Flowering now July 2007

[Martin Baxendale]

Still trying to comprehend HUGE size of Martin's Genista... wot a whopper! I don't think I've seen one so tall....are these giants common in Englandshire?[/quote]

Maggi, my parents used to have one almost as tall. Mine must be 18 to 20 ft tall. Some people like to keep them bushier with early pruning, but I like them as a small tree. I love to see the flowers against the blue of the sky. Also, I planted it to hide the telephone and power poles and lines in the street without cutting out too much daylight (the v. narrow shoots and leaves cast little shade). I think I recall reading that E.A. Bowles had one on his rock garden, but it was a pretty massive rock garden. In a big enough rockery, I'm sure it'd look magnificent topping a crest and silhouetted against the sky. In winter I like that silhouette effect; the thin shoots dark against the sky.

Here's a quick snap taken out of the sitting room window that gives a better idea of the shape and height.

[Magnar]

A couple of nice Centaureas.





Centaurea bagadensis




Centaurea triumfettii

[Magnar]

From the gravel bed:



Miniateur Delphinium alpestre




Phyllophyton complanatum




Eriophyton wallichii

[Maggi Young]

Goodness me, Martin, it's even bigger than I realised!    Pretty thing, though, not too heavy, as you say, so good for your purpose of disguising the wires etc.

Magnar, Eriophyton wallichii is one of my favourites... so furry one could keep it as a pet. This year ours were rather floppy in growth and went over very quickly. I presume this was due to our strange weather ... it has not done that before and the plants are well established. Ours are grown in pots, in an unheated glass house, while yours seems to be enjoying life outside. Have you had it long?

[Lesley Cox]

I like hoherias too but (and I can say this, they're ours) when in bloom they attract blowflies. Maybe they don't do that in the UK's ever-so-slightly cooler climate?

[Ian Y]

As many of you will have found out already we suffered some problems with our server today and we were all denied access to the site.

Thank you to every one who emailed or telephoned us to report the problem as we are not always on line to find out.

Sorry if you thought you were being singled out and denied your daily fix on the forum but we were all excluded for the day.

It did do some good though as Maggi did some house cleaning!!!!!

I better go and tell her we are back on line again.

[PaulM]

Some more plants flowering at the time being here in Sweden.

Loasa triphylla, which as many members of the Loasaceae-family has stinging hairs. The flowers are pendant, but if you turn them upside down a little architectural wonder meets your eye. I got seeds of this as Loasa nana through the German plant society Gesellschaft der Staudenfreunde 06/07, but I am fairly confident this is not L. nana. The plants are about 20 cm tall, growing in a container.

Also flowering is Papaver fugax which I collected seeds of in Turkey in 2003. It is a biennial, which self-seeds in favourable sites, and blooms profusely the second year. The flowers open in the morning and have lost their petals by the afternoon, but there are new flowers coming along every day.

Phacelia viscida is also beginning to flower. It has been so wet here, so it has got a bit leggy, so I have cut it back several times to try to keep it fairly compact. Very nice blue color.

Another annual is Tinantia erecta, which opens its flowers shortly, but the purple styles sticking out from the flowers are charming in a subtle way, looking a bit like snakes tongues.


I finish with some pictures of a VERY wooly ( and fairly short )Verbascum sp collected in Turkey in 2004. The single flowers are in the leaf nodes and open early in the morning and fall off in the afternoon. It is in its third year with me now, and has flowered in 2006 as well, so it seems to be perennial.

Oh, yes I got seeds in the 2005/2006 SRGC seed exchange  ( nr 529 ), which was supposed to be Asclepias rubra. It has grown very quickly already flowering its second year, and it has become evident that it is not A. rubra, but Vincetoxicum nigrum, which is also in the Apocynaceae-family, but a far shot from Asclepias rubra.

[henkw]

Paul you very brave to take the loasa in your hand.

I can still feel the sting in my fingers 

Henk

[Magnar]

Magnar, Eriophyton wallichii is one of my favourites... so furry one could keep it as a pet. This year ours were rather floppy in growth and went over very quickly. I presume this was due to our strange weather ... it has not done that before and the plants are well established. Ours are grown in pots, in an unheated glass house, while yours seems to be enjoying life outside. Have you had it long?

Yes it grows in the open scree bed. All my plants grow in the open garden and I don't do anything to protect them. But most winters we have a snow cower, although it has not been so stable the later years as it used to be.

[derekb]

 The last of my Disa to flower,
 Disa uniflora Fontein

[Magnar]

That's a beaytiful flower. Wish the plant would be hardy up here, but I don't think it is.

[Lesley Cox]

It's not hardy here Magnar, where I get very little frost compared with Norway I should imagine. This year has been harder than the last 10, with frosts at my house to about -8C I've had a couple of losses already. I grow the Disa in a plastic tunnel house.

[Lesley Cox]

Talking of hardy, remember this?



Here it is today



It has been in the tunnel house all this time and it never occurred to me that it would be too cold in there. I went in today to check on the cuttings Dave Toole gave me last October, of Asteranthera ovata. They're fine but I was horrified to see Oxalis peninsularis (or pedicularis) is a gonner. I don't think anything will regenerate.

Said to be tender but unscathed so far (also in the tunnel) is Nicotiana `Lime Green,' ostensibly an annual but I find the roots sprout away each year.



Disa uniflora still has a little green leaf on it and that looks OK too.

[Magnar]

Today's round with the camera:


Sedum dumulosum


Physoplexis comosa


Dicentra peregrina


Lewsia rediviva


Dianthus pavonius


Dianthus plumarius

[Lesley Cox]

What a lovely collection Magnar, especially that stunning Dicentra. Many thanks.