The plant pictured here is a variety of Lantana camara, family Verbenaceae. It is a native of the Gulf Coast portion of United States from Georgia to Texas. It likes well drained soil and resists drought and salt spray well. It can grow in partial shade but prefers sunny locations. The many flowered head of this variety produces pink blooms with orange centers and yellow blooms with deeper yellow centers.

This plant flowers from early spring until frost, many insects including bees feed upon its nectar. Its abundant black fruit are eaten by birds for the seeds they contain; however, caution must be taken to prevent children from eating these berries because they are poisonous. Also, if fowl raised for human consumption consume enough berries their flesh can become toxic to people.

Lantana grow so well that they can outcompete other plants and prevent the offspring of canopy trees from being able to establish. Thus, overtime lantana can change the ecosystem it has invaded and reduce its biodiversity.

The plants here exist in dry west Texas and are killed back by frost each year. We remove dead vines in the early winter and the roots survive the cold and reestablish in the spring. Two weeks of snow on the ground last winter didn’t harm our plantings.

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The Desert Willow, Chilopsis linearis, is a flowering tree that is found in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and into Northern Mexico. It grows naturally along arid washes and arroyos, and is sold commercially in West Texas and elsewhere as an ornamental landscape plant.
The photo above shows the beautiful purple and white bell-shaped flower produced by these trees. As you can see from the Common Roadside Skipper, these plants provide nectar feeders access to needed food. Desert Willow flowers during May and June but will bloom in other months after a good rain. This picture was taken in late July.

The fruit is a capsule reminiscent of a been pod but these trees are not in Leguminosae also known as Fabaceae (peas and beans), but rather, they are in the family Bignoniaceae which includes the catalpa trees, trumpet-creepers, and cross vines.

The beautiful green narrow willow-like leaves are what give this plant its name.

On young trees, the bark is smooth like young willows and becomes thicker and more fissured with age.

Birds eat the seeds of these plants and bees make good honey from their nectar.

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