Description
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Striking spikes of watermelon, wine red from May to July – exceptional and rare.
Striking spikes of wine red from May to July
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Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Striking spikes of watermelon, wine red from May to July – exceptional and rare.
ARCHIVED
Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Large, nodding flower heads with recurved petals white, glowing pinkish in August, fragrant.
Size: 3-4’ x 12”
Care: Sun to part shade in moist, acidic soil
Lilium was named for the Greek word for smooth, polished referring to its leaves. This species introduced to Europe by Carl Peter von Thunberg around 1777. Von Thunberg (1743-1828), student of Linnaeus at Uppsala University in Sweden. He made three trips to the Cape of Good Hope 1772-1775 where he collected about 1000 new species, Java and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1777 and 15 months in Japan (1775-1777) where he befriended local doctors who gave him hundreds of plants new to Western horticulture. He succeeded Linnaeus as professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. Knighted by Swedish King Gustav. Grown at America’s 1st botanic garden, Elgin Botanic Garden 1811. L.H. Bailey (1935) highly recommended this lily as “(o)ne of the most beautiful and satisfactory of all lilies, robust, permanent (and) easily grown…”
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Purple-blue spikes bloom from early to late summer
Size: 4-6” x 8-12”
Care: sun, moist well-drained to well-drained soil
Native: Alps
Described in 1779 in Prosp. Hist. Pl. Dauphiné
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Pale pink “pussy-toe”, resembling the pads of a kitten’s foot, flowers in early summer, great silvery-gray foliage, good groundcover and rock garden plant.
Size: 2” x 18”
Care: full sun in well-drained soil, drought tolerant
Native: Temperate areas worldwide
Antennaria from the Latin antenna originally referring to the mast of a sailboat. Part of the flower supposedly resembles a butterfly’s antennae. Historically used for medicine as an astringent, a cough remedy and to break fever. First described by German physician and botanical author Leonhard Fuchs (1501-1566). Gertrude Jekyll (1848-1931), mother of the mixed perennial border, planted this in her own rock garden at Munstead Wood and in the Sundial Garden at Pednor House in Buckinghamshire. The pink version, A. dioica rosea, collected in the Rocky Mountains by C.C. Parry before 1860.
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Short hedge-hog like clump with white flowers turning to bronzy spiked seedheads May-June. Best for rock, railroad or fairy gardens – anyplace for a miniature, clumping grass.
Size: 6” x 12”
Care: sun to light shade in moist soil
Native: wet places in Europe and western No. America
Collected before 1798 by Edmund Davall who botanized in Switzerland.