Hibiscus: Hibiscus heterophyllus: native Australian hibiscus, 1 by cestrum_SEQ

cestrum_SEQ wrote:
Mike, I've never considered the plant on a chromosonal level! Hibiscus are just a side interest for me, as my passion lies with scented plants. But the beautiful colours of a few have caught my fancy, and this is one of them. I'll give you what little info I've gleaned from my own short experience of growing them, but I think it would be worth your while to get in touch with the breeders on that link I posted as I imagine you could have some very informative correspondence with some of the dedicated breeders there :-)

1. A day flowerer; it usually opens from mid-morning and starts to shrivel by about 3pm.
2. Flowering starts in early spring, continues thru summer and peters out in autumn.
3. There is no actual monsoon here in the non-coastal subtropics: we get wet summers and dry/sunny winters. Most of spring is dry too: winter to mid-spring is actually our fire season. However, because I'm about 40km from the coast, the climate here is drier, with colder nights, than coastal areas. We often get light frosts in winter (zero to about minus 2degC, although in a bad year that might dip to minus 5C). The upside is that the winter days are dry and warm, about 18-22deg. C. Here's the record of temps for the closest weather station in mid-winter (July 2011): http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/201107/html/IDCJDW4002.201... Note that despite the colder-than-average winter nights--or because of them--we had warmer-than-average winter days. (And now we're having a cooler-than-average spring!) No snow here. Ever.
4. These plants are growing in pots up against the western side of the house, to protect them from direct frost. Here they haven't suffered from the winter frosts at all, although the air temps at night would still have been just above freezing. I've been trying to grow a protective canopy since I moved here and have finally started to feel the benefits of it, but I think these plants could probably survive the light frosts that we get. However, remember that (1) the winter days here are still relatively warm or, put another way, the ground never gets a chance to freeze ; and (2) the heat here lasts for a solid 6 months, and the humidity during most of this time is high too.
5. There is generally less variation in the length of days throughout the year here than in my home town of Melbourne, as we're closer to the equator here (152.75E/27.61S). But the sun! The sun is *hot*--you can get sunburnt even in mid-winter.
6. Although I haven't kept any records, the seeds do seem to ripen quickly here (e.g. compared with plants that I do keep a close eye on, such as brugmansias). Sorry, I can't be more precise! Here's a ripe seedpod on my Abbey's Tangerine in November of last year.

This message was edited Oct 9, 2011 11:51 AM