Notes · 5 October 2024

The ixora in the hedge

The small red flower that gives this site its name, and why it turns up in almost every hedge on the island.

Walk anywhere in Singapore for ten minutes and you will pass an ixora. It grows in the hedges along main roads, around the foot of housing blocks, in car parks, school fences and temple courtyards. It is so common that it disappears, which is partly why this site is named after it: it stands for the ordinary, close-up island that the walks are about.

What it is

The ixora most often planted here is Ixora coccinea, a shrub of the coffee family that comes originally from southern India and Sri Lanka. Left alone it grows into a rounded bush a metre or two high with stiff, glossy leaves. Kept as a hedge it is clipped into neat blocks, and it takes the clipping well.

What catches the eye is the flower head: a tight, rounded cluster of dozens of small flowers, each a slim tube that opens into four flat petals. Red is the classic colour, but there are orange, yellow, pink and white forms, and compact kinds with smaller leaves that suit low hedges.

Before they open, the buds stand up in a bunch like a box of red matches. A day or two later the head has turned into a dome of stars. It flowers almost all year, which is a large part of its popularity with gardeners: there is rarely a month when a well kept ixora hedge has no colour on it.

Who visits it

The long tubes hold nectar at the bottom, out of reach of most insects. Butterflies, with their long tongues, are the regular visitors, and an ixora hedge in morning sun is one of the easiest places in the city to watch them. Sunbirds come too, hanging on the stems to reach in. Ask people who grew up here and some will tell you they did the same as children, pulling a single flower from the head and sipping the drop of sweetness at the end of the tube.

Where to see it

The Gardens walk passes plenty, both in the clipped borders near the gates and as looser bushes along the paths, where they are allowed to grow to their natural shape. A full, unclipped bush in flower is a different plant from the hedge by the bus stop: taller, looser and covered in heads at every height.

It is a good plant for practising close-up pictures. The heads are a manageable size, they stay still unless the wind is up, and the red holds its colour well even in flat light. Get low, put a dark shady background behind the flower, and wait for a butterfly.