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This picture shows the flower of Vanhouttea calcarata. Compared to that of Vanhouttea lanata, this flower has rounder lobes and the stripes do not extend from the throat into the lobes.
The picture to the left shows the whole plant, in a 12-inch [30-cm] pot. It's an attractive shrubby plant, but rarely flowers under my conditions.
This picture shows a closer view of the foliage and the serration of the leaves.
Because most vanhoutteas do not bloom easily outside Brazil, we have a page showing a comparison of the leaves of four vanhouttea species.
| Plant Description | |
|---|---|
| Attribute | Information |
| Growth | Indeterminate |
| Habit | Shrub |
| Leaves | Green, finely scalloped |
| Dormancy | No tuber |
| Flowering | |
| Attribute | Information |
| Season | Summer |
| Flower | Red, funnelform |
| Horticultural Aspects | |
| Attribute | Information |
| Hardiness | Has survived 28 F (-2 C) in my yard, but defoliates completely in any frost and shows leaf damage from night temperatures in the 30s - it appears to be more vulnerable to cold than the other vanhoutteas in my yard |
| Botany | |
| Attribute | Information |
| Taxonomic group | In a vanhouttea subgroup of the Sinningia clade. |
Antoine Charles Lemaire (1801-1871), in 1845. Lemaire also named the cactus genus Cleistocactus.
Vanhouttea calcarata is the type species of Vanhouttea.
Etymology: probably has something to do with Latin calcar ("spur"). Latin calcareus ("heel") is not a good bet, because any derivatives would have retained the -re- ("calcareatus"). So we assume "spurred", but where is the spur?
[According to John Boggan, this "species was described from an aberrant flower that had a `horn' or spur on the top of the flower".]