I first met Aspidistra bogneri, when I crawled through a dense jungle of limbs in North Vietnam’s Ha Giang Province in 2005. There I was, face to face with a 5′ tall cast iron plant. Until that moment, I didn’t know such a plant even existed. Fast forward, 19 years later, it’s currently flowering in our collection at JLBG, having been named after the late German botanical researcher at the Munich Botanical Garden, Josef Bogner. Despite the great height, it’s very slow to offset. We are working on propagating it and hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to share.
Hybridize with another relatively tall aspidistra (like Lenin’s song)?