Re: Phormium tenax

Margy wrote:

>I'm thinking of planting New Zealand Flax along a very long, open fence at

> 1. Can I plant this from seed 

Phormium tenax and the smaller P. colensoi are readily grown from seed
making quite decent sized plants in a relatively short time.

> 2. I would prefer one of the cream/green hybrids...or possibly a
>combination of cream/green and some of the bronzy ones...I'm looking for a
>very dramatic, "architectural" look.

Ah, here's your problem - many of the variegated forms - especially
the yellow striped variants, are chimaeras and as such need either to
be micro-propped or divided since they will not reproduce true from
seed.  The purple leaved forms will occasionally produce some
reasonably well coloured seedlings, depending upon the parent plant.
The comparatively compact growing P. colensoi 'Tricolor' with leaves
striped creamy white with reddish edges does occasionally throw a few
variegated seedlings, but to get any decent quantities you need to sow
a lot of seed and be prepared to throw away hundreds of green plants.


Years ago, I had several big P. colensoi 'Tricolor' which flowered
freely and set good amounts of seed, but I worked out that for every
50 seeds germinated, I would get 3 variegated plants, 2 of which were
almost white, with little or no chlorophyll and these subsequently
died.  At the same time, I had a very well coloured plant of P. tenax
'Purpurea' which gave a high percentage of good purples with very few
greens.  

Of course the next problem is where do you source the seed - P. tenax
is fairly easy, even purple leaved forms, but colensoi?  Moira?

Dave Poole
TORQUAY UK
http://www.ilsham.demon.co.uk/gardenviews.html
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