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My Garden Plants
Michael L McClain
St James, NY
Shelter Island, NY
Lantana
Lantana caramara
Lantana is a multi-colored flowering shrub in the verbena family. In Plant Hardiness Zone 7 Lantana probably needs to be treated as an annual. Lantana is known for its rounded clusters of small, brightly-colored flowers which may be yellow, orange, white, red and purple, often mixed within the same cluster. The plants are poisonous to wildlife and so are not eaten by deer.
Lantana camara is known to be toxic to livestock such as cattle, sheep, horses, dogs and goats. L. camara also excretes chemicals (allelopathy) which reduce the growth of surrounding plants by inhibiting germination and root elongation. The toxicity of L. camara to humans is undetermined, with several studies suggesting that ingesting berries can be toxic to humans. However other studies have found evidence which suggests that ingestion of L. camara fruit poses no risk to humans and are in fact edible when ripe.
Last summer, I planted three lantana plants in the wooden planter next to the cottage deck at the Red House. They bloomed through the late summer and well into the fall, surviving the deer. During a garden tour, we saw two plants on either side of the front door at Tim Purtell's house in the Heights. They were several feet high and several feet wide. He says they die back to the roots each year, but come back in the summer.