Musella lasiocarpa (Golden Lotus)

These grow to very high altitude (8,000ft) in Yunnan Province, southern China in an area where a number of our plants hail from that have proved perfectly hardy (notably Osmanthus yunnanensis and Magnolia delavayi). Does this mean we can grow this outside in Sussex? Possibly. All we can say is that they remain happy in our unheated greenhouses for the winter (same temperature as outside but no wind or rain) although we do chop some of the leaves off if they look unhappy.

This is really a dwarf, high altitude banana plant with extraordinary yellow flowers. It’s also a clumper (several stems from one plant) and so one plant in a large pot can produce several flowers in a season.

Try it outside by all means (and tell us all about it) but generally the advice in Britain would be to keep it a nice big pot – outside for the summer and shed/greenhouse/conservatory for the winter.

It’s susceptible to Red Spider Mite on the underneath of the leaves. Remove and burn leaves if badly infested or treat with soapy sponge under leaves or use Biological Control

Propagated by us by division

Hardiness level Red

Find out more

IF IT HAS A RED TRAFFIC LIGHT

×

Hardy in Atlantic Seaboard gardens, The Channel Islands, gardens in Central London (and other large cities) and conservatories.

This is only meant as a guide; there are some plants with red labels that would only survive in extremely favoured spots such as The Isles of Scilly or coastal south-west Ireland.

We're always on hand to give advice about plants and their frost hardiness.

Please remember that these coloured labels are only a rough guide.

General Point about Plant Hardiness: The commonly held belief that it's better to 'plant small' is perfectly true with herbaceous plants, but not necessarily true with woody plants. They need some 'wood' on them to survive severe cold - so plants of marginal hardiness in very cold areas should really be planted LARGER, rather than smaller, wherever possible.