Growing the Chinese lantern (Abutilon x hybridum)

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]These plants light up a glorious autumn morning in Sydney. They're called Chinese lanterns or abutilon cross hybridum, and it's lovely the way the pendulous flowers line up here below our wishing tree. This is a plant that really is a garden plant. It doesn't occur in the wild. It's a complex hybrid of up to five species that was developed in the 19th century, and we don't really know what the parentage is. It's a wonderful plant for the garden. It produces huge amounts [music] of flowers through the autumn and winter months. It doesn't require a lot of care, although it is handy to give a little bit of a prune after flowering, otherwise they can get a little bit leggy. This is one of those plants in the garden that it's really worth taking [music] a closer look at the flowers. So, let's start underneath the orange petals, where you'll see these modified leaves that make something called [music] a calyx.

[00:00:57]You might have seen them at the base of tomatoes. You might have seen them at the top of strawberries. We have a whole glasshouse called the calyx. The petals are delightful, and they also have really clear venation, which is just beautiful when you see the light shining through it early in the morning. Now, if we look in the center, we'll see the structure that carries the pollen and will eventually produce the seeds. This belongs to the hibiscus [music] family, and it has a distinctive feature. So, the stamens, which are made up of filaments and anthers, and they carry the pollen. In this family, they're fused together to make what we call a staminal tube. The anthers then surround the tube. They bear the pollen, and the stigma and style, which are the parts of the flower that will eventually produce the seed and have the receptive surface for the pollen to land on, that comes up through the center of that [music] column and emerges right at the top of the anthers. So, you can see they're a slightly different color and they're held slightly above. So, when the pollen lands on them, a tube is created which will go down to the ovule and eventually a seed will be created.

[00:02:08]This is a wonderful plant for the garden in Sydney [music] and it's another one of those plants that volunteers in the gardens propagate and sell through our Growing Friends Nursery. And not only does it come in orange, but there's a lovely yellow form and also a deep red form. So, you can either have the colors separated or like we have here, create an informal hedge or screen in the garden that flowers [music] throughout autumn and winter.