Fuchsia Triphylla

When we first moved here we noticed that our neighbor, Victor,  had a type of fuchsia growing in his yard that always seemed to have hummingbirds hovering around it. We looked for it in local nurseries, without any luck. So, my wife Maria pulled some rhizomes off one of Victor's plants, with his permission, of course. It has been doing very well, and is visited regularly by hummers. The more I get to know this plant, the more I like it. It is very healthy and has bloomed continuously for a solid year now. It seems to have no pests and requires almost no upkeep, other than weeding around it every couple of months, and maybe watering it every two weeks or so in the dry season. Besides the beautiful crimson flowers, the velvety foliage is attractive, and the plant has required no pruning or staking.

Fuchsia triphylla

But what got me absolutely raving about this seemingly perfect plant was an incident that happened this morning. The fuchsia is located near our backdoor, and happens to be the first plant our golden retriever encounters when he goes outside. As a result, it gets peed on several times a day. Maria and I agreed that I had better put a fence around the fuchsia before it got burned by the nitrogen from the dog urine. I decided to do a good weeding before I put up the fence. The soil, I discovered, was almost solid clay, and the plant was growing on top of a 40-pound chunk of cement. Wow -- what a plant!!! I removed the cement and some of the clay and gave it some nice potting soil.

I didn't know what kind of fuchsia it was, so spent quite a bit of time searching the fuchsia images in Google. At first I thought it might be a Fuchsia boliviana, but eventually found some photographs that matched what we had -- Fuchsia triphylla. It is native to the islands of the Caribbean and is now grown throughout the neotropics. It likes full sun, but also does well in partial shade, and it likes high temperatures of around 80 and lows around 60, which matches the average temperatures we have here to within a few degrees. It only grows about 2-3 feet tall, whereas the Bolivian version can grow to 5-6 feet. We have a seedling of a Fuchsia boliviana that we got from the Trogon Lodge in San Gerardo de Dota, again, with permission (see photo below).

Fuchsia boliviana seedling

 The flowers of the boliviana are at least twice as long as the triphylla. One important difference, we noticed the hummers were piercing the sides of the boliviana flowers, near the base, meaning they were probably NOT pollinating the flowers, whereas the hummers visiting the triphylla flowers were sticking their beaks up through the center of the corolla, meaning they were probably pollinating the flowers.

Fuchsia triphylla flowers

Oops! I just noticed in the close-up photo above of our triphylla blossoms that there is a telltale scar at the base of one of the flowers . . . maybe a hummer hole. I'll have to pay closer attention.

Happy gardening!