Re: Burkwood's Broom

Irene Kuffel wrote:


Doobieous wrote:


While searching for Erysimium linifolia, I came across
a page on "Burkwood's Broom", a ruby/maroon red
flowered broom I've never seen before. I know that the
common broom (Cytisus scparis) gets villified, but
this one is spectacular to me... at least in pictures!

Does anyone have experience with it? The following
page claims it's not invasive like the common form of
C. scoparis.

http://www.paghat.com/broomburkwood.html



Yes, I have grown this, one of my favourites,
unfortunately lost when we re-did a bed some
years back. No special requirements, a generous
bloomer, well-behaved in size.

I don't think that the named hybrids are
invasive, at least not the ones I've tried:
Moonlight, Burkwood and San Francisco. In 8
years I have only found one seedling (of
Moonlight).
I just took a few minutes looking into the breeding of fancy garden brooms and scoparius genes do not figure all that much in their genetics, for instance while 'Burkwood' _is_ a scoparius X multiflorus cross, 'Moonlight' is a hybrid of tall C.multiflorus and low growing C. purgans. Other garden brooms mostly belong to various species other than scoparius which do not apparently share its bad habits.

At one time here the path along our local river had an interesting collection of semi-wild brooms in all sorts of colours. Alas, the local Parks dept. decided to "improve" the area and their tidying included the removal of all these. I still mourn their passing, man's ideas are not always better I fear and the park they made, while tidy, is considerably less colourful and interestingthan formerly.

Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES AND DIAGRAMS ADDED 20/Feb/2005

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