Lychnis and Silene

[P. Kohn]

Among the hundreds of species we left behind at Kerrachar, three have proved elusive to replace. All were originally raised from seed and all three matched the pictures in Philips and Rix and Martyn's descriptions so we are fairly confident about what we had.

We have tried Silene hookeri from seed twice.  Chiltern Seeds offered this species and their description sounded promiising but what we got was Lychnis flos-jovis. Seed from the HPS this year again produced Lychnis flos-jovis.

We bought a plant of Lychnis cognata from Crug and we also grew plants from seed from Plant World. Their catalogue picture showed the expected "long tooth on the side of each petal"  though not the pale colour of our original plant (and the Phillips and Rix picture) but the plants that grew were a quite different Lychnis that we could not pin down to any species we knew. The Crug plant shares the strong orange of the Plant World catalogue. Searching the internet only Quakin' Grass Nursery in Connecticut appears to offer the plant we are seeking.

Lychnis miqueliana "has smooth rounded petals" but our seed-raised plants (HPS last year and then SRGC this year) have deeply notched petals much closer to Lychnis sieboldii.  Many of the images on the internet do show the true species but many more show the notched petalled species.

Can anyone suggest a source of seed or plants of any of these in the UK please.

[Growild]

Hi, hope I can help with one plant you are looking for. I bought some seed from Japan a few years ago as L. sieboldii and two flowered this year. They are very different and suspect one to be L. cognata but a very pale form. I'll try and find photo's tomorrow and post here.

[arisaema]

Try Alplains for S. hookeri: http://www.alplains.com/Catalog11.html

[P. Kohn]

Thank you for your replies. I look forward to seeing Lisa's picture. I wonder where her seed came from ?

[Growild]

Still trying to find the pictures - I have taken 1,000's recently and none are ordered!!! Try and post later ... The seeds came from Chadwell seeds in his 2012 catalogue. I have a few very interesting plants from that seed batch some retain pure purple foliage throughout the season (but these did not flower this year due to rabbits!)

[Growild]

Hi, finally found the images! These were all grown from the same batch of seeds sold as L. sieldoldii from Chris Chadwell’s Japanese selection in his catalogue (presume they were wild collected?). They germinated in 2013. The flowering plants shown below are the only ones yet to flower, a vivid red and a very pale orange (which may be L. cognata?). I have just over 20 plants from this seed and a few plants have kept this purple coloured foliage seen in the last two photographs (some plants started out purple but gradually lost the purple colour and turned green over time). Hope this is the pale orange plant you are looking for? If it is I hope to be able to either send you some seeds this year or a plant in time.