This is the first year we have actually had a Confederate Rose (bush, plant, tree) in the garden and we waited all summer for it to bloom. But apparently they are the last hold outs of the summer and once they finally started blooming it was clear, the summer is on its way out. No more warm summer blooms for a while after this.
The Confederate Rose, also called all kinds of things like the Cotton Rose, got it’s name in the south because:
…according to legend, the flowers soaked up the blood spilled on battlefields during the civil war. Felder Rushing, the co-author of Passalong Plants, an influential book on Southern gardening, recalls that ladies in Mobile, Alabama, gave these flowers to Confederate soldiers returning home from the war.
(Everything You Need to Know About the Cotton Rose, Southern Living)
We had a friend of ours give us clippings from their plants and when we got them they were literally sticks as you can see below (this was in May). By July they had grown taller than Deborah, and now in October they are about 20 feet tall and 6-8 feet in diameter. Not bad for one summer when we weren’t sure if they would even survive being moved.
Today I finally got a chance to take some decent photos of the blooms and they will make it into my daily photo journal for today (Project 365 for 2022 if interested). Now that these bushes(?) have made it to tree size I’m not sure we should have planted them so close together, but if you see something blooming in the south right now, this is what it is.
![Project 365 [Day 284] The Confederate Rose (Hibiscus mutabilis)](https://i0.wp.com/scottfillmer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/sa706203.jpg?resize=6000%2C4000&ssl=1)
3 responses to “Confederate Rose Marks the End of Summer”
[…] Over the course of many years, weโve cultivated several gardens with flowers that bloom from early springโlike our daffodilsโall the way into late October, when our huge Confederate roses (Hibiscus mutabilis) surprise us with their big red blooms. Their arrival always marks the end of summer around here. […]
[…] and mushrooms, as the weather started to turn cooler. The last large blooming plant we have are the Confederate Rose blooms and then the big colors are done for the […]
[…] The Cotton Rose is always the last blooming plant in our garden each year. It blooms reliably around mid-October to close out the summer heat. The blooms were a bit of a surprise this year because we have been in a drought. We weren’t sure it got enough water to create any blooms this year, but we were pleasantly surprised. We got this particular plant as a cutting from a friend when it was a knee high stick. Now somehow it towers over everything else and must be over 25 feet tall even though we cut it back to the ground every winter (see when we planted it a few years ago at The Confederate Rose Marks the End of Summer). […]