Plant Name

Scientific Name: Medinilla magnifica

Common Names: Rose Grape, Showy Medinilla, Malaysian Orchid, Chandelier Tree, Kapa-kapa

Plant Characteristics

Duration: Perennial, Evergreen

Growth Habit: Shrub

Hawaii Native Status: Introduced. This naturalized ornamental garden plant is native to the Philippines.

Flower Color: Pink

Height: Up to 8 feet (2.5 m) tall

Description: The numerous, small flowers are in large, up to 18 inch (46 cm) long, pink, pendent panicles with distinctive, large, whorled, pale pink, petal-like bracts. The individual flowers have 5 pink, egg-shaped petals. The flowers are followed by grape-like clusters of small, pink ripening to purple berries. The leaves are large, up to 1 foot (30 cm) long, glossy dark green, leathery, deeply veined, sessile, opposite, and oblong to egg-shaped. The stems are square in cross section. The plants grow as either shrubs on the ground or as epiphytes on trees.

Here in Hawaii, Rose Grape is mostly a cultivated tropical plant, but it is increasingly becoming naturalized in humid, wet to mesic (moderately wet) windward areas on Oahu and the Big Island.

Classification

Kingdom: Plantae – Plants
Subkingdom: Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
Superdivision: Spermatophyta – Seed plants
Division: Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
Class: Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
Subclass: Rosidae
Order: Myrtales
Family: Melastomataceae – Melastome family
Genus: Medinilla Gaudich. – medinilla
Species: Medinilla magnifica Lindl. – showy medinilla