2010/11 catalogues

[johnw]

Lesley - Sadly the other red Jury hybrids are also not exhibiting their advertised colour in the UK and elsewhere. Even a North American hybrid, Phil's Masterpiece flowered dark pink here in the east. Maybe our winters are too severe or we lack sun though others further south on the east coast report the same.

This testing business is tricky stuff and fraught with minefields.  We've all heard about the plant that does well in one's yard but impossible next door. A few other examples:

a. a friend here who was a rhodo hybridizer had a brilliant strong firey orange with red stripes in his woodland. We had watched it for over 25 years & finally he gave me a cutting. I planted it out in full sun and it's flowered pale salmon with pink stripes ever since.

b. I was told in the 70's evergreen azaleas would not grow here. A digusted enthusiast gave me a brilliant red called Stewartstonian that was close to deaththough reputed to be hardy to -15F. For seven years it froze to the ground here. The next year it took off and was totally undamaged after the worst winter we have ever seen, flowering head to toe since 1980-ish. Now over my head and 2 metres wide.

c. The German Hachmann rhodo hybrids were touted as being very hardy and very compact. In North American they were cutting grown and not grafted as in Europe.  On their own roots they are very lanky in most of N. America.  Many hopelessly tender on mild Long Island, NY. There are only a half dozen growable here.

d. A Scottish rhodo hybrid Wren is one of my favourites. It was cautiously rated as being a bit tender as the cranky, miffy, nasty beautiful ludlowii was father. Many here find it an exceedingly diffuclt plant to grow, it is hopeless further south in the summer heat. The one in my yard is in the worst possible spot, under a greedy Whych Elm. It is by far the best one I've ever seen - 4-5ft across, prostrate and never misses a year.

e. During a garden tour locally we happened upon a yellow unnamed hybrid with huge flowers opening from apricot buds. We went bananas. The next year we took a crowd round to see it, it was flowering very pale lavender with a yellowish centre. After that it flowered normally.

f. Should yellow Galanthus not be sold? They seem to lack vigour here and some are quite greenish. They can perform admirably as Ian showed us. I guess we will never have cultivars that perform superbly everywhere.  

Point is once you open your mouth and make a pronouncement on a plant it will turn around and do the exact opposite just to prove how stupid we are. Still no excuse for Galanthus cultivars to be hitting the sales tables before they are carefully watched and deemed worthy.

johnw - now with feet bared we are off to press some E A Bowles for a trial batch of bubbly.

[Brian Ellis]

johnw - now with feet bared we are off to press some E A Bowles for a trial batch of bubbly.

Tee hee, add some Green Tear for added fizz

[johnw]

johnw - now with feet bared we are off to press some E A Bowles for a trial batch of bubbly.

Tee hee, add some Green Tear for added fizz

Or a green tear latte?

johnw

[Mavers]

Hi Lesley, seems like your mother could be wiser than the bloke wot rote wot I kwoted. 

 I would love to see the magnolias in New Zealand. Is the soil in NZ predominantly low pH?

[Lesley Cox]

Mike, the soil is low pH in some areas especially. One is Taranaki on the west coast of the North Island where these Magnolias were bred and there is an outstanding Rhododendron garden there, at New Plymouth, called Pukeiti, almost in the shadow of a lovely mountain, cone-shaped like Fujiama, called Mt Egmont or more nowadays, by its Maori name of Mt Taranaki. Another low pH area is Dunedin, my home town and its environs and again known for its rhodos. We have big Rhododenron festivals both here and at Pukeiti. A lot of the west coast of the South Island is also very peaty and much wetter than on my side of the island. About 6-8 METRES of rain per year!!

My mother was very hot on quotations being correct and drummed into me that "A little learning is a dangerous thing" (not knowledge) and that pride goeth before destruction not a fall. "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall." All things to do with the English language she held as almost sacred and the first line of your above post has her spinning in her grave.

On the other hand, she and my late brother had this thing going on whereby they mis-quoted literary things to each other, always very clever and witty and I, brought up with these, often produced them in school English classes, to get a good laugh for the wit but also to get in trouble for being wrong.

[Brian Ellis]

Lesley do you know what the rhododendron garden on the Hawera side of Mount Egmont is called.  David can't remember
...and to put it straight he has now found his slides and it was Pukeiti, he last visited it in Oct 1976.

[Brian Ellis]

Wading through the mountains of slides he has found Pukekura Park too and is now waxing lyrical about them

[Maggi Young]

Lesley do you know what the rhododendron garden on the Hawera side of Mount Egmont is called.  David can't remember
...and to put it straight he has now found his slides and it was Pukeiti, he last visited it in Oct 1976.

Holy Moly! David was able to find slides from 1976 so fast? IIf we could locate that sort of thing inside six months we'd be celebrating..... mind you, the storage system here is a little..... how shall we put this?..... "informal"... yes, that'll do, informal!!  

[Brian Ellis]

Lesley do you know what the rhododendron garden on the Hawera side of Mount Egmont is called.  David can't remember
...and to put it straight he has now found his slides and it was Pukeiti, he last visited it in Oct 1976.

Holy Moly! David was able to find slides from 1976 so fast? IIf we could locate that sort of thing inside six months we'd be celebrating..... mind you, the storage system here is a little..... how shall we put this?..... "informal"... yes, that'll do, informal!!  

Tee hee,   King Edward Park in Hawera looks nice too David's system is 'informal' too, but they were brought out some years ago to look at and we haven't got round to it.  They were to hand, as it were

[Maggi Young]

David's system is 'informal' too, but they were brought out some years ago  to look at and we haven't got round to it.  They were to hand, as it were Cheesy

 Oh, thank goodness for that.... you've saved me from a seriously depressed afternoon. 

[Lesley Cox]

Nothiong comes to mind Brian on the drier side. Hawera is not on my radar particularly except as a Narcissus var and there's a cheese factory there. To digress, the evils of centralising important community services is illustrated by the incident a few years ago when someone dialled 111 (999 to you) for an ambulance to go urgently to Lake Hawea in the lower part of the South Island, only to have it sent to an address in Hawera, west coast North Island. I don't remember the outcome but there was national outrage from the public. We have it all the time. Mt Wellington (known to Anthony now), is actually in Aucland and Palmerston is in Otago near me but Palmerston North is in the North Island, the "north" bit, always omitted by broadcasters and weatherforecasters so no wonder confusion occurs. Likewise, a gentleman from Germany some years ago asked me for the locations of various mega herbs as he was planning a trip to Auckland and wanted to see them. Said mega herbs are on the Auckland Islands, in the great southern ocean. 

If I think of the rhodo garden I'll let you know. Pukekura Park, though small as cricket grounds go, was voted a couple of years back by international commentators as the prettiest cricket goind in the world.

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry Lesley you missed my update, he was mistaken:

...and to put it straight he has now found his slides and it was Pukeiti, he last visited it in Oct 1976.

[JimF]

Colors do change in many genera due to pH, richness or lack of fertility in soil, sun or shade exposure, and other factors.

I work at a retail nursery (garden center) in Seattle/Bellevue, WA and we have noticed over 40 years the following cultural and production technique changes made in cultivars and genera.

Japanese maples will not show autumn color properly for the first two or three years if you water them those 2-3 years, as you should, to establish them, or if they are planted in rich soil. Life is too good. The leaves simply brown come and dry up come late autumn. Once the roots begin finding less food and water the autumn color is brilliant. Natural stress increases the color on most trees - drought, colder days, heat.  Also if the maple is planted in the middle of a lawn fed with nitrogen - serious loss of autumn color and an unwillingness to go dormant.

Hydrangeas are typical chameleons due to pH. Rhododendron flower color, we find, may be affected by pH, but more by UV rays depending on latitude, altitude, and plain old "hot" sun with dryish soils. (I grew up in Alaska where flower colors were brighter then "down here."

Some witch hazels cultivars take a year or two to settle down to true flower color. Many retain their leaves through winter like beech when grafted onto clonal stock with that propensity. My suspicion is that H. autumnalis won't cause leaf retention. When grafted onto Parrotia, as many witch hazels are here to create standards, there is no leave retention.

Hosta varieties which most often are sports are no longer tissued cultured here because they sport again and again in the initial chopping up step, so mutable are the cells. Many rose cultivars "drift" when budded by the 100,000s in the US so within 4-5 years 'Iceberg' on sale is not like the original plant, though the differences are sometimes subtle. Hence a modern techinque to go back to the original stock every ten years to correct for this drift and senility.

So if a snowdrop is chipped and twinned and pushed through feeding to get as many bulbs as soon as possible, and the cultivar is a mutation to begin with, which I suspect a good number of findlings may be, then it would follow that assembly line production will produce changes subtle to major. Something to be said for patience.

I have had many old seedling "stable" cultivars of galanthus look "untrue" the first year in pots (how I grow all of mine) or if a only single bulb in a pot making for lots of food for the little bugger. By year two or three they/it settled down and "match" the description. I expect my experience of this is from a "kinder" culture in a pot vs tough love under beech trees, etc. pH is sometimes mentioned as decreasing or increasing the yellow in the yellows, which are mutable in some such as 'Lady E.'.

So to repeat so many of you, patience in all things, especially these little bulbs which have grabbed us hook, line, and sinker.

Jim