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This vanhouttea has never bloomed for me yet. I anxiously await its flowers. There is always the possibility that it will displace Vanhouttea brueggeri as my favorite vanhouttea. You never know until you actually see the flowers.
If you like vanhoutteas and live in a climate which is not quite as warm as subtropical, it is important to keep one or two representatives (a cutting or a seedling) of each species in a sheltered location during the winter. As of this writing (June 2007), I have V. brueggeri, V. lanata, and V. pendula only because there were such cuttings and seedlings in sheltered locations.
It's not easy to grow vanhoutteas indoors.
V. hilariana is one of the "free calyx lobe" vanhoutteas, as opposed to the species like V. lanata, in which the calyx completely encloses the flowerbud (to see what is meant, check out the picture on the V. lanata page).
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 |
| Dormancy | No tuber |
| Flowering | |
| Attribute | Information |
| Season | ? |
| Inflorescence | Axillary cyme, usually one flower, on upper axils |
| Flower | Red, tubular, 4-5 cm long, on erect pedicel. |
| Horticultural Aspects | |
| Attribute | Information |
| Hardiness | I have no data yet |
| Botany | |
| Attribute | Information |
| Taxonomic group | The free-calyx-lobe vanhouttea clade. |
Mauro Peixoto's web site has a page about Vanhouttea hilariana.
The new species V. hilariana was described in Alain Chautems's paper "New Gesneriaceae from Minas Gerais" (2002). It grows in Minas Gerais state of Brazil, near the border with Rio de Janeiro state, at an altitude of 1200-1600 m (up to about 5000 feet).
The plant is named after Auguste François César Prouvençal de Saint-Hilaire (1779-1845). They don't make names like that any more. Saint-Hilaire made the first collection of this species, in 1822.
(He wasn't the only important Saint-Hilaire in biology alive in 1822. Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), usually called Geoffroy, was a famous zoologist who proposed that all animals were related, a principle he called "unity of plan". In this he was closer to the mark than his opponent Cuvier.)