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A giant species from the western Mediterranean. Makes large spherical heads of pure blue flowers in any good garden soil in full sun.
There are a number of slight variations in colour and form among plants in gardens locally and I am slowly assembling them to get a closer look at the differences. Brian Mathew says in'The Plantsman': "This was a doubtful candidate for trial on the grounds of size for it is bulky, even though often not very tall. It is a leafy plant and the long overwintering leaves start looking untidy by flowering time. Nevertheless the inflorescences are impressive, consisting of wide, symetrical corymbose racemes of numerous flowers so it can be striking. It needs a warm sunny site to encourge it to flower freely and in an unsuitable position may well be shy-flowering and consist mostly of lush leaves. This is a geographically widespread variable species and there are more compact forms than that normally seen in gardens but these, if in cultivation at all, are rare and were not present in the trial." In 1991 James Compton wrote in the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society: "Some geographical epithets are completely inaccurate, arising from an age when communications were poor. Plant origins were often confused on long sea journeys and information was passed on to botanists from unreliable sources. The great 16th-century botanist Charles de l'Ecluse (Clusius) was misinformed by a man growing a beautiful bulbous plant in a garden in Vienna. Clusius ahd not seen the plant before and was told it has come from Peru. In fact it is found in the western Mediterranean. He called it the Peruvian hyacinth, which Linnaeus later nameds Scilla peruviana. Such initial names must be preserved, despite their error, as laid down by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature." There is also a charming story that the name arose because plants were introduced on a ship called The Peru but the story appears to be poorly supported by evidence (ie. nonsense). |
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| 27th March 2007 | ||
