Hemerocallis 'Explosion In The Paint Factory' - just like the inside of my microwave!

So. The pasta was bubbling, the tomato and chilli sauce, left from a couple of days ago, was in a bowl in the microwave. Then I inadvertently hit the 10 minute button instead of 1 minute.

‘Explosion In The Paint Factory’!

The whole inside of the microwave is covered in – well, you can work that one out. Very colourful. Just like this ground breaking daylily, which has hemerocallis enthusiasts on the boil.

Now, we know that daylilies stand out for their weird variety names. ‘How Beautiful Heaven Must Be’ – you get the message.

And some breeders have a special talent with names. ‘Explosion In The Paint Factory’ along with ‘Adventures, Love and Shenanigans’, ‘A Convocation of Eagles’ and, oddly, ‘Binders of Women’ were all raised by Connecticut daylily breeder Rich Howard.

‘Explosion In The Paint Factory’ won the 2018 Eugene S. Foster award for best late blooming daylily, the 2019 RW Munson award for the best patterned daylily, and the 2020 Lambert-Webster award for best UFo. Like the hosta people, daylily enthusiasts love their names. And no, I didn’t know what a UFo is either. “Unusual Form”, apparently – and the o is intentionally lower case.

Curt Hansen from Ohio is another breeder known for his, errr, distinctive names. I discussed him here back in 2014. His introductions include: 'Lavender Panties', 'Pink Panties', 'Pantie Raid', 'Panties in a Knot', 'Panties in the Wind', 'Don't Touch Me There', 'Long Legged Lap Dancer', 'Nude Yoga' and 'We Dare to Bare'. I’m not sure these would meet much approval, these days, and daylilies are clearly not his only enthusiasm.

‘Nekkid Woman Frying Bacon’ is from a different breeder, Joe Goudeau from Louisiana, and one of its parents is ‘Nekkid Woman on a Tractor’!

And hostas? Well, some are certainly strange but I have to say that they don’t quite match the daylilies: ‘Outhouse Delight’, ‘A Scape Plan’, 'You're So Vein', ‘Pineapple Upside Down Cake’ and ‘Rosedale Tractor Seat’ can’t really compete, can they.

And then, of course, who could forget the Communist lilacs. Bred in the 1950s, ‘40th Anniversary of the Communist Youth League’ is the star – well, the name is, anyway. Although see the comments appended to the Communist lilacs post for more on that name.

I also quite fancy 'Tipsy Imperial Concubine' – if you see what I mean. It’s an old Hybrid Tea rose.

As for 'Explosion In The Paint Factory' - it will be available in the UK from Strictly Daylilies when they've built up stock. Find out more about  it and order it in North Amerca, at Rich Howard's own website.

Meanwhile, where’s the oven cleaner?

You can check out more of my posts on plant names here.

Thank you to Strictly Daylilies for permission to use their picture of Hemerocallis 'Explosion In The Paint Factory'.

Taraxacum faroense has this most wonderfully rich dark foliage.

* This blog post is about the different types of dandelion.

What do you mean, different types of dandelion? There’s more than one? You mean that there are red ones and blue ones?

* No, but there are two hundred and thirty nine different dandelion species in Britain alone - even if they do all have yellow flowers.

That’s ridiculous, they all look the same to me.

* That’s because you’re an ignorant buffoon. If you were the legendary dandelion expert Dr John Richards, it would be clear that there really are almost two hundred and fifty species.

How do we know this?

* He has a new book out, it’s called the Field Handbook to British and Irish Dandelions and it covers every single native species.

But they all look the same! Or most of them, anyway.

* That’s true, up to a point. But Dr Richards tells us that digital photography has revolutionised dandelion studies by easily revealing colours and forms not clearly visible in the traditional pressed and dried specimens used by botanists.

John Richards, the name rings a bell…

* Yes, he also wrote The Genus Primula, his uniquely comprehensive botanical monograph on one of our most popular plants. So his interests neatly combine the loved and the despised. He also discovered the black-leaved ‘Ravenswing’ cow parsley.

But if all British dandelions are yellow, what are the pink and white ones in the pictures here?

* When I worked at Kew, long ago, we grew a white-flowered dandelion called Taraxacum mongolicum. No one believed that we had a white one, so we had to take people over to inspect the plants. Until they died.

Hah! Kew couldn’t even grow a dandelion.

* Hmmm… But moving right along… The white one here is the Korean dandelion, T. coreanum, with grey green leaves and these beautiful white flowers. The honey and pink one, below, is T. pseudoroseum, from Central Asia. The one with the beetroot-coloured leaves, at the top, is T. faroense.

The Korean dandelion, Taraxacum coreanum

Have to day, they’re quite pretty. But no one would be mad enough to try to sell seeds. Gardeners would never stand for it.

* On the contrary, Growild Nursery in Ayrshire, in south west Scotland, sell seed of all three – plus three more. And they offered two species as plants this year and sold out. People really like unusual dandelions.

Growild? It sounds as if the whole place is covered in weeds.

* Not at all. It’s just that they prefer to offer wild species rather than fancy hybrid cultivars and they specialise in growing rare and unusual species, in particular hardy perennials, from Japan, China and the Himalayas. They’re clearly highly principled, and say that “no peat-based products are used in the nursery. Neither chemicals nor animal derived products are used on our plants and only seaweed fertilizer is used.”

You know, Growild Nursery sounds alright. And those pink and white dandelions sure look pretty.

* Well, you can check their seeds and plants on the Growild website at https://www.growildnursery.co.uk/.

Not sure I need a three hundred page book on British dandelions, though.

* If you change your mind, the Field Handbook to British and Irish Dandelions by A. J. Richards is available from NHBS, the Natural History Book Service.

And find out more about dandelions here.

Images ©Growild Nursery. Thank you.

An Asian dandelion, Taraxacum pseudoroseum

Lathyrus latifolius is one of the most popular of hardy perennial Lathyrus species. This is 'Blushing Bride'.

This is the first book to cover the whole of the genus Lathyrus, and not focus only on sweet peas. And a very fine piece of work it is.

Lathyrus: The Complete Guide, by Greg Kenicer and Roger Parsons, Plant Heritage National Collection holders, is indeed comprehensive. It covers all 150 Lathyrus species, 1,200 cultivars, and there’s also a directory of 450 breeders and companies associated with Lathyrus and this fat 500 page book is gloriously illustrated throughout.

Everything from the evolutionary origins of Lathyrus to recent taxonomic revisions are discussed, and the latest classification is clearly set out with the genus presented in its constituent groups so that relationships between species are easy to understand.

Many unfamiliar species are included, those of horticultural interest or potential being given more space than the less noteworthy species. Following the latest research, the garden pea, formerly Pisum sativum, is now included in Lathyrus as L. oleraceus. However, with differences in opinion between the botanic community and the agricultural community this may not prove to be the last word on the subject. However, the authors have taken the wise decision not to list or illustrate the many many garden pea cultivars.

As with other books in this impressive series, discussion of the cultivars is separated from descriptions of the parent species and there is also an extensive table usefully summarising the features of all the cultivars discussed – as well as a separate descriptive list of almost all the cultivars offered for sale in the last five years. This results in entries for many cultivars in three different places. Personally, I find this irritating but I can see that this approach combines comprehensiveness with an economy of space.

The book is, of course, dominated by the sweet pea with detailed discussions on its origins and recent development and with hints of interesting hybrids on the way. The whole story is clearly set out, bringing in detail of developments around the world to provide a full picture.

In spite of the technical nature of some of the material the book is an easy read, elegantly laid out and the photography ensures that even the less flamboyant species look tempting.

This impressive new work clearly relegates my own book on sweet peas to a dusty corner of the bookshelf!

“An elegantly presented, comprehensive and accessible presentation of everything you’d want to know about sweet peas and their annual and perennial relations.”

Lathyrus: The Complete Guide by Greg Kenicer and Roger Parsons is a Royal Horticultural Society Monograph. £40.

Others in the Royal Horticultural Society Monograph are: Colchicum, Hedera, Kniphofia and Wisteria.

Order Lathyrus: The Complete Guide for delivery in Britain from the RHS.

Order Lathyrus: The Complete Guide for delivery in Britain and around the world from the Natural History Book Service.

Order Lathyrus: The Complete Guide for delivery in Britain and around the world from Summerfield Books.

Peonies is the new book by Claire Austin

It’s peony season and we have a new book on peonies to savour. Written and photographed by renowned peony expert Claire Austin - her nursery lists more peony varieties than I could count – she doesn’t just describe her choice from the thousands of varieties she’s seen and grown over the years. No, she adds the fruits of her insight derived from decades of experience. (Well – enough decades to soak up the experience but not so many decades that… I’ll stop digging.)

The book is, basically, Claire’s choice of peonies, described and illustrated. We know we can trust her choice, and there’s no tricky botanical language in the text to trip us up. In fact I think that she sat on a stool in front of each variety and simply described what she saw. The best way.

But there’s more. So, apart from giving us the description of each plant we learn, for example:
‘Bunker Hill’ “Unlike many red lactiflora blooms, the petals don’t deteriorate quickly when the flower is cut.”
‘Emma Klehm’ “A useful plant for those who want a very late-flowering variety.”
‘Little Medicine Man” has flowers that are small “but produced in great numbers on stiff red stems”.
‘Marie Lemoine’ “Sadly, wet weather can spoil the flowers.”
‘Shirley Temple’ “blooms freely in a partly shaded spot”.’

She also notes, for each variety, whether or not it needs staking and the strength of its scent and lists more than two dozen varieties that she especially recommends for cutting.

Before we come to the descriptions and illustrations that make up most of the book, we have Claire’s advice on growing peonies, a summary of their development over the centuries, and a fascinating account of her own history with these everlastingly tempting perennials.

And I’m pleased to say that she slays the myth about moving peonies: “There is a long-held but totally unfounded gardening belief that peonies cannot be moved.” Got that? “unfounded”.

“Peonies have few ailments,” Claire continues. True enough. But a cut flower growing friend asked me just a couple of days ago why her white peonies were spoiling the purity of their colour with faint red flashes. I had no idea, so I hoped Claire’s book would help. But no luck.

So I’m very happy to have this book on my shelf, to enlighten me – and to steal from – whenever I need. Just one thing: the design is, well, a little bit dull. Modern plant books, including the excellent RHS Horticultural Monograph series and Discovering Dahlias that I reviewed here recently, inspire interest partly because of the elegance of their design. I see no designer is credited on this book. Claire should think about hiring a specialist designer next time.

• An unimpeachable choice of the best varieties
• Every variety illustrated
• Descriptions based on personal experience
• Thoughtful insight into each variety’s qualities
• Readable and without reliance on botanical language
• Design could be more stylish

“Dependable peony advice from our leading expert.”

Peonies by Claire Austin is published by White Hopton Publications at £25. Order a copy from Claire Austin’s Hardy Plants.

“The smartness and absurdity of plant names” is one of things I’m going to be discussing here on the re-launched Grahams Garden blog, as I did on its predecessor Transatlantic Gardener. We can start with an old favourite given heightened absurdity by the good people at the Royal Horticultural Society – Digiplexis.

“Oh, no!” I hear you cry… Yes, I’m sorry. And we’re going to do Mangave as well…

So. Here’s the story.

Our British native foxglove, a familiar tough biennial, is Digitalis purpurea (above left). The Canary Island foxglove is Digitalis canariensis (above right), a tender rather woody perennial. Charles Valin, then plant breeder at Thompson & Morgan, crossed the two species together and gave the resulting plant the name of Illumination Pink (above, centre). It won the Chelsea Flower Show Plant Of The Year award in 2012.

But, before the Canary Island foxglove was Digitalis canariensis, it had been Isoplexis canariensis – botanists had thought it was sufficiently different from other foxgloves to be in a genus all of its own. Closer examination proved that this was a mistake and the fact that it crossed easily with D. purpurea was one of the reasons that it was re-classified as a Digitalis. The RHS botanists gave the new hybrid the botanical name of D. x valinii, commemorating the breeder who first made the cross.

Other breeders then got in on the act and made their own crosses. And, somewhere along the way, over in the United States, someone decided that crossing two different genera together – Digitalis and Isoplexis – sounded much more impressive than crossing together two different Digitalis and the name Digiplexis® was born. This was much more a marketing exercise than it was a piece of thoughtful botanical nomenclature.

So, let’s be clear. Digiplexis® is an invalid, made up name with no standing whatsoever and which only serves to confuse gardeners. So it was especially maddening to see, just the other day, in the new plant centre at the RHS Garden at Wisley in Surrey, plants labelled Digiplexis® (below). And note the little symbol for a Registered Trade mark. This is a marketing exercise, not a plant name. Aren’t plant names confusing enough, without this sort of nonsense - and without one branch of the RHS muddling up the good sense of another?

But wait, there’s more. Pretty much the same thing has happened with Mangave®. Note that little ® again. This time we’re talking about rosette-forming succulents mainly from arid regions of the Americas – Manfreda and Agave. Nearly twenty years ago it was recognised that there was no justification for keeping these two genera separate so Manfreda was merged into Agave. All very sensible.

But then in the same way as with those foxgloves someone realised that, from a marketing point of view, crossing plants from two different genera was much more impressive than crossing two different species of the same genus. And Mangave® was born, recommended for patio planters.

But there’s payback for this sleight of hand. That first Digitalis hybrid turned out to be far less hardy than was originally announced and so the name Digiplexis® has become attached to plants that fail to make it through their first winter. Something similar will probably happen with Mangave®, which in the UK need grittier compost and more winter protection than is often mentioned.

But haven’t we suffered enough? In recent years plant taxonomists have taken on board the idea that they exercise caution in their decisions about plant names and respect the needs of the wider plant community. The shoot-in-foot madness of trying to make us call chrysanthemums Dendranthema is long gone.

But then someone else comes along and confuses everyone all over again. And the very least that the RHS can do is make sure that it agrees with itself.

Shasta daisies have come a long way in recent years, with developments on both sides of the Atlantic, and this year I’ve been looking at some of the recent introductions in my new trial garden.

The great American plant breeder Luther Burbank is said to have created the Shasta daisy using some creative, though now discredited, hybridisations between leucanthemums and related genera. He made pollinations between various species and genera but it seems certain that the resulting seedlings were not actually hybrids: pollination but no fertilisation.

The first double-flowered variety was spotted from a train passing through Norfolk in eastern England, growing wild, by Horace Read. On his return journey he’s said to have pulled the emergency cord, jumped out, dug up the plant and quickly got back on the train. That was in the 1920s.

These days, one of the leading breeders is North American, Terra Nova Nurseries, the other British, RealFlor, with other breeders in North America, Britain and Holland also making improvements.

This year I grew almost all the recent Shasta daisy introductions. I can’t make definitive judgements in their first season, the plants went in at different times and varied in size enormously, but a few things are clear.

The range of flower forms is impressive with neat doubles and tightly anemone-centred forms and, while we still have no pink-flowered forms, the yellow-flowered varieties are becoming increasingly impressive.

As I write in early October, most still feature a few flowers except for 'Shapcott Gossamer' and 'Shapcott Ruffles' which have been over for many weeks, in spite of regular deadheading.

Both ‘Real Galaxy’ (above, in summer) and ‘Goldfinch’ are still opening new buds, as is ‘Victoria’s Secret’ but its stems are so thin that they’re collapsing under the weight of the flowers. ‘Lacrosse’ had a break but this morning I see that it's producing new buds. ‘Real Charmer’ has no buds coming but the open flowers still look good.

Next season will be a much better test as all will be starting from established plants. I’m looking forward to it, and all thanks to Luther Burbank and Horace Read.

 The outstanding new perennial I grew this year was in the garden only by chance. Heliopsis ‘Burning Hearts’ was a trade from Ian Hodgson, Editor-at-Large for the UK weekly magazine Garden News, and it’s been exceptional. I passed him some new heucheras, he gave me the heliopsis.

This hardy bronze-leaved perennial is a form of the North American native H. helianthoides var. scabra which grows in much of the east and south of the USA as well as in Canada. A number of things impressed me about ‘Burning Hearts’.

I planted three young plants, raised from seed Ian had sown earlier in the spring, in mid May. The purple-bronze foliage was impressive straight away, the plants grew away well and in June they were in flower. They’re still flowering today at about 90cm/3ft, in spite of being partially shaded by the unexpected vigour of a new physocarpus (not to mention some rampageous climbing beans).

The bright, slightly golden yellow petals are rolled back gently from the dark eye, each one stained red-orange at the base, and are perfectly shown off by those dark leaves although the red centres fades as the individual flowers age. The plants have been dead-headed regularly and a long succession of stems have been cut for fiery bouquets. They’ve been amazingly productive.

Jelitto Perennial Seeds, who developed ‘Burning Hearts’, point out this is like a supercharged version of ‘Summer Nights’ with darker leaves and flowers in more dramatically contrasting colours. They say it’s been in the works in Germany since 2004 when, the catalogue from Jelitto reveals, “the idea for ‘Burning Hearts’ came in a dream”. Hmmm…

Gardeners in both Britain and North America can order seed of H. helianthoides var. scabra 'Burning Hearts' from Jelitto Perennial Seeds.

Back in March, I started to create a trial garden, a test garden if you like, in Northamptonshire. The idea was to grow new, recent and upcoming varieties so I can report on them from experience as well as grow cut flowers and vegetables. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

During winter, my friend and helper (and artist) Carol Parfitt made a start by digging out bindweed and just about everything else that was growing in the plot leaving me a clear canvas. Then I made a series of rectangular raised beds using 15cm (6in) pressure treated boards, each bed is 1.2m (4ft) wide with 60cm (2ft) paths between.

The soil is good: old English cottage garden soil that has been improved with soot and compost for generations (not to mention, in earlier days) enrichment from pigs and chickens. Most of the new beds had soil improver added.

Things were a little late getting going, after all I was making beds long after planting and sowing time for many varieties. But as soon as each bed was ready, plants and seeds went in. Then I’d make the next bed, and more plants went in.

Weeding has been a big issue, the tiniest slivers of bindweed root will grow, after all, and moving soil around exposed the seeds of annual weeds which soon germinated. But regular weeding has kept them down and only what Brits call the Duke of Argyll’s Tea Plant (Lycium barbarum) has proved a lasting problem. More about that another time.

The trials of leucanthemums and cosmos and clematis and calendula have been fascinating. Leucanthemum ‘Real Glory’ (below) has been a real star. We’ve had more cucumbers and tomatoes and zucchini than we could cope with (though not enough lettuces). Cut flowers have filled our tables and windowsills and been given away and there’ve been successes and failures amongst the American varieties I’ve been growing in Britain for the first time.

Through the autumn I’ll be discussing some of the results of this year’s trials here and also on my Plant Talk blog for Mr Fothergill’s. Please check back and take a look.

The tall and colorful American native summer phlox, Phlox paniculata, has been popular for more than a hundred years. In 1917 five hundred and eighty four (yes, 584) different varieties were grown in the USA and in 1907 one Scottish nursery alone listed well over three hundred varieties. In Britain, the Royal Horticultural Society currently has a grand total of 577 in its database.

Most of these have now vanished, but there are a number of impressive breeding programmes, many using other species in addition to P. paniculata, going on in both North America and in Europe. Hans Hansen at Walters Gardens in Michigan, with his Opening Act and Fashionably Early series, and Charles Oliver at The Primrose Path in Pennsylvania, with his Earlibeauty Series (above), are leading the way along with Gosen Bartels in The Netherlands with his Flame Series.

But some of the best known varieties of the summer phlox have arisen in another way – they’ve been spotted in the wild or in abandoned gardens by plants people with a good eye, and an appreciation of something special.

I’ve mentioned these in my article about phlox in the current issue of The American Gardener but space was tight so I thought you’d be interested in a little more detail. These were all chosen for their freedom from mildew, but it’s important to remember that mildew resistance is not constant. I’ve seen ‘David’, and ‘David’s Lavender’, completely ruined by mildew.

‘Common Purple’ Found in 1982 by Marc Richardson and Richard Berry, founders of Goodness Grows Nursery, at an old abandoned homesite in Greene County, Georgia. The plant was in full bloom, with no sign of disease or problems. It was introduced by Goodness Grows in 1984.

‘David’ Selected at the Brandywine Conservancy, Chadds Ford, PAennsylvania by nurseryman Richard Simon and the Conservancy’s Horticulture Coordinator Mrs. F. M. Mooberry for its unusually large white flower heads and freedom from mildew. ‘David’s Lavender’ is a sport discovered in 2002 by Kathryn Litton at ItSaul Plants, Georgia.

‘Jeana’ Found in the 1990s by Jeana Prewitt of Nashville, Tennessee, growing mildew-free among "many thousands" of mildew-covered wild plants. Introduced in 2001 by the much missed Seneca Hill Perennials.

‘Speed Limit 45’ Spotted by Pierre Brunnerup, in the company of Allen Bush, by the sign on the roadside near Bush’s nursery in North Carolina and seen to be mildew free. Propagated by Bush and introduced in 2003.

These are exciting time for phlox enthusiasts, with so many new introductions. Those such as the Earlibeauty Series, with no P. paniculata in their background, seem best placed to remain mildew-resistant in the long term.

* Thank you to Charles Oliver and Allen Bush for the pictures.

Since the chocolate cosmos, Cosmos atrosanguineus, began to be widely grown in the 1980s we’ve all assumed two things: that it was extinct the wild and that there was only one clone grown which never set any seed. Well, that’s what the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and others told us. They even participated in a plan to reintroduce it to the wild. It was all part of the mystique attached to this captivating chocolate-coloured and chocolate-scented plant.

Now, it turns out, Chocolate cosmos has been growing happily in Mexico all this time, and in a number of different locations. So it has no need of re-introduction. And, in New Zealand, chocolate cosmos has been grown from seed since 1990.

Mexican botanist Dr Aarón Rodríguez and his team found eleven relatively recent records of C. atrosanguineus, the earliest of which was from 1986, and the locations mentioned in the records led them out to find the plant in the wild. Dr Rodríguez told me: “The populations are quite numerous. Plants grow in mixed pine and oak forest.” They were found in three different Mexican counties.

From around the same time Dr Russell Poulter, a geneticist in New Zealand, has been raising plants from seed and working to ensure that the plants resembled the original wild form.

Dr Poulter’s work is the origin of the seed raised varieties now available, ‘Black Magic’ from Jelitto Perennial Seeds, and an unnamed form from Plant World Seeds. At least one more is on the way. His plants have also led to the introduction of new cuttings raised varieties including Dark Secret (‘3013/01’), Eclipse ('Hamcoec') and Spellbound (‘Hamcosp’).

It’s a little baffling that these two fundamental facts have slipped us by all these years. But it’s great news that this lovely plant remains established in the wild and that new introductions are being developed from seed-raised plants.

* Find out more in the June issue of the Royal Horticultural Society magazine The Plantsman, where I describe the horticultural history of the chocolate cosmos from its introduction to Britain in 1861 to the confirmation of its status in the wild and recent development of new cultivars, including those raised from seed. Please subscribe here.
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