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Galvezia speciosa 'Pink Panther' (Pink Island Snapdragon) – A new color form of our California native red flowering Island Snapdragon. This sub-shrub forms a dense mound with arching stems reaching to 3 feet high by 4 to 5 feet and possibly taller if provided with support. Though a much shyer to flower, this pink form rewards gardeners with a new color from this familiar shrub, displaying from spring through fall its tubular 1 inch long pink flowers that are flared at the lip, resembling small snapdragon flowers.
Plant in full sun to moderate shade in well-drained soil. It is drought tolerant, especially if planted in shade, and hardy to about 20-25 degrees F. A tough very adaptable plant that can be hedged or even pruned annually to its crown at ground level in late winter to keep the foliage fresh and its size down. The species is native to rocky canyons and bluffs in coastal sage scrub below 3,000 feet on San Clemente and Santa Catalina Island and in the Santa Barbara Channel Islands with a disjunct population on Guadalupe Island off of Baja California. It is included in the CNPS Inventory of Rare and Endangered Plants on list 1B.2 (rare, threatened, or endangered in CA and elsewhere). This new pink form, introduced by Annie's Annuals Nursery in Richmond, California was discovered in one of their customer's gardens and it joins the other two red two cultivars generally available in the horticultural trade; 'Firecracker', introduced by Tree of Life Nursery in 1986 and Galvezia speciosa 'Bocarosa', which we also grow, that was selected by the Saratoga Horticultural Foundation in 1980. The "new" name as listed in the Jepson Manual for this species is Gambelia speciosa but we choose to continue to list this plant by its more familiar older name for the time being so not to confuse staff and customers with a name change of such a familiar plant. We purchased our stock plants from Annie's Annuals Nursery and grew and sold this cultivar starting in 2016. Though we liked the color of this plant's flowers, it so rarely flowered that we decided to discontinue growing it in 2019.
Information displayed on this page about Galvezia speciosa 'Pink Panther' is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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