Lantana trifolia L.

Horticultural & Botanical History

‘There are several points of agreement between this species and annua (vide supra No. 1022); but our plant differs in the greater lengthening of the spike in having a shrubby, rounded, not annual and square stem, as well as leaves ternate, or sometimes, though rarely, quaternate.  The fruit of Lantana trifolia is more pulpy than in any other of the genus, and being of an agreeable flavour, is, as we are informed by Sir Hans Sloane, greedily fought after by the children in Jamaica.  Reichard imagined the plant described by Medicus as L. trifolia, really belonged to annua, because of the flesh-coloured corollas with yellow throat, not changeable; but as these circumstances are common to both species, we see no reason to doubt that the plant, of which he has given an account, is the same with ours, except that he describes the stems as being square.  His plant the first year grew with two opposite leaves, but in the second year the leaves were all ternate.  Native of the mountains in the West-Indies.  Requires the heat of the stove, but in warm weather should be removed into the greenhouse or be allowed plenty of air, in which situation it will ripen its fruit and continue flowering at the extremity of the spike at the same time.  Introduced by Dr. William Houston before 1733.  Communicated to us by Messrs. Loddiges, of Hackney, in August last.’  [BM t.1449/1812].  BM t.1022/1807 as Lantana annua.

History at Camden Park

Lantana trifolia Cham (1832) = L. undulata Shrank.

Notes