Name:  Ixora coccinea aka jungle geranium or flame of the woods.

Type of Plant: A shrub in tropical areas (zones 10-11) but a summer tropical pot plant in northern regions. Grows best in full sun to part-shade, thriving in slightly acidic, well-drained soils.

Why I Love/Hate this plant:  First of all, I’m a sucker for the color coral. Pale coral or deep coral, I love these hues since they Secondly, I love the fact that this plant blooms all summer and into the fall.

The clusters of flowers are huge and round. Often this plant is sold as a standard, also known as a tree-form. They have been trained to look like small trees, and these make attractive upright elements in pots.

A Word to the Wise: Once you grow this in a container, and experience the lovely show of coral flowers, you’ll be tempted to want to save it indoors over the winter. If you must, go for it…but know that indoors Ixora is prone to scale, mealy bugs and thrips. From my point of view I’d prefer to purchase a new plant every spring at the garden center, and not fight the bugs indoors.

I purchase this tropical plant in May at my garden center, and enjoy these coral flowers into October. The year this photo was taken, I underplanted the pot with Snow Princess Lobularia…it was a great porch plant!

This year I put one Dichondra Silver Falls in the pot under my Ixora, and it grew to be a silver carpet under the braided-stems of my jungle geranium standard.

This photo shows how the Ixora, with two Snow Princess Lobularia in the pot, livens up a grouping of plants by my garden shed.