JEARRARD'S HERBAL
25th September 2022
Hedychium urophyllum .
It has been an autumnal week. I can't say that it was a surprise, all of the pieces of autumn have been gathering in the garden. Last week they got themselves together
and suddenly it was autumn. There are fallen leaves among the cyclamen and upright Colchicum flowers are balancing on slender stems, just waiting for wind or rain to
topple them. I sat in the garden with a cup of coffee while the warm sun and a chill breeze negotiated a compromise. I put on a long-sleeved jumper because I wasn't quite happy with the
balance they struck. While potting Nerine seedlings last night I was driven back to the house by the darkness and then shocked to discover that it was only seven-thirty.
Hedychium have enjoyed the heat of summer but celebrate the softness of autumn with a flush of flowers. H. urophyllum is a good thing in the garden from the moment the
first red shoots emerge in spring until the seasons stems turn brown and fall. It will carry yellow flowers for several weeks but even when they end the red bracted inflorescences
look good until the first frost tidies the whole thing away.
25th September 2022
Rhodophiala 'Harry Hay' .
I grow a number of bulbs in the greenhouse and they move around slowly. If something isn't doing very well, I move it somewhere else and see what happens. Slowly they are settling into three groups:
those that grow with the Nerine; autumn flowering bulbs that seem to like the cold; and bulbs that like it warm.
For a long time the Rhodophiala grew a little unhappily with the Nerine. I was always concerned that they were too cold and dry. Two years ago I moved them
in with the Hippeastrum where they get more water, more warmth and probably too much shade. I can deal with the shade problem.
I felt optimistic when I moved them, but it was tinged with concern. That section of the greenhouse is kept quite wet when the Rhodophiala are dormant, would they flower?
Rhodophiala behave like Zephyranthes, sending up flowers immediately after the first rains of autumn. I wasn't sure what would happen if they didn't dry off.
I have a friend who watered his dry and dormant Rhodophiala and a week later they were in bloom. It seems that they responded very clearly to watering after a dry rest.
My plants have been watered right through the summer and wouldn't be triggered to flower by autumn watering.
Regardless, they flowered in the same week. I'm going to add the observation to the long list of things that I thought I understood and now discover that I don't.
25th September 2022
Nerine 'Sveva Pio' .
Nerine are something that have always perplexed me. I have been saved the trouble of thinking I know anything, it has been clear for a long time that I don't.
Where, for example, does the purple colour come from? There aren't any purple flowered Nerine species. The colour is often attributed to "hybridisation" but
I'm not sure what they were hybridised with. Wherever the colour came from, I like purple Nerine. They are incomprehensible.
'Sveva Pio' lurks on the fringes of the purple group, the flower is pink but streaked with purple and silver. If the appearance of purple is difficult to explain, the strange
pattern of colour in 'Sveva Pio' is unique as far as I have seen. There will be those who say it is the effect of some terrible virus, people always seem to blame the effects of a virus
when there's something they don't understand. When I was younger it would have been called a physiological disorder, a catch-all phrase to plaster over the cracks in understanding.
Whatever the cause of the colour, I like the plant. I have some sveva-babies growing on to see if they throw any light on the matter.
25th September 2022
Gentiana ligustica .
The outstanding plant of the week has certainly been Gentiana ligustica. It dried out during last weekend without me noticing. I found it looking limp,
the ballooning bud wrinkled and deflated. I was quite convinced that I had killed the plant, not just the flower. Its powers of recovery have been remarkable.
The plant perked up immediately it was watered and the bud stood up and opened two days later.
I would love to grow Meconopsis, I'm not quite sure why I can't. It may be that they have to be treated as monocarpic, coming up to flower and then dying.
I don't really understand it. Gentians are equally confusing. I have killed dozens over the years. They might produce a few flowers in spring and then curl up and die
in the summer heat. I don't understand why they have died, and I don't understand why G. ligustica hasn't.
I have had the plant for five years now and it has flowered for the last three. To begin with it flowered in spring and now it seems to flower in autumn.
It is behaving very strangely and I am grateful for it.
I don't understand it, but it doesn't matter.