Chapter V
COLORED FOLIAGE SHRUBS
If Hawaii does not have an autumn season when all the leaves turn red, it has, nevertheless, certain plants which suggest autumn all the year round, with their gorgeously colored foliage. Brilliant tones of red, orange and gold appear perennially in the leaves of many shrubs, while others are more delicately colored in tints of pink, cream and yellow-green. Still others hold very dark shades of maroon, crimson and purple. On most of these plants the flowers are small and inconspicuous, as if the colored leaves took their place in interest.
SNOW BUSH
Phyllanthus nivosus Bull
Variety roseo-pictus
A mass of small, delicate leaves, pale pink and light green in color, on a loose, graceful shrub, is the Snow bush. It is well named, the effect of the frosty coloring being as if a light fall of snow had touched the leaves. While some plants carry only the light and dark green leaves, others show a rosy coloring in the new growth. This variety is appropriately known as roseo-pictus. The color is strongest in the young parts, the leaves tending to turn to a more even green as they become older. In some, the pink color turns to a dull red. The leaves are rounded in form, about an inch and a half or two inches in length, and grow alternately on the stem. The latter is dark red, with a tendency toward angularity.
Small greenish flowers sometimes hang from long stems in the axils of the leaves, the male and female flowers being separate.
The plant is a native of the South Seas and a member of the Euphorbia family. It is one of Hawaii’s most attractive and colorful shrubs being often used as a hedge plant. ([Plate X])
CROTON
Codiaeum variegatum Blume
Leading in interest among the colored foliage shrubs in Hawaii is a large group of plants commonly called the Crotons. This name, however, properly belongs to a quite different plant but is used generally by nursery men for this Codiaeum.
Although these Crotons have an almost endless variety of leaf form and color, they all belong to a single species, the difference in appearance being only a matter of horticultural variation. The plants are natives of Malaysia and the Pacific islands, and are members of the Euphorbia family.