Podophyllum Kaleidoscope

[Thorkild Godsk]

Podophyllum Kaleidoscope.
One I have in the garden, I think it's a fine plant.
Podophyllum Kaleidoscope hybrid delavayi x difforme
Thorkild. DK

[Lesley Cox]

It is indeed a fine plant Thorkild, and rather like the horribly named 'Spotty Dotty.' Both will grow to almost a metre in height if they are cool and moist in a humusy soil, part shade. The flowers too are beautiful though the scent is rather overpowering. I don't know for sure but they probably have the same parents.

[Tim Ingram]

My plant of 'Kaleidoscope'  is quite young and about half that height. It would be magnificent to see it reaching a metre - the markings are even more striking than 'Spotty Dotty'. Fine plants, both of them.

[Lesley Cox]

At our local "Rhododendron Day" sale at the Botanic Gardens in late October, (RD is a gathering of all the local growers who maybe have small back door nurseries or just raise a few plants to eke out their income and the public support it well because many rare and different plants are available in small numbers, which maybe would never be offered otherwise) an almost local but very large nursery was present for the first time. This caused some consternation among us little blokes as we saw our own event being overtaken and our precious market being lost to the big guys. It will be interesting to see what happens next year). ANYWAY, the big nursery had maybe 100 large plants on display of Pod. 'Kaleidoscope,' raised from tissue culture. In the morning they were superb but later in the day a strong gusty wind came up and the huge leaves were torn and shattered. They had been raised and protected in a tunnel or glasshouse and were quite tender.They will come away of course but better to have raised them in the open or at least hardened them off before the sale. Probably half had been sold before the wind.

I should say that the big nursery is probably the best in the country for rhodos, trees and many other things and it's owners (a family) are the nicest and most generous people imaginable as well as Papa being hugely knowledgeable about trees and rhodos especially. They're good friends but just weren't expected at our little event. Rhododendron Day is the kick-off to Dunedin's annual Rhododendron Festival, a big tourist and garden event here in the city.

[Tim Ingram]

Lesley, I can sympathise with your comments about tissue cultured plants and bigger nurseries - there has been the same tendency in the UK over the past decade or more, with specialist nurseries often becoming more in thrall to the mass production of plants, somewhat against their principles. Most of the plants sold at AGS Shows are so specialised that they are still grown by smaller growers, but if nurseries such as Aberconwy, Blackthorn and Pottertons (long established and highly respected growers) were not bringing plants to the Shows these would be greatly compromised. The big thing is to get more gardeners excited by the unusual and different, and a more long term view of gardening. We should try something similar to your RD sale locally near us - there are more thoughts of doing this amongst local growers.