Re: Swan River Daisy
Moira wrote:
> Dave, I am puzzled by your reference to B iberedifolia followed by a
>description of what is obviously a perennial plant. I had always
>understood B iberidifolia to be the annual one and my Australian
>wildflower Catalogue agrees with me.
Sorry Moira,
My fault - total mental block. If I had actually read what I wrote
before pressing the send button, I might have prevented any confusion.
I had been replying to this and half browsing several seed catalogues
at the same time. This causes me to write some very weird things at
times. Of course iberidifolia is the annual species - I'd been
wandering about sowing some in a few scrapes of soil in the front
garden.
The perennial I was referring to is as you so rightly say B.
multifida. I agree with your comments about cuttings - it is the very
devil to root, although I've had success using ground up perlite which
seems to have the right consistency to encourage rooting, but they do
take quite a long time. However rather than bother with this, I
normally dump a pile of old compost on the crown of the plant in
spring and work it between the stems. Stem rooting occurs at some
stage in summer and I cut away any rooted bits that I want during
August.
I've grown the pale pink form of multifida, but it does not appear to
be as vigorous or quite so hardy. A 3 year old plant died this
winter, not as a result of cold, but because of the excessive rain we
had in December.
Australian plants certainly react to our weather in odd ways - the
pink form of Brachyscome multifida keeled over in the wet, but the
more tender Pandorea jasminoides loved it and carried on flowering
well beyond Christmas.
Dave Poole
TORQUAY UK
(Checked and re-read!)
