Spicy Lights Azalea

Group/Class: Northern Lights Series

Description:

A hardy deciduous azalea, featuring unique fragrant salmon-orange flowers in spring before the leaves, tall upright habit and good fall color; absolutely must have well-drained, highly acidic and organic soil, use plenty of peat moss when planting

Ornamental Features:

Spicy Lights Azalea is bathed in stunning clusters of fragrant orange trumpet-shaped flowers with coral-pink overtones and a yellow blotch at the ends of the branches in mid spring before the leaves. It has green foliage throughout the season. The narrow leaves turn an outstanding purple in the fall. The fruit is not ornamentally significant. The smooth gray bark is not particularly outstanding.

Landscape Attributes:

Spicy Lights Azalea is an open multi-stemmed deciduous shrub with a more or less rounded form. Its relatively coarse texture can be used to stand it apart from other landscape plants with finer foliage.

This is a relatively low maintenance shrub, and should only be pruned after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season's flowers. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Spicy Lights Azalea is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• General Garden Use
• Mass Planting
• Accent

Plant Characteristics:

Spicy Lights Azalea will grow to be about 6 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 7 feet. It tends to be a little leggy, with a typical clearance of 1 feet from the ground, and is suitable for planting under power lines. It grows at a slow rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for 40 years or more.

This shrub does best in full sun to partial shade. It requires an evenly moist well-drained soil for optimal growth, but will die in standing water. It is very fussy about its soil conditions and must have rich, acidic soils to ensure success, and is subject to chlorosis (yellowing) of the leaves in alkaline soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution, and will benefit from being planted in a relatively sheltered location. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone in winter to protect it in exposed locations or colder zones.

This particular variety is an interspecific hybrid.