Species

Click for picture menu of Fuchsia Species

From: WOldfi9065@aol.com
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997
To: kenneth.nilsson@mbox3.swipnet.se
Subject: fuchsias

Hej Kenneth
Just browsing your pages, brilliant job! I was wondering if you could put this on your guest page.
I am looking for people to correspond with re fuchsias, especially species ( my current addiction)
Thanks very much and keep up the good work!!

Wayne Oldfield, Worksop, England

There are about 125 wild species of fuchsia. They are only to be found in Latin America (+120 species), in New Zealand (4 species) and Tahiti (1 species).

Fuchsia is one of the 21 genera of the order of Onagraceae.

[Click here to see some wild and 'domesticated' relatives of FUCHSIAS]
[Click here to see a map of the World with the Homelands of Fuchsias]

Click for picture menu of Fuchsia Species

Fuchsia origins

(by Agneta Westin)

The Americas. Nearly all fuchsia species come from the West Indies and Latin America, from Mexico and southwards. They are trees or shrubs with flowers borne singly or in racemes and bloom on new shoots. The wood is hard and the bark flaky. The hardiest species comes from southern Chile near the Straits of Magellan - Fuchsia magellanica - where the climate is damp and cool. Fuchsias grow in rock crevices and at the edges of forests where the soil is rich and well-drained. They also grow at high altitudes, the nearer the equator the higher the altitude, in misty cloud forests, cool but light.

Fuchsias are edible. The berries have been used since time immemorial and the Incas knew all about fermenting beverages. It is rumoured that there are rock carvings of fuchsias in the Santa Valley in Peru, which could mean that the fuchsia was an essential part of local Indian culture, since they took the trouble to chisel its image in rock.

Fuchsia boliviana has sweet, purple berries that are mildly narcotic. It was considered sacred by the Incas and grown for ritual purposes. It is still grown in many tropical countries today.

One can derive the original uses of different fuchsia species from the names the Spanish conquerors gave them, for example Ink Sack, a species with black berries with juice that can be used as a dye. Other names indicate edibility, like Mountain Peach, names they got for their resemblance to fruits the Spaniards knew back home in Europe.

New Zealand. A few fuchsia species (section Skinnera ) hail from New Zealand and one from Tahiti. F. procumbens is a prostrate plant with small, round leaves and upright flowers without petals and big, plum-like berries.

The New Zealand tree F. excorticata is called Kotokutuku or Kohutuhutu by the Maoris and has tasty purple berries that are popular at the markets where they are known as Konini. The pollen is an intensive blue and Maori girls used to use it to powder their faces. The papery bark hangs in long strips and the wood underneath is bright green. European smoked the bark like tobacco rolling it into cigarettes. The timber is gnarled and twisted, dark brown with light streaks and waves. Because of its beauty it is used for inlay and other decorative work. It is hard and durable and hardly combustible at all, making it suitable for poles and building materials.

The Maoris used to embalm the heads of dead enemies to preserve tattoos and facial features. Fuchsia leaves were an ingredient in the mixture, which also made the heads look old. Trade with cured heads was forbidden in 1831 and after that tattooed heads became rare, desirable curios and the demand in Europe for Maori trophies made "old" heads a standard feature in the ship lists. How the victims died is unclear, but it was a lucrative business to trick sailors into buying "antique" skulls...

In the wild, fuchsias are often pollinated by
hummingbirds, but with us i Europe, it's mainly bees, bumble bees and wasps that try to get at the abundant nectar in fuchsias.

Wild fuchsia species are of a woody nature, ranging in their natural habitat from trees, such as Fuchsia excorticata, 30 feet (10 m) or more high, to prostrate, creeping plants such as Fuchsia procumbens with small, petal-less, yellow/green/brown flowers.

The majority are vigorous shrubs, found on high, rain-drenched, moisture laiden mountain slopes in the Andes or in dense, evergreen forests or jungles. Fuchsia tunariensis is an epiphytic fuchsia.

The New Zealand species and Fuchsia magellanica from the mountains of Magellan in Chile, are very winter hardy. Grown in Europe, esp. the northwestern parts, as far north as Stockholm, the magellanicas are cut back to ground level by winter frosts. Cold, dry winds do more damage than merely low temperatures. It seldom expires altogether and in spring, fresh young shoots appear from the base of the plant. These shoots grow 4-5 feet (1-1,5 m) during summer and bloom contiuously from midsummer till frost kills them in autumn.

The magellanicas I have tried as winter hardies are:

F. mag. riccartonii
F. mag. gracilis
F. mag. gracilis variegata
F. mag. aurea
F. mag. macrostemma
F. mag. thompsonii
F.mag. longipendiculata
F. mag. pumila
F. mag. alba / molinae

They all seem to be very hardy, but I have had the greatest success with F. mag alba / molinae, gracilis and pumila. With me riccartonii doesn't grow as a dense bush but just 4-5 branches spreading out. Alba / molinae makes a large (4 x 4 feet at least) bush but is rather shy in flowering. Pumila is a nice one with a maximim height of 2 feet (50 cm) and a nice dense bush covered in small one inch (2 cm) dark red and purple flowers. F. mag. alba / molinae is the only one with different coloured flowers, light mauve almost white. All other magellanicas have the red / purple flowers. So whichever magellanica you can get hold of, try it, either in a pot to be taken in for winter (they can grow 10 feet high in a pot if you wish), or as a winter hardy.
Some species (varieties) have naturalized themselves and for example in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales you can see Fuchsia magellanica (esp. the variety riccartonii ) growing as hedgerows.

Very few species are grown for decorative purposes but Fuchsia magellanica, Fuchsia splendens, Fuchsia boliviana and Fuchsia procumbens are the most common ones in cultivation.

F. procumbens (New Zealand) is also winter hardy with me. It's one of the strangest fuchsias you can find. You can't even guess it's a fuchsia. It is a creeping fuchsia that lies flat on the ground and produces erect, small bright yellow / brown / green flowers with red anthers and bright blue pollen. The stems are very thin and foliage is rounded and nail sized.
It is native to sand banks on the Northern Island of New Zealand. It can cover an area of several square meters.
Fruits / berries are almost cherry-sized, plum coloured. Fully edible and even tasty.
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