 |
The genus Salvia has seen considerable development in recent years, particularly among the species that straddle to boundary between shrubby and herbaceous.
New cultivars have extended the range of colour available and improved their garden performance. I have ignored them for the most part.
Salvia grow best in warm, dry sunny locations; they are not really suited to my cool dank summers. However, there are some exceptional new selections
that have been doing very well in the eastern counties and I thought I would give it a try. 'Amistad' is at the herbaceous end of the spectrum. A young plant at the foot of my south wall performed reasonable well in its first year. It over-wintered well but failed to get going until quite late in the year. As a result it didn't flower until late autumn and its vigour reduced with each year until I took it out in 2021. Cuttings overwintered under cover might have managed a faster start in spring but I didn't get around to doing it. My conclusion was that the modern Savia are effectively annual filler for me. San Marcos Growers say on their website: "Salvia 'Amistad' was discovered by Rolando Uria, a agronomy professor at the University of Buenos Aires who, who found it at a plant sale in Argentina in 2005 and gave it to Robin Middleton. The patent was processed by Rodney Richards of New World Plants, who was successfully able to market it worldwide. In United States it holds US Plant Patent 23,578 issued on April 30, 2013. Rolando Uria published in garden blog his wish that this plant be freely shared with everybody, and this was why he named it Amistad, which in Spanish means "friendship". " The US Plant Patent says: "Amistad was discovered by one of the Inventors as a naturally occurring whole plant mutation in February of 2007 in a garden bed in Lanus, Buenos Aires province, Argentina. The new cultivar is believed to be a hybrid of unnamed plants of Salvia gaurantica and Salvia gesnerifolia based on the characteristics of the new cultivar and their proximity to the discovered plant. The exact parents are unknown. Amistad can be compared to plants of the species that are thought to be the parents. Plants of Salvia gaurantica differ from Amistad in commencing bloom later in the season, in having flowers that are blue in color, and in having roots with a more spreading habit. Plants of Salvia gesnerifolia differ from Amistad in being taller in height, in having stems that are woodier, in being less cold hardy, in commencing bloom later in the season, and in having flowers that are orange-red in color." |
|
| 27th July 2019 | ||
