Tuesday 16 March 2010

Eranthis cultivars









Eranthis hyemalis, the Winter Aconite, is one of the most welcome sights of early spring, enlivening the garden with its typically bright yellow flowers. In some places here at Colesbourne they are still fresh and in full beauty, which is remarkable in mid-March. In other areas they are beginning to fade, however.

Along with a few other galanthophiles I have a collection of different forms of Eranthis hyemalis, some of which are illustrated here. At the top, just coming into full beauty, is an extraordinary clone in which the anthers are replaced by foliose structures, rather as they are in some Japanese Hepatica cultivars - an as-yet unnamed rarity very kindly shared with me by a friend last year. Several doubles are now known, of which Joe Sharman's selection 'Lady Lamortagne' is much finer than the more frequently seen 'Noel Ayres' (not illustrated). 'Orange Glow', when fresh, is a particularly rich orangy-yellow. It comes true from seed - my plants are derived from some seed kindly sent by Mat Murray from Australia. Conversely there are several seed-raised selections in which the flower colour is paler than average. 'Zitronenfalter' (not illustrated) is a German selection with lemon-yellow flowers, and is not very distinguishable from 'Lightning', shown here, which was found in an old garden in Philadelphia by Carol Lim some years ago. It comes more or less true from seed, but darker versions need to be rogued out, and it also has the pleasant habit of sometimes producing doubles in the same colour. My favourite of the paler aconites is 'Schwefelglanz', also from Germany. It opens a rich soft apricot (penultimate picture) and fades through straw to ivory as sen in the final image.

5 comments:

  1. Oh, wow, thank you for this post. Eranthis is one of my very favourite, probably because it is so early and it is very common in my native Denmark. But I have never seen doubles and the green one at the top, WHOA!!!
    Lene

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  2. Thank you very nice post I love those flower, but the only ones i've seen to sell are eranthis hyemalis, eranthis cecilica and Eranthis pinnatifida. I wish I could have doubles or orange glow. Where can I get these?

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  3. I have some Orange Glow, Flore Plena, Grünling and Schwefelglanz available.
    Contact me if you're interested
    wilko123[at]hotmail[dot]com

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  4. I just love the Winter Aconite, it's so beautiful and I think we need more blogs like this one with this kind of contents because it's all about new species and I have been collecting flowers at home but it's a good idea to investigated it.

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  5. This is so beautiful, I like to see the wonders the nature offers us, I want to plant those flowers at home because it would be perfect to fill my garden with color.

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