Hardiness zones:
Sunset 8-10 and 12-13 (often cold damage), 14-24
USDA 9 (other zones as summer annual) - 11
Landscape Use: Versatile and dependable color makes for a variety of landscape uses such as summer annual or perennial accent, ground cover, informal hedge, raised planters, hanging baskets and containers. This is one of the quintessential 'oasis' landscape design shrubs for the Phoenix area.
Form & Character: Evergreen shrub, free flowering, cheerful, bright, semi tropical
Growth Habit: Depending on cultivar from upright shrub to prostrate ground cover
Foliage/texture: Scabrous, serrate leaves, on brittle-wooded stem, medium texture
Flowers & fruits: Has terminal cluster of flowers, many colors, followed by black berries. All prostrate lantanas with purple flowers are L. montevidensis.
Seasonal color: Lantana produces flowers throughout the entire year.
Temperature: Heat loving, but cold sensitive. Most lantana will suffer frost and freeze injury during most Phoenix winters in exposed locations. Otherwise Lantana hybrids are sparsely foliated and dormant during winter. Lantana montevidensis is the most cold tolerant.
Light: Full sun to partial shade
Soil: Tolerant
Watering: Regular applications of water is best.
Pruning: Prune lightly as needed, or head back hard to near ground level in early spring after the danger of frost has past. In Phoenix, if lantana is frost or freeze damaged during winter, then don't immediately remove the unsightly, dead shoots (wait until early spring) as these damaged shoots will protect underneath living shoots from further frost injury.
Propagation: Lantana is very easy to propagate by vegetative softwood cuttings. Seed propagation is reserved mostly for cross breeding of species.
Disease and pests: In the late summer and early fall there are white flies!!!! Oh yeah, can you say ice cream??
Additional comments: For ground covers most horticulturist and landscape designers will select L. montevidensis (purple flowers most of the year) because of it's trailing, prostrate habit. Note though that there are now many new hybrid cultivars with other flower colors such as yellow and orange that have prostrate trailing habits.
Some common lantana hybrids cultuvars include:
Lantana sap is poisonous and can irritate human skin. Green, unripe fruits can if ingested cause dizziness, weakness, vomiting, cardiac arrhythmia, and even death.
Invasive alert: Lantana has naturalized in the southeastern US into Florida and Hawaii where it is considered a pest plant.
