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If you like hummingbirds you will like Standing Cypress. Its profusion of red, inch-long trumpets are made to order for hummers.
Standing Cypress or Ipomopsis rubra is very dependable in the sandy Cross Timbers soil where I live. It’s a biennial. It produces a ferny rosette the first year, followed by a flowerspike the second year.
I’ve generally grown it from seed, although you can transplant the rosettes fairly easy, as long as you dig down and get about six inches of the tap root. It likes the sun and is generally pretty drought-tolerant. At my place it seems to prefer the gravel driveway to the flowerbed where I keep trying to put it. After it goes to seed, collect them and sow wherever you want them.
The flower spikes can be anywhere from two feet tall to more than six feet in wet springs. When the spike has bloomed out, you can cut it off, and new spikes will be formed.
The relationship to hummingbirds is not a one-way street. Standing Cypress depends on the hummers for pollination. Plus the hummingbirds help control the insects that nibble the plants.
According to most sources Standing Cypress is not considered deer resistant, but I’ve never seen the deer show any interest in it at all.
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**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: Bill Hopkins
