Trailing lantana

Eastern Australian temperate forests

Edwards Plateau savanna

Fynbos shrubland

New Zealand North Island temperate forests

Piney Woods

Willamette Valley oak savanna

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Puget lowland forests

A low, mat-forming member of the mustard family from the Mediterranean coast, grown almost everywhere as a cool-season annual for its dense mounds of tiny, sweetly fragrant white four-petaled flowers. The flowering is so profuse it often hides the gray-green foliage entirely. It thrives in cool weather, tolerates dry soil and drought, and is a reliable nectar source for small pollinators.

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

3 ft

Habit

Low, trailing, mat-forming evergreen shrub or subshrub, grown as a groundcover or trailing container plant and as an annual in cold climates

Care tips

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Check your local invasive-plant list before you plant it: UF/IFAS does not recommend it anywhere in Florida, Queensland restricts it, and it is a declared weed in several other Australian states and territories.

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Give it full sun and lean, sandy, well-drained soil for the heaviest bloom; in shade it flowers less and is more prone to powdery mildew.

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Below zone 8a, treat it as an annual or bring a container plant indoors to a bright, cool spot for winter, and check it for whiteflies and spider mites while it is inside.

Lifecycle

Planting

Before planting, check your local invasive-plant lists: UF/IFAS does not recommend trailing lantana anywhere in Florida, Queensland restricts it, and it is a declared weed in New South Wales, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia. Where it is appropriate, plant after the last frost in full sun and average, well-drained soil; the Missouri Botanical Garden notes it thrives in lean, sandy, slightly dry soil and tolerates part shade, but flowers best in full sun.

Transplanting

Set nursery plants at the same depth, allowing for a 3 to 5 feet spread, or let the stems spill from a hanging basket, container, or the top of a wall. Below zone 8a, grow it as an annual or overwinter a container plant indoors in a bright, cool spot, and move it back outside after the last frost.

Early growth

Water regularly while it roots in, then only in dry spells; NC State Extension lists it as tolerant of drought, heat, humidity, poor soil, and salt. Powdery mildew can appear in shadier spots, and the Missouri Botanical Garden advises watching for whiteflies and spider mites, especially on plants overwintered indoors.

Maturity

A mature plant is a dense mat 12 to 18 inches tall and 3 to 5 feet wide that blooms from early summer to frost. The small fleshy fruits ripen from green to purple, each with one hard black seed. They are poisonous to people and pets, but birds eat them and spread the seed. Wear gloves when trimming, since the leaves can irritate skin.

Propagation

NC State Extension lists seed and stem cuttings as propagation methods, and the stems also root where they lie on the ground (layering). Birds spread the seed, so where it can escape, trim off spent flower clusters before the fruit ripens; NC State Extension notes that some cultivars set no seed at all.

Native range

Climate notes

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NC State Extension's Plant Toolbox lists Lantana montevidensis for USDA hardiness zones 8a-10b, and the Missouri Botanical Garden's PlantFinder gives zones 8 to 10. Per Kew's WCVP it is native to northern Argentina, Bolivia, southern, southeastern, and northeastern Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, in a seasonally dry tropical climate; it is not native to North America.

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It is frost-tender: below zone 8a, grow it as a warm-season annual, or keep it in a container and overwinter it indoors in a bright, cool spot. Where it is hardy it flowers almost all year in frost-free areas and from early summer to frost elsewhere.

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Invasive in parts of the United States. The Missouri Botanical Garden reports that it has escaped gardens and naturalized in parts of the southern US, though it appears somewhat less invasive than common lantana (Lantana camara); NC State Extension lists it as naturalized in California, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Hawaii. The UF/IFAS Assessment of Non-native Plants rates it a high invasion risk in north, central, and south Florida, predicts it to be invasive, and does not recommend it.

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A listed weed in Australia. Weeds Australia records it as a declared weed in Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia, and as a weed of potential national significance: an aggressive weed of pastures in coastal Queensland and New South Wales that displaces native vegetation and pasture grasses and is suspected of poisoning cattle. The Queensland Government lists it as a category 3 restricted invasive plant under its Biosecurity Act 2014, which means it must not be given away, sold, or released into the environment there. It spreads by bird-dispersed fruit and by stems rooting where they touch the ground, and NC State Extension notes it has also naturalized in New Zealand.

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Previously known as Lantana sellowiana, Lippia montevidensis, and Camara montevidensis, and also called weeping lantana, purple trailing lantana, creeping lantana, small lantana, and trailing shrubverbena.

Plant this, not that

Better fit for this place

For Chicago, IL, these are replacement suggestions: similar plants with a stronger hardiness fit now and/or in 2050.

Lobularia maritima

Sweet alyssum

Chionodoxa forbesii (syn. Scilla forbesii) is a small bulbous perennial native to western Turkey - botanically recorded only from Babadağ Mountain in Muğla Province - producing loose racemes of up to 12 star-shaped, sky-blue flowers with white centers on 4 to 6 inches stems in early to mid-spring. It naturalises freely under deciduous trees and in lawns, filling gaps with carpets of colour before most other plants wake from winter, which is its genuine garden gift. The honest catch is its eagerness to spread: it seeds prolifically and the bulbs multiply quickly, so in a small garden or a formal bed it can crowd out neighbours and become hard to contain once established. All parts are toxic if eaten, and the bulbs need a dry summer dormancy or they rot.

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Chionodoxa forbesii

Glory of the Snow

Caryopteris × clandonensis

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Bluebeard

A compact, mounding deciduous shrub bred in the 1930s by crossing the East Asian species Caryopteris incana (southern China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan) and C. mongholica (Siberia, Mongolia, northern China) - it has no wild range of its own. Its defining virtue is a flush of vivid blue-to-violet flowers on the current year's growth in late summer and early fall, a period when little else in the garden blooms, combined with aromatic gray-green foliage and exceptional drought tolerance once established. The honest catch is its borderline hardiness at the cold edge of its range: in zones 5–6 the woody stems routinely die to the ground in winter and the plant resprouts from the base each spring, behaving more like an herbaceous perennial than a shrub - gardeners in those zones should hold back pruning until new growth confirms the crown has survived.

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Gomphrena globosa

Globe amaranth

Globe amaranth is a warm-season annual in the amaranth family (Amaranthaceae), grown for its round, clover-like flower heads of papery, long-lasting bracts: bright magenta in the species (Missouri Botanical Garden PlantFinder), with cultivars in purple, pink, red, lilac, violet, and white. The true flowers are tiny white to yellow trumpets tucked among the bracts. Kew's WCVP gives its native range as Mexico, Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama), and tropical South America (Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Bolivia, and Brazil). NC State Extension and Missouri Botanical Garden describe a compact, upright plant 6 to 24 inches tall and 6 to 12 inches wide that flowers from June until frost, takes heat and drought once established, and makes a classic everlasting: the heads keep their color when cut and dried. It is frost-tender. NC State Extension rates it winter hardy only in USDA zones 9 to 11, where it can be grown as a perennial; everywhere else it is sown or planted after the last frost and grown for a single summer, which is why both sources list it as an annual for zones 2 to 11. It is a Gomphrena, not an Amaranthus: the amaranth in its name is the family it shares with love-lies-bleeding and the grain amaranths. It also shares the name bachelor's button with the cornflower (Centaurea cyanus), a different plant.

Better fit now and in 2050

Now: well-suited

2050: well-suited

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Calluna vulgaris

Heather

Heather, or ling (Calluna vulgaris), is the low, wiry evergreen shrub that colours the moors and heaths of Europe purple in late summer. It grows only 4 inches to 24 inches tall in dense, spreading mats of tiny scale-like leaves, and from July to September it is covered in spikes of mauve (wild) to white, pink, or red (cultivar) flowers that draw an intense traffic of bees - the source of prized heather honey. It is beautiful, wildlife-rich, and extremely cold-hardy, but it is also a fussy plant with two non-negotiable demands: genuinely acidic soil and cool summers. The honest catches: it will not thrive on chalk or in hot, humid heat (NC State advises against planting south of zone 6), and where introduced - notably New Zealand - it has become an invasive weed.

Shrub

Chionodoxa forbesii (syn. Scilla forbesii) is a small bulbous perennial native to western Turkey - botanically recorded only from Babadağ Mountain in Muğla Province - producing loose racemes of up to 12 star-shaped, sky-blue flowers with white centers on 4 to 6 inches stems in early to mid-spring. It naturalises freely under deciduous trees and in lawns, filling gaps with carpets of colour before most other plants wake from winter, which is its genuine garden gift. The honest catch is its eagerness to spread: it seeds prolifically and the bulbs multiply quickly, so in a small garden or a formal bed it can crowd out neighbours and become hard to contain once established. All parts are toxic if eaten, and the bulbs need a dry summer dormancy or they rot.

A low, mat-forming member of the mustard family from the Mediterranean coast, grown almost everywhere as a cool-season annual for its dense mounds of tiny, sweetly fragrant white four-petaled flowers. The flowering is so profuse it often hides the gray-green foliage entirely. It thrives in cool weather, tolerates dry soil and drought, and is a reliable nectar source for small pollinators.

Jasmine tobacco, also sold as flowering tobacco, sweet tobacco, or winged tobacco, is a tender perennial in the nightshade family (Solanaceae) native to southern and southeastern Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and northeastern Argentina. The true species grows 3 to 5 feet tall from a low rosette of large, hairy basal leaves with winged stalks, and from early summer to frost it carries long-tubed, star-faced flowers, white to greenish-yellow, that open in the evening and pour out a sweet scent through the night for moths. It is perennial only in USDA zones 10a-11b, so most gardeners grow it as a summer annual. Many plants sold as 'flowering tobacco' are compact hybrids (Nicotiana × sanderae and similar strains) up to 24 inches tall whose flowers open by day and are mostly unscented; for the night fragrance, grow the species from seed. Be aware that it is poisonous: every part of the plant contains nicotine, it is harmful if eaten, and the RHS advises gloves when handling it.

Annual