Other Names:  Buddah's Lamp, Virgin Tree

Description:

A beautiful, colorful shrub presenting fabulous orange-yellow flowers from spring to fall, over handsome dark green, glossy foliage with ridged surfaces; perfect for massing along borders or as an accent plant in frost-free areas

Ornamental Features

Marmalade Mussaenda features showy clusters of yellow tubular flowers with gold overtones and orange calyces at the ends of the branches from mid spring to mid summer. It has attractive forest green evergreen foliage. The large textured oval leaves are highly ornamental and remain forest green throughout the winter.

Landscape Attributes

Marmalade Mussaenda is a multi-stemmed evergreen tropical plant with an upright spreading habit of growth. Its relatively coarse texture can be used to stand it apart from other landscape plants with finer foliage.

This is a relatively low maintenance tropical plant, and should only be pruned after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season's flowers. It is a good choice for attracting bees and butterflies to your yard. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Marmalade Mussaenda is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Accent
• Mass Planting
• Hedges/Screening
• General Garden Use
• Container Planting

Planting & Growing

This plant is native to the tropics and prefers growing in moist environments with evenly warm conditions all year round. In our climate, it is usually grown as an outdoor annual in the garden or in a container. If you want it to survive the winter, it can be brought in to the house and provided with special care, and then returned to the garden the following season. In its preferred tropical habitat, as a shrub it can grow to be around 10 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 12 feet. However, when grown as an annual or when overwintered indoors, it can be expected to perform quite differently, and its exact height and spread will depend on many factors; you may wish to consult with our experts as to how it might perform in your specific application and growing conditions.

This tropical plant does best in full sun to partial shade. You may want to keep it away from hot, dry locations that receive direct afternoon sun or which get reflected sunlight, such as against the south side of a white wall. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. This plant should not require much in the way of fertilizing once established, although it may appreciate a shot of general-purpose fertilizer from time to time early in the growing season. It is not particular as to soil type or pH. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone in winter to protect it in exposed locations or colder microclimates. This particular variety is an interspecific hybrid.

Marmalade Mussaenda makes a fine choice for the outdoor landscape, but it is also well-suited for use in outdoor pots and containers. Its large size and upright habit of growth lend it for use as a solitary accent, or in a composition surrounded by smaller plants around the base and those that spill over the edges. It is even sizeable enough that it can be grown alone in a suitable container. Note that when grown in a container, it may not perform exactly as indicated on the tag - this is to be expected. Also note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.

-- THIS IS A TROPICAL PLANT AND SHOULD NOT BE EXPECTED TO SURVIVE THE WINTER OUTDOORS IN OUR CLIMATE --