On the occasion of the traditional inventory of flowering plants on January 1st, I asked myself about the influence of the continent of origin of the plants on their flowering period.
My hypothesis being that plants originating from the southern hemisphere keep the memory of the seasons inverted compared to those of our northern hemisphere, and will therefore tend to flower here as from autumn and winter, which corresponds to spring and summer in their “plant memory”.
A typical example is Diosma hirsuta, which has been in the garden since 2017. Originally from the Cape region of South Africa, this shrub has a fairly long flowering period and is somewhat erratic, as if ‘disoriented’ by the change of hemisphere.