It’s hard to find information about this rather rare Florida native plant. Its cousin, Lantana involucrata, is fairly well represented on the web, and its other cousin, the non-native and very invasive L. camara, is also well described. But the state-listed endangered Hammock Shrubverbena (L. canescens) is a bit harder to research. Part of the problem is that it’s rare because, well, it’s on the endangered species list.
Here is a picture of it from the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden’s website:
Pretty little flower, isn’t it? According to the Fairchild, part of the reason it’s endangered is the all-too-familiar “habitat loss”:
Lantana canescens is a rare tropical shrub native to the ecotone between pine and hardwood forests in Miami-Dade County– a habitat that has almost disappeared.
They go on to say that it does best, at least reproductively speaking, in full sun instead of the shade that one might expect from its common name.
Here’s a close-up view of the one I’ve planted in the corner of our yard:
I really like the small deeply veined leaves, so symmetrically arranged (“opposite” in botanicalspeak) on opposite sides of the stems. The veins are deep, with one large central vein that the others branch off (“pinnate” veins). The “ovate” (egg-shaped, attached at the broad end) leaves end in an “acute” tip (the angle is acute, and the leaf runs relatively straight to the end, rather than bulging in or curving out). The margins of the leaves are “serrate,” but not ouchily so. [Click the link at the beginning of the paragraph for a decent image of leaf shape terminology; I use a different one, from How To Identify Plants, but the online ones are pretty good.]
I understand that L. canescens is a good nectar source for butterflies, so I’ve planted it in a corner with wild lime (Zanthoxylum fagara) and Coralbean (Erythrina herbacea), and I plan to add Firebush (Hamelia patens) and wild coffee (Psychotria nervosa) as soon as I can acquire some. There are a few images of this plant in flower, and I’m hoping it’ll have the same massive number of flowers as its cousinĀ L. involucrata that I know from my old house. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see!