Have you every wandered through a nursery just to look knowing that you really don’t’ have room for another plant?  Hard to do isn’t it? Well  that’s  what  I did last year  and saw  an unusual plant, so I  just had to  buy it and bring  it home. Upon getting it home, I found I really didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it in a container.  The tag said it was Jollas-de-Opar ‘Limon’ which did not help at all. So I went off to the internet to learn more.

The delicate little jewels. (photos by Betty Victor)

Jewels of Opar are sometimes called fame flower, Talinum paniculatum, and is related to Portulaca.  A fun fact about this plant is that it is said to be mentioned in the Tarzan books that were written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Books that I have not read.  This is a tropical, tender perennial.  When we had frost last year, I forgot to cover it like my other frost tender plants; it turned into a black mess. It seems there are questions as to if this is a succulent or a cactus, an agreement has not been reached to date.

Wonder of wonders it came back this year and really grew. The stems are long, pointed almost succulent-like in lime green about 10 inches long.  The hot pink star-shaped flowers are small and really not very noticeable, but the best part is once the flowers die, what is left is jewel like seedpods, starting out an amber color fading to cinnamon red hue. They will stay on the plant until late winter-that is if I don’t cut and dry them to see if the pods will stay on the stems.

It is a self-seeding plant so if you want to avoid more of them, dead heading is important. If you do not dead head them and you plant them in your garden you could have more than you want.