I only ever grow Fuchsias in the ground. Never in hanging baskets. I would not have time to take care of them even if I had the patience.

One of my neighbors commented more than once that she never knew you could grow them in the ground. She thought they had to grow in hanging baskets. I would grin and tell her that "that's to duplicate the growing conditions in their native home in the famous 'hanging basket forests' of South America".

There actually are epiphytic Fuchsias, but the kinds grown in hanging baskets are just small shrubs that have been bred to have lax growth. It's not natural.

Landscaping Fuchsias should be upright (otherwise, the flowers would be flopping on the ground, and slugs would get them too). Someone goofed and sold me "Yolanda Frank", which sure looks like a trailing variety to me. It has not produced any shoots yet.

This afternoon I spotted a wee shoot on "Perlleine" ("string of pearls"), a wimpy little German variety that is surprisingly hardy for its lack of vigor! I keep thinking I'll lose it and back it comes.

Another one with a similar name is "Deutsche Perle" (a lot of plants bred in Germany seem to have "Perle" in their names!). No signs of life yet. It didn't get very big last year either.

Yet another no-show is "Billy Green", a triphylla type. It is one of the hardiest triphyllas--but alas still rather marginal! I am hoping for the best. It was just gorgeous last year.

All of the rest of my plants have shoots. Unfortunately I am not sure what I have anymore. The labels went missing years ago. Some of them I can recognize. Aztec has reddish leaves. It languished for years in a bad spot, and then I moved it, and it has done beautifully.

I probably have "Chillerton Beauty" and maybe "Roufus" aka "Roufus the red".

Celia Smedley is a nice one, and that one is easy to recognize (as soon as it has leaves again--ah). It's back too. Reasonably good sized flowers remind me of pink marshmellow candy.

Most of my Fuchsias are either old hybrids (but I have a few modern ones) or species. My species include F. campos-portoi. A fairly hardy Fuchsia, looking like a fine-leaved and small-flowered F. magellanica. It does not normally freeze back here, but a late frost destroyed every bud on every shoot I had. Bummer. And it is not a particularly vigorous plant either. It has never been common. I did not want to lose it.

Another one I don't want to lose, because I REALLY can't replace it, is a seedling that showed up in my garden one year, and has amazed me by never freezing back until last year due to the late frost that killed its expanding buds. It has short-tubed flowers that make me think that it is decended from Fuchsia magellanica 'Riccartonii', a particularly hardy strain of magellanica from the UK, often used as a hedge.

Although a very few American collectors have the real thing, it is VERY rare in the USA, all commercial plants under that name being a not particularly hardy strain of F. magellanica which lack the short tubes that chararcterize Riccartonii. British gardening books often used to claim that Riccartonii was the ONLY hardy Fuchsia, leading naive American growers to assume that their perfectly hardy magellanicas were Riccartonii!

Too bad, because once a plant is misidentified that way, it is almost impossible to introduce the real thing.

Another one that is almost ubiquitously misidentified, is another magellanica labelled as "lycoides". Lycoides is a very distinctive plant, native to dry subtropical scrub. Extremely rare in cultivation.

My seedling is not pure Riccartonii, but is the chance self-sown seedling of a hybrid type, probably one of the British varieties with Riccartonii as one ancestor. It was used for breeding because of its great hardiness. It "reverted" and looks very much like a wild Fuchsia.

I have several F. regias. Even they froze back, which is rare.

F. thymifolia partially froze back. It doesn't usually. It is an encycliandra type from Mexico, with tiny red blossoms that have conspicuous sepals but not much in the way of petals. The leaves are small and create the impression of "ferny" growth. It can easily hit a few meters high. Despite the tiny flowers hummingbirds do like it--as they do most Fuchsias.

F. xSpeciosa is an unusual variety with big somewhat floppy leaves, partially colored reddish-pink with a bit of blush diffusing into the leaf, and hot-pink-and-green flowers. Although it is not particularly generous with blossoms it's one of my wife's favorites, because the whole plant is colorful. It's not incredibly hardy but it does eventually come back.

I think I still have a "Rouge Cardinal". Huge red flowers.

I have others--no idea what they are. Maybe in the summer I'll post pix. Wish me luck with the ones that still haven't made new shoots.