The two-inch, flat clusters of lantana flowers look like colorful, cloth-covered buttons. Thus lantana's colloquial name: button sage. The sage part comes from the sage-like smell of crushed leaves, but lantanas are related to verbenas and not true sages.

Lantanas, which include about 150 species of tropical plants and wild sage (Lantana involucrata) and the endangered pinelands lantana (L. depressa), are native to Florida. But in South Florida the most conspicuous lantanas are the two-to-six-foot-tall common lantana (L. camara) from Latin America, the more ground-hugging trailing lantana (L. montevidensis) from West Africa, and hybrids between these.

Discovered in Jamaica in the 17th century, common lantana is now cultivated and growing wild in tropical areas around the world. Flowers of common lantana are often pink and yellow, but cultivars and hybrids can be shades of yellow and pink or purple, orange, red, and white. Flower color can change with age. The abundance of flowers on a single lantana can provide a spectacular display and a favored stop for butterflies and other nectar-feeding insects.

Each lantana flower produces a small green fruit that turns blue-black when mature. These are toxic to humans and livestock, but not to birds. Lantana seeds pass through a bird to colonize disturbed areas and open habitats, causing problems in natural ecosystems. Lantana releases chemicals into the soil that slow or prevent growth of other plants, thus out-competing natives. Common lantana also hybridizes with native lantanas, threatening the integrity of these plants.

Enjoy the beauty of common lantana without threatening native plants by selecting a hybrid that cannot reproduce by seed. These include such cultivars as Alba, Gold Mound, New Gold and Patriot.

-Jerome A. Jackson, Florida Gulf Coast University