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.

Canon 16-35mm f2.8L @ 30mm; ISO-100; f6.3; 1/800-sec

JD

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.

There are, I have heard, about 200 species of Hibiscus, and mine are
not the exotic and gorgeous "tropical" variety. Barbara and some other
folks in frost-free areas probably have those.

This variety is quite hardy in my vicinity, however, which is
officially rated to -10F (-23C) and where we regularly hit 0F (-18C).
I dare say that these would do well anywhere in England. They are
sometimes called swamp rose-mallow here and they are known as wetland
plants.

Although they are big and showy in August, they have limited color
selections. Most have the red center eye, but otherwise the petals are
just red to pink to white. It is the tropicals that have the rainbow
colors and wonderful markings, but most of those cannot take a frost.
And then of course there are the Rose-Of-Sharon woody shrubs (Hibiscus
syriacus), but those are a different story too.

JD



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.

John - Pa. wrote in message
There are, I have heard, about 200 species of Hibiscus, and mine are
not the exotic and gorgeous "tropical" variety. Barbara and some other
folks in frost-free areas probably have those.

This variety is quite hardy in my vicinity, however, which is
officially rated to -10F (-23C) and where we regularly hit 0F (-18C).
I dare say that these would do well anywhere in England. They are
sometimes called swamp rose-mallow here and they are known as wetland
plants.

Although they are big and showy in August, they have limited color
selections. Most have the red center eye, but otherwise the petals are
just red to pink to white. It is the tropicals that have the rainbow
colors and wonderful markings, but most of those cannot take a frost.
And then of course there are the Rose-Of-Sharon woody shrubs (Hibiscus
syriacus), but those are a different story too.

It was the Hibiscus moscheutos varieties they had at Kew and they came in
quite a lot of colours with their usual huge flowers. They had quite a large
bed of them next to the Princess of Wales Conservatory. I think I will have
to search out some seeds, I'm sure Chiltern seeds will have something.
We have a couple of H.syriacus here, "Diana" a large pure white, and a white
with a red centre which I took as a cutting from a relatives plant years
ago.

Guessed they would have...
http://www.chilternseeds.co.uk/chilt...s/211/default/

--
Regards
Bob Hobden