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Callistemon 'Neon Pink' (Bottle Pop™ Neon Pink Bottlebrush) A fast-growing compact evergreen shrub to 10-15 feet tall by nearly an equal width with 1 inch long by 1/2 inch wide elliptical grayish-green leaves and bright fuchsia-pink flowers that appear much of the year with a peak in the warmer months.
Plant in full sun in a well-drained soil and irrigate occasionally to infrequently - tolerant of little supplemental summer water once established. As with other bottle brush it can be pruned to shape or to keep denser growing and is good as an accent plant, hedging plant or as a container specimen. It is attractive to bees and butterflies and can be used for a short life cut flower. This plant has a very similar colored flower to Callistemon 'Jeffers' but is a bit more compact growing with shorter broader leaves and shorter flower clusters.
The genus was named using the Greek words 'kallos' meaning "beautiful" and 'stemon' meaning "stamens" in reference to the long conspicuous and colorful stamens that characterize the flowers of this genus. Melaleuca and Callistemon have long been noted as closely related and separated on the basis that Callistemon stamens were free and those of Melaleuca were in bundles. In 2006, using DNA evidence, Australian botanist Dr. Lyndley Alan Craven of the Australian National Herbarium reclassified nearly all species of Callistemon as Melaleuca noting that Callistemon was insufficiently distinct from Melaleuca. For more information about this see our more detailed discussion about this name change on our Callistemon citrinus entry. Though this change makes this plant's name Melaleuca 'Neon Pink', until such time that the new names have broad recognition in the California nursery trade, we will still refer to these plants as Callistemon. We only sold this plant from 2015 to 2016 from plants originally received from the now closed EuroAmerican Propagators nursery as a trial crop.
This information about Callistemon 'Neon Pink' displayed is based on research conducted in our horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We also will relate observations made about it as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we receive from others and we welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they can share any cultural information that would aid others in growing it.
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