Re: Medit-Plants Top Ten List
Dave Poole wrote:
>
> Unless I missed it, no-one seems to have mentioned Jacaranda
> mimosaefolia. Now as I think I've intimated here before, I'm not
> overly enthusiastic about its colour, but there's no doubt about its
> medit-style qualities and the avenues and roads of the South of
> France, Spain, Portugal etc would not be quite the same without them.
> Less obvious, but great favourites with me are Atlantic island
> treasures such as Campanula vidalii from the Azores with its racemes
> of waxy pink chalices and hard, glistening foliage and that supreme
> ground orchid - Dactylorrhiza foliosa (maderensis) from Madeira.
> This latter I've recently re-acquired after 20 years of 'abstinence'.
> A friend in Bristol is somewhat over-run with it and sent a dozen huge
> tubers as a swap for rooted cuttings of Ipomoea indica! I think I
> know who got the better of that trade!
>
Dave
I echo your sentiments about that ground orchid, It is most magnificent
and hearty. Mine is just about to burst into flower and will grace its
corner for at least the next month. Of other ground orchids, I do have
reasonable success with Bletilla and have also had its variegated leaf
version, but I think it has left me. I also have one or two Calanthes,
but they have the nasty habit of only flowering at infrequent intervals.
One very handsome variety with brown flowers, whose name is now lost to
me, put on amagnificent show one year and then never again. The white
one which flowered finally this spring (after I had long given up hope
of it doing anything) isn't a patch on it.
I don't actually grow Jacaranda (which is too borderline in hardiness
for this valley) but remember it from my Kenya days with considerable
nostalgia. It was very popular there as a drive tree, though some people
complained about the untidiness of the fallen blossoms !! However, what
I chiefly remember was the most magnificent public planting down the
main avenue running through the centre of Nairobi, where the trees rose
out of a ground cover of Bougainvillea "Mrs Butt". The effect of the
mauve/crimson combination was quite stunning. Alas, I fear it is very
doubtful that any of this now survives.
--
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand. (on the "Ring of Fire" in the SW Pacific).
Lat. 41:16S Long. 174:58E. Climate: Mediterranean/Temperate
