How much do you know about Mexican flowers and their captivating beauty? Whether or not you have been to Mexico, there’s a tour of the prettiest and most popular flowers in Mexico for you below. These flowers can serve as your next inspiration for a bouquet for a loved one, a special souvenir for an occasion, or a form of self-care.
1. Poinsettia (Euphorbia Pulcherrima)
Poinsettia is a flowering plant that blooms during shorter days. It is favorable to humid and moist soil. Well known for its decorative role during the Christmas holidays, it is very colorful. Its flowers are modified leaves called bracts.
It also sports small yellow flowers in the middle called the cyathia. Poinsettia can come in red, pink, green, bright orange, and cream color.
2. Dahlias (Dahlia spp)
Dahlias is an edible perennial plant that belongs to the same family as daisy, sunflower, chrysanthemum, aster, and zinnia. Its gorgeous cut flowers can be used in bouquets for weddings and other celebrations.
As a trendy flower, it became Mexico’s national flower in 1963. You can find dahlias in orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow hues but not in blue. It symbolizes everlasting love and passion.
3. Anthurium
Anthurium is a perennial herbaceous plant that often grows on other plants and can be terrestrial. It is also known as laceleaf, flamingo, and tailflower.
The most prominent feature of an anthurium is its heart-shaped, colorful spathes and long, yellow or red flower spikes. In addition, it features bright and glossy green leaves. Its spathes are in different colors, such as red, pink, white, purple, orange, and black.
4. Mexican Marigold (Tagetes Erecta)
This aromatic, annual, and sprawling shrub is very useful for flower beds and decorative edging of fences. Its daisy-like flowers can grow in clusters or single blooms. Mexican marigold grows slowly, blooming during the fall, winter, or summer.
It thrives in well-drained soil and serves as food, medicine, and perfume ingredients. Its flowers come in yellow, gold, and sometimes a touch of orange.
5. Laelia Orchid
This flower is tagged the ‘workhouse’ as it is usually crossed with other flowers because of its elegance. Belonging to the orchid family and widely cultivated as ornamentals, Laelia orchid is a flowering plant and non-parasitic epiphyte that tolerates drought and blooms from Autumn to winter.
Laelia orchid is an ornamental flower with long, glossy evergreen leaves and star-shaped flowers. It is available in white plus pink, blue-violet, and purple.
6. Baja Fairy Duster ( Calliandra Californica)
Do you know that woody shrubs can be beautiful? Fairy Duster is a woody shrub that is heat and drought-tolerant. Native to Baja California, Mexico, this flowering shrub blooms all year round. It sports fern-like medium green leaves and clusters of long red stamens.
These stamens are similar to feather dusters, hence, their names. The flower colors can be red or red-orange. It attracts bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.
7. Belize Sage (Salvia Miniata)
This plant became popular when it featured as the day’s plant on the eighteenth of September, 2015. Belize sage, also known as smooth leaf sage, misty mountain sage, and salvia, is endemic to the Belize and Mexican state of Chiapas.
It boasts red tubular flowers arranged on a long, upright stem. It’s an herbaceous perennial plant that blooms throughout the year and is very common with hummingbirds. Available in red and reddish-orange, it requires dead heading to flourish.
8. Mexican Prickly Poppy (Argemone Mexicana)
This uniquely leafed Argemone is an annual blooming plant found in Mexico, usually from spring to summer. The plant has long, alternating green leaves with ragged edges, giving it a thistle-like look with a leathery feel.
Between the leaves are white or silvery veins. Its singular flowers appear at terminals. It also boasts ovoid-shaped fruits that carry many seeds. Flower colors from cream/tan to gold/yellow to white.
9. Mexican Zinnia (Zinnia haageana)
Native to Mexico, Zinnia haageana is an annual, easy-to-grow plant in the daisy family. It carries attractive flowers on long hairy stems. This invasive plant boasts hairy, deciduous, long, and narrow green leaves.
It blooms from fall to summer and often all year round. It’s usually a yellow flower and has an orange center disk. Other hues include brown/copper, gold/yellow, orange, purple/lavender, red/burgundy, and pink.
10. Silken Pincushion Cactus (Mammillaria Bombycina)
Of the Cactaceae, Mammillaria Bombycina is a cactus endemic to Western Central Mexico. This squat, succulent plant comprises a singular or cluster of round or cylindrical cactus with white and dense spines all over its surface.
It is a beginner-friendly plant that grows with ease and blooms in spring. Above the cactus are a few flowers in deep rose pink.
11. Lyreleaf Green Eyes (Berlandiera Lyrata)
Lyreleaf green eyes are commonly known as chocolate flowers or chocolate daisies. These names are given because of their characteristics. Its leaves reminisce lyre, and its green disc, which is left after the flowers fall off due to heat, gives it an eyelike look.
It has a chocolatey scent, hence its other nicknames. The plant sports solitary deep yellow to orange flowers, each held on a long hairy stalk.
12. Yucca Flower (Yucca Baccata)
The Yucca flower was designated as the New Mexico state flower in 1927. Yucca is an edible perennial shrub or tree belonging to the family of Asparagaceae.
It is well known for its sweet scent and unique shape of evergreen sword-like leaves forming a rosette from which flower spires carrying clusters of white flowers grow. It blooms every few years and sometimes once per season under favorable conditions.
13. Chocolate Cosmos
Chocolate Cosmos is one of the rarest species of cosmos in the world. Though it is believed to be extinct, it is abundant and very popular in Mexico. This herbaceous perennial plant doesn’t stumble on its name.
It features six to ten ray flowers with center disc florets. These velvety dark red to brownish red or chocolate flowers smell like chocolate. Chocolate cosmos makes beautiful cut flowers.
14. Bromeliads
From the family of monocot plants, Bromeliad is an adaptable epiphytic plant that can live on other plants. Some bromeliads are also terrestrial.
With its colorful sword-like leaves that form a rosette around a tank used in storing water, bromeliads, specifically its tank, is home to many animals such as ostracods and salamanders. It usually produces an inflorescence towards the end of its life.
15. Mexican Lady Slipper
Endemic to the Northwestern Sonora, Mexico, and Baja peninsula, California, the Mexican lady slipper is a drought-tolerant perennial plant that belongs to the succulent species. It blooms during late spring or early summer.
The predominant feature of this plant is its name. It features a slipper-like flower on a wax-coated stem containing milky sap. The flower colors include red, orange, and yellow.
16. Creosote Bush (Larrea Tridentata)
With a slow growth rate, the Creosote bush is one of the medium-sized evergreen shrubs. It sports several clusters of compact, green leaves coated in wax.
This competitive and preservative plant faces southwest and efficiently uses resources from photosynthesis to rain and nutrients. It also boasts of small, fuzzy, yellow flowers.
17. Fallugia Paradoxa
Fallugia is a monotypic deciduous to an evergreen plant known as Apache plume and ponil. It is endemic to the northern region of Mexico with arid areas. It blooms in the spring and seldomly in fall.
It features single white flowers that look like roses. Along with its hairy leaves, it has pinkish clusters of style. It attracts valuable pollinators such as butterflies, birds, and bees.
18. Mexican Honeysuckle (Justicia Spicigera)
Mexican honeysuckle is a perennial evergreen shrub that blooms from summer to fall—also known as myrtle, firecracker bush, and muicle. This flowering plant has velvety leaves and tubular flowers in orange color.
When boiled, it takes on purple, pink, green, and orange color. It can be used for dyes, medicine, and tea. With its spicy smell, it attracts hummingbirds and symbolizes happiness.
19. Gladioli ( Gladiolus spp.)
Commonly called the sword lily or the glad, gladiolus is a perennial plant that belongs to the iris family. Its sword-like leaves appear from the underground corn with one-sided spikes carrying funnel or trumpet-shaped flowers.
With summer or early autumn as its blooming time, it comes in various sizes and brilliant hues such as white, pink, purple, red, yellow, and orange. It symbolizes sympathy and memories.
20. Coral Vine (Antigonon Leptopus)
Coral vine is an invasive and crawling flowering plant from the buckwheat family. Its other names are queen’s wreath and bee bush. It is a perennial plant native to Mexico which blooms from summer to autumn.
It is edible as it contains antioxidants. Its vine flowers in shades of pink, white, and red, as well as heart-shaped leaves, attract hummingbirds and butterflies.
21. Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia Diversifolia)
This flowering plant is beginner-friendly, easy, and fast-growing, requiring little supervision. The daisy-like flowers in red, yellow, and orange are all laced with a yellow disc. It also has tall and dark green foliage with coarse and hairy leaves taking on elliptical or triangular shapes. It is used to represent faith, loyalty, and adoration.
22. Blue Palo Verde (Parkinsonia Florida)
Blue Palo Verde means green pole or sticks in Spanish, referring to its blue-green bark that photosynthesizes. The bushy tree features multi-trunk branches and leaves that look evergreen. Its yellow-gold flowers appear in spring. In addition to the flowers, it sports cylindrical legumes.
Blue Palo Verde is a favorite of desert birds, such as hummingbirds and vermin.
23. Mexican Frangipani (Plumeria Rubra)
Plumeria is a deciduous, spreading flowering plant native to Mexico. Its local name in Mexico is cacaloxuchitl. The Plumeria tree carries alternating large green leaves and terminal white or pink-edged flowers with yellow in the center. It has a great fragrance like that of rose or citrus. It also has cylindrical pods of fruits.
24. Mexican Passion Flower (Passiflora Mexicana)
In Mexico, the passion flower is used to signify the death of Christ. It grows mostly under trees. Its unique flowers and leaves make it look adorable.
It has green flowers with a yellow central ring, five green sepals, and tiny solitary or paired filaments which can be green, light-green, yellow, corona red, or violet-purple. Its large, green leaves are uniquely bilobed. It comes with green ball-shaped fruit.
25. California Poppy
Also known as the golden poppy, Eschscholzia California, and a cup of gold, the California poppy is endemic to the southwestern United States and Mexico. It is characterized by a long stem on a four-petaled flower and gray-green foliage.
It flowers from February to September and can be annual in favorable conditions. It’s a very versatile plant that wanes immediately after it’s plucked. It’s the state flower of California.
26. Mexican Hat Flower
The Mexican hat flower stays true to its name, scientifically called Ratibida Columnifera and generally called upright prairie coneflower.
It is a perennial flowering plant that produces upright green stems and numerous, multi-lobed, light green leaves. Its hat-shaped flower is usually in shades of red and yellow. It’s easy to grow as it propagates itself by naturalizing. Additionally, it is an excellent choice for dried and cut flowers.
27. Mexican Bird Of Paradise
As a symbol of beauty and excellence, the Mexican bird of paradise is commonly called the peacock flower. It is often mistaken for other species in the same genus. It flowers in summers or all seasons, depending on the climatic conditions.
This small evergreen tree features bright red, orange, or yellow inflorescence with long brilliant red stamens. Its flowers take on a bowl-like shape, like a bird, hence its name.
28. Mexican Morning Glory (Ipomoea Tricolor)
Morning glory will glorify your gardens and flower pots with hues of gorgeous blue flowers. Its trumpet-like flowers are in a spiral arrangement. Although it is usually in blue, it also has several other colors.
It is a temporary plant that blooms for less than a day. These blooms appear from July to October. The flowers are known for their medicinal and ritualistic values. It can be used to symbolize unfulfilled love.
29. Pineapple Sage (Salvia Elegans)
Pineapple sage isn’t a pineapple; its foliage sure smells like one. Unsurprisingly, it is widely cultivated for this same reason. It is a perennial shrub in the mint family. It has long, hairy, and light-green ovate leaves.
The red, slightly opened flowers bloom late in the season and arrange themselves, having the smallest at the tip. Its scent attracts hummingbirds and butterflies. It also makes a gorgeous cut.
30. Gentian Sage (Salvia Patens)
These two-lipped beauties are what you’ll want to have in your garden. Endemic to Mexico, Gentian sage is a pest-free flowering plant that best fits in gardens, beds, borders, patios, and containers.
It has the most lively blue color and blooms from midsummer to mid-fall. It is characterized by two-lipped, showy-blue flowers that occur intermittently between ovate to triangular green leaves. It also captivates valuable pollinators.
Summary
Wonder why Mexico has many lovely flowers? Growing flowers is intrinsic to the values and culture of Mexicans. Flowers are cultivated for food, herbs, and aesthetics. Now that you know the common Mexican flowers, you don’t have to start guessing when you see them. Whether you want a pleasant scent in your home or to make your party colorful, there’s a flower for you.