Sprinkled across the country in a dozen or so sites, this garden escape is a most handsome semi-evergreen shrub that grows to approximately 5 metres. It has rather stiff, spreading branches on the tips of which it bears dense spherical clusters of small, tubular, 4-lobed, yellow-orange flowers, resembling little golf balls. These flowers are sweet-scented. They flower from May to August. The leaves are opposite, lanceolate and wrinkled, darker green above and much lighter colour below. The bark of the shrub is grey and fissured. An introduced species, Orange-ball-tree belongs to the Figwort or Scrophulariaceae family.
I spotted this lovely, elegant shrub in a hedgerow at Ardgroom in County Cork in May 2018 when I also photographed it.
If you are satisfied you have correctly identified this plant, please submit your sighting to the National Biodiversity Data Centre
