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I have just digitised some older pictures from the garden and that's my only excuse for showing this picture
of Viburnum 'Lanarth'. In 1999 it had been in for about 10 years and it has always been free flowering. A vigorous shrub with horizonal arms, crusted in their season with white flowers, like meringue on top of a pie. It is now (2011) about 12 feet tall and getting difficult to photograph. It is in a fairly congested corner of the garden so I end up standing underneath it and pointing the camera straight up which doesn't result in good pictures. I am slowly clearing shrubs and trees from the area so it is now possible to see it from a little distance away. Trees and Shrubs online says: "Thunberg described two forms of this species: V. tomentosum was the normal wild form, and the name V. plicatum was given by him to a form with 'snowball' inflorescences cultivated in the gardens of Japan. Since the former name had priority, the garden plants with the snowball type of inflorescence took their natural place as a variety or botanical form of the wild V. tomentosum. Unfortunately, as Dr Rehder pointed out in 1945, the name V. tomentosum Thunb. (1784) is antedated by V. tomentosum Lam. (1778), which is V. lantana. It is therefore illegitimate, and the order of nature must be reversed: V. plicatum becomes the correct name for the species as a whole; the snowball forms are collectively V. plicatum f. plicatum, and the wild plants V. plicatum f. tomentosum." "Raised at Lanarth and received an Award of Merit when shown from Exbury in 1930. It has become confused with 'Mariesii', but so far as can be ascertained the true 'Lanarth' has ray-flowers to well over 2 in. wide; the common-stalk of the inflorescence is about 1⁄2 in. longer than in 'Mariesii' and rather stout; and the fertile flowers are not so densely arranged. It is really a rather coarser plant, and certainly no more effective in the garden. It is possible that some plants grown as 'Lanarth' are really 'Mariesii' and vice versa, while plants imported from the continent under one or the other name are said in some cases to be the normal wild form (these may be seedlings)." |
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| 11th May 1999 | ||
