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mysteries, questions and answers


Many thanks to everyone who helped to track down the identities of my
mystery plants from Eden Phillpotts. Very impressive! - and, truly, a
great help. Now an apology, then a few  follow-ups, then some more
information, then (don't groan...) a couple of new mysteries for you
(please!) to use your detective skills on..

The Apology. 

I'm sorry if I/we have had everyone wondering what the heck is going
on here. Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it an out-of-his-tree
cross-dressing transsexual horticulturalist? Nope, it's just me, Tim,
too cheapskate to run to an e-mail address of his own and hitching a
lift on Celia's. Mostly it'll be me doing the writing here - but don't
rule out the possibility of her chipping in from time to time.

The Follow-ups. 

Luculias certainly sound interesting and as though they ought to be
feasible for me here, as in-and-out plants (in the garden in summer,
under glass in winter), at least, even if not as plants for all the
year round in the open garden. I'll be following up the spp on Matt's
list.

Susan: Hermannia incana on Matt's list of available species from B & T
is the sp Phillpotts reckoned was Australian. I confess E.P. wasn't
always too accurate about that sort of thing: too many whisky and
sodas at the club before he sat down to write, perhaps... Does anyone
else have more definite information about the place(s) of origin of
hermannias?

Matt: If your collector in Chile can get within reach of any Lepechina
spp.,  could you let me know? Indeed, details of any new accessions
from Chile would be gratefully received. My UK West Coast climate is
in many ways more suited to plants from that sort of region than it is
to 'classic' mediterranean plants.

If I succeed in tracking down seed sources for any of the other
Phillpotts mysteries, I'll post the information here.

Susan: you asked for more information on Inga, Manettia, Pavia,
Grabowskia, Entelea. Here is what Diane Whitehead generously found out
for me from various (sometimes ancient) horticultural reference books:

Inga Leguminosae  Acacia-like foliage and clusters of showy red
stamens.  Spineless.  More than 150 spp in West Indies and South
America.  I. feuillei, called pacay, has pods with sweet edible pulp
much prized in Peru.  It has ripened pods in California. [Tim's
addition: you'll find a lot more about ingas in some of the books of
the great c19 S. American plant-hunters: Matthew Bates, Richard
Spruce, Alfred Russel Wallace. Which of course I discovered,
belatedly, once I'd asked the initial question.]

Manettia  Rubiaceae  Graceful evergreen climbers ~40 spp in warmer
parts of America Common manettia vine (M. bicolor  and M. inflata - I
don't know whether this means they are synonyms) scarlet tubular
flowers an inch or more long with five spreading yellow tips.  Good on
pillars.  Blooms almost year round.  M. coccinea probably not in
cultivation.  Mexico to Colombia

Pavia = Aesculus  Ungnadia was named for Baron Ungnad who in 1576 
introduced the horse chestnut to western Europe by sending seeds to 
Clusius at Vienna.  Only one species Mexican Buckeye  native to Texas.

Deciduous. Winterkills at 0F in north Texas.  Available for $5.95 from

Forest Farm, 990 Tetherow Rd., Williams, Oregon, USA 97544-9599

Grabowskia  Solanaceae ~6 spiny species.  G. boerhaaviaefolia Schlecht

(G. glauca, hort), offered in California (this is old information from

the book. )  Lycium-like scrambling or wide-spreading bush.  Spiny.  
Whitish or pale blue flowers, not conspicuous.  Used in California 
because of its good grey-green foliage and graceful drooping habit.

Peumus (syn Boldoa, Boldea, Ruizia) common name boldo.  One species.  
Evergreen tree or large shrub.  Dioecious.  Male flowers larger.  
Exceedingly hard wood used for implements and charcoal.  Bark for
tanning and dyeing.  Leaves for medicine.  Small sweet aromatic edible
berries.  Panicles of small white flowers.  Fragrant plant.  Grown in
Southern California, and the male plant under glass in Europe. [TL:
Obviously nobody had told poor old Eden he should have been growing it
under glass. Or if they had, he hadn't listened. Indeed, I don't think
he did, much, being distinctly - good on him - one of the 'it isn't
tender until I've killed it at least three times' school.]

Now for something completely different. Well, not perhaps COMPLETELY
different, since this, too, goes back to Victorian and Edwardian
times. Is anyone else out there nowadays interested in odd solanums?
Victorian horticultural encyclopaedias and reference books in Britain
(such as Wm Robinson's THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN or Thompson's THE
GARDENER'S ASSISTANT} listed dozens of species. Now only half a dozen
or so are commercially available in the U.K. I think they're plants
with a lot going for them, if you like quick-growing, dramatically
foliaged plants with (often) a spectacular and long-lasting display of
flowers. Yes, some are weedy. Others aren't. All are worth trying.
Then you ditch the ones which are more weedy than effective. Simple. 

What isn't simple is finding seed  of the old Victorian favourites or
of other unusual spp. Nor is it easy, even when you've found seed,
finding either if the name which came with it is accurate, where the
plant comes from, what it requires or what, if you give it that, it
will do for you in return. 

 Here are details of (and questions about) a couple of spp I grow at
the moment, to (I hope) start the ball rolling. If anyone has had
success with other spp and/or knows of sources of seed, I'd be
delighted to hear from you.

S. marginatum is a monster - both overall and in all its individual
parts. A second year plant here is 8ft tall by 5ft wide against a
south-facing wall.  The big, roughly rounded leaves (7-8"x5-6", say)
are a shiny deep green on top, white and slightly felted below. They,
and all the other parts of the plant, are covered in sizeable, pale,
hard spines. The thickness of the main stem is forearm-sized, that of
side-stems is wrist-sized. The flowers are white, hanging below the
leaves, in profuse clusters. Flowering is more or less continuous from
June until October. The fruits, the size of small apples or large
tomatoes, start off almost snow-white, then age into green. There may
be further colour changes to come but that's where they've got to at
the moment. Last year I overwintered young plants in a
just-about-frost-free greenhouse and they were fine. This year they're
too big - and too vicious - to dig up, so they're staying where they
are, with a covering of fleece if it gets really cold. I don't know
where this one comes from or what conditions it grows in in the wild
or how hardy it might be expected to be in captivity. Does anyone have
answers to those questions? (I'm assuming that these white-into-green
fruit are stuffed with seeds which will sooner or later be [a] ripe
[b] viable. If anyone - in a country which allows solanums to be
imported, even as seed: I know some don't - is interested in trying
it, just let me know.

S. pyrenacantha is even more monstrous - but miniature (at least with
me: so far). It has 8"-long, narrow, dark green, toothed leaves, with
brown mid-ribs and huge, hooked, pale brown spines. The flowers are
pale mauve, in clusters. This has grown to around 2ft in its first
season and flowered right at the end of it - too late, alas, for the
flowers to be fertilized. 'In the flesh,' if not in my description,
grown as a single specimen in a small pot among other potted spikies,
this is actually impressively sultry and threatening. It probably had
more 'Good-lord-what-on-earth-is-that' looks and queries from visitors
this year than any other plant in the garden. I don't, though, trust
either the name or the (little) information which came with it. I
can't find the name in any of my reference books and my seed source
(who's really a succulent specialist: I think that for him this had
just been chucked in as part of a job lot and he was happy to pass it
on cheaply to any idiot interested in exotics he could find: guess
who...) said that neither he nor his collector knew much about it but
that he THOUGHT it was used as a street tree in NZ! Well, any
vertically-disadvantaged New Zealand vandals would certainly have
problems.... Otherwise, though, I doubt it. It looks clearly a
'tropical weed/shrub,' like most solanums. And the NZ friends I've
asked have never heard of it. Anyone know anything about this one? Is
the name, even, a real name?

And last: shouldn't some sort of introductory piece be more or less a
standard item for new members?  How many of us, without something of
that sort, are geographically expert enough to know precisely what
growing and climatic conditions are like in specific areas of often
distant countries ?  

Tim
Celia Eddy
celia@eddy.u-net.com
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