Fuchsia
According to a French missionary in the early 1700s, the Brazilian name for Fuchsias was Molle cantu, or Bush of Beauty. These plants offer graceful habits and pendulous, tubular flowers that are richly colored. The following mite resistant varieties appreciate ample moisture.
Like dainty ballerinas, tubular crimson flowers abundantly dangle from branches cloaked in deep green comely leaves. Esteemed for its verdant bushy form, which grows with amazing vigor and frost tolerance, this interspecific cross between Fuchsia campos-portoi and Fuchsia magellanica was bred by Peter Baye. ‘Campo Thilco’s lovely demeanor can be coupled with Salvia ‘Limelight’, and due to an abundance of rhizomes, its numerous basal shoots should be pruned hard each spring.
Blooms June–October.
Size: 3' 0" – 6' 0" high x 4' 0" wide.
Zone 6/7.
Don Mahoney from Strybing Arboretum kindly gave us this airy, multistemmed Fuchsia whose branches are first upright, and then elegantly arch over. Accentuated by wine-colored petioles and stems, the gleaming and darkly green, veined leaves stage ‘Grand Harfare’s spectacular pendant blooms. The glossy, 3 in., thick-walled tubes are colored in dazzling orange-scarlet shades and embellished with decorative, wide-open bases. This cloud-forest species appreciates constant soil moisture, some humidity and winter protection.
Blooms October–April.
Size: 2' 0" – 4' 0" high x 3' 0" – 4' 0" wide.
Hardy to zone 8.