Cigar Flower (Firecracker Plant, Red-White-and-Blue Flower)
Cuphea ignea. LYTHRACEAE.
Planting and Growing Cigar Flower
You’ll find everything you need to know to plant and grow cigar flower in the accompanying table’s tabs:
-
-
- Flowers, foliage, and root structure of cigar flower
- Plant hardiness and growing conditions for cigar flower
- Season of bloom and planting time for cigar flower
- When, how deep, and where to plant cigar flower
- How to plant cigar flower
- Watering, fertilizing, care, and pests or diseases of cigar flower
- Landscape and container uses of cigar flower
- Comments about cigar flower and its features
-
Growing Cigar Flower
A few cultivars of upright, branching, bushy, shrublike perennial herbs, 1–3 ft. (30–90 cm) tall. Smooth, deep green, lance-shaped, narrow, pointed leaves, to 1-1/2-in. (38-mm) long, in whorled clusters.
Planting and Care Guide
Blooms
Many shiny, orange red, cigar-shaped, tubular flowers, to 1-1/2-in. (38-mm) long, with brown tips surrounding protruding stamens, in summer–autumn.
Best Climates
Plant as tender annual, zones 3–9; ground hardy, zones 10–11.
Soil Type and Fertility
Moist, well-drained, sandy loam. Fertility: Rich–average. 7.0–7.5 pH.
Where and How to Plant
Start seed indoors in spring, 8–10 weeks before final frost for early blooms, zones 3–8. Transplant outdoors when frost hazard has passed, in full sun, 9 in. (23 cm) apart. In zones 9–11, sow seed outdoors when soil warms in spring.
Proper Care
Easy. Keep evenly moist. Fertilize every 2 weeks. Pinch to direct growth. Propagate by cuttings, seed.
About This Plant
Good choice for accents, borders, containers, massed plantings in cottage, wildlife gardens. Attracts hummingbirds. Heat, humidity tolerant. Disease resistant. Spider mite susceptible.