Justicia aurea (umbrosa) - Yellow Jacobinia

Very attractive

Thank you.

What a beauty and full of flowers.

Yes, by the end of next week it should be done flowering. It doesn't flower very long.

Its worth seeing even if it was nt for long .

Yes, it flowers for three weeks or one month only.

Not to bad flowering time some plant here dont last that long.

We have trees and plants which flower for a long time here. Right now the Hong Kong Orchids trees are starting to bloom. I love those trees! They have huge, sweetly fragrant flowers. It flowers from Sept to March or April.

Yes having so much hest and sun I suppose your plants and trees have a long period time if flowering.

I have never heard of Hong Kong Orchid trees but the sound great.

Hong Kong Orchid trees line the streets and are widely used in the landscape here. It has the largest and most sweetly fragrant flowers of any Bauhinia species.

Just looked to see what they look like they are beautiful must be great having them lined of the streets and the fravrance from them.

I have several pics of Hong Kong Orchid trees posted on GoY.

Yes, it's a beautiful sight when they're in peak bloom which is typically in December and January.

I bet they are nice would be great in winter months some thing like that here but no chance with our cold weather.

It is a tropical tree.

Defiently would nt survive here then.

Definitely not outside in winter. It does grow as far north as parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, though.

Do they have to bring it inside up there as they can have their weather go down to zero.

No, it's grown outdoors in the ground in many area around the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's difficult to explain the micro-climates of the SF Bay Area. Most of the cities around SF Bay are frost-free. When it does get down to freezing it's for a very short period of time (duration of 30 minutes to about an hour only) this doesn't cause much damage to most tropicals. The cold only causes damage when it's freezing for many hours or several days continuously or when it goes several degrees below freezing, which just doesn't happen very often around the SF Bay Area.

The December 1990 freeze was the extreme exception. The temps in Hayward (where I used to live and where Stan lives) got down to 22ºF (-5.5ºC) one morning and a solid week of freezes nights. On one day it barely got above freezing for the high (extremely, extremely rare!). This was the worst freeze ever recorded in the SF Bay Area and extremely rare!

I hope this explains it a little.

Yes it does explain a lot curious the below tempreture does last long an hour at most around San Fransico bay also Jaywood sad the freeze lasted so long I bet a lot of great plants suffered.

Yes, the cities around SF Bay have the influence of the Pacific Ocean and the bay. This keeps temps above freezing. There's several areas close to the ocean that never get frost. San Francisco is one of those cities which very, very rarely receives a frost. In the 1990 freeze San Francisco got down to freezing 3 mornings in a row. This was the first time that had ever happened in the almost 160 years of weather records. The official coldest temp ever recorded in San Francisco is 27ºF (-2.7ºC), which was in 1932 and in 1990 it was 1 degree higher, for one morning.

Penny, the amount of freeze damage in the 1990 freeze throughout the SF Bay Area was so heat-breaking! So many large trees were damaged or killed. I had so many plants damaged in my yard. It was HORRIBLE! This arctic freeze hit most of the western states. The only place that didn't get affected was here in San Diego (because even parts of Los Angeles go hit pretty hard, also).

Suprising how oceans influence the weather . Strange how freak weather comes about is nt it.

It is such a shame when such damage is done through artic freeze they are saying we will soon be getting weather from the artic again and snow . Such a shame your pla nts hadca lot of damage . So your lucky now being in San Diego that you dont get this freeze.

It's actually not strange. The Pacific Ocean water stays mild all year along the California coast. The coastal areas of California are influenced 90 to 95 percent of the time from the ocean. This prevents the coastal areas from getting severely hot or cold. There's that 10 percent when it's not influenced by the ocean. This is when cold waves or off-shore winds bring cold or hot weather.

San Diego is truly a mild subtropical climate. There hasn't been an official freezing temp in San Diego for almost 60 years. Canyons and inland areas are the exception, though. In January 2007 San Diego had its coldest weather in 60 years. Inland areas and canyons went down to freezing or below. The mesas (where I live) never went down to freezing; however, did get pretty darn cold. I recorded a 34 degrees (1.1ºC) temp one morning. This was extreme cold for San Diego.

So its mainly contoled by the ocean.

Thats great where you live they have nt seen such a freeze for 60 years you know your plants will be safe.

Yes, a person could live in my zone and never see a freezing temp during their lifetime.

Cold just doesn't visit San Diego very often, luckily! Even though the temps went down to freezing in some of the canyons and valleys during the cold spell the daytime highs were in the low 70's (22ºC) . The hours of cold is never very long, either. That's the most important thing (duration of cold).

Your lucky to live in such an area .

22 c would be warm here lol its good that that the cold does nt last for long in the canyons and vallies also.

Even though, the cold didn't last too long in 2007, it was long enough to cause of a lot of damage to tender tropical trees. In Montezuma Canyon only a few miles from where I live a pretty large Ficus benjamina tree was killed from the cold. That was a shock! The low areas is where the cold air drains from the mesas, though.

Yes ots can do the same here Andy over. just one nights hard frost such a shame about the Ficus Benjamina tree .

There's millions of Ficus benjamina trees here in San Diego. It's such a common tree.

Oh I see I thought it might be a rare one as you mentioned a large one had ddied.

It's just extremely rare to see a large 20' (6 m) tall Ficus benjamina die from cold here (anywhere, even in a canyon). The tree was located in Montezuma canyon. I calculated temps could have gotten down to around 28ºF (-2.2ºC) there or maybe slightly colder. This kind of cold in urban canyon areas only happens maybe every 50 years or so.

Sounds like a freak weather spell then like when we had hoar frost which killed a few of my plants yet normal low temp below 0 frost had never killed those plants .

It was a very, very unusual cold spell. The same arctic plunge caused the deserts to have the coldest weather in 75 years. It really did some damage out in the deserts. I saw gigantic (more than 50 ft (16 m) tall rubber trees (Ficus elastica 'Decora') in the low desert that were very badly damaged. They were coming back;however, you could see all tops of the big rubber trees were were frosted back on 2 to 3 ft of the tops.

We had a strange freak weather here some years back like that it killed all the Cordyline trees in our city .

That sounds HORRIBLE! I can't imagine cold that would kill Cordyline australis. It's such an extremely hardy plant!

Most species of Cordyline are tropical. We grow lots of Cordyline fruiticosa, teminalis, and stricta. I have Cordyline stricta and fruiticosa in my front yard.

It killed two very large ones in my sons as well garden he had to chop the two large tree Codylines down I recall on here quite a few lost theirs. I first thought they had released germ warfare on us again like they had been doing from 1940 until 1979 yet they are still doing this they released a biolohical one on Deven two years ago not so long back we here in Coventry had a fog over us our council sent up a helicopter to take test to see if it was the weather or some thing else so they even dont trust them.