PlantFiles: Giant Pinwheel Flower
Tabernaemontana pachysiphon

I'm growing this plant in a container on a glass-enclosed porch. I've owned it for about 4 months, now, and it's bloomed (multiple flowers) three times, already, with huge, creamy, intensely-fragrant gardenia-scented blossoms. Thus far, it seems amazingly resilient for Maryland (indoors), as it can't be grown outside here. I've had only one incident where the leaves turned yellow and fell off the plant, which was when I first got it (shock?). I have yet to see how it overwinters, but I plan on bringing it completely indoors so that it won't get drafts. Currently, my plant is about 2 to 2 1/2 ft tall and has produced at least 3 large branches with many new leaves since I first got it (4 months ago). It seems to be a rather fast grower.

Most of the plants identified as T. pachysiphon (syn. T. holstii) offered by the tropical nursery trade are in fact T. africana. Both plants are similar except that T. pachysiphon's leaves are up to15-16" long (and longer), while T. africana has leaves generally half this size.

My T. pachysiphon hasn't flowered yet, but on of my T. africana specimens has multiple time and the flowers are very nicely fragrant. I am curious to see if T. pachysiphon has even larger flowers.

This grows to be a good sized evergreen shrub. Large, dark green leaves with new growth having the glossy look found in Gardenias. The plant blooms spring to fall with clusters of very fragrant, large white flowers. It can handle a good degree of cold, to include a slight freeze. Maybe high 20s in SoCal. This is not an easy plant to find and is usually expensive here in SoCal - but well worth it.

This plant is easily confused with Tabernaemontana africana - Samoan Gardenia. The Samoan Gardenia has smaller leaves, but other then that I can't tell the difference.