Ixora?

post this in the rose discussion forum it gets more traffic

I added very little perlite to the mix for this plant since I was putting it into a clay pot, so it's mostly regular potting soil. I added a little peat moss and vermiculite like I always do to the mix. I usually start out plants in containers with a little osmocote plus mixed into the soil mix, and for general fertilizer I've used fish emulsion for this one. I generally fertilize my potted plants at least twice a month depending on the plant (I stop fertilizing June thru August since most new foliage that is grown fast will just burn in those months). Right now my plant is just coming out of dormancy so it's not much to look at but I'll show you a pic so you can kind of see how wide it gets: For reference, each square of that path is 1 foot, and I had taken off some of the branches that went further out because I figured they were dead but I found green in the middle so they might have been okay. If you look closely you can see the new branches forming. Last year it started the branches a little bit later than this so I guess it's improving a little bit. Wow I didn't know it got that cold there. The coldest I've seen here was 19 degrees F a few years ago, but I had protected everything really well that night. It's a good idea to let it stay in a container the first year. I'd just use a 2 or 3 gallon container and make sure you plant it's top root just below the soil line. A lot of times nurseries add soil around the base of a plant to protect it and people think that's where they need to plant it at. I think I want to eventually plant this into the ground as well, but I'm not sure how much I like the whole "dormant until May" thing. :) I'll probably wait another year or so and see how it reacts to a warmer winter under the patio. Hopefully we're not hijacking this thread.. I would put all this into a new post but I've already put it down here :)

I didn't guess the two shrubs I asked about were the same (but with different flower colors). The overall appearance is so different and I thought the leaves were very different. When I went out to see if I believed your answer, I saw each of these two shrubs has two distinctly different leaf types. The smaller, darker, more curved leaves are dissimilar enough between the two plants that I wouldn't guess same (and neither looks to me similar to the long, thin, curved dark green leaves in online Azalea photos. But the slightly larger lighter green leaves that are a large majority of leaves on the red flowering shrub are a perfect match for the leaves that are a small minority on the white flowering shrub. The flower shapes match each other (and online photos of Azalea). I just didn't know how common that flower shape is. Having two very distinct leaf types seems to be a feature these two plants share distinct from many other shrub types. I'll try to find older photos to check, the smaller darker leaves may be just older, or maybe specifically cold adapted. Do existing leaves shrink in the cold? Or do leaves that start growing in the cold end up smaller than leaves that start when it is warmer? I don't even recall whether these shrubs kept some leaves all winter or not.