Do you know some of the prettiest blooms come from Mexico? We’ve compiled a list of the Best Mexican Flowers You Must Grow!
Flowers have been revered and cherished since the Mayan times. They are an integral part of Mexican tradition. From Christmas to the Day of the Dead, different flowers hold special meanings within their culture. Let’s have a look!
Best Mexican Flowers
1. Laelia Orchid
Botanical Name: Laelia rubescens
Laelia orchids are beautiful flowering plants originally from Mexico and are a tropical cousin to the cattleya orchid. They come in all sorts of vibrant colors, including lilac, red, bronze, and green, with star-shaped petals. Sporting rounded, leathery leaves, these orchids can be a bit picky about temperature.
2. Mexican Marigold
Botanical Name: Tagetes erecta
Ah, Mexican marigolds! These aren’t your average yellow marigolds. They are taller, with showy blooms that come in orange, yellow, and even red. Easygoing flowers, they are happy with lots of sunshine and aren’t fussy about watering.
3. Poinsettia
Botanical Name: Euphorbia pulcherrima
Poinsettias are festive plants with bright red and green foliage that you see everywhere around Christmas. But guess what? Those colorful bits aren’t actually petals; they’re leaves that change color! You can easily keep them red for a long time and you can also grow them outdoors in shade in frost free climates.
4. Mexican Passion Flower
Botanical Name: Passiflora mexicana
This Mexican native produces flowers that are a mix of greenish-yellow and reddish-purple, with frilly bits that look like a crown. It’s a climber, so it loves to sprawl out and vine up fences or trellises.
5. Pineapple Sage
Botanical Name: Salvia elegans
Pineapple Sage is a bushy plant with fuzzy, bright green leaves that, you guessed it, smell like pineapple when you brush against them. Pretty cool, right? It isn’t about just tasty-smelling leaves, though; it bursts with bright red flowers in the fall.
6. Mexican Sunflower
Botanical Name: Tithonia diversifolia
Mexican sunflowers are the cheerful giants of the sunflower family. They have a bold, bushy growth, reaching up to 6 feet tall! Plus, they have sunshine-yellow or fiery orange flowers that are big and daisy-like, attracting butterflies and bees.
7. Mexican Honeysuckle
Botanical Name: Justicia spicigera
Mexican honeysuckle, despite the name, isn’t actually a vine like its namesake. It’s a compact little evergreen shrub. The real stars of the show, though, are the flowers! They produce bright orange tubes that bloom heavily from late spring all the way through fall and sometimes even sneak in some winter blooms.
8. Mexican Morning Glory
Botanical Name: Ipomoea hederacea
It is a stunning climbing vine native to Mexico and Central America. Mexican Morning Glories are fast growers, reaching up to 13 feet tall in a single summer! But here’s the catch–their blooms are one-day wonders. They open before dawn and fade by the afternoon, especially in the hot sun.
9. Chocolate Cosmos
Botanical Name: Cosmos atrosanguineus
Chocolate Cosmos has rich, velvety, deep brown flowers that look almost black, with a faint chocolaty scent, especially on warm days. It’s a perennial in warm climates, but in colder areas, you can grow it as an annual.
10. Sword Lily
Botanical Name: Gladioli
Sword Lilies grow on tall stalks that shoot straight up like a green sword. On these stalks, they bloom with big, beautiful flowers in all sorts of colors—bright yellows, pinks, purples, you name it!
11. Belize Sage
Botanical Name: Salvia miniata
Belize Sage is a hummingbird magnet with a fiery personality! This beautiful plant has glossy green leaves and puts on a show with bright red, tubular flowers all summer long. It thrives in partial shade, so it’s happy under a shady tree with some morning sun.
12. Mexican Birds of Paradise
Botanical Name: Caesalpinia pulcherrima
The Mexican Bird of Paradise has fern-like leaves and explodes with bright yellow flower spikes throughout the warm season and loved by pollinators. Fun fact: the seed pods pop open even when they’re mature, adding a little surprise to your garden! It can grow quite big, up to 15 feet tall, and loves sunshine.
13. Mexican Poppy
Botanical Name: Argemone ochroleuca
Mexican Poppy has beautiful yellow or cream-colored flowers with a spiky, thistle-like appearance. But here’s the catch–this poppy is actually poisonous! No worries if you’re just admiring it, but be careful not to let pets or kids around it, and definitely don’t eat it yourself.
14. Yucca Flower
Botanical Name: Yucca baccata
Used by Native Americans for centuries, this tough plant symbolizes resilience, tenacity, and loyalty! With stiff, sword-shaped leaves that stand tall, you may not expect it to bloom at all. But come summertime, a tall stalk with a cluster of big, white, bell-shaped flowers shoots up. Yucca flowers are fragrant, and at night, their sweet scent attracts pollinators like moths.
15. Baja Fairy Duster
Botanical Name: Calliandra californica
The Baja Fairy Duster is a Mexican shrub with bright red, fuzzy flowers that puff out like little bottle brushes. It blooms most in spring and fall, but you might even see some sprinkles of color throughout summer. This low-maintenance shrub requires occasional watering and loves hot, sunny spots.
16. Silken Pincushion Cactus
Botanical Name: Mammillaria bombycina
The Silken Pincushion Cactus is an adorable little cactus perfect for bringing some spiky cuteness to your windowsill. But here’s the neat part: from these fuzzy bumps sprout even tinier spines, and in spring, beautiful pink flowers bloom around the base. It’s also low-maintenance.
17. Mexican Zinnia
Botanical Name: Zinnia haageana
Mexican Zinnias are perfect for beginner gardeners because they are easy to grow from seeds. Also a great choice for attracting butterflies and bees with their colorful blooms and sweet nectar, they come in various hues like yellow, red, orange, pink, and even white.
18. Lyreleaf Greeneyes
Botanical Name: Berlandiera lyrata
The Lyreleaf Greeneyes is a perennial! This low-maintenance plant has fuzzy, gray-green leaves that resemble a lyre, a fancy harp-like instrument. Its flowers look like sunny yellow daisies with a maroon center.
19. Bromeliads
Botanical Name: Bromeliad spp.
These tropical beauties come in all shapes and sizes, with spiky green leaves that form a rosette, like a colorful fountain. Lasting for weeks, Bromeliads bloom a vibrant red, pink, orange, or yellow right in the center of the rosette.
Bromeliads get moisture from the air through their leaves, so they’re perfect for terrariums or bathrooms where humidity is higher.
20. Mexican Lady’s Slipper
Botanical Name: Mexipedium xerophyticum
This one’s the real deal–a rare orchid found only in a small region of Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s a shy bloomer with tiny, white, pouch-shaped flowers. While not as showy as its slipper plant cousin, it’s a special find for orchid enthusiasts due to its rarity.
21. Creosote Bush
Botanical Name: Larrea tridentata
The Creosote Bush might not be the flashiest flower, but it’s a tough one that thrives in the hot, dry Mexican desert. When it rains, those leaves release a strong scent, kind of like that clean, earthy smell you get after a desert downpour. It also gives pretty yellow flowers.
22. Fallugia
Botanical Name: Fallugia paradoxa
Fallugias have small and lobed leaves with a fuzzy green top and a paler underside. The Mexican flower has unique white, saucer-shaped flowers. After the petals fall off, feathery purple tails emerge, swaying in the breeze like something out of a fairytale.
23. Coral Vine
Botanical Name: Antigonon leptopus
The Coral Vine is a true perennial beauty from Mexico. Its leaves are big and heart-shaped, and it also produces flower clusters—usually a bright pink color and sometimes white—that bloom pretty much all year round. The vine grows super fast and climbs fences, trellises, and walls.
24. Blue Palo Verde
Botanical Name: Parkinsonia florida
Don’t go by the name of this Mexican flowering plant. Blue Palo verde is actually known to have yellow blooms. It’s called blue because of the bark. This desert-dweller is a small tree with cool blue-green bark and tiny leaves that it loses in the winter. But don’t worry; it still looks pretty neat year-round, thanks to that blue tint.
25. Mexican Frangipani
Botanical Name: Plumeria rubra
This small tree with thick, green branches can reach a height of 25 feet. Unlike most trees, it likes to take a vacation in the winter and lose all its leaves. Come spring and summer, it wakes back up and bursts into bloom with big, beautiful flowers. These fragrant flowers come in shades of white, yellow, and pink.
26. California Poppy
Botanical Name: Eschscholzia californica
The California poppy, the official flower of California, is stunning with bright orange or yellow blooms. It’s found in both California and northern Mexico. These cheerful flowers typically bloom from February to September and close up at night or in cold weather.
27. Mexican Hat Flower
Botanical Name: Ratibida columnifera
The Mexican Hat Flower isn’t actually from Mexico! It’s a wildflower native to North America, but its droopy red and yellow petals with a big brown center do look like a sombrero, hence the name. These easy-going plants love hot, dry places and don’t mind poor soil.
28. Gentian Sage
Botanical Name: Salvia patens
Gentian Sage has the most incredible, deep blue flowers you’ve ever seen. It hails from central Mexico and loves sunshine. Hummingbirds and butterflies adore it, too. It’s pretty low maintenance, but keep in mind it might not survive cold winters.
29. Mexican Aster
Botanical Name: Cosmos bipinnatus
You might also know Mexican Aster as Cosmos. These easy-going annuals come in all sorts of pretty colors. They grow tall and don’t mind a little heat and drought. Just plant them in a sunny spot and water them regularly at first, then they’ll pretty much take care of themselves.
30. Mexican Tulip Poppy
Botanical Name: Hunnemannia fumariifolia
The Mexican Tulip Poppy, well, it’s not quite a tulip and not quite a poppy! It’s a unique flower from Mexico with sunshine-yellow blooms that look like a cross between a ruffled tulip and a delicate poppy. Plus, they’ll bloom through summer and fall.
31. Mexican Tarragon
Botanical Name: Tagetes lucida
The Mexican Tarragon is a cute little bushier herb with tiny yellow flowers. It’s not really tarragon, but its leaves have a cool licorice-like flavor that reminds people of it. Plus, unlike French tarragon, which can struggle in hot weather, Mexican tarragon thrives in hot weather. You can use the leaves to flavor chicken dishes, soups, or even tea!
32. Mexican Petunia
Botanical Name: Ruellia simplex
Talking of Mexican flowers, we also have the lovely Mexican Petunia. It has dark green, pointy foliage and gorgeous lavender-violet blooms in shade, with dark centers that perfectly complement the foliage. It’s a great choice for a pot.
33. Mexican Paintbrush
Botanical Name: Castilleja indivisa
Mexican Paintbrush flowers are a pretty shade of blue. You can also find ones that have lavender, purple, red, pink, and white shades. All of these flowers grow on tall floral stems, so they’re easy to make out from the rest.
34. Mexican Evening Primrose
Botanical Name: Oenothera speciosa
These Mexican flowers are also called Pinkladies. Why? Because the Mexican Evening Primrose has flowers that are a soft pink shade that slowly fades into white as you move toward the flower center. And how can we ignore the pretty yellow stamens?
