It grows here as a weed, but I've also got a couple that have been trained into box-style hedges. It attracts butterflies like no other plant in the garden, and if I don't deadhead it, it makes fruit that looks like mutant blackberries (large black nodules grouped in the general shape of the blooms, not coherent like the fruits of Rubus spp.) It seems to be a creeper if I let it go creeping, or herbaceous if it's trimmed to shape. The picture I have is of the pink variety; there's also an orange one with paler variegated leaves. 1. What is it? 2. Can I eat the berries?
Please don't take my word for it but I just read recently that "although some people believe the fruits to be poisonous, one of us has eaten them since early childhood without ill-effect. There are certainly reports of children being made ill by eating lantana fruits but, probably, unripe fruits were involved in these cases." Wild Food in Australia A.B. & J.W. Cribb. Collins Publishing Australia. 1974.
