You won’t find any exploding fireworks here but you will find a vintage botanical print and firecracker plant drawing. We’ve grown this showy plant in our garden a few times but they’re never truly established themselves. The Russelia Juncea variety, shown below, is one of two varieties from India. It’s a wonderfully light and delicate, yet explosively showy, plant for gardens that don’t get unduly cold during the winter. In colder climates, it can be brought indoors to be overwintered as a houseplant.
Hummingbirds and butterflies love the nectar. It can bloom year-round in the right climate too.
Bright red flowers, resembling firecrackers grow in great profusion on rush-like stems. The flowers grow to half an inch to an inch long. It doesn’t have leaves. It has reed-like stems upon which the flowers grow.
This is yet another of the wonderful, full-color illustrations from the 1878 work Familiar Indian Flowers by Lena Lowis. The firecracker plant drawing is quite large – too big to show here. But, you can simply click on the drawing to freely access the full-sized version.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
