Even With Sprinkler Repair, These Plants Hate Las Vegas

While getting someone to do a sprinkler repair can help make your Las Vegas landscape look better and may make Las Vegas landscapers happier, some plants still do not thrive in this city. These plants live in diverse locations worldwide but require growing conditions that the subtropical hot desert climate and gravelly fine sandy loam of Las Vegas do not accommodate. Many are extremely rare, and growing them outside their native habitat has proved troublesome.

Don’t Waste Your Money on Hooker’s Lips

Hailing from Ecuador and surrounding South American countries, the hooker’s lips plant looks like lips that are puckered up and ready to plant a big kiss on you. The lips are part of the plant’s bracts. While it cannot give workers at your Las Vegas sprinkler repair company a kiss despite its looks, hummingbirds find its shape very beautiful, so they pollinate it. From December to March, this plant puts on creamy white star-shaped flowers that turn into blue berries between the two bract structures. This plant thrives in hot, humid conditions, but it must have a thick padding of decaying materials under it, so do not try adding it to your Las Vegas landscape.

Officially called Palicourea elata, this plant is a small shrub that usually grows between 3 and 10 feet tall in the understory of tropical rainforests. People in Panama and Columbia often gather this plant, grind its bracts and use them to make herbal cures for earaches, cough, skin irritation and rashes. In fact, it has been overharvested, and finding it in the wild is difficult.

Sprinkler Repair Will Not Help Corpse Flowers

If a corpse flower would thrive in your landscape in Las Vegas, your neighbors would demand that you remove it because this plant stinks with many describing its odor as smelling like rotting flesh. This plant, the largest unbranched inflorescence in the plant kingdom, also generates heat, causing its stench to travel even further. If you are thinking about planting one to get back at your nosey neighbor, this plant does not thrive in Las Vegas because it takes very specialized care and needs a hot and humid climate.

This plant has a very unpredictable bloom cycle. Instead of blooming yearly, it only blooms when enough energy is stored in its sizeable underground stem. Therefore, many corpse flowers do not bloom until they are about eight years old. When the bloom appears, it can be up to 60 inches tall, looking like a skyscraper rising from the middle of this plant. The bloom only lasts about two weeks. Then, the flower may not bloom for another decade. Once done blooming, the bloom falls to the inside of the plant in minutes.

Fear Growing the Ghost Orchids

Your Vegas landscape is not an ideal place for ghost orchids to thrive. This plant that has no leaves requires high humidity and temperatures. It requires swampy conditions, and visitors often see it in the Everglades. At the top of the stubby dark green stem, it produces a white flower that looks like a ghost. The flowers appear one at a time in June and July. When this plant blooms, it smells like soap.

The bulk of this plant consists of its photosynthetic roots, which it uses to attach to tree trunks, where it steals its energy since it cannot process the sun’s energy. Instead, it exchanges gases with its host tree and generates energy from those gases.

The Monkey Orchids Won’t Stare You Down

The flowers on monkey orchids look like tiny monkeys with great big eyes, but there is no need to fear them trying to stare you down in your Las Vegas landscape because they want a tropical highland forest environment. This plant’s long petals meet in the middle, where its pink color changes to a brownish red, similar to a golden lion tamarin’s color. Each flower also has two dark dots, closely resembling eyes. This plant usually blooms only once every seven years. The bloom has a pleasant citrus scent.

Monkey orchids live on host trees in cloud forests at an elevation of about 6,000 feet. It takes in moisture from the tree, but it also gets water from the forest’s moist environment. It thrives in environments between 65- and 80 degrees year-round. The moisture gives this plant energy because it hates even a glimpse of the sun. Therefore, even the most shaded location in Las Vegas is too bright for it.

You Won’t Get Carried Away by the Grim Reaper

The grim reaper plant does not want to visit you in Las Vegas because it loves open flooded plains. Officially named the Aristolochia Salvador platensis, it is up to you to decide if this woody plant looks more like Darth Vadar’s full-face mask or a Halloween death mask with its spotted light brown hood, large white eyes and pointed chin. You may not want to get close to this plant because its bloom smells like rotting flesh.

This plant’s eye-like membranes are fragile, and that is how this plant takes in light. Pollinators find these membranes extremely attractive. They contain downward-facing hairs that trap the insect pollinator until it is covered with bacteria. Then the hairs wither away, and the insect is released, but it may have stayed trapped for up to 30 minutes. Shortly after insects pollinate each blossom, it fades away.

While many beautiful plants thrive in Las Vegas landscapes, you must avoid these five choices. They need a different environment and may make your neighbors call the police because they smell rotting flesh.