The Colourful Living
Look what I found by the roadside of Orchard. Yes! There is interesting plant discovery even in the heart of town. Amaranthus tricolor, it is! There is a colony, self-sown and happily sprouting out as weeds, amongst the Spider Lilies. The seeds are suspected to originate from the IMF plant display back in 2006, where we used many different types of annuals.
Above are the 6 individuals, the bigger ones. I discovered this ‘leaftiful’ (leaf-beautiful) annual on the night of October 29th. That night, I thought I saw some Poinsettia (those with variegated pink/cream bracts) from a distance. But it is very unlikely, because that area is unsettled and undergoing underground cabling works. Of course, when I got nearer…all my doubts were gone.
This is a bad shaky photo I captured that very night, doesn’t it resemble Poinsettia if you just give it a quick glance? This leads me to fully appreciate one of the common names given to this plant, Summer Poinsettia. Two other common names are Joseph’s coat and Fountain Plant, which need no explanation either.
So much so for the leaves, here are the very inconspicuous flowers. They are really tiny, only 1mm at most. Well, you have beautiful leaves, so you don’t get beautiful flowers…fair enough, I thought. Another Amaranthus, A. caudatus (love-lies-bleeding) is the one with beautiful chains of flowers but a no-show in the leaf department.
The blue star is where they can be found at, and the colony is between lamp posts no. 35 and 37. If you are driving along Orchard Rd and turning into Scotts Rd, you may be able to catch a brief glimpse of it, as there are 3 big ones right by the kerb.
If you are interested in growing this plant, you can get the seeds conveniently off the shelf from supermarkets like NTUC Fairprice or Cold Storage, etc. Alternatively, you can get it from HortPark’s HortMart, which carries both Amaranthus tricolor and Amaranthus caudatus at 90cents/pkt. It is pretty easy to grow and I read that plants, which are grown in poor soil, tend to produce more vibrant colour.
Keneric Ng
Kevin Tan said,
December 27, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Good morning Keneric, I also read this article courtesy of Shirley from NParks. Just came back from Hortpark and was very disappointed not to find the seeds. In fact almost everyone I spoke to there, staff and employees of Far East have NEVER heard of this tricolour. I even called other branches of Far East to no avail. My wife and I have also tried looking for the seeds at Fairprice and Coldstorage to no avail.
Regards
Kevin
LENC
96798967
Keneric Ng said,
January 6, 2009 @ 10:54 am
Hi Kevin, thanks for your interest in gardening. We are very sorry to hear that, I will feedback this situation to the management of Far East Flora as the seeds are definitely available. Whether it is out of stock, they should still know that they do sell the seeds before and advise appropriately.
As for FairPrice and ColdStorage, please try the bigger outlet as their seeds collection are better.
Thanks.