Lisianthus: Flower Spotlight
This article comes from our series of flower spotlights, which are adaptations of the newsletters we send to members of our flower share throughout the season. You can see more spotlights by heading here.
Eustoma grandiflora, AKA Prairie Gentian, Poor-Man’s Rose, Lisianthus
Nelson does not look like a poor man with all these lissies!
These stunning cut flowers look like roses, but they’re annuals, easy to cut, and super prolific in our hot dry climate. You’ll notice that they can last 2-3 weeks in the vase.
Lisianthus, or lissies, as we call them, are in the gentian family, and are also known as prairie gentian. They’re native to the great plains of the United States, believe it or not, though the hybrid varieties I grow are certainly different from the original prairie flower. They have now been bred and cultured far away from their ancient roots, much like corn or wheat has been. Most new varieties are now coming from Japan, where techniques like tissue culture are used to breed new strains.
The scientific name comes from the Greek eu ('good’) and stoma (‘mouth’) - pleasing mouth, probably referring to the beautiful open flowers. The species name grandiflora simply means 'large-flowered’.
We buy our young lisianthus plants from wholesale growers and plant them into the hoop house in early February, then again in early May for a succession crop. Because the seed and the seedlings are so small (you almost need a magnifying glass!) and because they take so long to grow to transplant size, we outsource the job of growing them from seed to professional greenhouses where growing baby plants is all they do.
They go into the hoop house because they need protection from rain and wind: they are so top-heavy that they easily topple over. For this reason we also use netting to keep the stems upright. We plant them at about 6” apart in 6 rows per bed, and we pinch the plants early to allow for long side shoots, and plants are usually blooming by late July. Depending on the variety, they may bloom through frost and beyond.
Lisianthus en masse are one of my favorite things to see, so full buckets of them make me unreasonably happy. I hope they do the same for you.
Native prairie gentian in Texas hill country. Source