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A small evergreen tree covered with white camellia-like flowers that would make the forest of my dreams.
There is only one drawback. It isn't entirely hardy. Fifteen species have been described from tropical and warm temperate S.E.Asia reaching as far north as Mt. Omei in Sichuan. Modern botanical treatments reduce this to a single variable species. I first grew it so long ago that I don't have any pictures. It grew incredibly fast in the conservatory and it became impossible to keep it in a pot. I was too stupid to think about planting it out so it died of malnutrition and neglect. Two years ago I was offered another seedling and snapped it up. It has grown fast in the Hedychium house and when it is too large it will go out to take its chances. There are mature plants in a couple of local gardens but all in gardens a degree or two warmer than mine. It is said to recover well from frost damage so I will venture on, heart filled with hope and optimism, propagator filled with precautionary cuttings. Plants of the Worls online accept S. khasiana as a species and says: "The native range of this species is Bhutan to China (W. & SE. Yunnan) and N. Indo-China. It is a tree and grows primarily in the subtropical biome." Trees and Shrubs online says: "Schima species are extremely variable and can be difficult to distinguish. For this reason, Bloembergen (1952) amalgamated all of them into one species, S. wallichii (DC.) Korth. More recent opinions (Prince & Parks 2001, Ming & Bartholomew 2007) suggest that the genus contains numerous species; the truth is probably somewhere in between. Johnson (2007) records (under the usual miscellany of names and combinations) several specimens in western Britain that are over 10 m tall. The largest of all is a ‘S. wallichii var. khasiana’ measured at 20 m (70 cm dbh) at Trewithen, Cornwall in 2004; ... " I haven't managed to establish one outside yet. |
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