Re: Odontonema strictum or Firespike

This has been grown for many years in coastal New South Wales and shows no sign of becoming a weed (at least in my area, around Sydney, though sometimes it persists on former garden sites, or where garden rubbish was dumped) -- but then we lack its hummingbird pollinators. All the same, I would have thought that trees and shrubs that are weed threats in Miami/Dade County are unlikely to be so in southern California, because of the vastly different climate and soils.
 
What has been known as O. strictum here is a shrub usually no more than about 6 ft high, forming a thicket of stems that may in time expand to 8 ft or more across, though it's not what I would call invasive. The flowers are a brilliant deep scarlet. But there is something of a taxonomic tangle. One Central American flora in the 70s lumped O. strictum under O. callistachyum. But more recent flora writers lump it under O. tubaeforme, while recognising O. callistachyum as a different species. See Missouri Botanical Garden's database at http://mobot.mobot.org/cgi-bin/search_vast for the technical details. So I'm not sure what is the current status of the plant I know, but I suspect that the species in its broad sense is rather variable and the one I am familiar with represents just one clone among many.
 
Tony Rodd
botanical consultant
Sydney, Australia
----- Original Message -----
From: e*@ucla.edu
To: m*@ucdavis.edu
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 2:45 PM
Subject: Odontonema strictum or Firespike


When I read the tag from San Marcos Growers and discovered that the plant
Odontonema strictum (Firespike) grows to 12x10 feet I thought I'd better
ask the experts before I plant it in my garden.  When I looked for
information online I found that Florida asks that it not be planted "within
500 feet of native hardwood hammock in Miami/Dade County."  The plant was
bought for me by a friend.
Thank you.

Ellen Hoffs - Santa Monica, CA

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