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Taxonomy, Texts & Chinese Foxgloves

A quick note about a plant name, a couple of recommendations of books,
and a few questions.

The name. This refers back to the solanum discussions of a while ago
and is very much just 'for the record'. It seems that after all
Solanum aviculare var. latifolium (as distinct from simple S.
aviculare) IS an approved name. Formally it should be: S. aviculare
G.Forst var. latifolium Baylis. This info. comes from the University
of Nijmegen, who for reasons which I don't know (supposing anyone
does...) seem to coordinate the European research into the whole
Solanaceae family.  Their web site is well worth accessing - for some
splendid pictures of and much detailed info. about solanums and their
relatives. No picture or info. on S. pyrenacantha, though, the other
solanum featured in that previous discussion here. On the other hand,
it seems that if anyone in the US iinterested in it, they can actually
get plants: from a firm called Arid Plants, who I think have a web
site (sorry; don't have the URL).

Now, to justify myself in the eyes of Mediterannean purists, a couple
of recommendations of books as useful for REAL Med. gardens as for
those of us on the wild and wet fringes...

First: apologies if this is teaching grandmothers to suck eggs and
everyone already knows about it but it hasn't, I think, been mentioned
since I've been a member. The book is simply called FYNBOS. It's by
Richard Cowling and Dave Richardson, with absolutely beautiful
photographs by Colin Paterson-Jones. It was published by Fernwood
Press, PO Box 15344, 8018 VLAEBERG, S. Africa, in 1995. Its ISBN is
1-874950. I don't know how much it costs. (Too beautiful to be cheap,
I suspect.) This isn't a book about plants as such, certainly not
about plants in gardens. The authors are ecologists at Cape Town
University and they're concerned with the whole ecological structure
of the fynbos area. So it isn't light reading. You get a lot about
alpha, beta and gamma diversity and similar stuff. Which is actually
interesting but you have to keep your wits about you to follow the
thread(s). For an ignoramus such as myself, there was much to learn
about the different KINDS of fynbos and the different sorts of plants
endemic in different areas. I'd just thought (if I'd thought at all):
"Oh, fynbos. Yes, right. Sure. I know what THAT is." Turns out there
are half a dozen different sorts, each with its own distinct flora.
Which goes some way, at least, to enlightening me as to why some
"fynbos" plants do remarkably well in a mild but
all-the-year-round-moisture garden like mine, whereas other "fynbos"
plants just won't have it. All depends (well, some of it does) on what
SORT of "fynbos" they come from. Apart from all this, the book is
worth getting simply for its hundreds of stunning photographs of
stunningly beautiful plants. It'll be a resolute gardener who doesn't
find the pen scribbling down names as the pages turn - even if you've
read the text and know that most of the confounded things will prove
to be impossible in your garden.

Second: this is (a) hot from the presses, (b) privately published, so
unlikely to be widely reviewed, (c) published a long way away, in
Germany/UK, but (d) absolutely relevant to the interests of
Medit-Plants members - hence particularly worth bringing to people's
attention here. The book is AUSTRALIAN PLANTS: A GUIDE TO THEIR
CULTIVATION IN EUROPE, by Thomas Ross and Jeffrey Irons. This is a
thumping big hardback book - 312pgs, page size around 12"x9". It deals
(a)  with plants suitable for cool temperate climates, (b) with plants
suitable for growing in pots but also (c) plants suitable for
Mediterranean regions. 

Thomas Ross, the German half of the collaboration, had gardens both in
a cold part of Germany and in a hot part of Spain (but one exposed to
fierce sea-gales), so he knew (I use the past tense because he's no
longer alive: the book is to some extent a memorial to him) what he
was talking about, in terms of Mediterranean conditions. Jeffrey
Irons, the English half of the collaboration, is the driving force
behind the UK Australasian Plant Society and has grown Australian
plants, in the ground and under glass, in a variety of gardens in
various parts of the UK, over more than 30 years.

You get around 150 plants dealt with in extensive detail (a page or
more per plant) and a further 500 or so plants dealt with in
compressed tabular form (same categories of information squeezed into
a single line). The plants include trees, shrubs, herbaceous, bulbous;
the detail includes native habitat, soil required, hardiness levels,
moisture and light requirements, propagation procedures, etc. There
are lots of detailed botanical line-drawings, too, plus 80 colour
illustrations. The selection of plants tries to steer - and by and
large succceeds in steering - between convincing beginners to give
these plants a try and providing information about plants new even to
hoary old experts who've been growing plants from Australia for years.
It's the first book of its kind, certainly for Europe (and I don't
know of one for the US: is there one?), and I strongly recommend it.
The printing and layout, by the way, are both splendid: it's a
handsome book as well as an informative one. It's also, given what it
is and how it's been published, a remarkably cheap one. The price is
24.00 sterling (sorry: my originally US machine doesn't have a
sterling sign on it!) plus 4.00 post and packing. I don't have a price
in $ or in any other European currency apart from sterling and I don't
know if the post and packing charge would be the same for copies sent
outside Europe. It would be as well to check before sending cash. The
only distributors of the book, at the moment at least, are: Markus
Ross, c/o CEROS, Lindenstrasse 37, D-60325 Frankfurt/Main, Germany
(phone +49-69-97 57 07 25) and Jeffrey Irons, 74 Brimstage Road,
Heswall, Wirral, L60 1XQ (phone +44-1513-42 17 03).

Now, having paid my contribution to 'the Mediterranean heartland,'
here's another attempt to push the bounds of 'mediterraneanism'
unreasonably far...  I promise the attempt will be brief, though - and
who knows? - perhaps someone like Nick Turland or Matt Sleigh will be
able to polish off my queries with a single quick two-sentence
answer... I hope so!

The queries are about various species of Rehmannia which don't appear
to be in cultivation, at least in the UK, nowadays - where the only
two spp grown seem to be the fairly well-known R. elata (of which  R.
angulata is now taken to be just a synonymn: or so I gather...) and
the less well-known R. glutinosa. (These are also the only spp
mentioned in my out of date edition of Harkness and my 1996 edition of
Andersen, so I guess that perhaps they're the only ones now grown in
the US, too.) However, I've come across references to at least three
other spp. which sound as though they'd be very desirable plants for
gardens with mild winters but (here comes the un-med bit) probably
with fairly moist summers. 

Just in case anyone doesn't know the rehmannias currently in
cultivation, I should perhaps quickly describe them. R. elata is a
straggly perennial (much better LEFT to straggle than being corsetted
to sticks), to as much as three feet (though not often that tall, at
least in my climate), with fresh green, irregularly lobed and somewhat
hairy leaves, and (the genus's great glory) big dramatic foxglove-like
flowers, in this case purplish-red with orange markings in the throat.
R. glutinosa is much smaller and neater, to about a foot, with pink,
purple-veined flowers. (I'm told the flowers are also sometimes yellow
but I've never seen that colour-form myself.)

These plants are Chinese. ('Common' name - though I've never heard
anyone actually use it - 'Chinese Foxgloves.') The two spp in current
UK cultivation will stand a little frost but not much. When suited,
they'll self-sow cheerfully - particularly in places like shady
drystone walls.

Reading about early plant-hunting in China I came across some other
spp which either have never been introduced or which, if they have
been in the past, seem to have died out since. 

The first two I found in the appendix Charles Nelson contributed to
Sheila Pim's biography, THE WOOD AND THE TREES, of the Irish
plant-hunter, Dr Augustine Henry (published by the Boethius Press,
Kilkenny, 1984). C.N. details the history IN GARDENS of plants
discovered and/or introduced by Henry. Two he mentions are: R. henryii
(about half a metre tall; toothed leaves with glandular hairs; flowers
yellow spotted with red) and R. rupestris (a creeping or hanging plant
from rocky cliffs [see my comment above about the cultivated spp.'s
self-sowing preferences]; no flower colour given). Dr Nelson thinks
both of these HAVE BEEN in cultivation but probably aren't (at least
in Europe) now.

The third (and the one I'm most interested in, though idiotically I
neglected to write down its name - organization? what's that?) is a
WHITE-flowered sp (species name derived, says memory, from the name of
a person - but darned if I remember the person). It was mentioned by
Ernest Wilson in his A NATURALIST IN W. CHINA (1913). He doesn't say
if he collected it. Certainly I can find no record of a white-flowered
sp in cultivation.

Can Nick...or Matt...or anyone else... help with sources/further info
for any of these? Am I right in supposing that the hardiness levels of
all of them will be much the same? Is there anyone out there who's
actually grown any of my 'lost' spp?

Tim Longville
Solway Coast, Cumbria, UK
Snow on the Lake District fells 15 miles away but warm spring-like
sunshine here by the sea...
Tim Longville
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