Shrubby Secrets
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Shrubby Secrets
- From: t*@eddy.u-net.com (Tim Longville)
- Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 20:34:12 GMT
Help! Anybody out there know anything about these obscure shrubs? -
which used to be grown in a few gardens in this country (the UK) at
the beginning of the twentieth century but don't seem to be around any
more and which I can't track down any further details on beyond those
in my source, a couple of books by an enthusiastic Edwardian amateur,
the writer Eden Phillpotts.
Grabowskia glauca ('a Peruvian for a shady wall...rambling habit,
glaucous green foliage, blue flowers'); G. pendula ('white
blossoms...a beautiful habit. I never found this precious plant in a
catalogue...').
Fluggea ('charming East Indian with green flowers and white berries').
Bouvardia ternifolia (syn B. triphylla) from Mexico, 'with most
brilliant scarlet corymbs...no more splendid thing brightens an August
day.'
Fendlera rupicola from Texas, a white-flowered shrub 'for a warm wall'
(in the UK, only in the most favoured gardens even there - and perhaps
not even in those?): in 1916 'it thrives, or throve, on a wall at
Kew.'
Inga pulcherrima, 'a noble evergreen with scarlet flowers which
thrives in Cornwall.' It doesn't nowadays, unless it's hiding under a
different name.
Same possibility with Manettia coccinea? - 'a gem from French
Guinea...flourishing superbly and ascending to the roof tree of a
Cornish mansion. The little scarlet and yellow flowers of this choice
climber are very dazzling and effective.'
And does anyone know anything about the Lepechinas, once Sphaceles,
from Chile and similar places? Are they grown at all in the US or in
NZ or the damper bits of Oz? Phillpotts mentions S. (as it then was)
lindleyi. The only one available (just about) from a couple of UK
nurseries nowadays is L. floribunda. Same thing under a different name
or a genuinely different sp? Phillpotts describes S.l. as 'a sage-like
shrub bearing lavender blue, bell-shaped flowers, which may be
accounted quite hardy' - which certainly rouses MY interest.
TIA for any info. or leads to same which anyone may be able to offer.
Duck honking their way back up the Solway Firth on the last stage of
their journey back from Africa to their nesting grounds on the salt
marshes at the Firth's head - spring must be on the way...
Tim Longville
