Some Fuchsia 'NIghtfire'

Tuesday, April 01, 2025
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Fuchsia ‘Firecracker’ has stopped cracking most of its fire in the Pacific Northwest. An interestingly variegated sport of ‘Thalia’, the cultivar was originally dubbed ‘John Ridding’ after its finder. It was introduced commercially under the more attention-seeking name of ‘Firecracker’.

About five or six years ago, I noticed something odd about the batches being sold in nurseries in the PNW. Nestled in among the colorful exuberance was sometimes a partial reversion to its parent that lacked much of distinctive flashes of white and pink that characterized its parent. The leaves are still variegated but subtly so.

I’ve been watching this reversion spread. Over time, I was seeing it a lot. Slowly it’s become more and more prominent due the sloppy collection of cutting material in commercial greenhouse production. I visited a few nurseries over the weekend and not a single individual in these batches is actually the true ‘Firecracker’.

In fact you’d be more and more hard pressed to find the real cultivar in the PNW anymore. The takeover seems almost complete. It’s not unattractive but it’s not ‘Firecracker’. I’ve taken to calling it Fuchsia ‘Night Fire’.

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