Gynura aurantiaca, the velvet plant, is an evergreen perennial from Southeast Asia grown mainly as a houseplant or hanging-basket trailer. Its leaves are covered in soft purple hairs and it needs bright light and steady moisture.
Family
Asteraceae (Daisy family)
Grows as
Shrub, Climber
Light
Bright indirect
Water
Keep the soil lightly moist and let the top layer dry slightly between waterings.
Soil
Well-draining general potting mix with some perlite or bark.
Temperature
18–27 °C; protect below 10 °C
How easy
Easy
Native range
Sumatera to Jawa, Sulawesi
Climate
wet tropical
About
Gynura aurantiaca, called purple passion or velvet plant, is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family Asteraceae. It is native to Southeast Asia but grown in many other places as a house plant. In warm regions, it is frequently grown outdoors on patios and in gardens rather than inside buildings, and hence it has escaped into the wild in Africa, Australia, South America, Mesoamerica, Florida, and a few other places.
How to grow it
In cultivation in the UK this plant has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gynura aurantiaca by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.