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Roscoea cautleyoides is probably the commonest of the Roscoeas in cultivation.
It is probably the easiest and least demanding of the species to grow and propagate.
It can be very variable in the wild, and endless variations have been named.
Roscoea cautleyoides is the earliest of the species to flower. The shoots emerge during april
, and as they break the soil surface, the yellow flowers burst from the tips. The stems will continue
to elongate, until the end of may or later, when they will be growing in stort stems emerging from the top
of the 30cm pseudostems. The long leaves are quite narrow and rushlike. As the seed pods swell,
the plants will usually produce a second crop of shoots that will grow to about 20cm before flowering
in late July or August.
This picture shows a rather typical plant in cultivation in full flower. As far as I know there have
not yet been any selections named specifically for the reliability of their early flowers springing
almost directly from the soil or from very short shoots. 'Early Purple' is certainly early and purple,
but it has produced a stem before the first flowers open. Every other potential variation seems to
have a variety named for it. They are all quite wonderful! Jill Cowley says: "This attractive plant was described by Francois Gagnepain in 1902, from collections gathered at the end of the 19th Century by Abbe Jean Marie Delavay and Prince Henry d'Orleans. Once it had been introduced into cultivation, it quickly became well known and popular among horticulturalists. George Forrest, who went on expeditions to western China on behalf of Arthur K. Bulley and his seed firm of Bees', collected this species many times at the beginning of the twentieth century, as did many other collectors. The original habitat of this species is in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan. Here it can be found growing in association with grasses, Rhododendron, pine and oak trees, at edges of forests, in open stony meadows or shady situations between shrubs and trees or on rocky slopes, at altitudes between 2000 and 3350m. In the wild it flowers from mid-May until August." In recent years all of the R. cautleyoides forms have been planted out in the garden where they seem to be prospering. |
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| 14th June 2005 | ||
