Is Lantana Just a Lantana?

            Lantanas are confusing but easy to grow just about anywhere, whether it’s in the tropics or the desert. They can add a variety of easy to grow colors that attract wildlife including butterflies to home landscapes. In cold climates where the ground freezes they won’t survive more than one growing season. They can be planted as annuals.

Lantanas can handle most soils and rock without many problems.

            In desert areas of the southwest they are cut back close to the ground any time after the first freeze and sucker from these small stems in the spring. A small amount of regular watering and fertilizer each year produces spectacular growth and flowers in just about any type of soil in full sun to partial shade.

Lantana can be cut back really hard in after the tops have died for the winter. 

As long as you leave one node or "joint" peeping from the rocks after pruning for the winter it will grow back.

            The three lantanas popular in the nursery trades of the desert are hybrids of Lantana camara, Lantana depressa and the trailing type, Lantana montevidensis. Collectively we call them all Lantanas. But the nurseries might call them by more common names such as ‘Gold Mound’, Purple or Yellow Trailing lantana or the multicolored ones like ‘Confetti’ Lantana by Monrovia wholesale nursery. The color and growth options are wide ranging.

Some lantana are considered "trailing" types and can grow quite large.

            Lantana is in the Verbena family (this explains their flowering) and considered tropical  (this means they frequently freeze during the winter in Las Vegas). Their flowers are arranged in clusters called “umbels” (similar to carrot flowers) and vary in color from white to yellow to red to blue and all the colors that can be made when you mix these colors together. This means plant breeding results in a proliferation of colors and growth habits for consumers. Furthermore, these individual flowers (called florets) may change in color as they age adding another dimension in variety and sales.

Some lantana flowers change color as the day goes longer.

            Some of these plants are “bushy” and others grow much longer stems and considered “trailing”. Plant leaves are considered poisonous while their flowers and fruit are not and supplement the diets of many types of birds, butterflies, and lizards. Lantana is considered invasive in wet climates and hybridizes with native Lantana found in the east but should not be a problem in desert climates unless there is free-flowing water nearby like the Colorado River or desert springs.

Lantana flowers are in umbels like carrot, onion, parsley or dill flowers.

            Lantana propagation is extremely easy by cuttings or by seed in the late spring or early fall months.