Christmas Bells

Christmas Bells
Christmas Bells - Blandfordia nobilis

Saturday, October 13, 2007

More garden plants

Here are a few more "garden plants" in flower.

Having shown you a stunning large-flowered Clematis, with mauve-blue flowers, a few days ago, here is what the local native Clematis looks like. This species is Clematis glycinoides.
What it lacks in quality and size of blooms, it makes up for in "enthusiasm". This plant is fantastically floriferous, with one single plant covering two full-sized trees with its white flowers.
So, this plant, while completely native and natural in its setting here, should be classed as a "wild flower", but I like to regard it as a "garden plant" as well - for the wonderful effect of its flowers. And in a few months, the female plants will also show the famous silvery white seed heads, thus creating a second display of sheets of white.

This is another "wild flower" - from Japan. It is Rosa rugosa "Rosarie de la Hay". This is its first full flower, but soon the plant will smother itself in these lovely magenta flowers, which are sweetly scented. The perfume is in the same slightly musky range as the more famous "old-fashioned Roses". I love the Rusosa Roses for their wildly healthy, rich green foliage. They are very prickly, but the thorns are more like pins and needles than the more dangerous reverse hooked thorns of the Hybrid Tea Roses. So, while they are difficult to handle, these plants are not as bad as they are made out to be, once you get the knack of handling them. Rosa sinica alba, which I showed you several days ago, is vastly more dangerous to handle, with vicious thorns on long arching canes.
Here is an un-named variety of Lilac. This was a good garden specimen, but it is basically a wild form, as it is a "sucker", not a grafted, named variety. I love it any way. And here is a close-up of the Hybrid Waratah, "Red Shady Lady". This plant is a really good garden specimen, as this plant is less than two years old in my garden, (planted as a 6 inch pot specimen). It has had at least 50 flowers this season. Amazing.

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