Description
Diascia ‘Coral Spires’
A different colour form of this lovely hardy Diascia. It differs from the species in that the flower spikes are a lot less branched with the flowers held in quite tight short spikes. The colour is a soft orange-scarlet. A little shorter than the pink species also.
Diascia is from the Greek ‘di’ = two and ‘askos’ = sac ie Twinspur.
The main reason that Diascia make such superb floriferous plants with an incredibly long flowering period (May-Oct) is that in Britain they have no suitable pollinators and hence never set seed. In their native South Africa Diascias have a much shorter season as they are pollinated by bees of the genus Rediviva and switch their energies into producing sedds for future generations.These bees have much longer forelegs than any British species of bee and these enable them to reach into the long spurred flowers to collect a special oil secreted by the flowers’ glands. The hairs on the bee’s legs soak up the oil like a sponge while the anthers dust the body of the bee with pollen as the sticky atigma picks up ‘foreign’ pollen and achieves pollination. Once this happens the flower fades. As this process is not accomplished in Britain each flower lasts longer and the plant goes on and on trying to produce flowers in the hope of potential pollination.
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