"Chilean Bellfower, Copihue"
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| Scientific Name: | Lapageria rosea Ruiz & Pavon |
| Common Name: | Copihue, Copiu, Chilean Bellflower |
| Plant Family: | Philesiaceace |
Follow the dinosaur footprints across the entrance driveway to the Gondwana Walk! Now, soak up the enchantment of the national flower of Chile.
‘By popular demand’ and because it is flowering so well this year, we are featuring this plant for the second year in a row. Our copihue produced its first solitary flower in June 1998, missed a year, and had two blooms in March 2000.
A Royal Botanic Gardens collecting expedition in 1985 provided the propagation material and attempts to cultivate this beauty in many different parts of the Garden have been made since then. With its ancient lineage it is appropriate that success has been found here, in the Gondwanan Section. The closely related South American, and equally showy, Philesia magellanica, from which the genus takes its name, is much more abundant in the wild though it has so far alluded our attempts to cultivate it at Mount Tomah. By comparison, the flowers are not so spectacular for the Wombat Berry, Eustrephus latifolius, and the Scrambling Lily, Geitonoplesium cymosum, which occur naturally here at Mount Tomah along the Gondwana Walk. These two Australasian species belong to the Luzuriagaceae plant family but are sometimes placed in the Philesiaceae.
Our ‘wild collection’ of copihue was from Pichirropulli, in central Chile, where the plant was growing with Tulasne, Laurelia sempervirens; Roble, Nothofagus obliqua; and Lingue, Persea lingue. The first two of these compatriots are growing nearby and the latter two can be found in the Chilean Woodland, below the Brunet Pavilion.
Copihue and its many cultivars are grown throughout Chile and much prized for their blooms. The flowers are naturally red or, less commonly, white. Cultivars include white with red edged petals and pink flowering forms. The fruit is edible, the stems are used in basketry and the roots are ascribed medicinal properties. However, the plants are protected in the wild where they are almost extinct. The natural range is warm, moist forest from Valparaíso to Osorno and eastward into Argentina.
Jan Allen
Garden Information Officer