Driving through a suburb of Melbourne many years ago, I was literally stopped in my tracks by the sight of what looked like a glowing ball of fire! In the front garden of somebody’s home, there was a large shrub covered with the most strikingly coloured flowers I think I had ever seen. I rushed home and dragged out all my reference books poring over them for hours until I had discovered the identity of the mystery plant.

What I had chanced upon was Cantua buxifolia otherwise known as the Flower-of-the-Incas or Magic Flower (see right). Its first common name should give you a clue as to its origin and indeed this beautiful flower is the national flower of Bolivia in South America. There, the people love it so much that during spring, the flowers are strung from their ears and adorn their clothes.

Cantua buxifolia is a shrub that can grow to about 2m and is generally evergreen, partially defoliating only in colder climates when the bush really does have a very bedraggled appearance. It’s this appearance and inability to flower in a 140mm pot that makes this plant hard to find. The leaves are unremarkable being small and ovate and sometimes irregularly lobed. The bush produces long elegantly arching canes from which large bunches of the tubular flowers hang throughout September and October in southern Victoria.

The interesting feature of the flowers is that they can be variable. The general description given is of a cherry-red flower, however my description is of a fluorescent orange-pink tube flaring at its base to hot pink with a yellow throat! Each flower is about 6-8cm in length and at a guess I’d say the hummingbirds in South America must love them. There is a variety called bicolour (see above left) that has a yellow tube striped pink flaring to pink and white. I have also seen another form with a plain yellow tube flaring to white (see right).

In the course of writing this article I spoke to a few nurserymen and one said that if you grow a bush long enough it will sport these variations and this statement was supported when I actually saw a bush with two different flower colours on it. There are other species in the genus Cantua but if they are in Australia, it seems that they are not available commercially.

Various references say this plant will grow virtually anywhere - although appreciating some protection such as a warm wall behind it in colder districts. My bush is growing in a raised bed so it obviously likes a well drained soil. The bed is quite a dry bed too, so I surmise that it must be reasonably drought tolerant once established. A nurseryman told me he propagates the plant from softwood cuttings during the warmer months, so if you can’t buy this glorious plant, take a cutting from a bush. My plant (see right) was grown from a cutting taken (with permission!) from the original bush I spotted all those years ago.

Each year when my Cantua buxifolia looks at its scrappiest, I promise myself that I will remove it. Then it flowers and all is forgiven. No wonder it is also called the Magic Flower!

Illustrations from top to bottom:
1. Cantua buxifolia with its fluorescent orange-pink tubular flowers
2. C. buxifolia var. bicolour has a yellow tube striped pink flaring to pink and white
3. C. buxifolia - yellow and white form
4. Prodigious display of C. buxifolia var. bicolour 
5. C. buxifolia - the people of Bolivia string the flowers from their ears and use them to adorn their clothes