Plant of the Week- the Lollypop Plant
I have seen this attractive, unusual looking plant at a variety of tropical locales including Barbados, Costa Rica and Thailand. Native to Peru, the lollypop plant (Pachystachys lutea) is a popular ornamental plant in tropical gardens. Belonging to the Acanthaceae family, the plant has delicate white flowers, which emerge from golden yellow scale-like bracts. The most beautiful specimen I found was in the magnificent rainforest gardens at the Casuarina Beach Club in Barbados. This small tropical evergreen shrub is also known as the golden candle or shrimp plant
October 28th, 2006 at 8:41 am
[…] I came across this vine again while touring Costa Rica in February 2005; walking thru the lovely gardens of the Bougainvillea Hotel located just outside of San Jose, I encountered “the mystery vine†climbing the fence in the back of the gardens growing side by side with the Lollypop plant. Running into the hotel with a couple of the blossoms in hand, I asked the young lady in the gift shop and some of the people who worked at the front desk if they knew the name of this vine. At last, I think it was the young lady in the gift shop who told me, that in Costa Rica, they called this vine Pirotecnia which in English means Fireworks but she didn’t have a clue what the botanical name was. Armed with the local name of this vine, I was one step closer to making a proper identification, but my hunt for the botanical name on the Internet eluded me. […]