Valuable climbing dicentra relative
May 18, 2011
About ten days ago, here on the Transatlantic Gardener, I was talking about Dicentra spectabilis (as was). Then, after I’d posted that piece, I suddenly remembered one of its wonderful relations, a biennial American native climber called Adlumia fungosa, also known as the Allegheny Vine.
I grew this years ago in one of my earlier British gardens, in my picture (above, click to enlarge) it’s scrambling over an especially good form of Euphorbia characias called ‘Blue Hills’, raised by the great British plant breeder Eric Smith. The euphorbia is noted for its very long, very blue leaves.
The adlumia makes an overwintering rosette of very attractive, lacily divided foliage and then long, long, rather succulent shoots develop carrying strings of flowers in a slightly impure pinkish purple. It clings in the same way as clematis, by curling its leaf stalks round its support.
I was always impressed by the fact that it was shedding its tiny, shiny black seeds towards the base of the stems while there were buds still waiting to open towards the tips. It’s a really valuable climber to grow through shrubs in a sunny place.
It turns out that Adlumia fungosa is native here in Pennsylvania, though not in our county, but it looks like popular deer food to me so it’s surely on the decline. I’ve not seen it in the surrounding counties where it’s said to grow.
Looking it up in the book I mentioned in my last post, Bleeding Hearts, Corydalis, and Their Relatives by Mark Tebbitt, Magnus Lidén, and Henrik Zetterland (Timber Press), I’m reminded that it has an uncommon white-flowered form. I notice that Summerhill Seeds in the USA have a pale pink form, which looks very pretty. And seed of the normal form is available for shipping all over the world from Britain's Chiltern Seeds – which is where I got it many years ago.
But can anyone tell me where I can get seed, or plants, of the white-flowered form?