I need help. Those are three powerful words, aren’t they? Everyone wants to be helpful, to feel needed, to feel like they can contribute.
You can help me out, and I’ll give you a prize. Just name these plants.
Here is Plant #1. The picture was sent to me from someone who is wintering in Florida, so I assume this is a plant that flowers in the winter there. If you name this one, your prize will be my gratitude. It’s not much but, it is easy to send over the Internet.
Below is Mystery Plant #2, sent by the same person, so it is also flowering in the winter in Florida. This one is on the tip of my brain, but I’m too tired to think. The prize for this one is also my gratitude.
But if you correctly identify both plants, I’ll wrote a blog post about what a smart gardener you are, with a link and everything.
And below is a bonus plant to identify. This is mystery plant #3. It is flowering in my sunroom right now, and believe it or not, I previously posted a picture of the plant in December. If you are the first to correctly identify this one, then I’ll make sure you are the first to “speak” (be listed) when I post the Garden Bloggers’ Book Club post next week. (I actually do know what this one is.)
Well, I only know the second two, so I’ll keep quiet and see if someone can get all of them 😉
The first one looks a bit like firebush (Hamelia patens), though I’m not sure. The second looks like plumbago (Plumbago auriculata). The third, some sort of salvia?
Pam/digging, I await confirmation on your 1st two answers, though I think you are correct on the second one. Sorry, answer number 3 is incorrect.
GGG, feel free to confirm number 2 if that was what you were thinking.
The first one looks like an ixora of some kind – I’ve got something very similar growing in my garden (in Australia). No idea what any of the others are!
Carol,
Number 3 looks like a hosta blooming (For eveyone else out there in blog land I’m only a pretend gardening, so dont’ laugh if I am totally, completely off base – LOL!)
Plant number 3 is coleus. Have no idea about the other two, except if we grew them up north they’d be houseplants. Although number two looks like a low growing phlox to me.
I have no clue, but they are pretty. It would need to be a real common flower for me to recognize it.
#1 is pentas or star flower
#2 is blue plumbago
Annuals are my thing, I don’t know the tropical #3…!
Sissy got it, didn’t she? Penta and plumbago. Both are tender perennials quite common down here in Austin. You see them in a lot of commercial plantings.
Ditto, Pentas and Plumbago. The plumbago can get to be quite large, and the soft lavender-blue color is lovely, but to get it to bloom in Connecticut, you basically had to buy a full-size plant from a greenhouse. I’m guessing a ginger for the third plant, although considering the couple of genera that “ginger” covers, I’m afraid I’m not being very specific.
Number 2 definitely plumbago.It’s one of the plants that flowers best on balconies here in Milan and I posted a few photos back in the summer and autumn. Comes in white as well as the blue in your photo. Some people here let it grow up a trellis and it does get very tall – I prune mine every spring to keep it pot size. It loves the warmth but isn’t supposed to be very keen on the cold – I cover mine in the winter. However,lots of my neighbours don’t and it seems to survive regardless of temperatures below freezing, so I think it may be hardier than the books suggest.
Guessing (and not looking at comments first)
A Penta.
A Phlox.
(cultivars unknown)
Your third is tougher, because you don’t really show a good leaf. I’m gonna say that stem looks square and place it in the mint family, but that could be anything. Probably it’s a salvia. Here’s my smart assed answer: It’s a mint salvia – Salvia divinorum. Am I right?
*grins*
now to read the rest of the comments….
Hi Carol,
Sorry I missed being able to identify the top two plants. As a Florida gardener I recognized two of my favorite plants.
I stumbled across your blog and have enjoyed reading it very much. So much so, that I would like to feature it as “Blog of the Month” in my February newsletter – “The Inside Dirt at iloveplants.com.” Please let me know if you would prefer that I did not feature it. I know that my readers will enjoy it very much. Thank you. Susan Myers
1. Is a Penta.