The shrimp plant earns the name honestly. What looks like a flower is a drooping chain of overlapping bracts, coppery bronze or soft pink, curved and segmented exactly like the shell of a shrimp, with the real flower a small white tongue slipping out from between them. The display goes on for months, and hummingbirds work the bracts steadily.

Justicia brandegeana comes out of Mexico and is grown across the Gulf South as a perennial that dies to the ground in a hard winter and returns, and further north as a container plant that carries on flowering indoors. Give the plants part shade, ordinary soil, and a pinch in spring for a fuller frame. In a border they are the reliable long-season filler; in a pot beside a door they are a small ongoing entertainment.