Description
Buddleja loricata | Popcorn Butterfly Bush
Buddleja loricata | Popcorn Butterfly Bush
Popcorn Butterfly Bush, also known as Loricata Butterfly Bush or Mountain Sage Butterfly Bush, is an evergreen shrub native to South Africa and Mozambique.
It grows up to 8 ft in height as either a multi-stemmed, bushy shrub, or a small tree that takes on a rounded canopy. From a distance, Buddleia loricata looks similar to Buddleja knappii. However, it is smaller in stature, with willow-like foliage that’s half as long and with square orange eyes on the flowers, rather than round orange eyes. Narrow, tapered, dark-green leaves with white downy undersides and small, sweetly-scented, creamy white flowers with square orange centers are held in dense terminal spikes or cymes with hairy stalks and calyx that bloom in summer. Attracts a variety of pollinators to the garden.
The seed capsule is small and covered with fine, creamy-grey hairs that form dense woolly heads, which eventually split open to release very fine, dust-like seeds. Buddleja loricata grows mostly among rocks or in moist, sheltered places on slopes, mountains and sometimes on stream banks at fairly high altitudes.
If any pruning is to be done, it should occur shortly after flowering because flowers will bloom on last years wood.
Deer resistant. Drought adapted and cold hardy.
Type: Perennial
Sun exposure: Full sun to part shade
Mature height: 4-6 ft
Mature width: 4-8 ft
Hardiness zones: 7-9
