Pulsatilla nn

[Egon27]

Can someone help identify this Pulsatilla? The leaves are similar to Pulsatilla vernalis, half evergreen, flowers larger and on high stems.

Egon

[Armin]

Hi Egon,

a lovely pulsatilla. I'm by far not a pulsatilla specialist but it looks like a P. patens to me.
How look the leaves in summer when fully developed?

Can you tell us more about the origin of the plant and the growing conditions?

[Egon27]

Hi Armin,

This is not Pulsatilla patens. Leaves are other, similar to P. vernalis. Blooms later, simultaneously with the leaves. I grow it from  - seed mix for some [?] botanical garden. I think maybe this is a crossword P. chinensis?

Egon

[Tim Ingram]

When I first saw this picture (extremely beautiful) I too thought it Pulsatilla patens - the leaves look very similar to a form of this species I have grown from wild collected seed from N. America. I wonder if Olga or Susann would have any thoughts? Information on its source would be valuable; my (hazy) recollection of reading about P. chinensis is that the leaves are broadly cut but larger than vernalis and patens.

[Susann]

Dear Egon and others,
Maggi just sent me this link ( As if I would be an expert...I am far from it, but very interested in the genus). To me it looks like a normal P patens? It comes in many different colors, depending of the geographical origin.

Sorry to say that it is certainly not P chinensis, or a hybrid of it.  It looks totally different with very small flowers, and is very big comparing to P patens.  Its seedhead is also completely different, I am quite sure you would have caught your attention so you would have described it for us? P chinensis has hanging seeds unlike almost all the other Pulsatillas.

When I look at the picture it looks to me as the P vernalis leaves are coming into the picture from a plant that is closer to us but not visable in the picture? ( Look where the tip and the stalk of the old evergreen leaves are?) The plant has new leaves coming, but it it a little too early on the picture to say what they would look like when fully developed. P patens usually has its leaves coming when in flower, and has a lot of different shapes of the leaves.

There is a beautiful natural cross of P vernalis and P patens, quite frequent in Finland, that has the same beautiful color as your picture, but the leaves normally are less divided than the ones that are developing at your picture, and evergreen. It does not look like your plant has evergreen leaves, just as they happen to be in the frame of the picture?

Anyway, thank you for having me look at the very beautiful picture and a happy ending and good and interesting 2014 to all of you; Tim, Armin, Egon and Maggi. Tim, please tell me how the plants you got last spring are doing?

[ChrisB]

Which all goes to prove you are an expert, Susann.... anyone who knows more than me is an expert what ever the subject....

About half the plants I bought are surviving for me, the best are the saxes I got at Jiri's.  A number I should never have attempted, others have surprised me.  All my witches brooms are doing very well indeed...

Happy New gardening year to you too

xxx

[Egon27]

Hi,
Thanks for all. I cultivate Pulsatilla already 35 years and I have a lot of species and varieties. This found NN is not  P. patens. I found a leaf [see photo], and you can see the difference.
Greetings,
happy New Year

Egon

[Tim Ingram]

Egon - these are patens (on the left - deciduous) and vernalis on the right from my garden. Your plant looks as though it could be a hybrid between the two as Susann suggests - presumably any such hybrids wiil show variation in leaf characteristics. I've only grown the one form of patens so I don't know how much this varies naturally, but such a geographically widespread species must be very variable - the leaf on my plant is certainly very different from yours. It raises the question of whether seed from this plant breeds true or results in variable progeny that would tend to segregate to putative vernalis and patens parents? Hard to tell without knowing the original site of the seed collection.

[Egon27]

Hi, Tim
Unfortunately I do not remember where this Pulsatilla was around in my garden. I collect a lot of their own seeds and other get out of the botanical gardens. All sows and blow in  the garden. This may be a crossword P. patens x P. vernalis. In the garden grow side by side. In the NN collected seeds and sowed immediately. Now, there are a few young seedlings. I do not know what will be the flowers.
Greetings

Egon

[Susann]

Thank you Egon for showing the picture of a mature leave of the plant. I agree with you, it looks like a P vernalis leave. When P patens and P vernalis crosses in nature it seems like they always get evergreen vernalis leaves and big light colored upward looking flowers that has like "floating" petals. So, if you are sure that leave is from your NN plant I would agree on the idea that it is a hybrid patens x vernalis. It really does not matter where in the garden the parent plants grow, only if they have mature pollen and pistils in the same time. The nice insects move all over and they do not care where they leave the pollen. Which makes life much more enjoyable to us.

Tim, unfortunally as usual you use such a difficult way of "speaking" so I can not really be sure I understand what you wrote in your last post. Sorry. (I follow you until the very last sentence "tend to segregate to putative vernalis and patens parents?..." ) Could you please translate it to Swenglish?

[Susann]

Chris, I forgot to comment about your sucess with your Czech plants. Congratulations! I do not know how mine are doing or what the poor things are thinking about me. They were repotted in 7 cm x 7 cm pots and had to spend the whole summer and autumn unattended as I was away so much enjoying myself with other alpines. But last time I saw them most of them were alive. I got very surprised and happy. I covered them just before Christmas as it seems that the rain will never stop. We only had a good snowcover for very few days but now it is well above zero. We are experiencing the warmest winter since I do not know when. My plan for next year is to buy only conifers as I will travel with a bus and can bring "big" things back.

[Egon27]

Thank You, Susann
I have not heard of crossword P.vernalis x P.patens. Is it possible? . I will continue to sow the seeds of my Pulsatilla. In the garden I have also my own bees so help me do interesting crossword.

Greetings
 Egon

[Susann]

Egon,

yes, there is a natural cross between the species, but as far as I know it does not have a name. It is not unusual in southern Finland, and as i wrote very very beautiful. I have not any pictures of my own, but will have next year, so I can not publish any here. But I have publish one before in the Pulsatilla thread, which I think is called "Pulsatilla 2013". There is also a very beautiful cross between P patens and p pratensis, P x hackelii that has the pratensis color and style with nodding flowers, but with sweeping petals.

You can easily help your bees with a small brush or the sticks with cotton used to clean your ears. Just remember that the pistills are ready to recieve pollen before the pollen is mature at an individual flower, to help prevent self-pollinating. Good luck, we would love to see pictures of the result.

I checked my 2013 Pulsatilla sowings today and found several seedlings coming up through the leaves covering them. This winter is really unusual. I decided to bring the pots in and let them wake up fully under the nursery lamps.

[Tim Ingram]

I will try some Swenglish! The idea of seedlings segregating back to the parental types is the result of genetics. So a hybrid between two distinct species (like vernalis and patens) will tend to be consistent and uniform and show characteristics of both parents. If the species are very different then it may not be fertile, but if it is then the resulting seedlings from the hybrid will tend to vary a lot and show characteristics more similar to the two parental types than the initial hybrid. So this could be a good test of whether a plant is a hybrid or not, though in my experience there is a lot more variation in many plants grown from wild seed than most gardeners would appreciate (who just buy them as single plants or read about them from photographs). In the wild, if you get hybridisation naturally, there will tend to be quite a mix of plants resulting, but often many of the hybrids will have less vigour than the wild adapted species and die out. In some plants, like celmisias in New Zealand, there is so much variation that they can be thought of as actively 'evolving' (but these are isolated and the NZ mountains are young geologically speaking). This is why it would be so interesting to know about the natural variation that occurs in any particular place and how this might compare with other places. For the gardener we tend to pick out the most striking and dramatic plants, which Egon's certainly looks like - it would be a beautiful thing to have in the garden.

[Egon27]

This my Pulsatilla NN had 5 flowers but gave very few seeds. Germination  only 3 seeds, and now I have 3 young seedlings. I will cherish them and waiting to see  flowers. I'm very curious.

Egon