It was a perfect summer for growing pansies, so why were my ‘Ultima Morpho’ plants such duds? ‘Ultima Morpho’ is named after a blue and yellow Costa Rican butterfly, and the flowers are very fetching:
This cultivar is an AAS winner and a Fleuroselect Gold Medal winner, so it definitely has street cred. And it’s one of the most heat-tolerant pansies available. I’ve grown ‘Ultima Morpho’ in the past and I was always impressed by how it continued to bloom throughout the summer no matter how beastly our temperatures got. Pansies are cool-weather annuals and many of them poop out once the temperatures climb.
My plants started out fine. They were some of the first annuals to start flowering, but as summer wore on they got buried by their neighbors. Some of them even turned brown and started to shrivel.
This summer we only reached the 90s twice—once in July and once in August. I can’t remember a summer when there have been so many gorgeous, 70-degree days. It should have been a pansy utopia, but not in my yard.
I’m not ready to give up on this plant, but I’m not particularly pleased with it right now either. I do love the near-blue color in the flowers and those funky purple whiskers.
‘Ultima Morpho’ grows 6 to 10 inches tall in full sun to part-shade. Hopefully my latest experience is just an anomaly.