This beautiful mock-orange with solitary, pendent flowers and tiny leaves comes from the Madrid Mountains of Texas and adjacent parts of Mexico. I was given a plant a few years ago by Hugh McAllister of the University of Liverpool, as a 'species from Mexico', but had not been able to identify it - my usual source for such information, Sean Hogan, obliged yesterday. It has a very strong scent - one flower perfumes a room, but this is curiously less noticeable in the garden. It has now survived two hard winters, becoming deciduous (it would normally be semi-evergreen), but coming back into growth in late spring and flowering prolifically now.
How wonderful - I hope we see it on a sales table! Is it the same one, I wonder, which I saw in a garden in Devon, near Buckland Abbey, and which I was told was p. mexicanus? It too was wonderfully scented - but aren't they all - I have made a half-hearted attempt at finding it (half hearted as there are so many other things I want...!)
ReplyDeleteSorry, no it isn't - having googled both plants which I should have done in the first place, I see they are different - and the one I saw had much larger leaves. Even so, it was a stunner, and its scent was all over the garden. Yours too is a stunner - I shall keep an eye out for both of them...I 'collect' philadelphus.
ReplyDeleteJune and John, the Philadelphus June saw in Devon may have been P. maculatus. Hilliers has just introduced a selection of P. maculatus called "Sweet Clare" Try Googling P. maculatus and you will get a number of hits
ReplyDeleteHere are links for the pictures and descriptions of the "Sweet Clare" form of P maculatus that Hilliers just announced in England.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/chelseaflowershow/7764785/Chelsea-Flower-Show-2010-pick-of-the-new-plants.html?image=2
http://www.hillieronline.co.uk/products/seasonal-offers/philadelphus-maculatus-sweet-clare.html
http://www.hilliergardencentres.co.uk/chelsea17.php
"Forgive the lateness of my reply."
ReplyDeletePhiladelphus madrensis is from the Sierra Madre in Mexico. The holotype is in Kew, Seeman 2167, specimen can be viewed on the searchable database.
I've been trying to find information about this little mockorange that made it through Denver's awful winter (so far,anyway), and this is what I found.
The new proposed combination is P. microphyllus var. madrensis.