John - Pa. wrote
I have been offline for a while, but here is a shot of a Hibiscus
moscheutos from this afternoon. This is the common hardy herbaceous
kind of Hibiscus, and this guy is maybe 4-years from seed. I measured
this particular flower at 9-in across.

These flowers are usually eaten to shreds by japanese beatles, but for
whatever reason, this has been a remarkably tough year for those pests
around here, and therefore a particularly good year for the H.
moscheutos.


John, do you mean hardy in that they can take couple of degrees of frost?
I saw some at Kew Gardens a few years ago and was knocked out by the colour
and size of the flowers but didn't think they would be hardy enough over
here to survive our cold wet winters. (Summers are the same these days!!)
Some plants can take cold but not the almost daily change in temp coupled
with the wet.
--
Regards
Bob Hobden
17 miles W. of London, UK.