Roma Street Parklands - Brisbane

Wondeful Crotons! I see they are planted under trees. Good idea!
Mine fried to death in the Sun during our Winter heat wave in January!

I have my crotons under trees as well - for that very reason. We would have heat waves very comparable to the ones you get and they get certainly do get fried out in the full sun then.

Bernieh:

The biggest issue with our Winter heat waves is they are usually Santa Ana Wind induced or influenced...which brings our humidity values to below 10% which is extremely hard on tropical plants and people.

In the Los Angeles area it's even worse...sometimes they receive negative relative humidity values...which, I know sounds so odd...however, true. Young plants can be completely dissicated...and even older trees can suffer.