When I first moved to my present place in 1999, I thought that I knew a lot about native plants. It turned out that I just knew some of the more common ones. I had never seen an inkwood (exothea paniculata), a krug’s holly (ilex krugiana), west indian cherry (prunus myrtifolia) or a coral bean (erythrina herbacea) plant before, for example. The coral bean plant is a rather gangly plant – as it stretches for the sun, it can develop long and twisting stems. Grown in the full sun, it develops into a fairly compact shrub, but on my property it is in the woods, so it wanders all over the place, seeking sun. The flower is very unusual and is an excellent hummingbird attractor, for obvious reasons.

I suppose there are butterflies with long enough organs to reach into the tubes of the flower, but hummingbirds are the pollinator of choice, apparently.

The coral bean plant gets its name from the bright red beans inside the seed pod, from which the plant gets its name, according to what I’ve read. I don’t know how “coral” equates to “bright red”, though!

The subject of the last post, West Indian Lilac, had an unusual leaf and so does this plant. I’m sure someone somewhere can point out a similar leaf, but I’m not familiar with a plant that has a leaf similar to the coral bean:

Native American peoples, from the Cherokee and Choctaw to the Seminole, used various parts of the plant as a treatment for digestive disorders and in Mexico, the seeds are used for rat poison and the bark and leaves are used to kill fish.

Ahhhh … the things I learn by blogging!