Pronounciation: Jat-RO-fa in-teg-er-REE-muh

Hardiness zones:
Sunset 13 (with cold protection)-24
USDA 9 (with cold protection), 10-11

Landscape Use: Foliar and floral accent, specimen, informal hedge or screen, perennial gardens, pollinator or habitat gardens, raised planters, large containers, mesic landscape designs. Often grown as a summer annual in Phoenix

Form & Character: Upright, rounded, colorful, tropical.

Growth Habit: Evergreen, semi-woody, perennial shrub or small tree, moderate to fast growth rate to 5- to 20-feet tall (depending on cultivated selection), somewhat similar to lessor spread, sparsely branched.

Foliage/Texture: Deep green leaves, variable in shape ranging from narrow, espatulate and entire to clubbed or lobed, 4- to 6-inches long; medium texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Male and female flowers produced separately, female flowers (1-inch wide) produced on terminal clusters in a cymose arrangement, individual female flowers with five petals, red (rarely pink or white) in color with yellow orange style, flowers attract hummingbirds and butterflies; fruits are a nut, not showy.

Seasonal Color: Flowers produced throughout the year, most intensely from March to November.

Temperature: Frost and freeze intolerant, optimal cardinal temperature range is between 75^o to 90^oF. Suffers some heat stress (like all of us do) when desert summer temperatures exceed 110^oF for extended periods.

Light: Full sun with afternoon shade during summer.

Soil: Well-drained, nutrient-dense soils amended with composted organic matter will yield best performance.

Watering: Regular supplemental water is a staunch requirement for successful local culture.

Pruning: Occassional selective removal of individual stems and branches is all that is necessary. If cultured as a landscape perennial, then spicy japropha can be trained with care (and not by local 'Hort clods') into a small tree.

Propagation: Mostly softwood cuttings.

Disease and Pests: Root rot in poorly drained soils, spider mites.

Additional comments: Spicy jatropha is a 'curiosity plant' (rarely seen) for the Phoenix area with landscape usages limited to being a colorful foliar and floral accent plant in tropical-themed perennial gardens. The dwarf cultivar 'Compacta' (compact spicy jatropha), marketed locally by Monrovia Nursery in California, is most suitable for local landscape use. The cultivar 'Compacta Pink' grows pink flowers.

Toxicology: All parts of spicy jatropha are poisonous if ingested. Sap exudate from stems can produce a skin dermatitis.

Taxonomic tidbits: There are about 170 species of plants worldwide in the genus Jatropha. The genus name Jatropha literally translates from the Greek to mean 'physician nutrition'.