Apache Plume (Fallugia paradoxa)

This native of the southwest is a most versatile shrub for use in landscaping. It can be used as a hedge and is thick enough for screening. It can be trimmed and used in the foreground of landscapes with a number of many drought tolerant plants. Also, it provides cover and seed for birds and can stabilize soil along slopes.

Apache Plume is a member of the Rose family and the flower is typical of the simple rose, white with five petals. After the petals fall off the center has many plumelike lavender styles, each one to two inches long. These clusters of plumes give the plant its name as they resemble an Apache headdress. The bush grows from two to eight feet tall and wide but typically you find them five feet wide and as tall. They have small green leaves and many thin branches.

If you want a hedge of Apache Plume they should be spaced four to six feet apart but individual plants are best six to ten feet apart. They are long lived and very drought tolerant once established and they will grow in almost any soil including our typical New Mexico alkaline and saline soil. This includes, sand, clay, rocky, or caliche. In nature the Apache Plume grows in arroyos, dry slopes, and plains and can tolerate cold down to -30 F. It tolerates light shade but loves the heat of the New Mexico sun.

Water young, newly planted Apache Plume weekly by flooding the soil surrounding the plant with a garden hose. Reduce supplemental watering once the shrub becomes established and starts to produces new foliage and stems. Water mature established shrubs monthly if no rain. You will have more flowers if your Apache Plume is pruned in early spring before they start new foliage. Cut out any broken, damaged, or diseased stems. Make each cut ¼” above a growth node. Thin the plant by no more than one third. Bushes can be fertilized in early spring with a slow-release balanced fertilizer. Apply one tablespoon per square foot of soil spread in a ring around the shrub outside the perimeter of the plant’s branches.

If you are looking for something to fill in an area of your yard, you won’t find anything as beautiful, drought tolerant, and versatile as the Apache Plume.

Edith Iwan is a Cibola-McKinley County Master Gardener who lives and works in Thoreau. As a Master Gardener she assists the County Cooperative Extension Service in providing accurate, research-based gardening information to county residents. If you have any gardening questions, please call the NMSU Cibola County Extension at 505-287-9266 or NMSU McKinley County Extension at 505-863-3432