Summer-Sun - And a Sunshine-Climate Plant Which Doesn't Like Sun
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Summer-Sun - And a Sunshine-Climate Plant Which Doesn't Like Sun
- From: t*@eddy.u-net.com (Tim Longville)
- Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1999 19:20:18 GMT
Moira:
' I am glad to know summer has finally reached you - long may it
last!!'
Surely you remember the Brit. climate better than that?! It lasted all
of a week. Well, it did here. No doubt Dave is still basking on the
beach in Torquay. Here we're back to normal: bits of rain, bits of
sun, not a lot of heat - but a lot of wind.
My summer-sunshine-climate plant which seems to be a sun-hater is the
shrubby foxglove from the Canaries - either Isoplexis canariensis or
I. sceptrum - same thing seems to apply to both spp. For a couple of
years I grew young plants of these in full sun, thinking
'Canaries=heat+drainage.' They didn't die but they languished, looked
sad, did little. So I thought (I do, occasionally) 'Maybe their
foxglove blood is more important than their Canaries homeland' - and
re-located'em to a warm, moist, shady corner. Result: whammo! Dramatic
Martian invaders 3' high, sprouting huge ruffs of leaves on top of
thin woody legs, and topped with tall, thin, multi-eyed 'heads' of
tawny-orange-brown (lovely darker veinings inside the big foxglove
flowers, too).
Do these creatures get grown in Calif, Aus or NZ? If not - and if
you've got or can create the aforesaid warm moist shady corner -,
permit me to recommend'em. (Keep them out of wind if you can: the big,
coarsely textured, almost rigid leaves easily get damaged.) As easy as
any foxglove from seed. About 3 years from seed to flowering - at
least in my own experience: in a hotter climate they might well be
quicker.
If other folks do grow them (or know them in the wild: I don't), a
couple of questions: First, has my fumbling 'learning by doing' (in
this case, by doing wrong) method led to results which others
recognise from their own experience? Ie, is the 'warm damp shady
corner' the standard solution? Second, I only know these two spp: are
there others? If so, are they worth trying/feasible to try?
Tim Longville
