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This is possibly my favourite of the hardy Gesneriads. It is a beautiful thing, but it is also tough and slow enough growing to be precious. Unfortunately, one
consequence is that I take far too many photographs, and find it very difficult not to include then here. I grow it in a pot, because it likes to dry out a bit through the end of summer,
but it is completely hardy. Writing in the Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society in 1948, Dr Hugh Roger-Smith says: "Ramondia pyrenaica, or as we now have to call it, Ramonda myconii, is the special prize and beauty of the Pyrenees. Everyone knows and everyone grows it, and any description is unnecessary, but those who have not been lucky enough to see a whole rock face plastered with these plants in full bloom, cannot realise what an enchanting sight this can be. It is fairly distributed over the Pyrenees, but I have found the Gavarnie district the richest centre, thought it was seen in great quantity at the entrance of the Vallee d'Esquiery and plentiful in the Vall6e d'Oo." In 1949, H. S. Wacher wrote: "Ramonda myconi (pyrenaicd) when happily established in a horizontal rock crevice facing north lives on and on and will with stand more overhead sunshine than is often imagined, but unfor tunately the crowns rarely multiply so that seed is the only method of increase, although leaf cuttings are also mentioned, but with these I have never been successful. In the early stages it takes a few years to become happy and flower well, for it resents being moved, and like so many plants when in poor health it becomes a tempting prey to worms and birds which love to pull it right out of the ground. When in flower with half-a-dozen or more stems it is one of the elite plants for the rock garden." |
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| 11th May 2006 | ||
