Re: Japanese Painted Fern

John:

	Our garden plants of Athyrium 'Lady in Red' are looking great this year
for the first time.  Athyrium 'Silver Falls' also really looked good after
its second season.  As with most perennials, it takes 2-3 years in the
ground to really judge the quality of a new fern.

At 05:37 PM 7/19/2004 EDT, you wrote:
>In a message dated 7/19/2004 1:50:05 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
>ralpharcher@bellsouth.net writes:
>
>I would  like to pick up the A. niponicum thread and ask a question regarding
>the A.  niponicum cultivars.  We added four of the subject cultivars to  the
>HFF Display garden at Whitehall Home in Louisville, KY USA a year ago  last
>fall along with several plain A. niponicum 'Pictum' and two hybrids,  A. x
>'Branford Beauty' and A. x Ghost . The cultivars are 'Ursula's  Red',
>'Branford Rambler', 'Wildwood Twist' and 'Silver Falls'.    Almost two years
>later, the 'Pictum' and the two hybrids are have started  to show the
>distinct character associated with them, i.e. color and  form.  The four
>cultivars do not look very much different from any  normal group of A.
>niponicum 'Pictum'.
>
>Has anyone had experience  with any of the cultivars for this long or longer
>and if so, do they look  much different from the regular 'Pictum'?   I ask
>this question  as it took about two years for our first planted native lady
>fern cultivar,  A. f-f 'Lady in Red', to start to shine.  Now it is a
traffic
>stopper.
>Ralph in Shelbyville, KY USA
>
>
>My tentative conclusions at this point in time is that few if any of the  
>"new" cultivars are any different from the normal variation in what you
see in a  
>nursery bed - to wit, last week I bought three very different looking 
>'pictum'  from a local nursery, selected from about 30 pots, all slightly
different.  
> They were then matched to the named varieties in my trial beds.
> 
>None of the new introductions really inprove upon my 25 year  old selections 
>from Wildwood Nursery.
> 
>As to time -- I've had various forms for up to 40 years -- the same plants  
>and divisions. Individual plants don't change much over time. However, there 
>are  three distinct phases -- the early fronds, often quite striking; the
mature 
> fond; and the late summer frond.
> 
>To the average viewer they are vaiable but not a dimes-worth of difference
 !!
> 
>As to the 'Lady in Red' I rushed to buy early oftering 2 years ago  and got 
>very disappointing stem color and slow enimic growth. They still  don't look 
>like much in my woods.
>However, I just bought a mature local nursery plant in a 1 gallon pot and
it 
>is quite good -- 
>hopefully it will settle in with better color. 
> 
>John Scott
>Rockland Botanical Garden
>PA --  z 5.5
>
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Tony Avent
Plant Delights Nursery @
Juniper Level Botanic Garden
9241 Sauls Road
Raleigh, NC  27603  USA
Minimum Winter Temps 0-5 F
Maximum Summer Temps 95-105F
USDA Hardiness Zone 7b
email tony@plantdelights.com
website  http://www.plantdel.com
phone 919 772-4794
fax  919 772-4752
"I consider every plant hardy until I have killed it myself...at least
three times" - Avent

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