Hibiscus Terminology
Tufts? Haloes? Bleeds? What did you say???
We use a lot of strange terms at times to describe hibiscus flowers and bushes, and we are often asked to clarify what we mean. Most of the terms we use are the same ones that flower shows use, and a few are unique to us at HVH. But we thought it might be helpful to create a little lexicon of hibiscus terminology. If we are missing any terms that have puzzled you, feel free to reply to this newsletter to ask us about them!
Singles
A single flower has five petals that are evenly laid out around the center of the flower. The stamenal column sticks out from the center of the flower prominently, with the brightly colored pollen sacs and stamenal pads. This is the typical look we are used to seeing with most hibiscus flowers.
Doubles
A double flower has extra petals giving it a ruffly look, like a rose.
- A full, ruffly double has many extra sets of petals, sometimes in little swirls around the center of the flower. The petals are packed so tightly, it's hard to see individual petals.
- A loose double has only 2-3 extra sets of petals. You can clearly see individual petals.
- A cup-and-saucer double has large petals for the bottom set, then smaller extra petals in the center, creating a shape that looks like a cup sitting on top of a saucer.
Overlap
Overlap refers to how much of one petal overlaps the petal next to it. In classic hibiscus shows, deeper overlap is considered more desirable. If you like a ruffly look, sometimes less overlap creates a rufflier looking flower. In a deeply overlapped flower, it is often difficult to see where each petal begins and ends.
Windmill
A windmill shape means the petals don't overlap. The flower looks like a windmill with space between the petals.
Reflex
Reflex means the petals curl backwards or downwards away from the front of the flower. It is typical for many hibiscus flowers to reflex when they first open, then flatten out later in the day. It's as if the flower is doing a huge stretch backwards when it opens, then it settles into its normal flat shape.
Form
Form is the overall shape of the hibiscus flower. Are all five petals about the same size and shape? Are they spread evenly around the flower? Does the flower look symmetrical from different angles around the flower? Are all the petals flat? Do they overlap each other deeply? If the answer to all these questions is "yes," then we say the flower has "good form." Most hibiscus plants produce flowers with beautiful form sometimes, and less-than-perfect form at other times. A few varieties tend to produce flowers with great form most of the time. So if you see a flower that we describe as having "consistently beautiful form," this is one of those special varieties.
Texture or Substance
Texture or Subtance refers to the weight, thickness, and strength of each petal. A heavier, thicker, stronger petal typically lasts for several days. This is what we call heavy texture. Thinner, lighter, softer petals typically fold up after only a day or two. So a heavier texture is something we try to hybridize for, in order to create longer-lasting flowers.
Ruffles
We say a hibiscus is ruffled when the outside edge of the flower is ruffly, frilly, or zig-zagged.
Tufts
We say a hibiscus is tufted when the inside edges of the petals are frilly and stand up, like shoulders which is another term that is sometimes used for tufting. Many hibiscus have both ruffles and tufts.
Petaloids
Petaloids are little ruffly extra petals that develop at the end of the stamenal column, popping out just beneath the pollen sacs. Some hibiscus varieties tend to have them all the time, like 'Daffodil' at right. Others develop petaloids only in summer heat. Almost any hibiscus can develop them in high heat.
Eye
The eye of a hibiscus flower is the color at the very center of the flower. Eyes vary from tiny circles of color to large star-shapes that can cover a large part of the flower.
Halo
A halo is a kind of glowing color around the eye. A very common halo is a bright red halo around a very dark red eye. Not all hibiscus have haloes. Many haloes have veins or rays emanating out of them.
Rays or Veins
We talk about rays or veins when the veins of the hibiscus are a different color that stands out from the flower, giving the effect of wheel spokes or peppermint candies.
Bleed
A bleed is a kind of glowing color around the eye. Bleeds are most commonly pink, and they tend to have more color in cool weather and less color in heat. The bleed seems to come out of the eye and is usually a light version of the eye color, but it is undefined and highly variable, unlike a halo. At times a bleed can spread across the entire flower. Other times it disappears completely.
Spots, Splashes, Sparkles
Spots, splashes and sparkles are different types of markings in contrasting colors that develop in hot weather. Generally, we say spots for big blotches of color, splashes for medium-sized markings, and sparkles for small markings.
Surviving Summer Heat
August is here, and with it summer heat, heat, heat. Like humans, hibiscus aren't at their best at the peak of summer heat in places where temperatures stay at or above 100°F (37C). They need a little help to survive the heat and keep blooming and growing. We can't change August temperatures, but we make some small changes that can make a big difference for our hibiscus.
Find or Create Some Shade:
If your August temperatures are mostly in the 90's F (low-mid 30's C), you don't need to worry about giving them extra shade. Hibiscus can get used to temperatures in the 90s and will be fine as long as you provide plenty of water and good nutrition. Your flowers may be a little smaller during the hottest months, but otherwise, your hibiscus plants will be fine. But if your temperatures are consistently around 100°F (37C), a little bit of shade will make a big difference in both the health of the plants and the quality and quantity of the blooms.
If your hibiscus are in pots, shift them to the north or east side of your house, a tree, a wall, larger shrubs, anything that will give them partial relief from all-day, relentless sun. Porches or covered patios are ideal for hibiscus in very hot climates, but even just a couple of hours relief from blistering sun is better than no relief. Every little bit of shade gives the hibiscus plant a chance to cool down and recover from the kind of stress the burning sun induces.
If your plants are in the ground, you'll need to bring the shade to them. It doesn't take much to help. A standing umbrella, a piece of shade cloth or parachute cloth strung up between some trees, anything at all that breaks up the sun will provide some help for your hibiscus. Make it artistic if you like! String up several pieces of colorful cloth criss-cross across your hibiscus garden. Shade doesn't have to look like institutional shade cloth. It can be anything that crosses between your hibiscus and the hottest sun and blocks out even a little bit of the sun. Of course, you can use greenhouse-grade shade cloth if you like. Whatever suits your fancy is fine, and any shade is better than no shade in places where heat is extreme.
Use Water to Cool Your Plants
A daily shower during the hot part of the day is one of the best ways to quickly cool your hibiscus plants. If you do a thorough showering job, spraying up under all the branches, leaves, stems and all around the trunks, you will also prevent most pests from ever getting started on your hibiscus. Hibiscus thrive in places like Hawaii where it rains every day, so providing a daily rain shower is optimum care. In extreme summer heat, though, this kind of shower is NOT the same as watering your plants! The water from a shower will evaporate very quickly, cooling the plants in the process. But it won't get down deep into the ground and water the roots! A daily shower will never take the place of watering your plants. This needs to be in addition to deep watering of your plants. Think of a shower for your plants like a shower for humans. It is necessary and healthy, but it does not replace all the water that we need to drink during hot summer days. A shower is no more a drink for a hibiscus than it is for humans.
Water Your Hibiscus Well and Often
In places where heat is extreme, hibiscus need to be watered twice per day - once in the morning and once in the afternoon or evening. If you water only once in the morning on very hot days the hibiscus can reach the pre-wilt stage by afternoon. You can't see any wilt yet, but the hibiscus are stressed and can be set back if this happens often. One of the first consequences of this type of stress is fewer buds and flowers. If you want to keep your hibiscus healthy and blooming, it really is important to water twice a day in extreme heat.
A drip system is the easiest way to give hibiscus the water they need. You adust your timers for each season - once a day watering in spring and fall, twice a day in summer, and once or twice a week in the winter, depending on how much rain you get. In areas of extreme heat, unless you want to spend your summer months holding a garden hose, a drip system is really almost a necessity. Drip systems are not very hard to build. We have instructions on our website that anyone can follow: How to Build a Drip Watering System. There are many other websites that provide information on building them too, plus any landscape company can build one for you for much less than the cost of traditional sprinkler systems.
Watering takes time. If you do it by hand you need to take the time to make sure that the water soaks all the way through the rootball. If you're watering hibiscus in pots, the easiest way to water thoroughly is to fill each pot to the rim with water, then go back a second time and fill each pot to the brim one more time. If your potting soil comes up all the way to the top of the pot, you may need to fill each pot a third time. It is also important to use a potting mix that doesn't have too much peat moss in it. Peat tends to harden so badly that water won't soak into it. If the mix is mostly peat, it won't matter how much you water. The peat over time will stop absorbing water. A little bit of peat mixed in with other ingredients is fine. But very inexpensive potting mixes tend to be mostly peat, and you will quickly find hard dry clumps of peat in your pots, even after a thorough watering.
To check your pots, tip one or two root balls out of their pots to see if your technique is actually watering the entire rootball. People are often shocked to find that the water only penetrated a few inches down into the rootball. You can see the dark area that is wet and the lower dry area of the rootball that is still dry. If you see this, it means you need to spend more time watering each pot. If more watering still doesn't soak the entire rootball, you will need to find a better potting mix.
Hibiscus planted in the ground do best with deep watering. If you water with a hose plan on spending plenty of time watering so that a deep soaking is achieved. Again, the only way to know for sure is to get the shovel or trowel out and dig down into the earth after watering. You don't need to do this often once you learn how deep the water is penetrating. But don't be shocked if you discover that what seemed like a deep watering to you has only penetrated the top 4 inches of soil. In hot areas, watering is quite a skill. Be patient and keep working at it. You will learn over time exactly how much water it takes to give your hibiscus the water they need.
Pot Properly to Protect from Heat
Pots are important. They should be big enough to provide plenty of water but not so big that they never dry out. It is often quite amazing to see how hibiscus take off when given more room for the roots to grow. Eventually every hibiscus in a pot will want to be moved to a larger pot. If that does not happen they start to languish and eventually decline.
As an alternative to moving a hibiscus to a larger pot, you can do root pruning on them. Though this sounds drastic, in reality it works out quite well usually. During spring or early summer (Never in mid-summer heat!) prune the roots by removing 1/3 of the rootball from the bottom and sides. Then, using good quality potting mix, repot the hibiscus in the same pot or same size pot that it was removed from. This allows fresh root growth without a larger pot. This process will refresh the entire plant, and good top growth will follow new root growth.
Exposing plant pots to direct sunlight can cause overheating of the root ball. One technique for preventing this is to double-pot your hibiscus: Place the water-retaining plastic pot inside a larger ceramic pot that will provide cool shade for the roots. In addition to cooling the roots, ceramic pots usually look prettier, plus they are heavier and help keep large plants weighted down, and standing up. We've all had the experience of hibiscus plants tipping over easily in their lightweight plastic pots. Heavier ceramic "sleeve" pots help provide the anchoring and cooling that the earth provides for hibiscus that are planted in the ground.
We grow hibiscus in temperatures up to 110°F (43°C) using these techniques, so we know they work! It takes some patience and diligence to get everything right, but in the end, you should have happy, healthy, blooming hibiscus all through the summer months. Happy blooming!
Seedling of the Month...
Another New Giant!
A new giant hibiscus flower, 8-10" (20-25 cm) across
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Giants, giants! We keep growing more of them! This one accomplishes that goal, but it accomplishes another of our hybridizing goals. It looks just like another hibiscus that everyone loves but that has a disappointing flaw for us ~ the beautiful, near perfect 'Cindy's Heart' that is, sadly, very hard to propogate. One of our main hybridizing goals always is to produce new versions of older, popular flowers, but to hybridize out the flaws in the older ones. If we can also make the flower bigger, while retaining all of its beautiful pigments and form features, then that's even better, of course.
So how does this work? First, we analyze the flaw and try to find its cause. 'Cindy's Heart' was the result of a self-cross of 'High Voltage.' This means that 'High Voltage' was both mother and father. Self-crossing tends to produce at least some flaws in a flower, and the most common one is sterility and difficulty propagating, which is exactly the flaw that 'Cindy's Heart' has. So bringing in totally new genes is important in order to get rid of this flaw. Hybridizing out flaws often means looking back a few generations, which begins to feel quite complex. So we will try to keep it simple.
Parents |
Giant Mother 'Belle du Jour'
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Giant Father 'Spring Fever'
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Our new seedling is the offspring of 'Belle du Jour' and 'Spring Fever.' 'Spring Fever' is always a giant, and 'Belle du Jour' is sometimes a giant, so both gave genes for the giant size of our new seedling. Both parents are mostly pink, as is our new seedling. Both have great bushes, and our new seedling already has a great bush too. So our parents give us some information about our new seedling, but not as much information as we want. For this we need to dig a little deeper.
Grandparents |
Maternal Grandmother
'Tammy Faye'
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Maternal Grandfather
'High Voltage'
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Paternal Grandmother
'Bright Hope'
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Paternal Grandfather
'Radiant'
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Maternal Grandparents were solid pink 'Tammy Faye' and white 'High Voltage.' These pure white and pure pink genes set our new seedling up to have clean doses of both these colors, which it clearly demonstrates. 'High Voltage' was also both parents for 'Cindy's Heart' so having it in this mix, set the stage for a possible look-alike.
Maternal Great-Grandparents were two unknowns, plus two very old whites 'Spring Break,' and 'Victoria.' Very little is known about these old hibiscus varieties, so they aren't as helpful as we would like. Let's look at the father's side.
Paternal Grandparents were the pink and yellow 'Bright Hope' and bright orange 'Radiant.'
Paternal Great-Grandparents were 'Rainbow Christie,' 'Simple Pleasures,' 'Cosmic Gold,' and 'Saffron.'
Every one of these hibiscus on the paternal side are great bloomers with large flowers and durable colors, even in high heat. All are on our Tried and True hibiscus list, and have stayed there for many years, providing a very strong genetic mix for excellent bushes, prolific blooming, and large flowers which this seedling already clearly shows. As strong as this genetic lineage is, there's still one more thing that is very important in the paternal mix. . .
Paternal Great-Grandparents |
Paternal
Great-Grandmother
'Rainbow Christie'
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Paternal
Great-Grandfather
'Simple Pleasures'
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Paternal
Great-Grandmother
'Cosmic Gold'
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Paternal
Great-Grandfather
'Saffron'
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Pigments Matter!
Pigments are the essence of flowers, so we always need to look at them.
The maternal genes contributed pure pink and pure white genes, which are evident in our seedling. But these pink pigments are fragile anthocyanin pinks that break down and fade in heat. Two paternal great-grandparents, 'Cosmic Gold' and 'Radiant,' contribute very strong doses of tough yellow, orange, and tomato-red carotenoids that produce their strongest colors in high heat. So, by combining the cold-loving, fragile anthocyanin pink pigments with the heat-loving, tough tomato-red carotenoid pigments, we can produce a flower with stronger pink color that develops and holds its color in all weather conditions, including high heat. Or at least this is our goal! 'Cindy's Heart' apparently had this mix, although the genetic ancestors are mostly lost and impossible to trace. But now our new seedling also seems to have this kind of strong, mixed pink pigmentation.
Hibiscus are one of the wonders of the flower world for exactly this reason. Most other types of flowers use only one pigment type. It is rare to have both anthocyanins and carotenoids in the same flower. But it is very common in hibiscus, which is a huge part of what makes hibiscus so wonderfully variable in colors and markings. It makes hybridizing a very complex and confusing science with a huge array of variables. But sometimes we do manage to get it right! In the end, only time and growing experience will tell how good each new seedling will be. For now, this little seedling is looking very promising!
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