Acalypha, also known locally as Joseph’s Coat, is found in gardens all over Barbados. It’s very easy to propagate with cuttings, and a healthy shrub is really quite spectacular with the various red hues or green through pale yellow hues of the leaves. They’re also quite popular as hedges and a line of alternating shrubs is lovely though not very functional as a barrier hedge.
The Acalypha shrub does need to be trimmed periodically to maintain a nice bushy appearance, but they survive the dry season without much attention. If they don’t get trimmed regularly, the shrub will tend to get a bit thin and straggly.
I love all the colours in each leaf, so the name of “Joseph’s Coat” is very appropriate. As one would expect, they look better during the rainy season, and fill out into nice thick bushes. The flowers, as you can see in one of the photographs, are very small and nondescript, but they are appealing to nectar feeding birds, moths and butterflies.
There are hundreds of varieties of Acalypha within the Euphorbiaceae family of plants, but this one seems unique in the aspect of the variegated leaves. Some of the other species have more visible and dramatic flowers (Cat’s Tail is a prime example), but they will be dealt with in a separate post.
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