Wednesday, December 16, 2009

A Fuchsia basket

Fuchsia in a hanging basket

Today I was looking around for a gift to take the host of a party I am going to on the weekend and came across this beautiful Fuchsia in a hanging basket.
Fuchsias are at their peak of flowering at the moment and to get a nice compact looking plant like this one, you need to start off by pruning back the bare stems in late winter ( most hybrids are deciduous) and then pinch out all the growing tips in early Spring to make it nice and bushy. A few doses of liquid fertilizer suitable for flowering plants helps produce lots of buds as well. They are fairly trouble free to grow and can even be brought indoors for a short period if grown in a basket such as this. These hybrid Fuchsias, which come in a huge range of colour combinations, were bred from species found in their native habitat of South America. They enjoy a position in shade with good soil moisture and high humidity. However, in case you think they are delicate and difficult to grow they will flower quite well in a full sun in parched dry soil as shown in the photo below.

A spot in full sun with no water has not stopped this Fuchsia from flowering.

Fuchsia named in honour of German Botanist Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1556)
Portrait dated 1541 from Wurttenbergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart.


A photo from Wikipedia of a variety called 'Moonglow' growing in California
Have not seen this here but it looks exceptional

2 comments:

  1. Ian, I am sure that the host would be thrilled to get a beautiful gift like this. It's always nice to receive a gift that lives on...

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