See them he
http://www.thimblefarms.com/11apren.html


I'm also growing the native triloba--gorgeous little flower. The color is so
bright it really jumps up at you. I got my first ones last spring. Only one
came back this year so I added a couple more. If I manage not to kill them
and if they come back next year DH says he'll buy me a Jap Hep for a for the
garden--my first specimen.

--
Kristen
Zone 6, SE NY



"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article ,
(Sandman) wrote:

P.S. what's a Japanese Hepatica?

Japanese cloned hybrid hepaticas include some of the most amazing wee
flowers on earth. For those of us that adore little woodland shade flowers
(which compared to tulips & poppies & other such showy things may seem
invisible to some gardeners), these tiny built wildly ornate flowers are a
gold standard beyond the reach of most of us. A local grower told me he
paid I foget how much but something like a thousand dollars for one plant
nowhere in production. Normal hepatica has white or pale pink or pale blue
flowers in winter & spring, but these Japanese strains have doubles that
look like miniature carnations, singles with bright purple & white, or
carmine & white stripes, or with a small flower inside a big flower
sometimes resembling teency gardenias, elsetimes with the
smaller-flower-center a completely different bright color than the outer
ring of larger petals (like yellow inside blue), or singles with pointy
petals making them look like miniature clematis flowers, & other strange
varieties including one that is pink with purple pokadots called Koshiro.
If you can find any of these for less than $75 each, that'll be at the
"affordable" end. I'd really like to add some of these to my shade
gardens, but for sake of finances I've settled for ordinary hepaticas
which are already among the more marvelous flowers any shade garden can
have.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/