Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

Butterfly Bush, BUDDLEJA DAVIDII, flowers & leaves

from the February 26, 2012 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins; limestone bedrock; elevation ~39m (~128ft), N20.675°, W88.569°; central Yucatán state, MÉXICO
BUDDLEJA BUTTERFLY BUSH

Occasionally around here you see much-branched, dense, ten-ft-tall (3m) bushes with dense clusters of reddish, four-lobed corollas such as those shown above. A side view of an inflorescence showing the flowers having long tubes, and the leaf undersurfaces to be white with soft, cobwebby hairs is shown below:

Butterfly Bush, BUDDLEJA DAVIDII, flowers from side, and hairy leaf undersurface

A longitudinal section of a flower showing stamens inserted at the corolla tube's throat is seen below:

Butterfly Bush, BUDDLEJA DAVIDII, flower longitudinal section showing stamens arising at corolla tube throat

The most common English name for this plant is Butterfly Bush, but that's a name applied to any number of other plants as well. It's the genus Buddleja, sometimes written as Buddleia, nowadays placed in the Snapdragon Family, the Scrophulariaceae.

I suspect that our pictured plant is one of many cultivars of BUDDLEJA DAVIDII, native to central China, or maybe it's a hybrid between Buddleja davidii and other species. Buddleja davidii is the most popularly cultivated Buddleja species. In fact, you might enjoy doing an image search on "Buddleja davidii" just to feast your eyes on the flowers of such cultivars as 'Royal Red,' 'Black Knight,' 'Sungold,' 'Buzz,' 'Lo & Behold' and 'Pink Delight.'