Pretty picture: Lantana camara 'Rose Glow Improved'

I continue to work on the plant-toxicity post, which is now looking like it's going to be a PATSP Special Event, something on the order of Houseplant Toxicity Week. (Hey, if the Discovery Channel can have Shark Week . . . ) Things keep getting added and subtracted and moved around, and at last check, the damn thing was up to 6400 words. Not unprecedented (the two parts of the Saintpaulia ionantha cvv. post, combined, were about that long), but unfortunately I think I was also only about 1/3 finished, too. So the plan at the moment is to find some way to break it up into a weeks' worth of small posts, though I'm unclear on how to do that, so we may get a Plan C at some point. I don't know.

What I do know is that Lantana camara is toxic. But it's also pretty. And butterflies like it. This was a popular variety last year; one of the nursery lot guys planted up a big tub with this, a dark purple Petunia, and a light blue-purple Scaevola, and the three of them together looked really nice.


On the down side, it's kill-you-dead poisonous. And it smells a little weird. Like citrus, but . . . wrong citrus. It's also, according to Toxicity of Houseplants, one of the ten most toxic weeds in the world, which is pretty impressive given the competition.

I like it anyway.