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Back in the dawn of time, when dinosaurs still roamed in the garden, I bought a car load of evergreen azaleas from a nursery in the New Forest.
Over the years they have been here and there in the garden, moved around as need and opportunity arose. In the process many of them lost contact with their labels.
Over the last decade I have been trying to identify them by elimination - I have a list of the things I bought and I am matching it to the plants I still grow. For a long time I referred to it as Rhododendron 'Purple' but I only had three unidentified cultivars in the violet range, 'Lullabye', 'Merlin' and 'Violetta' and thanks to the magic of the internet my best guess now is that this is 'Violeta'. It is certainly the most striking colour in the collection but I am open to correction on the identification. The Rhododendron Register lists eight different plants under the name 'Violetta' (things are never simple) but fortunately I know that I bought Glenn Dale azaleas at the time. So this is probably the Glenn Dale 'Violetta'. The description in the International Rhododendron Register says: "Evergreen azalea: 'Malvaticum' (seed) x Satsuki azalea. Raised: B.Y. Morrison. Introduced: USDA (1947). Fls 2-3/truss, 50-55mm wide, light mallow purple (light reddish purple (74C)), with a rhodamine purple (vivid reddish purple (74A)) blotch. Shrub to 1.2m. Mid April. Glenn Dale." |
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| 23rd May 2010 | ||
