Minor Melianthus

I'd certainly agree with Ernie - and in relation to Melianthus I'd put in a word for M. villosus and M. comosus, both of them good plants if not as showy as M. major (more plain green than blue-grey-green), and both making the same bold if rather untidy clumps of eye-catching foliage. Neither has flowered in this cool North-Western UK garden (I guess I'll have to wait for one of our once-in-a-decade seriously hot summers) but they survive our mild-ish wet winters without any discomfort (even, during January 01, a sustained month of nights of a degree or two of frost).
 
Phlomis is another genus I'm fond of which has lots of under-used plants in it - certainly under-used in the UK. Not, sadly, ideal for my wet climate (better in the drier south and east) - but do they get grown by the dozens of different desirable species even in the drier bits of California, I wonder? I somehow rather suspect not. Or am I being unjust? (Jim Mann-Taylor, the National Collection Holder of the genus in the UK, wrote a useful small book about them a few years ago, detailing all of those dozens - and several dozen more!)
 
Tim
 
 
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