Flowers and foliage April 2008

[Lvandelft]

Luit, thank you for the lovely pictures,
Can You tell me More about your Cornus florida Sweetwater.
It is Queens day today in Holland, so something orange
Henk

Henk, I wanted to try some Cornus which would grow with me in my "bulbsand" and while looking
around in Boskoop I found this one, but cannot tell anything about it untill now.

You'll have a free day today, well let's make an orange party then,
here some "Royal Tulips":

Tulipa DEG Willem van Oranje       
Tulipa Triumph Group Bright Irene H.v.Dr. '02   
Tulipa Darwin Hybr. Group Orange Queen

[Tony Willis]

here are a few nothofagus in Chile,showing them a little windswept and contorted.This is mild to the state of others on more exposed areas but I did not photograph them

[Paddy Tobin]

Best wishes to the Queen though here in Ireland there would be an antipathy towards the House of Orange since the days of William of Orange who was not a popular chap here. Good tulips though.

And speaking of twisted fellows, here is a photograph taken in Mount Usher, Co. Wicklow, Ireland last Saturday. At first glance I thought it was a Kniphofia caulescens but it seems to be a cordaline.

Paddy

[Lvandelft]

Here some more from my garden:

Phlox subulata Daniel's Cushion 
Akebia quinata
Pulmonaria Opal     
Pulmonaria angustifolia   
Potentilla Goldrausch   
Anthyllis montana   
Aurinia saxatilis Flore Pleno     
Daphne Wilhelm Schacht         
Daphne Anton  Fähnrich   

[Paul T]

Luit,

Oh those Daphnes!!!!!    Beautiful.  I rather liked the Potentilla Goldrausch as well, and the Anthyllis montana is a completely new genus to me.  Looks rather intriguing so I must look it up at some point and find out more.

Paddy,

That is one very confused Cordyline.  Maybe it was thinking it was here in Australia so it was trying to grow the direction they would here.... so it ended up trying to grow down into the earth and made that unusual stem?  As good an excuse as any I guess!! 

[Maggi Young]

A  few things in the sunshine we had on Monday.......
 a little  lonely, chewed Tulip

An Anemone ranunculoides.... he's lonely too, he's somehow got into a box of erythronium seedlings

I have a couple of grafted Caragana arborescens pendula  "trees"... they are about 1.5m high at the graft and then the top growth expands above that into an umbrella shape. These plants are places in summer, where, like on a Laburnum tree, it is nearly always possible to collect DOZENS of snails....
The foliage is very pretty as it emerges.....
I couldn't resist two shots of the Caragana leaves!

I am an avid rhododendron addict... here is the yummy, aromatic  blue foliage of R. impeditum and its fat buds.

 

[Lesley Cox]

And speaking of twisted fellows, here is a photograph taken in Mount Usher, Co. Wicklow, Ireland last Saturday. At first glance I thought it was a Kniphofia caulescens but it seems to be a cordaline.
Paddy

It looks like our Cordyline australis but however did it get like that? I can't imagine any event that would cause the trunk (which is pithy, not like timber) to fall over and curl, or curl from babyhood since the trunk isn't evident until some years are on it anyway. Is it possible to find out anything about that specimen Paddy?

I meant to say that my supplier of the Nothofagus antarctica said "a small tree, to 4 metres" but I suspect it can grow MUCH taller than that, in the wild at least, and as Kenneth says above, 4 metres at least, and growing like mad. Mine has plenty of room and I'll be happy with whatever it does, I like it so much. Mine has grown from about 60cms in 2005 to around 2 metres now.

Tony, in the picture of the Chilean nothofagus, what is the white on the ground? Just stones or a carpet of some flower?

[Tony Willis]

Lesley a carpet of white composites which I think must have been introduced. It was a boat trip to see wildlife and glaciers and it was a lunch stop.I had a walk whilst the rest were eating half a grilled cow each. Middle of summer,it was cold !!

[Hans A.]

Nothofaghus antarctica grown in cultivation will become higher than 4 meters - I have seen about 25 years old trees in germany of about 8m - and it said to grow as 25m high.
In Chile I doubt to have seen any which had more than two or three meters  - it is growing in higher altitudes sometimes together with N. pumilio or N. betuloides. It seems not to be competitive with the other native Nothofaghus species (N. dombeyi, N. obliqua, N. glauca, N. alpina) in lower altitudes or better soils.

[johnw]

My Nothofagus is growing upwards but it was strangly grown from the beginning when I bought it. So it is leaning a lot in the lower parts. It´s not easy to find in Sweden so I had to accept what I got. (On the other hand I managed to get a very good price!) I planted it in 2004 in peaty ground and it has been growing like mad the last two years. It is at least 4 m today. I took a picture yeasterday but I think it is hard to take photos of trees and bushes. It looks like this anyway.

Kenneth - Yours is certainly a rapid grower. Growth here has been slow but steady.  They will all be quite fantastic when they are aged.

I see a typical wayward branch on yours. It's almost as if they produce these as a safeguard.

Hans - There must be huge ones in Chile.  Here is a picture from somewhere on the internet! And for Leslie some seed.

johnw

[Paddy Tobin]

Lesley,

I don't know the present gardener at Mount Usher but a friend does and so will get him to ask about it.

Paddy

[Lesley Cox]

I'll be interested to hear Paddy.

Thanks for the seed pic John. Yes, mine were like that. A bit of chaffy stuff as well I suppose. Time will tell whether they are fertile.

[johnw]

re: Nothofagus

By the way, Kenneth et al, those wayward horizontal branches are quite readily layered.

johnw

[rob krejzl]

those wayward horizontal branches are quite readily layered

That's why our local N. gunni is called tanglefoot! High alpine forms of this might be more suitable for smaller spaces, since they typically grow to only 2 metres or so.

[Anthony Darby]

Now that  sounds like a more manageable species for my wee garden Rob. Do you have any pics?