Princess Flower, Tibouchina urvilleana
Both the gorgeous tibouchina urvilleana and the velvety-leaved grandifolia are landscape show-stoppers for their luscious purple flowers. Though the bloom color is similar, these two mid-size varieties have distinctly different looks.Urvilleana’s large blooms are made up of five wide open petals, on slightly downy, elliptical leaves. Grandifolia’s leaves are rounded and so velvety soft you’ll want to pet them, and the flowers are spiky upright clusters of small blossoms. These plants are so breathtaking you can expect passersby to come knocking at your door. They’ll want to discover the plant’s name and admire it more closely. Normally seen in shrub form, urvilleana can be grown as a small standard (tree-form). Buy it already trained this way… doing it yourself may not give you the results you want. Like most varieties of this wonderful plant, these shrubs prefer a bit of shade (like morning sun only or dappled light is ideal) rather than full-out blazing sun all day.
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