Randolph Gardenwerks, Landscape Designer, Metro Seattle, Rainbow-lover, Retired City Planner, gardener, dog-lover, natural history, architecture
GREVILLEA x ‘AUDREY’
Good afternoon! Well it’s been a very long time since I have posted..life has been very full the past 2 years. Still is. But I miss sharing plant geek stuff!
On this very warm - for Western Washington - mid-August summer day, Grevillea 'Audrey’ is in full bloom!! The rest of the grevilleas that I planted in our neighborhood peak out their bloom in mid-winter through Spring. And Audrey bloomed then as well, but not nearly as profusely as it is now.
The plant in my garden was acquired from Ian Barclay at The Desert Northwest Nursery (Sequim, WA), and was planted in the fall of 2019. Trying to cram in as many plants as possible into a small garden (LOL!), I decided to try growing 'Audrey’ as a “standard” - multi-stem, upright, with room for other plants at the base. And…with some perseverance each of the 4 growing seasons, this has worked out well. The bush has three main stems, and lots of lofty shoots. It has now reached a height of over 10’ and is probably 8’ wide. Will continue training the bush into a multi-stemmed small tree.
The humming birds LOVE LOVE LOVE this plant. Both our year-round Anna’s and the Rufous hummingbirds that are with us each warm season. I try to grow a variety of tubular flowers to give variety to their diet.
Did a bit of research on 'Audrey’. According to Ian Barclay in his post “Pacific Northwest Grevilleas Revisited”, 'Audrey’ was likely incorrectly marketed as 'Poorinda Constance’ - which has pure red flowers. 'Audrey’ has orange and pink in her flowers, varying somewhat between winter and summer.
As Ian notes, 'Audrey’ “makes a silvery-leaved shrube with a rather angular growth habit. It is exceptionally vigourous and tough…It has outgrown its expected dimensions, reaching 10’ tall and 15’ across in only 7 years.” He reports it blooms about 11 months out of the year, and advises light summer shaping. It is hardy to about 5 degrees F.
HortFlora (https://www.rbg.vic.gove.au) at the Royal Botanical Gardens of Victoria [State], Australia reports that 'Audrey’ is a “probable hybrid, G. juniperina x G. victoriae, raised by George Althofer at Nindethana Nursery, Dripstone, New South Wales, in 1957, the name commemorating his wife.” The Althofers were pioneers in promoting Australian Native Plants. “So, this wonderful plant is named for Audrey Althofer, who helped her husband George in a pioneering effort to popularize Australian Native Plants. Appropriate.”
Yesterday, I took a wonderful “therapy” walk at the Bloedel Reserve, about 20 minutes from home on the north end of Bainbridge Island. These gardens are an amazing fusion of nature and human landscapes. Here’s some info from the website. https://bloedelreserve.org/
PS - apologies for the slightly fuzzy quality of some of the photos. I’m having a hard time with the camera on my LG K30 phone. Took many more photos that were blurry. Need a new phone.
It’s a wonder.
Bloedel Reserve is a 150-acre wonder of nature, created by the imagination, vision, and a passionate love of the natural world shared by our founders, Prentice and Virginia Bloedel. Working with the rugged geography of the land, they artfully transformed a rough-hewn Northwest forest into a harmonious series of curated gardens, structural features, and distinctive landscapes, with nature as canvas and paint.
A Gift to All
In 1951, Virginia and Prentice Bloedel purchased the large house and property that would become Bloedel Reserve. It was their private residence for more than 30 years, many devoted to exploring the relationship between people and nature.
NOTE from Steven: The original incarnation of this property was Agate Point Farm, developed as a summer retreat and hunting/fishing lodge by the Collins family. The large house was built in 1931-2 for Mrs. Angela Collins, of Seattle. Mrs. Collins son Bertrand (Bertie) recommended the architect J. Lister Holmes, who created French chateau inspired design for the house. The house was built high atop a bluff with a view over Puget Sound to the northeast, with the Cascade Mountains in the distance. Bertie was active in working with the architect and supervising construction of the home that became known as Collinswood.
Yale-educated, Mr. Bloedel began a teaching career but soon became the reluctant heir to his father’s timber business. An environmentalist at heart, he innovated several of today’s conservation concepts such as “reuse.” He advocated reusing hog fuel, a log byproduct, to help generate sawmill power and worked with pulp mills to reduce waste. His most enduring “green” idea was to plant seedlings to reforest clear-cut land.
NOTE from Steven: this History from their website oddly does not mention the serious contributions to the garden from Virginia Merrill Bloedel, who developed a strong interest in horticulture. Many of the gardens close to the house were developed with her inspiration. And…Virginia was the older sister of Eulalie Merrill Wagner, who with her husband Cory developed the fabulous gardens of Lakewold on Gravelly Lake near Tacoma, Washington, 60 miles to the south. It appears that the two sisters collaborated on gardening, and several well-known landscape architects worked at both properties.
Sculpting the landscape became the focus of Mr. Bloedel’s retirement. Almost daily, he could be found walking the grounds, thinking of how to shape his masterpiece. With the help of noted landscape architects and designers, including Thomas Church, Richard Haag, Fujitaro Kubota, and Iain Robertson, he “wove” several unique landscape experiences throughout the native Pacific Northwest forest. Mr. Bloedel’s commitment to ecological principles prevailed; for example, he placed water features only proximal to natural groundwater.Later in life, the Bloedels gave the Reserve to the community and established a nonprofit to support its operations. In 1988, the Reserve opened to the public as a 150-acre public garden and forest preserve.
It’s our heritage.
The history of the land on which Bloedel Reserve sit extends back much farther than the Bloedels. We express deep gratitude towards the Suquamish People, People of the Clear Salt Water, for sustaining the land within which our healing landscapes thrive. Those entrusted with caring for Bloedel Reserve acknowledge that the sacred ancestral territory on which the Reserve resides flourishes because of the stewardship, since time immemorial, by the Suquamish people. We will honor and respect their legacy by nurturing this land and the waterways of the Central Salish Sea for present and future generations.
Steven again - I’m particularly fond of the English Park-style entrance garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Rhododendron Glen, waterfall, and pond below the west side of the house.
Well…I thought the photos would be at the TOP of the Post. Alas, they ended up down here. OOPS.
1. Entrance Garden - looking at the south facade of the house, with a lovely flock of American Wigeon ducks coursing up the middle of the lake.
2. Entrance Lake and wigeons
3. North facade of the house and terrace garden
4. View northeastward across Puget Sound to the Cascade Mountains lost in the clouds
5. Camperdown Elm on north terrace
6. The Birch Walk to the Rhododendron Glen - Himalayan White Birch, Betula jacquemontii
7. Japanese Guest house by noted PNW (Pacific Northwest) modernist architect Paul Hayden Kirk, and Sand and Stone Garden designed by Dr. Koichi Kawana
8. Japanese red pine - Pinus densiflora - on one side of the Sand Garden
9. Christmas Pond in the Rhododendron Glen fed by a waterfall and small stream - the banks upstream from this pond are planted heavily to candelabra primroses
Happy 1st of December, start of Advent. My sincere apologies for not posting in a VERY long time. My garden design work this Fall has been very busy, and I’ve been focused on personal growth.
This is a lovely “California fuchsia” that was purchased 3 years ago to cascade down over the low retaining wall at the bottom of the flower garden. Lovely air spikes of silvery foliage. PLEASE NOTE: the flowers are much more reddish-orange that was captured by my LG K30 phone camera.
Zauschneria is a now-defunct genus of 5 species of perennials, all native to the dry slopes of California’s chaparral (evergreen shrubland) and other dry areas in mountains and canyons. All species are fairly low-growing from, 6″ to 18″ tall, spreading by rhizomes into nice colonies - some mat-forming, others bushy like Silver Select. All the California fuchsias are beloved by hummingbirds and bloom in late summer through the fall - perfectly timed for fall migrations of several hummer species. The typical flower color is orange through red/orange to scarlet red, however, there are pink, salmon, and white forms as well.
Wikipedia reports that recent taxanomic studies have placed all these varied California fuschias into a single species ‘cana’ within the genus Epilobium - the “willowherbs.” Here in the Pacific Northwest, the showiest member of that family is Fireweed, which can grow 5-6′ tall, with bright pink-purple flowers that have zero resemblance to California fuschia flowers. Alas…that’s the way things stand right now.
The original genus name was in honor of Johann Baptista Josef Zauschner (1737–1799), a professor of medicine and botany in Prague.
In another garden, I had enjoyed Zauschneria ‘Select Mattole’ which was lower, less silver, but reliably August blooming with lovely orange tubes. When I could not find that particular form for our new garden in 2019, I chose ‘Silver Select.” Loved the VERY silvery foliage. Alas…in the ground, ‘Silver Select’ didn’t start blooming until October, and most of the flowers were lost to the first freeze. That made me think it was not getting enough “heat units” to initiate bloom time in our milder climate. So, I decided to pot it up and place it in a SW-facing ‘sun catch’ on our back porch/deck. The temps on that covered deck routinely get into 90′s, sometimes 100′s, even when it is only 75-85 F outside.
Well…that was a SUCCESS! This year it started blooming in late August, as it does in California and Portland, Oregon (warmer than us). And, it has just kept on cranking out flower buds. This photo was taken November 26, and you see LOTS of small flower buds still developing. And…the porch location gave it protection from our first hard frosts. While the plant is indeed drought tolerant in the ground, it really sucks up the water when growing in a pot!
Apparently ‘Silver Select’ was introduced by Xera Plants of Portland, Oregon. It clearly looks like a hybrid between two of the Zauschneria species, but is now considered just a form of Epilobium cana. Here’s what Xera Plants has to say, and I will note that it does not die away in winter until maybe January.
“
No other California Fuchsia has foliage that even approaches being as ashy white as this cultivar. Its as if the foliage is covered in dense white powder. The 1″ long hot orange/red flowers absolutely shine against this ghostly backdrop. Vigorous perennial for well drained sites and just light summer water. Full sun. To 20″ tall in bloom which starts in early August and continues into October. Hummingbirds dive down for this vivid sweet treat. Expanding to a clump 2′ wide in just a few years. Dies completely away in winter…only the stoloniferous roots remain to regenerate this sexy perennial in spring. Moderate deer resistance.
“
Crocosmia x ‘Emily McKenzie’ and Molinia caerulea variegata
Hello friends: sorry I haven’t posted in a couple weeks. My mind has been busy elsewhere trying to make sense of death and grieving. But the flower garden just keeps on blooming happily! Thank God!
Emily McKenzie is a later-blooming Crocosmia - in full bloom now in our garden in early September - getting started a full 4-8 weeks after the other Crocosmias. It has a typical Crocosmia plant form - upright sword-like leaves tinted bronze - with dark-colored flower stalks arching upward and outward. Plant size in bloom is 2-3′ high, and a bit wider. The flowers are very large, opening flat, and facing downwards. The dark purple calyxes highlight deep orange flowers with dramatic burnt orange/maroon markings around light yellow-orange throats. Hummingbirds love them!!
Ballyrobert Gardens, in County Antrim, Northern Ireland UK, provides this history:
Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora ‘Emily McKenzie’ was first found in 1951 in a Tyne Valley Garden owned by Emily Mckenzie. A vigorous plant which produces branching stems of rich orange flowers splashed with wallflower red. It is believed by some to have been a natural sport of an older hybrid called 'Comet’ (aka 'Malahide Castle’ after the Malahide Castle Gardens in county Dublin) which was developed by crossing C. aurea with C. masoniorum. But 'Emily Mckenzie’ may also have C. pottsii in its make-up as do the majority of today’s Crocosmia hybrids. [Note: Tyne Valley, Northumberland, England, UK]
The lovely grass with which ‘Emily McKenzie’ has been interplanted is Molinia caerulea variegata. This grass looks great showing off the other crocosmias in this bed: ‘Adriana’ and the tall, bold C. paniculata, both of which bloomed earlier.
Penstemon ‘Garnet’
aka ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’
Penstemon ‘Firebird’
aka ‘Schoenholzeri’
The
wonderful ‘Garnet’ Penstemon, together with its look-alike neighbor and
offspring ‘Firebird’, have become stalwarts of our garden. They are huge for a “perennial”,
easily reaching 2-3’ high and 3-4’ wide. They have abundant lovely, glossy, evergreen,
narrow foliage, and are prolific bloomers. The mid-August photo (2nd photo) was taken two months after full-bloom in late June (top photo They will
keep this up until Thanksgiving. Each spike holds up a large number of
brightly-colored, long tubular flowers, with cute “faces”, a floral form showing
their relationship to snapdragons. The “faces” are called “two-lipped” having 2
lobes above the opening of the tube, and three below. They have interesting
markings – bee guides – and fuzziness. These are hummingbird and bee magnets. ‘Garnet’
is purply-red, while ‘Firebird’ is crimson red. I realize those colors are not coming out that distinct in the photos.
Penstemons are native to North America – in fact, with about
250 different species, they are the largest endemic genus of plants native to
this continent. Most of the species are native to arid and/or mountainous
regions, and mainly west of the Mississippi and throughout highland Mexico. These
two plants are hybrids, but with strong P. campanulatus (Bell-flowered
penstemon) features. This species has lavender-purple flowers, and does not
grow as large as the hybrids, but the foliage and plant form are very similar.
It hails from highland areas throughout Mexico.
Technically, these two Penstemons are “sub-shrubs”, in that
they have a woody framework of lower stems, supporting lush herbaceous spikes. In
late January this year, I hunted down YouTube videos – from the UK – that showed
major whack-back was useful for maintaining the health and floriferousness of
the plants. So, I did that. Scary to look at, but as you can see they came back
with a FLOURISH!
Their cultural requirements are good drainage, lots of sun,
and they tolerate fairly infertile soil. They are drought tolerant, but look
better and bloom longer with summer irrigation. These two plants were
originally in the South Side flower garden, but proved way too robust for that
location. So, I moved them along the split-rail fence in the long Back Garden,
behind the ‘Bakeri’ Blue Spruce. The soil there is very sandy and not very
fertile, so is ideal for these. We see their lovely flowering from our dining
room window for months on end – clear until very hard frost.
Ballyrobert Nursery in Northern Ireland provided the following
info about ‘Garnet’: Penstemon ‘Andenken en Friedrich Hahn’, also known as
'Garnet’, commemorates an 18th century German astronomer. It forms pinkish red,
tubular flowers with attractive white striping on the inside. One of the oldest
hybrid Penstemons, bred in 1918, it is still one of the best penstemon to grow.
Its parent, P.'Southgate Gem,’ was a very popular plant back in the early
1900s. It was a short-lived perennial, so the Swiss breeder, Hermann Wartmann,
crossed it with either P. hirsutus or P. campanulatus. According to the oldest
reference found, it’s more than likely the parentage is P. campanulatus, since
it’s an easier cross to make between the species.
Debbie Teashon, the Rainyside Gardener, notes that Garnet is
one of the most successful penstemons introduced in the Pacific Northwest. San
Marcos Growers notes that it is long-lived, and very hardy, provided it has
good winter drainage.
Digging Dog Nursery in California provides this information
about ‘Firebird’: Arising in Switzerland
when Paul Schoenholzer crossed Penstemon ‘Garnet’ and Penstemon ‘Southgate
Gem’ in 1939, the ample, hummingbird-friendly bell-shaped flowers are bright
red, heightened by a fiery touch of scarlet plus pink-lined white throats. This
shrubby AGM winner was bred for longevity, sprouting tall durable stems,
refined semievergreen foliage and a somewhat lax, yet mighty manner.
So ‘Firebird’ is a backcross of ‘Garnet’ to it’s parent ‘Southgate
Gem’. No wonder the plant forms are virtually identical, with only the color of
the flowers being different. Both plants have received the Award of Garden
Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society in the UK.
This is the Grevillea hybrid ‘Audrey’, growing in our south side flower garden. I am training it up as a multi-stem “standard” to leave an open area beneath for perennials. Yes…I know that is a “busy” photo, but look for the upward arching stems of very narrow, pointy foliage, which looks a bit like Rosemary. (on the left is a Jasminum nudiflorum trained onto a trellis) The multiple bunches of flowers are gorgeous - dominated by shiny red-orange, with orange-peach throats. This is it’s first major bloom, and the plant has increased in size 10-fold this year!
Why ‘Audrey’? This hybrid between the Australian natives Grevillea juniperina and Grevillea victoriae has an extremely long bloom cycle. It is the only one of 5 different types of Grevillea in our garden and our neighbor’s that is in bloom in August! And, it is very popular with our Anna and Rufous hummingbirds. [For which I am relieved, since I had to whack back the Chilean Glorybower Vine (Eccremocarpus scaber) whose red/yellow flower are a major food source]. The foliage texture of ‘Audrey’ is very different - much more narrow and pointy, and darker green, than the G. victoriae hybrids and cultivars and G. miquelena that I planted in our neighbor’s garden. Oh…and we also have a long-time friend named Audrey. So, it just seemed appropriate.
This plant was purchased as a rooted cutting in a 4″ pot in Fall 2018, at The Desert Northwest Nursery run by Ian Barclay in Sequim, WA, on the NE corner of the Olympic Peninsula. This area is in the rain shadow of the Olympics and gets maybe 1/3 the rainfall we do here in Kingston only 40 miles away. Lavender grows extremely well in Sequim, and there are so many farms that a Lavender Festival is held most years - alas not 2020 and 2021 due to COVID19.
Ian strongly recommended ‘Audrey’, and was intrigued about my idea to grow it as a standard. He felt that would work. However, it will take some serious training for several more years. My efforts this year have been to train one stalk as the main trunk with several uprights at narrow angles, all tied up to a 6′ rod of rebar! You see, this plant really wants to be a sprawling, fountaining bush. Well that will be fine, if I can get the canopy up high enough to allow other plants to grow underneath. Then the weeping branches will be lovely. This is only the 3rd growing season for ‘Audrey’, which was only a couple of foot tall stems in both 2019 and 2020. As, I said, exponential growth this year.
It took quite a bit of research today to determine the origins of G. ‘Audrey’. Ian Barclay had the most info, but I was able to find a few scraps of additional information. Ian was able to identify this cultivar with
assistance from Grevillea authority Peter Olde. Apparently ‘Audrey’ was masquerading as another cultivar, but did not match that cultivar’s description in Australian sources. The Royal Botanical Garden of Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia, reports that this hybrid, G. juniperina × G. victoriae, was raised by George Althofer at Nindethana Nursery, Dripstone, New South Wales, in 1957, the name commemorating his wife.
The Australian National Botanical Gardens’ Horiticultural History garden provides some perspective: Nindethana Nursery was a significant step in the history of Australian native plants in Australia’s horticultural industry. The Nindethana dream eventually became Burrendong Arboretum. So, Grevillea ‘Audrey’ was the product of pioneering native plants nursery, founded by George Althover…and his wife Audrey - you know she was a huge source of support for the success of such an enterprise! How awesome to have a plant named for a native plants pioneer. And, such beautiful flowers on a beautiful plant.
Alas, Ian reports:
In
Australia, it seems to have fallen out of favor as a “junk plant”
compared to other Grevilleas. Go figure. Indeed! Here it is awesome!
A GIANT in the Crocosmia world! This is either the species C. paniculata, or a hybrid with a lot of paniculata blood. Those thickly-pleated wide, spear-shaped leaves are about 3-4 ft tall, twice as high as those of C. ‘Adriana’ that shows up in front at the bottom of the top photo. The floral scapes rise another foot or so above the foliage. The lower close-up is at eye-level to me, and I’m 5′ 9″ tall.
The corms are as big as gladiola bulbs (corms), so it’s not surprising the plant grows so large. The flowers rise up vertically on either side of the dark-colored scapes, yellow at the base, flaming red-orange tubes, with yellow throats. When I checked on ours this morning, a humming bird was busy visiting the flowers. This is the second year in the ground for this plant, and even though it was moved in late winter to be back-of-the-border, it has given us quite a show this summer. PS - the lovely grass shown in these photos is Variegated Purple Moor Grass - Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’ which makes an excellent foil for the three different crocosmia that are interplanted with them.
Researching the identity of this plant has taken quite some time. It was given to me in February 2020, at a Weed-Walk-and-Talk volunteer workday at Heronswood Garden, just outside of Kingston, WA. I had volunteered to help remove a huge stand of a lower-growing, “standard type” orange crocosmia (not yet starting to come out of the ground for the season). As a thank you, I was allowed to take home clumps of corms of that type, but then Duane brought me this huge corm, and said I should plant this too. He said it was large-growing and very special. INDEED!
The 2001 Heronswood Nursery catalogue listed a red-orange crocosmia named ‘Mars’. Looking through photos of Crocosmia cultivars online, especially the Hardy Plant Society of the UK, this plant was clearly not ‘Mars’ (’Mars’ might be the orange cultivar I brought home - which is thriving). However, there were some straight species shown, and referencing Bulbs by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, it looked like a plausible match for C. paniculata. Searching for that species brought me to an excellent write-up by John Manning of the Compton Herbarium posted on PlantZAfrika website below. So very pleased with this plant - awesome. Thx Heronswood team!
Heuchera ‘Fire Chief’ is another long-blooming, compact member of the massive Heuchera hybrid family. This is growing in a pot with Helleborus x ‘Silver Veil’ with satiny silver leaves, for year round contrasting foliage interest. Note the deep plum-colored foliage of Fire Chief, with lovely veining quite apparent. The foliage color is brighter, a light purplish red, when it first appears. Fire Chief has dark stems (@9-10″) that that support large numbers of very pink flowers - light pink florets in a deep coral-pink calyx. Tiny as they are, the flowers attract our local hummingbirds. Just learned that this flower clusters-up-a-stalk floral form is called a THYRSE.
Some online research revealed it’s origins. This is PP21880, bred by Janet Egger for Terra Nova Nurseries, Canby, Oregon, USA, patented in 2009. Although not specifically mentioned in the Patent Papers, this is a hybrid between three North American Heuchera species - H. americana, H. villosa, and H. sanguinea. Clearly the pink flowers come from the H. sanguinea blood lines. And the hybrid vigor explains the nearly constant bloom cycle. In the Patent Papers, this plant is contrasted with Heuchera ‘Peach Flambe’ which is similar but has more “peachy/amber” tones to it’s foliage and white flowers. At the time, this plant apparently had the “reddest” foliage of the purplish-foliaged heucheras then in commerce. In my experience, the red new foliage is indeed stunning but ages to a more typical purple with pinkish “veil” over it. Which is lovely. The foliage rises about 6″ high, with the thyrses another 9-10″ above that.
The Patent Papers list the bloom time as only May-June. Will this photo was taken in mid-August, and the plant is still sending up new shoots (or thyrses). In fact, for us, it blooms from late spring through until hard frost. The plant would likely grow wider in the ground - it is not part of Terra Nova’s ‘Little Cuties’ series of very compact heucheras. For us, it is fine in a pot; admittedly it does get a bit ragged in late winter. But that’s when the Hellebore is blooming, so they complement each other.
BTW - when accessing US Plant Patents for heucheras, Ms. Egger and Terra Nova Nurseries have bred and introduced a very large number of hybrid cultivars over the years, including two of my other favorites - ‘Marmalade’ (2004) and ‘Paris’ (2006). I will feature ‘Marmalade’ in the future.
This is Amber Flower Carpet rose, planted from a large pot into the ground 3 years ago Labor Day, i.e. Early September 2018. It has grown from a 1.5 x 1 ft plant to 4 x 5 and very bushy. We brought this rose in a planter from our house in Bothell, WA. It was about 2 years old at the time, and desperately wanted more sunlight than we could provide. Clearly, it LOVES it’s new home in our Kingston, WA, garden. Full sun, well-drained soil. I bought it on impulse because it was named “Amber” like our Tibetan Spaniel, and because it was pretty. I’ve always loved roses in shades of Amber-through-Orange.
Now…what a misnomer - “Flower Carpet”. This member of the series, as are others, are clearly NOT groundcovers. However, they are highly disease resistant, densely branched, and flower prolifically. When purchased as a “flowering shrub” not as a rose for a groundcover or for cutting, this is an extremely satisfying and useful plant. Maybe…I will get to try others in this series, to replace Cistus Sunset rockroses that seem to be dying off branch by branch.
If I could only have one “orange” rose in my garden, this would be it! Superlative.
ADDITIONAL INFO: Flower Carpet Roses are a Trademark of the Anthony Tesselaar Plants Pty. Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia. Here’s a bit from their website:
Twenty years later in 1989, he [Anthony Tesselaar] identified an opportunity to develop a then radical approach to plant marketing. Taking a new eco friendly stand-out rose and using the now proprietary structured program for commercialising plants, a global sensation – the Flower Carpet rose – was created. Mr. Tesselaar was born in Australia to a family of Dutch horticulturalists. Clearly the “Flower Carpet Roses” were a commercial breakthrough for the firm, and the plants are sold world-wide. There are currently 10 different varieties, many of which have one major Rose awards. For more info…
Montbretia or Crocosmia - what’s in the name?? However, these two names are used interchangeably, and confusingly. And there are two very different plant forms associated with these plants. But first, what is the plant? These wonderful perennials are corms, which grow in large clusters, throwing up lance-shaped, often ribbed foliage, looking somewhat like Siberian Iris, and then long, often dark, stems of multiple flower heads in early-to-late summer. The flowers are arranged on either side of individual spurs from the main stalk. The leaves arch out, and the flower stalks arch even further.
So I promised a post showing some of the many different Crocosmias in our garden. Here’s that attempt!
Wikipedia states the following “Crocosmia × crocosmiiflora, montbretia, is a garden hybrid of C. aurea and C. pottsii, first bred in 1880 in France by Victor Lemoine.” Missouri Botanical Garden had a photo of C. pottsii, which has broad, tall foliage, with upright flowers in long clusters held well above the foliage, and is native to the Cape Province and Kwa-Zulu/Natal in South Africa. It looks like what I call “crocosmias”. C. aurea is called “Falling Stars” in South Africa, and has shorter, narrower foliage with arching stalks of yellow-orange flowers that hang down on either side of the stem. It has a broader range across the southern part of that country, including the same areas as C. pottsii. A nice write up on C. aurea is found at:
There is a third species Crocosmia masoniorum that must have been been involved in some of the hybridizing, because it looks just like many of the named cultivars, particularly ‘Adriana’ that I showcased in a separate post.
So…all Montbretias are Crocosmias. Montbretia is just a garden name, like “lilac” refers to Syringa species. Most of the resulting Montbretias or Crocosmias in our gardens then are actually hybrids of two different Crocosmia species, and most are of the classification C. x crocosmiiflora. But, here in the US, Crocosmias generally refer to the taller forms with wider foliage that have upright flowers in rows on horizontal stalks. See the two upper photographs.
And…Montbretia refers to the form that is shorter, has arching “plumes” of dangling flowers, and is quite robust. See the two lower photographs. This smaller form which shows its C. aurea parentage, has naturalized along streams and waterways throughout Western Europe and several other countries. Montbretia is actually classified as an invasive weed in UK, Australia, and New Zealand. In fact, any Crocosmias/Montbretias cannot be sold or propagated in New South Wales, Australia. These clumps were given to me by our neighbors the Bells. They brought them with them from their garden in Kent, WA, where they had appeared all on their own. The Bells never planted them. But, they certainly do multiply, and fast!
The name “Montbretia” refers to
A. F. E. Coquebert de Montbret, a French botanist (1780–1801), according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Wikipedia reports “The genus name [Crocosmia] is derived from the Greek words krokos, meaning “saffron”, and osme, meaning “odor”, as dried leaves of these plants, when immersed in hot water, emit a strong smell similar to saffron.” Saffron is th fall blooming Crocus sativa from the Mediterranean. The anthers of this plant are collected and dried for use as the spice “saffron”.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the cultivar names of the Crocosmias shown in the upper photos. Over the years, I had acquired ‘Babylon’, ‘Bright Eyes’, probably ‘Severn Sunrise’, and likely a couple others. Birdies searching for seeds and bugs in the garden have kindly flicked out the tags from most of them. They all were planted in pots, often did not bloom the second year in our Bothell, WA, garden. We brought them, planted them in the ground, and they are thriving here on! In fact, I’m always finding thin tall blades coming up in ferns, other perennials, etc. I try to dig them out and collect them in a pot. Wait for them to bloom. Will see! Will have plenty to give away.
