Browallia Americana: An easygoing, Long-lasting Annual
The informal growth of Browallia americana makes the plant a favorite among gardeners. Browallia americana is an easygoing annual with a long-lasting beauty. Browallia americana is stunning alone and a perfect foil for all partners. The flowering shoots tumble gracefully over the edges of pots, tubs, and hanging baskets, with their violet-blue flowers suspended like butterflies from their stems. The light spot in the center of the flowers enhances their refinement. Sow Browallia americana indoors in March-April at a temperature of about 68 °F. Pinch out young shoots to encourage bushiness and plant out-of-doors after the final night frost. They do best in poor soil, but will also grow in richer kinds. Choose a sunny position in a border, but partial shade is better if you are growing them in pots, tubs, or hanging baskets. The plants do not need much water, but the rootball should not be allowed to dry out entirely, as the plants definitely do not recover from that.
Browallia americana possesses the gentlest and most amiable color that any flower may possess and that color is blue. Cool and poised by itself, it also enhances any other color with which it is put. It clarifies yellows and oranges, intensifies reds, gives determination to wavering pinks and mauves, and blends with white to create perhaps the suavest of all color combinations. Given these valuable attributes, when a new blue flower is discovered, especially when it is an easygoing annual, gardeners have reason to rejoice.
Such a plant is Browallia americana, which is just now shyly making its way into nurseries that specialize in unusual annual and tender plants. Its flowers are a deep lilac-blue upon opening, but they fade to mauve. Each flower, for its short life of three days or so, maintains a brushing of yellowish white in its throat, creating a winsome, surprised look, like a winking eye. In effect, B. americana conveys much of the charm of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica), beginning to bloom in most gardens as that plant fades away in early June, and continuing until frost, though self-seeded plants may wait until July to flower.
Browallia viscosa is a very similar species, but has viscous stems. The plant itself makes a more compact impression and bears a profusion of small flowers that grow to about 1 in wide.
