Ochna thomasiana Seeds | Mickey Mouse Plant

Mickey Mouse plant with yellow flowers and black berries on red sepals — Mickey Mouse Plant (*Ochna thomasiana*): Ochnaceae, coastal thickets of Kenya and Tanzania.

LATIN NAME: Ochna thomasiana

COMMON NAME: Mickey Mouse Plant

Plant Profile

Mickey Mouse plant is an evergreen shrub of coastal East Africa, grown throughout the tropics for the strange performance that follows its flowers. It reaches two to four metres with a rounded, dense crown of glossy, finely toothed leaves that flush red when young. Yellow flowers open in clusters through the warm months, and when the petals fall the five sepals swell and turn bright red, while the receptacle carries a cluster of black, shiny berries in the centre. The result looks like a cartoon face, which is where the name comes from, and it persists for weeks. The plant grows on sandy soils near the coast in Kenya and Tanzania, tolerates salt wind and drought, and flowers almost continuously where the weather is warm.

Science & Biotechnology

Ochna belongs to the Ochnaceae, a tropical family whose flowers are unusual in having the stamens arranged in two whorls and in the way the fruit develops: each carpel forms its own berry-like drupelet on a swollen receptacle, so a single flower gives a cluster of fruits rather than one. The red sepals that persist after flowering are a genuine botanical feature, not a disease, and they serve the same function as petals, attracting birds over a longer period. The genus is large and taxonomically difficult, with many species separated by small differences in leaf and sepal shape, and garden material is often misnamed. Ochna thomasiana is one of the species with a distinctly serrate leaf, which helps separate it from the similar O. serrulata of southern Africa.

Uses & Benefits

The shrub is grown as an ornamental in tropical and subtropical gardens, where it works as a hedge, a screen or a specimen, and it is one of the few plants that gives colour in both flower and fruit over most of the year. Its berries are eaten by bulbuls and mousebirds, which spread the seed, and the plant has naturalised in parts of Hawaii and Florida. In East African medicine the root and bark are used for stomach complaints and for skin infections, and the leaves are applied to wounds. The wood is hard and used for small carvings. It is not a plant for cool climates, and it needs protection from frost, but it grows well in a large container in a conservatory.

Growing from Seed

Sow fresh seed after cleaning off the fruit, in a free-draining mix of loam, sand and compost, one centimetre deep. Keep at twenty-five to thirty degrees with steady moisture; germination takes three to six weeks. The seedling grows slowly at first and then steadily, and it should be potted on before the roots circle. Grow on in full sun with moderate water, and pinch the tips to make a bushy plant. Plant out in a frost-free, sheltered spot with sandy, well-drained soil, or keep it in a large pot and move it under cover for winter. Prune after flowering to shape, since the plant flowers on new growth. Protect from salt spray only if the leaves scorch.

Our Take

A shrub that turns its sepals into a cartoon face and feeds the bulbuls. It wants heat, sun and no frost at all.

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