over the garden fence

Sinningia leucotricha

Among many good plants currently flowering in my parents' garden is this outstanding plant of Sinningia leucotricha. I don't think I've ever seen a specimen of this species looking so good, with so many shoots in perfect condition.

This is a Brazilian plant and is often given the English name Brazilian edelweiss, on account of its densely silvery-hairy leaf rosettes, which give an edelweiss-ish look as they emerge, but I learn from an online search that its Brazilian name is Rainha do Abismo, Queen of the Abyss. This ominous-sounding name presumably comes from its natural habitat of cliff faces in the state of Parana. Although many members of its family (Gesneriaceae) are generally thought to like equable moist conditions, an equally large proportion are very well adapted to seasonally dry conditions in various ways. Some, like the sinningias and their relatives, have a tuber that may be subterranean or at least partially exposed (just visible in the lower image here), while others have the capacity to lose moisture from their foliage without causing irreparable damage and then rehydrate when moist conditions return. Such 'poikilohydry' is evident in even European gesneriads such as Ramonda and Jancaea, which can become very wizened on their rocks, but is also common in the familiar African houseplant genera Saintpaulia and Streptocarpus. In Sinningia leucotricha the large tuber (or caudex, as succulent enthusiasts would call it) will tide the plant through awkward periods of drought on its cliffs, even in the growing season, while the hairy leaves are also an adaptation to a potentially dry habitat.

The red tubular flowers indicate that in the wild they would be pollinated by hummingbirds. After they fade the foliage expands and becomes considerably larger and less silvery. It persists through the summer, then each shoot is shed from the tuber as a unit, leaving the tuber to sit out the winter as a naked carapace. The pot is stored cool & dry under a bench in the conservatory, being brought out and watered when growth starts in spring. I would not describe it as being hardy, but I have heard of plants tolerating a light frost if dry in dormancy. The plant is best propagated from its minute seeds: they need care but will grow quite quickly and soon form a small tuber.

Late frost at Wisley

I was at Wisley again yesterday and amid all the spring splendours it was sad to see the damage done to many new shoots of both woody and herbaceous plants by the frost last Wednesday. We had a touch of frost here too, but it seems to have been colder in the London area (or perhaps plants there were further advanced and thus more vulnerable), causing this sort of damage. This picture shows the same Cornus controversa 'Candlelight as I featured on 29 April.

Fairy Foxglove

Erinus alpinus, the Fairy Foxglove, is in full flower now on the walls of the old kitchen garden at Colesbourne Park. It is the only indication left of the once famous collection of alpine plants grown by Henry John Elwes, evading competition by escaping into the mortar of the walls.

Two good early perennials

As the bulb season comes towards its close the larger herbaceous plants begin to make more impact in the garden. These two are favourites of mine, though both have relatively short seasons and slightly difficult aftermaths.

The cranesbill came to me from the Garden House in Devon, where it has been grown as Geranium libani x peloponnesiacum. Fortuitously, just after I'd finished this piece, Matt Bishop called and I was able to ask him about it. He tells me that this is indeed the parentage and that it is one of Alan Bremner's multitudinous Geranium hybrids and has now been given the cultivar name 'Solitaire'. As the pictures show it is a floriferous plant, producing many flowering stems up to 50 cm or so tall above the mound of foliage. The flowers are a soft lavender blue with darker veins. It seems tolerant of a range of conditions, though is probably at its best when a bit starved and thus kept compact. It emerges in late winter here (possibly earlier in milder gardens) does its thing now and then rather quickly dies down and becomes dormant for the rest of the year. This is unfortunate, as a large patch does leave quite a gap; you can't plant anything over the dense rhizomes, so the classic solution is to let something flop over the empty space, but 'what?' is always the question. In the cottage garden my clump has been infiltrated by the stolons of the vigorous grass Bromus inermis 'Skinner's Gold'. The result is rather attractive, suggesting a cranesbill in a meadow, while the grass will develop more as the Geranium dies down.

The aftermath of the next plant, Thermopsis chinensis, is less troublesome, but not ideal. It flowers now, on unbranched stems, but later becomes quite bushy with the pods hidden amongst the foliage. The plant looks alright until about August, then becomes tired-looking and really needs to be cut away then if grown in a tidy sort of place. Curiously, Thermopsis chinensis does not appear in any of my standard references on perennials, though the Plant Finder lists a couple of nurseries that stock it. The plants at Colesbourne Park, where it is currently a lovely feature in the main border, were grown from seed I brought from Holland: we grew it as a crop when I worked for Sahin. I believe the stock originated with the very useful China National Tree Seed Corporation and it seems to fit the description for the species in Flora of China. It is a classic soft-yellow Thermopsis and I like the effect of the flowers above the dark stems and slightly pewtered leaves. Best of all, it is a solid clump-former, so does not run about as some of its kin do.

Seeng the pictures in close proximity like this suggests that here is an ideal combination for the border, with a late-developing plant in between to occupy the site in late summer.

Dryopteris affinis 'Revolvens'

A beautiful bunch of tulips

This beautiful bunch of tulips was the gift yesterday of a lunch guest, Sue Dickinson - an exquisitely satisfying blend of yellows and creams. The deeper yellow, fringed tulip is 'Maja', the paler single late is 'Maureen'. A combination to remember!