My contribution to the May 09 issue of the bimonthly Serangoon newsletter focussed on four selected beautiful flowering plants from the Acanthaceae family. The Acanthaceae family consists of numerous ornamental shrubs that feature rather long-lasting, showy and colourful inflorescences. The durability of inflorescences is due to the bracts and not the often insignificant, tubular flowers that the plants produce. Some members of this family of plants are also medicinal.
The four plants that were featured include the shrimp plant (Justicia brandegeana), lobster claw (Ruellia colorata), Golden Plume (Schaueria flavicoma) and lollipop plant (Pachystachys lutea). They can all be found growing in various parts of HortPark (NParks’ Gardening Hub for Singapore) such as the Home Garden and Golden Garden.
These four flowering shrubs should be grown in an area with direct sunshine for at least half a day that has soil that is fertile and well-draining. They will not thrive in waterlogged areas. Do also prune periodically when plants start to look straggly as this will help to ensure a compact and attractive growth form and rejuvenate them. Fertilise shortly after a hard prune to give plants a good kickstart again.
From what I have noticed, they fare better outdoors probably due to longer availability of direct sunshine. When grown in on a sunny balcony, plants can receive direct sunshine ranging from 4 to 6 hours daily. That is likely to be insufficient as apartment gardeners I have come across had lamented that their plants tend to grow rather straggly and etiolated and flower production had been poor.
Readers are to note there are some errors in the article due to my late returns to my Editor. The corrected article is shown above and its corresponding pdf file can be downloaded via the following link:
http://www.greenculturesg.com/articles/may09/acanthaceae_SGNL.pdf
