas, sometimes with very striking results. When you see a dead pine trunk completely covered with a shroud of marbled yellow and green pothos with hundreds of leaves bigger than your head, it's impressive. When you've seen the thousandth neglected and frost burned and spindly Dracaena marginata or Ficus elastica, you grow inured to the quasi-tropical spectacle. Central Florida is not tropical, but subtropical. Mickey Mouse may want you to believe that flamingos are endemic here, but they aren't. It's too cold, too acid, and too commercial. A lot of the tropical plants I find on hikes and meanderings are not reseeded, but dumped. Pulled out of overgrown dooryards and toppled poolside plantings and tossed into woods and ditches. Eh, it's my home for now. I had planned on moving to Edmonton a few years back, and I've lived in New England so it's not that I am clueless about solid freezes and snow days. I'd actually relish a few freezing days here to kill off some of the invasive species, both plants and animals. Getting mosquito bites on Christmas Day gets old real fast. Lantana here would suffer, but the wild one would come back. I'm sure I'd have to wrap my gingers, crotons and ti plants in their pots, but that's about all. I'd gladly let the inground poinsettias die off.
Yes, Toward the end of the season, when it was getting harder to find that perfect red one (point) in the green houses, we'd be saying things like 'better dead than red' to each other. Not too long now hey? D
I bought a Lantana this summer and brought it in to keep it growing all winter. It is still growing and blooming. How big do they get in ideal conditions? How can it be pruned to keep it full and bushy?
Down here, in yards, people can keep a moderately dense hedge of lantana cultivars going for years. So you might see it knee high around a mail box at the curb, or taller interspersed with a clipped Ilex. Keeping it indoors, you'd probably need supplemental light to maintain a lantana sculpted or pruned to a simple topiary shape. I've pruned the cultivars to no more than a hands-breadth and had them rebound bushier than ever. I find they do have dead wood in places, so a more open habit may be more attractive. The wild lantana we hack off with machetes about every fifteen minutes. ;) Or in my xeric, mostly native yard, I cut back to the ground a couple of times a year.
I think it would be possible to keep it as we keep fuchsias and geraniums over winter up here where we get real winters. And that is usually done by getting them to go dormant by with holding water, pruning back, as they will shoot in the Spring and cooler temps with adequate light. They just won't do well without good light an it is just too poor up here in our winters. I have never tried the lantanas this way before and had hopes of finding someone here who has done so in our climate. So, do let us know how yours do kevind76 and I will report back in the Spring on how mine did since no one else who reads here has done this. Makes me think it's not worth it? SO, Later, D
