In article ,
Dave Poole wrote:
Nick, the reason why your plants didn't flower last years is probably
due to Lotus bertholetti tending to produce a main flush of flowers on
previous year's growth. Older, well established plants carry on for a
fair amount of time, and may repeat to a degree. Youngsters usually
flower just once so if you buy them with flowers already open, they
provide little or no colour for the rest of the year. Despite that,
the silvery foliage is always worth having and if you overwinter the
plants cool, but frost free and nearly dry, they go on to give
spectacular results.

Thanks. I liked the foliage, but they didn't really like the way
that I grew them, and suffered very badly as the light dropped
off. Some were in the conservatory, so it wasn't the temperature,
but they may have found it too dry. In all cases, except one in
a pot, they really suffered with competition - and there wasn't
always that much.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On 30/1/06 22:20, in article ,
"Dave Poole" wrote:
snip
Don't you just love the way 'pink bobbles' (describing the flower
heads) becomes pink bubbles and is then suddenly elevated to a
varietal name? It is a pure species, Polygonum capitatum - a
Himalayan knotweed, nothing more, nothing less.

But charming nonetheless? A lot better than the infinitely more invasive
shepherd's purse that I spent half of this afternoon yanking out. Luckily,
yanking is easy with that stuff. But if contained, I do think that
Polygonum is a delightful little plant and somehow, its rather bossy nature
is made more engaging by its deceptively 'sweet' appearance!
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
)

Dave Poole writes
Kay wrote:
Polygonum 'Pink
Bubbles',

There was some of that in a plant I picked up from an urg meet - now I
have it as a greenhouse weed!


Probably from me Kay - and I probably warned that if it isn't killed
by frost it can become a weed.

I had it in my mind that it was from you. But the only plant I had from
you was a ginger relative, and that is completely free of it.
The ginger relative has fresh green leaves and spikes of orangey red
flowers - any ideas what? I know that's a pretty poor description even
by urg standards! With me, it flowers rather late in the season, late
August, so it probably flowers in about March with you ;-)

It is a pure species, Polygonum capitatum - a
Himalayan knotweed, nothing more, nothing less.

I wondered.

--
Kay

Dave Poole writes
Kay wrote Polygonum capitatum:

I had it in my mind that it was from you. But the only plant I had from
you was a ginger relative, and that is completely free of it.

This was at Sacha's when we had the first URG meet back in '99.

It was the first SW urgmeet but not the first urgmeet! We'd been having
them up north since '97 or '98!

That is Hedychium densiflorum, which is highly variable in colour and
growth. It flowers from late June through to November here. Out of
that batch of seedlings, there were some nice palest coral-salmon
shades, a biscuity-buff and a very fine intense scarlet that is still
the best red I've seen amongst that species.

I don't think mine is any of those! I don't think I'd describe it as
anything except 'orange-red' But I'm well pleased with it - it can be
relied upon to give a splash of tropical colour, it has fresh green
leaves, and is trouble free with a remarkable absence of pests.

--
Kay