Anchors Away

I’m going to go out and a limb and guess that few people grow Colletia paradoxa…commonly known as anchor plant. Colletia was named to honor French botanist Philibert Collet (1643-1718). I’m not quite sure what we find so fascinating about this botanical oddity, but something causes us to be drawn to a plant with large spines, no leaves and a terrible form. Perhaps it’s the lightly fragrant winter flowers that are just beginning.

Colletia paradoxa hails from scrubby dry hillsides in Southern Brazil and Uruguary, which have yielded so many amazing, well-performing plants for our Zone 7b climate. Bright sun and a baking dry site are the keys to success. Instead of producing leaves, Colletia is clothed with triangular cladodes, similar to plants in the genus Ruscus. Colletia is not related to Ruscus, however, but instead is a member of the buckthorn family, Rhamnaceae. Because colletia is native to nutritionally poor soils, it evolved to fix nitrogen, which is more common in the legume family.

Colletia paradoxa produces triangular shaped cladodes rather than true leaves.
Colletia paradoxa
Colletia in flower in the winter garden. The white flowers are lightly fragrant.
Colletia paradoxa

2 thoughts on “Anchors Away”

  1. I remember a plant grew at the (then) NC State Arboretum in the early ’90s, but a cold winter eventually took it out. We had colder winters back then, of course.

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