Frangipani Flower Colours
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, the frangipani rubra is the most common species of frangipani in Australia. There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of flower colour variations within the rubra species. If you look at a frangipani flower from a distance, it will most likely appear to be either yellow, orange, red or pink.
Our Flower Categories
If a frangipani flower usually starts with all yellow before fading to white in the sun, we call it a yellow. If a flower starts with a white flower with yellow in the centre and looks cream from a distance, we call it a white. We sometimes include blue frangipani flowers and purple frangipani flowers with the pinks and often separate dark pinks from soft pinks.
Rubra Flowers
Even though “rubra” means red in Latin, the Frangipani rubra species is responsible for almost all of the beautiful frangipani flower variations. If you look at the below colour wheel, you can see that the frangipani flower colour spectrum spreads around from the purple to the yellow with the red sitting in the middle.
Frangipani Flower Fragrance
Almost all frangipani rubra flowers have strong scents. We believe its only worthwhile keeping a frangipani with a mild scent if it’s a special flower or unique frangipani species. Different colour flowers have different scents. Frangipani scents are sometimes fruity like peach or citrus and sometimes like other flowers like jasmine or gardenia. The strength of the emitted fragrance varies greatly depending on other factors such as weather and time of day. The best way to compare frangipani scents is to have more than one frangipani in your own yard.
I’m interested in buying a frangipani with an orange flower. What are the options? Which ones do you recommend?
Hi Darren. Let me start by saying most orange looking frangipani flowers are actually pink and yellow when looked at from a close distance. As described on this page, our eyes see orange when red and yellow or pink and yellow are merged. Pure orange frangipani flowers are quite rare. The one I like the most is called Apricot.
The most common orange flower is the fruit salad which is has yellow and pink bands and has some white which increases as the flower fades in the sun. This orange, pink and white appearance is the reason it’s also called the Tricolour frangipani. Other frangipani flowers also get called Tricolour but the Fruit Salad frangipani is the most common. The Cooktown Sunset is another orange tricolour but it has a darker or redder pink and a darker or more orange-like yellow.