By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on March 5, 2004
The miniature shrub damianita is the Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) plant for March. Damianita (Chrysactinta mexicana) is increasingly used as a landscape “flower” in Hill Country yards, because it blooms profusely through the hottest part of the summer.
This native shrub reaches no more than one to two feet high and will grow in poor, dry, shallow soils.
The plant takes on a more-or-less-hemispherical shape that looks good in rock gardens and raised beds or other well-drained sites.
The dark-green needle-like leaves stay evergreen under most winter conditions in this part of Texas. During the long blooming season, from late spring to first frost, the plants often are covered with small yellow flowers.
Damianita thrives in full sun or part shade. Needless to say, this little shrub requires little water.
In poorly drained, clay soils it may not survive the winter.
We enjoy blooming damianita in sunny parts of our yard where most other flowers wilt away during summer hot spells. Just like black-foot daisy, damianita keeps on trucking, even during August.
In Texas, damianita is native to an area from the eastern edge of the Hill Country (Williamson to Bexar counties) across the southern Edwards Plateau and Trans-Pecos Texas to El Paso County.
It also is native to northeastern Mexico. Damianita is one of the wildflowers seen in the limestone hills around Boerne.
The common name “damianita” sounds to me as if someone must have thought this plant is a little version of something known as “damiana.”
Sure enough, there is a larger plant called damiana. It is damiana turnera (Turnera diffusa), a 3-6-foot shrub that grows in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, southern California, Mexico, West Indies, and South America. It has small yellow flowers and small olive-green leaves.
“Damiana” is the name of a drug made from Turnera. It is used as an aphrodisiac and to treat dysentery, malaria, and syphilis, among other things.
Damiana was introduced into Europe about 1874 and was used to treat all types of kidney and bladder diseases.
So, what about our own damianita? According to Vines (“Shrubs, Trees, and Woody Vines of the Southwest”), all parts of damianita “were used medicinally by Indians for fever, rheumatism, and as a diuretic, sudorific, antispasmodic, and aphrodisiac.”
The Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas provides free planting and care instructions for damianita at the nurseries participating in Operation NICE!: Barkley’s Nursery Center, Boerne in Bloom Garden Center, Fair Oaks Nursery, Hill Country African Violets and Nursery, Maldonado Landscape and Nursery, and Where Wild Things Grow Native-Plant Nursery.
