Aeschynanthus
Credits
John Grimshaw (2026)
Recommended citation
Grimshaw, J. (2026), 'Aeschynanthus' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
Family
- Gesneriaceae
About 160 species of epiphytic subshrubs from tropical and subtropical Asia. Stems usually arching and pendulous, occasionally erect or fully pendulous, or creeping along the substrate, when often rooting at the nodes. Leaves opposite, often unequal, and sometimes congested in pseudowhorls, entire, often somewhat fleshy, usually dark green, glabrous to variably pubescent. Flowers axillary or terminal, solitary or clustered, protandrous; calyx tubular, variously 5-lobed or -divided, sometimes showy; corolla tubular, decurved, with 5 lobes, though the upper limb may be no more than emarginate, red or orange to yellowish-green; stamens 4, with the anthers cohering in pairs, strongly exserted; style glabrous to hairy, stigma broad. Fruit a 2-valved, linear capsule. Seeds numerous, ellipsoid, with characteristic patterns of hairs. (Huxley, Griffiths & Levy 1992; Middleton 2010; Mabberley 2017)
The vast majority of Aeschynanthus are out-of-scope for Trees and Shrubs Online, being plants from humid forests of tropical and subtropical southeast Asia. Many are cultivated in glasshouses or as houseplants, valued especially for their showy flowers which sometimes emerge from an attractive calyx, as in the case of A. pulcher (Blume) G.Don and A. radicans Jack. This feature, of a red bud emerging from the calyx tube, has given them the contemporary name Lipstick Plant, while the scientific name derives from the Greek aischyno, to be ashamed, and anthos, flowers, presumably an allusion to blushing (Huxley, Griffiths & Levy 1992). The flowers are bird-pollinated (Middleton 2010).
Only one species, Aeschynanthus buxifolius, is known to be hardy enough to be grown outside in the mildest parts of our area.