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Michigan ‘cardinal flower’ won’t be happy migrating to Tampa
Posted Sep 14, 2009 by Loren Omoto
Updated Sep 14, 2009 at 06:34 PM
Ann Brown of Zephyrhills has been searching the internet for this flower, which her friend calls cardinal flower.
“When I search for that name, what I find doesn’t look anything like these,” she writes.
The photo above (and the one below) were taken in Michigan.
As always, Rick Brown of Riverview Flower Farms (check his helpful and often funny garden blog here) had a ready answer.
“This is Crocosmea ‘Lucifer’,” he writes. “Although you can grow these bulbs here, my advice is not to try them as they get spider mites quickly and never flower that good. Like the calla lillies [see earlier post], yes you can grow them here but at what cost in pesticides and time spraying and for a sporadic bloom?”
So Ann, unless you’re looking to order some for friends up North, better to go with some nice red salvia.
(This looks like a gorgeous garden, by the way.)
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Reader Comments
Posted by (RickBrown) on September 15, 2009
Ann, You can search online and find these bulbs and have them sent north. They are not on the Florida recommended bulb list http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG029 and they are highly suceptable to Rust disease http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PP172 and spider mites just like Buddleia in Florida. I have had poor luck with them in the past and they are not worth them amount of chemicals required to get them to bloom here in Florida.
Posted by (Janna) on September 15, 2009
I visit Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan every year and love to see the beautiful summer gardens. They do have a lot of plants and flowers that I wish would grow here, but on the bright side - we’re still growing flowers in the fall and winter. They’re shoveling snow.