Flowering maple
Abutilon × hybridum
also called abutilon, parlor maple, chinese lantern, callianthe
No maple at all but a soft-wooded mallow: maple-shaped leaves and papery lanterns that nod open for months, planted in the ground in the mildest zones and kept in a big pot everywhere else.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Orange
- Sunlight
- Full sun where summers are mild; morning sun and afternoon shade where they run hot
- Watering
- Moderate to high; evenly moist, and a pot in July may want a drink every day
- Soil
- Rich, moist and well-drained; a good potting mix in a container
- Feeding
- Rose & flower
- USDA zones
- 8a–10b
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Pruning
- Cut back by about a third in early spring. It flowers on new growth and turns into a few long bare stems if it is left alone, so pinch the tips of a young plant too.
- Plant out
- 14 days after the last spring frost
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 6 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 11 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 5–6.5 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
The habit is Flowering maple’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- Not harvested. The job is a hard cut in early spring as new growth starts. Below zone 8, a pot also comes indoors before the first frost and gets a light trim to fit the window.
- What to look for
- Long bare stems with a tuft of leaves at the tips and flowers thinning out mean it is overdue. Nights falling toward 5°C are the sign to bring a pot in; leaf drop in the first week indoors is the move and not a death.
- How to harvest
- Cut stems back by about a third with clean hand pruners, just above a leaf joint, keeping an open framework. Pinch the tips of young plants through their first summer so they branch. Cut any green shoot out of a variegated plant at its base.
- How often
- One real prune a year and a few pinches through the season. Feed and water often while it is blooming, and little over a cool winter.
- Storing the crop
- Nothing to store. It winters as a plant: a bright window at about 10–15°C, kept on the dry side and watched for whitefly. Soft tip cuttings taken in late summer root easily and are cheap insurance.
- Aphids Aphids on the soft new growth, and mealybugs in the leaf joints under cover
- Japanese beetle Japanese beetles, which chew it to lace in midsummer as they do any mallow
- Whitefly Whitefly and spider mites, above all on a plant wintering indoors in dry air
- Dropped buds and yellow leaves after a dry spell or a sudden move; that is stress and nothing is eating it
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Assassin bug Reduviidae
A patient ambusher with a curved beak it drives into whatever it catches — caterpillars, beetles, bugs, and the occasional bee, so count it a generalist rather than a specialist. It will jab a careless finger too, so admire it and leave it be.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Dragonflies & damselflies Odonata
Aerial hunters that take mosquitoes, midges and small flies on the wing all day, and whose larvae spend a year or more clearing the same insects from the water. A pond with planted margins and no fish is the way to have them.
- Garden birds Passeriformes
Both things are true: birds strip your currants and a brood of blue tits takes several thousand caterpillars out of one fruit tree in a fortnight. Net what you must and welcome them everywhere else — a nest box near the apples is worth more than a spray.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Parasitic wasps Braconidae & Trichogramma
Tiny, stingless wasps that lay eggs in or on caterpillars, aphids, and moth eggs — the white cocoons riding a hornworm are their calling card, so leave that caterpillar be. Umbel flowers with shallow nectar keep the adults fuelled.
- Praying mantis Mantidae
A sit-and-wait ambusher that snatches caterpillars, beetles, and anything else that wanders close — friend and foe alike, so count it a mixed blessing. Tall, structured plantings give it perches and egg-case anchors.
- Spiders Araneae
Webs, ambushes, and night patrols make spiders the garden’s steadiest generalist predators, taking whatever flies or crawls past. Mulch, ground cover, and undisturbed corners keep the population dense.
- Aphid midge Aphidoletes aphidimyzaHunts Aphids
A tiny midge whose orange maggots paralyze aphids and drink them dry, twenty or more each. Sold as a greenhouse biological control and resident outdoors wherever there are small nectar flowers and an unsprayed aphid colony to find.
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Japanese beetle
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Damsel bug NabidaeHunts Aphids
A slender, mantis-armed bug that grabs aphids, small caterpillars, and thrips in low crops and meadowy edges. Leave a strip of unmown grasses and flowers for it to overwinter in.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Aphids
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Soldier beetle CantharidaeHunts Aphids
Soft-winged beetles seen mating on flower heads in high summer; adults and larvae both take aphids and soft grubs. Open composite flowers are their landing pads and hunting grounds.
- Spined soldier bug Podisus maculiventrisHunts Japanese beetle
A predatory stink bug — same shield outline as the pest, but with a sharp spine at each shoulder and a beak it uses to spear caterpillars and beetle grubs. Learn the spines before you squash a shield bug, because this one is on your side.
- Tachinid fly TachinidaeHunts Japanese beetle
Bristly, house-fly-lookalike parasitoids that lay eggs on caterpillars, beetle grubs, and earwigs — the maggot consumes the host from within. Adults sip nectar from shallow umbels and daisies.
The leaf is the only thing it shares with a maple. It is kin to hollyhock, hibiscus and okra, and botanists have moved most of the garden kinds from Abutilon to Callianthe, a change the plant tags have largely ignored. Victorian households kept it indoors, hence its other old name of parlor maple, and hummingbirds work the hanging bells outdoors.
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com