PlantFiles: Esperanza, Texas Yellow Bells
Tecoma 'Sunrise'

I love this plant and it grows well in the Texas Hill country. Today I found a long green seed pod on a plant. I picked it to see the seeds inside but it looked like I should let it dry out first. Some how I dropped the seed pod into my coke and had been drinking it. I ended up having bad stomach cramps about an hour latter. So I would mark at least the pod part as poisoness.

I live on the edges of zones 6 & 7 (Enid, OK) and have planted this beautiful plant outside after wintering it inside the house. I hope it makes it through the winter because it is a lovely plant!!

This esperanza (which means "hope" in Spanish) can attain a height and width of 5 feet produces clusters of lemon yellow trumpet shaped blooms which have copper veining in the tube (throat) and around the edges of the tube. The buds are deep copper and are beautiful themselves. The attractive foliage is deep green. It is a perennial in Zones 8a and 8b, but may be evergreen in Zones that do not experience hard freezes. It will die to the ground during a hard freeze, but will sprout in the spring (usually later than most other perennials) and will grow rapidly. It may be grown in containers with protection from hard freezes in colder regions. It is drought tolerant once established, has few insect problems (I have experienced no insect problems with my esperanzas), requires little care and blooms continuously until the first hard frost or freeze. It may be pruned to encourage a denser habit, control its spread and encourage more blooms (which really is not necessary).