PlantFiles: Climbing Tibouchina
Tibouchina laxa

This is a vexing plant!! The flowers are extremely beautiful with their petunia-purple velvety petals. Even the leaves have a furry cover and are quite decorative. I bought my plant (trained as a standard) from a mass marketer, repotted it and placed it in full sun. The plant sulked for a few days and dropped some yellowed leaves. It's resumed blooming, but still drops yellow leaves. This plant needs to be watered well, and light fertilizing every two weeks is recommended. I've moved the plant back into a more sheltered position, where it gets filtered shade part of the day. But (you guessed it!) it still drops yellow leaves!
Tibouchina is supposed to be easy to propagate from cuttings, but I haven't had luck so far. The plant can be overwintered inside, but should go through a resting period in order to remain healthy (or so an expert wrote).