Description
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Blue bottle-like or oval balloon blooms in late summer
Blue bottle-like or oval balloon blooms in late summer
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Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Blue bottle-like or oval balloon blooms in late summer
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Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
In colder areas grow as annual
Spectacular basal foliage – arching, silvery, deeply incised leaves. Late summer-fall spiny buds open to rich purple feathery flowers.
Size: 3-4’ x 3-4’
Care: sun in moist well-drained to well-drained soil. Cut off flowers immediately after flowering to bring on new foliage, gorgeous into late fall.
Native: Southern Europe
The leaf stems, blanched, are also edible. Bridgemen, The Young Gardeners Assistant (1847)
Described by Linneaus 1753.
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Rosette of thick silver-grey leaves with an inch-long terminal tip of each spine and offshoots, knowns as “pups” emerge near the base, even of young plants. Flowers only once & takes +10 years. In Z 5-6 plant in spring to get established.
Size: 18” x 18-28”
Care: sun in well-drained soil. We grow this in Z 5A on the south-facing side of a mound of well-drained soil, with a few large rocks nearby and gravel mulch.
Native: mountains of Arizona and New Mexico.
First Americans in the SW traded baked leaves and buds hundreds of years ago. Roasted stalks,baked buds & water mixed & fermented make pulque, further distilled to make mescal or tequila.
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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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Cobalt blue flower clusters with contrasting, showy red stems and calyces in late summer and fall. Foliage turns crimson in fall – excellent groundcover. One of the most award winning plants.
Size: 9-12” x 18”
Care: Sun to part shade in moist well-drained soil
Native: China
Awards: Five (5) of them! Georgia Gold Medal 2006, Elisabeth Carey Miller Botanical Garden Great Plant Picks, Missouri Botanical Garden Plant of Merit, Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit, Oklahoma Proven
Plumbago is Latin meaning “lead” derived from use of the plant to treat lead poisoning. First collected by Russian botanist Alexander von Bunge in 1830 in Mongolia, then introduced by Robert Fortune who found it growing in Shanghi in 1846. “Bear a profusion of brilliant cobalt blue flowers (when) the leaves take on a distinct reddish tinge.” H.H. Thomas 1915.