"Sacha" wrote
after"Bob Hobden" said:
"Chris Hogg" wrote
Dave Hill wrote:

A horticultural phenomenon is taking place at a Cornish garden as a
plant that only flowers once every 15 to 20 years has started to grow.
The Furcraea longaeva which can grow in excess of 40ft tall - a world
record - has started a new lifecycle at Trebah Garden near Falmouth,
Cornwall. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity for some
people to see the flowering of a plant which has an unusually long
lifecycle.


The exotic plant, which originates from Central Mexico, is thought to
have sprouted earlier than usual as a result of an extremely cold
winter. Trebah's head gardener, Darren Dickey said: "What makes them
so unusual at Trebah is the fact that there are so many of them
grouped in one distinct area.

"We think that the flowers have been spurred on by the cold winter we
experienced. They don't like the cold and their instinct is to fight
for survival. The really are out of this world."

The plants have started flowering on the Rockery, above the Lawn Path
of the Cornish garden. They start off as a soft, beautiful blue-green
rosette that eventually form a trunk of around 6ft. The umbrella type
plant then spikes into a huge tower of flowers, with pendulous
branches and white petals cloaked in white velveteen.

Furcreas are not uncommon in west Cornwall gardens. I've even seen
them as roadside plantings, presumably put there by the local council
(also Beschornerias, someone somewhere's quite adventurous!). Their
behaviour, that of flowering once in a lifetime of 20 years or so, is
very similar to that of Agave americana (aka Century plant), to which
they are related. But IMO when they do flower, they are very much more
attractive than the agave. For some reason they remind me of white
weddings. There's a good picture of 40ft. high Furcreas in flower on
Tresco, in Arnold-Forster's book, 'Shrubs for the Milder Counties'
(opposite p. 320 in the 1st. edition), recently reprinted I believe,
but I've never seen them that big on the mainland. As the central
rosette dies, it produces offsets that grow into new plants, but the
dead centre is rather unsightly and is best hauled out, no trivial
undertaking I gather. AIUI they will tolerate a little frost, say to
-5C, but they are very susceptible to winter wet, so best grown in
areas of low rainfall and planted in very free draining soil.

All I can add is that Ray Hubbard gave me two tiny Furcrea bedinghousii
which he broke off from a flower spike and I grew them up in our
greenhouse.
When big enough I planted one in a large pot and put it outside where it
has
been ever since (quite a few years) I move it up against the house wall
in
winter so it stays dryer and warmer. The other plant I kept in the
greenhouse and planted it out in a dry sunny spot in the garden last
summer,
it didn't last the winter.


Bob, we got back from Tresco this evening. I cannot begin to describe to
you or urg what the Furcraea longaeva are like there. 'Weeds' don't begin
to describe it. They are rampantly flowering all over the island - on the
edge of paths, almost on the beaches, in every garden. Some tiny gardens
have 3 or 4 flowering their socks off and almost blocking doorways -
great, vast, tall candelbrae of beautiful pendulous 'branches' with
lovely greeny yellow flowers giving their all. All over the Abbey
gardens they are, frankly, shameless. How very, very much more I like
these than F. bedinghousii! These Furcreas in Tresco must be going up
to a minimum of 12 to 15 feet at a guess and it is quite impossible to
describe how prolifically they're distributed around the island. Even the
reasonably blasé residents have remarked on them to us and we've been
promised a 'bucket load' of seedlings when that happens so you'll
certainly be getting at least one!
Nobody in Tresco really knows what's caused this extraordinary and sadly,
deathly, explosion this year. To them the cold winter seems an unlikely
spur. Tresco suffered little from the latter, losing, as Mike N put it "a
couple of Aeoniums". The gardens do appear completely unaffected so we
can only guess at the copious rainfall but the sharply draining Tresco
soil. It is the most extraordinary sight to behold when on the island and
I'm just so glad we were there while it was happening. Knowing how you
like those plants I can only suggest you board a helicopter asap! The
sight is just astonishing and while I've known Tresco for 9 years, Ray,
who has known it for much longer, says he has never seen anything like
this. It's superb.

Thanks for that, can't see us taking a flight right now unfortunately but
would welcome a seedling IDC.
Now is F. longaeva more hardy than F. bedinghausii? Suggestion is it can
take some frost, but can it take winter wet as well? Probably not.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden
just W. of London