Lantania loddigesii

[NatureGirl]

I was surprised to see these at Lowe's ystdy.  Red Latania $89.98 for a 7 gal. 

[Looking Glass]

With all the rain, I couldn’t take the flooded main road, and cut through the side neighborhoods yesterday.  Spotted two (what appeared to be) pale green adult reds in a couple of yards.  Perfect scale for the houses here and interesting looking.  

[Looking Glass]

On 6/26/2023 at 6:01 AM, NatureGirl said:

I was surprised to see these at Lowe's ystdy.  Red Latania $89.98 for a 7 gal. 

Went to Lowe’s this AM to grab some fuses, and lo and behold….  They had a couple there also.   They were just crammed into an out-of-the-way, forgotten corner with the other step children.  Hopefully people pick these up.  They’d make a great addition to someone’s yard.  Not bad bismarks either)…
 

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Looking Glass

[GMann]

On 3/30/2023 at 6:45 AM, Looking Glass said:

A good match for here.  (Stolen internet pics)…..

Where did you get these 2 pics? Did someone take a trip to Round Island recently?

[Looking Glass]

48 minutes ago, GMann said:

Where did you get these 2 pics? Did someone take a trip to Round Island recently?

Someone did, but not me….   I stole them off of the internet somewhere.  Pretty brutal looking landscape.   Looks like south Florida in May.  

[GMann]

3 minutes ago, Looking Glass said:

Someone did, but not me….   I stole them off of the internet somewhere.  Pretty brutal looking landscape.   Looks like south Florida in May.  

hahaha, South Florida but without the sprinklers

[Looking Glass]

1 minute ago, GMann said:

hahaha, South Florida but without the sprinklers

When your irrigation breaks, and you return from vacation.  

Edited June 29, 2023 by Looking Glass

[D. Morrowii]

I was looking at these two again today and noticed that the “loddegesii” has had more and more of a blue waxy underside on its leaflets. The colors have stayed the same, the lontaroides is more of a cherry red and the loddegesii is darker and more of a purple red. Still kind of feel like one or both of these might be hybridized. 
 

@Looking Glass Did you ever figure out for sure what you had there? 

[Looking Glass]

17 minutes ago, D. Morrowii said:

I was looking at these two again today and noticed that the “loddegesii” has had more and more of a blue waxy underside on its leaflets. The colors have stayed the same, the lontaroides is more of a cherry red and the loddegesii is darker and more of a purple red. Still kind of feel like one or both of these might be hybridized. 

@Looking Glass Did you ever figure out for sure what you had there? 

Of the two Etsy lontaroides I have, one does have some silver underside to its fronds, more so than the other, though they are now in separate areas with different sunlight exposure….

 

The supposed EBay loddigesii has a visible difference, in that the petioles are just outlined in red, and not solid red like the other two have always been.  The others have always had solid red petioles.   At this time that is the only visible difference.   Look at how the petioles are just outlined with red here….

Lantania lontaroides is everywhere for the past year.   The Red Latans are literally at every nursery and big box store around here for the past 2 years.  The Blue Latans are nowhere to be found here, in contrast.  Someone barfed up the mother-load of reds onto the general market here.  

I still have a hard time telling the difference between these at young ages.  They are super difficult for me to discern.  If someone put a gun to my head, I’d say, you’ve got two reds, but I’ve been wrong before.   (See the start of this thread - lol)

[D. Morrowii]

The one you bought on Ebay sure does look different with those pinstripe petioles. It’ll be interesting to see what that turns into.  I’m really liking the waxy look on my (maybe) blue latan I’m hoping that continues to intensify. If it does I’ll probably plant that one out somewhere. They may turn out to be verschagesii, lodderoites, lontarffeltias or maybe even lodderverscharoides 😀 but who cares as long as they look cool. 

[Looking Glass]

Just now, D. Morrowii said:

The one you bought on Ebay sure does look different with those pinstripe petioles. It’ll be interesting to see what that turns into.  I’m really liking the waxy look on my (maybe) blue latan I’m hoping that continues to intensify. If it does I’ll probably plant that one out somewhere. They may turn out to be verschagesii, lodderoites, lontarffeltias or maybe even lodderverscharoides 😀 but who cares as long as they look cool. 

I think like a Bismarks, there is variability on how much green vs blue you see from specimen to specimen of the same species, which makes things even more confusing with these.   If I drive around, I’ll run into big adults in the ground in neighborhoods around here, mostly loddigesii planted long ago in various yards.   They all look great though.  I’m going to plant a red out one of these days soon.   

I’ll just keep these growing and see what happens.  They are happy and easy here in part shade to full sun.   

Besides, if you can’t tell, what difference does it make….

 

[bubba]

Latania is an old school palm that is underused:

[bubba]

[bubba]

[bubba]