Looking showy summer blooms in your North Texas garden? Try this sprawling plant
One of my early and fond gardening memories was my Texas Star hibiscus. I picked it up on a shopping spree with mom and dad at a big Houston nursery. It graced my backyard gardens until I moved away from College Station and off to finish my degrees at Ohio State eight or 10 years later.
I still love that big, sprawling plant and its showy summer blooms, even though I’ve learned that sometimes it’s better to go with plants that don’t scream out quite so loudly for attention. But it’s difficult for me to leave one sitting in a garden center without reaching to lift it into my cart.
As a large group, these hardy types of hibiscus are mostly native to marshy conditions in the southeastern United States. This one is Hibiscus coccineus “Texas Star,” or “Texas Star” swamp mallow.
As with most forms of hibiscus, they grow best in full or nearly full sun. Because of where they’re native, you could guess that they prefer neutral or acidic soils, and you can certainly assume that they’ll grow best if kept moist at all times. They’ll survive a drought, but they’ll thrive in the rain. They bloom much more heavily when grown with ample moisture.
“Texas Star” is known for its brilliant scarlet-red flowers, each with five distinct petals. Plant developer Heidi Sheesley of Treesearch Farms in Houston introduced “Lone Star,” a pure white form that is otherwise identical to the red type. Online searches will turn up a few consumer sources.
Most of our hardy rose mallows have broad, coarse-textured leaves. ‘Texas Star’ plants, by comparison, have finely cut leaves that have confused many passersby, even law enforcement officials, into mistaking them for marijuana plants — until they throw out those giant red blossoms!
“Texas Star” plants are root-hardy to U.S.D.A. Zones 6 and warmer. That means that they’re reliably dependable across all of Texas. They’ll die to the ground with the first freeze in the fall, but they’ll emerge again in the spring. I don’t like to have dead stems sticking out of my perennial garden over the winter, so I’ll cut my frozen “‘Texas Star” plants back to 12 or 15 inches after their tops die just to mark where the roots are. They’re rather late in coming up out of the soil in the spring, and I don’t want to forget and start digging to plant something new there.
I can’t recall ever having an insect or disease on my “Texas Star” plants in the decades I’ve grown them. Maybe grasshoppers went after them once or twice, but that’s to be expected in a bad grasshopper year. But it’s never been anything extraordinary.
I fertilize them when I feed the rest of my perennials, which many years is when I’m feeding my turfgrass. After all, soil tests from Texas A&M tell us we need to be using the same plant foods for all the plants that we’re growing in our North Texas clay soils (all-nitrogen, 30% of that N in slow-release form).
Since the scarlet “Texas Stars” are of the straight species and not hybrids, they’ll “come true” from seeds. The plants’ flowers last only one day, and they’re followed by fruit that contain many seeds. If you’d like to plant the seeds, allow the fruit to ripen and turn brown. As they open, save the mature seeds and plant them immediately into four-inch pots, two or three seeds per pot. The small seedlings will probably be too small to survive outdoors their first winter, so make provisions to protect them when temperatures are below freezing that first winter.
If you prefer, let them dry completely, then store them cool and dry until next spring when you can plant them in small pots with the intent of setting the transplants into the garden by mid-summer.
You can also propagate ‘Texas Star’ and its white counterpart from cuttings. Tip cuttings from vigorous shoots can be taken in spring and rooted in loose, highly organic potting soil in conditions of warmth and high humidity.
Use “Texas Star” hibiscus alongside garden pools or toward the back of your perennial garden. The plants are large enough that you’ll need a deep bed to allow for their width and height. You’ll also want other perennials and even a few low evergreen shrubs to fill in around them when they’re not in their prime.
