Lantana is a common, vigorous flowering shrub cultivated for its long blooming season and attractive, multi-colored flowers. People often search for “seed pods,” but the structure that holds the seeds is technically a small, fleshy fruit known botanically as a drupe. Understanding how to identify this fruit is important for gardeners and homeowners.
Visual Identification of the Lantana Fruit
The fruit of the Lantana camara species is a small, berry-like drupe that develops in tight, spherical clusters. These clusters form immediately behind the spent flower heads. The individual fruits are nearly round and quite small, typically measuring only 2 to 4 millimeters in diameter.
The skin of the mature fruit is glossy, giving the cluster a shiny appearance. When fully ripe, the color is generally a dark, intense shade of purple or a deep, glossy black. This dark coloration makes the clusters highly visible against the green foliage and is intended to attract birds, which are the primary dispersers of the seeds.
Each small drupe contains a single, hard seed. Some modern, sterile cultivars of Lantana have been bred to minimize or eliminate fruit production. However, most common or wild types will produce these distinct, clustered berries throughout the growing season.
The Fruit Development Timeline
Fruit development begins immediately after the individual flowers within the flower head are successfully pollinated. The bright, tubular flowers, which often change color from yellow to orange or red as they age, eventually wither and drop away. The remaining base of the flower cluster then begins to swell into small, firm green fruits.
At this immature stage, the green fruits are small and hard, often blending in with the surrounding stems and foliage. They require a period of maturation, during which they increase in size and begin to soften. As they ripen, the color transitions from light green to a darker hue, often passing through stages of metallic blue or dark purple before reaching the final black coloration.
Because Lantana shrubs bloom continuously, it is common to find flowers, immature green fruits, and fully ripened black drupe clusters simultaneously on the same plant. This continuous cycle of flowering and fruiting is a characteristic feature of the plant. The presence of these dark, ripe fruits indicates that the plant has completed its reproductive cycle for that specific flower cluster.
Important Safety Considerations
Identifying Lantana fruit is important because the berries contain toxic compounds. The entire plant, including the leaves, stems, and flowers, is considered poisonous, but the fruit poses the greatest risk, especially to children and pets. This danger is primarily due to the concentration of pentacyclic triterpenoid compounds, known as lantadenes, within the plant tissue.
The highest concentration of lantadenes is found in the unripe, green berries, making them significantly more dangerous than the mature, black fruits. Ingestion can lead to severe gastrointestinal distress, including vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. More serious symptoms can include liver damage, jaundice, neurological issues, or rapid heartbeat.
The appealing, clustered appearance of the fruit can tempt curious children and animals, requiring vigilance when Lantana is present. Livestock, such as cattle and sheep, are also highly susceptible to Lantana poisoning, experiencing liver toxicity and photosensitization after consuming the foliage. Therefore, if Lantana is grown, it should be placed in areas inaccessible to pets and small children, and any green, unripe fruit should be treated with caution.