Late Summer Flowers
- To: medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Late Summer Flowers
- From: t*@eddy.u%2Dnet.com (Tim Longville)
- Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 16:59:46 GMT
Nan: I don't know if this counts as even loosely 'Mediterranean' and,
more importantly, I'd don't know how it would cope with real heat +
drought, but the Himalayan shrub Colquhounia coccinea is one of my
personal late summer into autumn favourites: lovely soft green,
velvetty leaves, with a distinctly fruity scent if crushed, and whorls
of orangey red labiate flowers. It makes a big lax shrub and a mature
specimen covered in hundreds of flowers is a splendid sight. Like lots
of these Himalayans, it seems to prefer heat + moisture - the sort of
conditions you might give to ginger lilies, say. My best plant falls
forward over a low retaining wall and makes a huge
soft-green-and-orange wave for week after week - cheeringly tropical
in effect at a time when, even more here than there, I suspect, things
are starting to look a touch tired.
(And of course some of the ginger lilies and their relatives offer
much the same sort of effect at the same sort of time, and with a
similar colour scheme.)
Tim
Tim Longville
