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With love and passion, everyone can have a nice garden...Elaine Yim

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Malaysian Flora USDA Zone 11
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Red Hot Cattail (Acalypha hispida) for Leap Day Wordless Wednesday



Scientific name: Acalypha hispida

Common name: Chenille Plant, Red Hot Cattail
"Chenille" is the French word for caterpillar.

Malay name: Ekor Kucing (Cat's tail)
Origin: Malesia (Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea)
Photograph taken at: The Rooftop Secret Garden of 1-Utama




“Red Hot Cattail (Acalypha hispida) for Leap Day Wordless Wednesday”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on February 29th, 2012.



Update on 2 March 2012
Thanks to the precious information from my commenters, I am now aware that there are 3 similar plants or 'lookalikes', namely:

1. Acalypha hispida (Chenille Plant, Red Cattails) - the above pictures
This shrub is about 1m tall. The flowers are borne on long pendulous inflorescences. Each flower spike is at a short distance from one another and they look like dangling cat tails. 
Origin: India
According to wikipedia, all parts of this plant is poisonous to animals.

2. Acalypha reptans (Dwarf Chenille, Trailing Cattails)
The leaves and inflorescences are smaller and shorter. It can be grown indoors.
Origin: Central America.

Ami of Southeast Florida Garden Evolvement blog has a picture of this plant here.

3. Amaranthus caudadus (Love Lies Bleeding)
The inflorescences appear in clusters, not one by one. Even the leaves are different in appearance. Many parts of the plant is edible. 

27 comments:

  1. Bardzo podoba mi się nazwa tego oryginalnego i ładnego kwiatka - "ogon kota". Pozdrawiam. *** I really like the name of the original and a pretty flower - "cat's tail." Yours.

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  2. Good morning AB, i love this plant too and i always want to have it in the province. However, until now i havent propagated it even if there is one plant downstairs of the office building grounds. But sometimes it succumbs so easily to aphids and mealy bugs.

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  3. This is such a fun plant - who could not love those fuzzy red cattails! It's an exotic plant here, a hot house plant to wonder at. Lucky you that can grow them!

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  4. So different and dramatic. I like the name Chenille plant. It does look like chenille.

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  5. Interesting plant love the contrast in the colours.

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  6. I wonder what is this plant called in your native language, e.g. Polish, Tagalog, etc.?

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    Replies
    1. In Tagalog, this plant is called "bontot-pusa" in english cat's tail :))

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  7. Such a brilliant bloom! Nice shots. It's called a Chenille plant here too, or Red-Hot Cat's Tails!

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  8. Something strange is happening. A few days ago, I had successfully put a Reply Button on my comment form. But today, I suddenly found that I cannot even comment in my own blog :(

    So, I have to change the settings of my comment form placement as "Full Page". Now I can comment again but there is no more Reply Button.

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    Replies
    1. Try more searching and trying in your DASHboard area on setting and you give a try. I had great problems as too many hacked into mine!
      I hate it anyway!

      Delete
  9. Very pretty plant. I would have to touch it every time I walked by!

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    Replies
    1. Yes, you read my mind. I'd like to do that too!

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  10. Beautiful! I have the dwarf version (Acalypha reptans, Dwarf Chenille) in my garden.

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    1. Ami, I have hopped over to see your dwarf plant in your blog post. The blooms look like short cat tails, so cute and you call them fire tails!

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  11. Very unique and interesting plant. They look so healthy in your garden...

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  12. I used to have lots of this plant but have to throw them away due to mealy bugs infestation.

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  13. I am having problems using the Reply Button, the new feature in Blogger for threading of comments.

    The follow comment which has been transferred from my previous post on Strobilanthes hamiltoniana is from Mom on Blog :

    I wanted to comment on the Cattails but does not allow me to enter anything under the post! I hope it is only for that one post. So, I am here instead. I was going to say that I thought the cattails was the same plant as Love-lies- a bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus ), which is also called pendant amaranth, tassel flower, velvet flower, foxtail amaranth. I see now that they are different. Although on first glance they both have cattails - I think the amaranth cattail is made of tiny seeds. I'll have to look closely the next time I come across Love-lies-a bleeding

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  14. Autumn Belle: Thanks for the link back to my post!

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  15. This is called "buntot-pusa" in Tagalog, which means....drum roll... "cat's tail" (LOL)

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  16. Ami, you are welcome!

    Solitude Rising, yay! so interesting to know it's name in Tagalog ♥

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  17. Ekor kucing merah, that has gotta be one red, hot cat!

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  18. The red is very radiant... pretty flower...

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  19. I use to see this plant in my hometown when I was young! We use to play with the flowers!

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  20. Thanks for writing out those plants' names and the last one, I think it doesnt has any hardy stem, right? Looks like the spinach or Bayam...?

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  21. Hi, I'm Samantha. Recently I found a type of vines that grows on fence and it look like Chinese lantern but it is much smaller. I was wandering what is the name of the plant and really needs help to find the name! Thank you.

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