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Many plants produce colourful flowers or leaves.  They may either be tall-growing as in trees and shrubs, or they may be climbers, creepers and crawlers.  

Some are also low-growers as they characteristically stay close to and hug the ground.

The use of plants that stay close to the ground in gardens and other landscapes have been widely applied as ground covers, borders, bedding or potted plants since a long time ago.

This is not surprising as such plants have attractive features too.  However, the most visible use is in the generation of a layer of plants known as ground covers to meet certain designs or creative patterns.

But ground covers in theory also include shrubs of the woody and semi-woody types apart from the herbaceous and succulent varieties. It all depends on how they are intended to be used, especially in relation to the existing surrounding plants or whether it is necessary to fit into existing garden plans.

When the main or principal plants such as trees or large shrubs are allowed to grow tall, it is therefore necessary to select the taller varieties of ground cover plants.

The shorter varieties may also be used but these are maintained with lesser top trimmings.  In other words, the shorter plants in such a scenario, are allowed to grow to their full potential in terms of height and spread.  

In this respect, skilful fingers can really do wonders with tropical plants that are as simple as Cuphea hyssopifolia.

This variety of plant carries with it a lot of common names such as cuphea, corail, tarweed, elfin herb, elfin plant, Mexican heather, false heather and Hawaiian heather.

It is a low-growing flowering semi-woody to woody perennial ornamental that belongs to the family of Lythraceae.  

At one time, it was so popular to the extent that local nurseries and home gardens were producing countless numbers of them, thus dragging down the price of the plant in the market.  Fortunately, no rice bowl was broken considering that Sabahans are a really tough, ingenious and flexible lot.

In growth form, cupheas are small plants with a low growing but profuse branching habit.  Their compact size allows for an impression of the plant that is densely-foliaged with heights that are usually in the range of 0.5-0.6 m.

As cupheas do not crawl or climb, they are therefore favourites with plant lovers as they do not require anyone to climb up or to use climbing equipment to trim the growth during maintenance rounds.

Apart from these attributes, cupheas are also able to flower freely throughout the year, more so especially if they are unshaded.  The flowers are shaped like tiny trumpets each carrying six elongated but crinkled petals whose colour range is from purplish-pink to whitish.

As ground covers, cupheas are also quite tough and hardy despite their appearance of being softies. During prolonged dry seasons, the leaves may turn scraggy and limb but these may easily be perked up with a light trimming and a round of watering.  

On the whole, cupheas are capable of tolerating a wide range of soil conditions including the fertile enriched organic soils to the marginal soils as can be found in many housing lots.

Even on very thin, sandy and exhausted soils, cupheas are able to scrape by without casualty, often with the growth seriously affected only by a gross lack of nutrients and water. However, it is best to provide a well-drained, fertile topsoil for the plants that are grown on the ground or in pots.

Nevertheless, cupheas are not averse to enjoying regular applications of moisture, plant nutrient solutions and organic manure. Such applications do help greatly to improve the condition of the plant, the improvements of which may quickly become visible usually within 15-25 days of application.

Generally, cupheas do not need much trimming as they are naturally of a compact and short stature. But due to competition for space, or if there are some intrusive structures such as a boulder or tree stump, then the spread of the branches or the direction of growth may be affected.

In this case, a light surface trimming may be sufficient to recover the good looks.  Nevertheless, when the objective is to maintain a low and flat ground cover, then the height of the trimming may be lowered to a level that is considered acceptable.

As cupheas are hardy plants, cultivation and propagation are indeed easy exercises.  Multiple tiny seedlings that are naturally grown, may be obtained from around the base of mature plants throughout the year.  If left undisturbed, the area may become densely packed with large numbers of plantlets.

With careful separation, it is usually quite easy to remove the plantlets that can then be used to plant up other ground cover lots, garden beds or borders, or as edging plants along walkways or garden paths.

Of the potted plants, some may then be set in small but attractive baskets to be used in hanging gardens.

It is also not difficult to develop new plants by using cuttings taken from mature and firm sections of cuphea stems. These are then trimmed into short cuttings measuring about 8-12 cm and inserted into a suitable rooting medium.

Another very fruitful way to propagate the plant is to collect the tiny seeds found in the pubescent fruit capsules that stick onto mainly the mature branches. Such seeds can be sown in the usual way to yield a lot of little seedlings within 10-20 days.

The above writer may be reached at:onggrow@yahoo.com