HOW OLD DOES YOUR ALPINE GROW ?

[Lvandelft]

When I last week in a friends garden in Switzerland this Draba
saw, hanging out of a tufa wall, and my friend told me that this was
planted in 1958, I thought it might be an interesting Forum topic to
see how long can survive in Forumists gardens.

Here one pics of Draba bryoides Imbricata and one with a detail of the root.

Very interesting I found that amateur growers sometimes asked how  the gardener managed
to grow  this plant on the 'stick'.   

[Gerdk]

Luit - apart from the age of the plant, very impressive pics - a desirable tufa wall!
Always something to learn here - I never noticed that large rootstock on Draba.

Gerd

[David Shaw]

Gerd, Isn't Draba normally a scree plant in the wild. Typical scree plants have there roots in a growing medium deep within the scree but as more gravel and rock comes tumbling down from the mountain side above the plant has to keep on growing through the rubble, hence to long tap root.
We would not normally notice this in the garden because we tend to grow our plants on a flat surface with a limited amount of grit round the neck of the plant.

[Lvandelft]

What I forgot to tell, is that my friend told that his children were making
sand cakes on the cushion when they were little.
They are now around 40 years.
Maybe that's why the cushion came out of the wall.

[hadacekf]

My Draba-rigida-ssp.-bryoides is 25 years old.

[johanneshoeller]

Some of my Cypripedium calceolus are older than 50 years. Maybe 100 years because my grandfather, borne 1880, and then my father, born 1922, grew them in the Alpinum.

[Lvandelft]

Seemingly only on the Continent, in Central Europe, plants are growing old....

Franz, your Draba is a very good doër, because I think that such cushion plants in
a garden, often soon are forming a ring, like Silene, Dryas etc. on high places.

Hans, I never knew that Cyps. would get so old. But of course in nature there are seen
often very big plants, so they must be old too.

In my place I started plantings after 1975, but there are still some plants alive from that time.
There is a Gentiana angustifolia Typ Frei, still flowering every year (on sealevel Zero!)
and also a Cytisus purpureus Grigna, which is beautiful, staying about 25 cm. and rich flowering every year.

Servus, both!

[johanneshoeller]

Here is my oldest Cyp. calceolus (older then 50 years).

[Lvandelft]

Here is my oldest Cyp. calceolus (older then 50 years).

That IS a plant Hans! Looking forward a picture when flowering??

When I was Saturday in Utrecht Bot. Garden, I saw a young Draba with the same "hanging"
system like the plant in Switzerland.
Here is a picture.

[ian mcenery]

Here are a few plants in this large lump of tufa that are up to 30 years old including the Ramonda just visible on the left (north facing). All flower and grow slowly like they do in their natural habitat. Others grown in more tradional ways don't last as long with me

[Lesley Cox]

Ian you're very fortunate to have the saxes so long. It would seen grass grubs, vine weevils and cutworms aren't keen on tufa. Nothing for the eggs of the parents to bury into I suppose.