On a 2020 trip to the UK, I purchased a plant labeled Acanthus spinosus ‘Ferguson’s Form’ from our friends at Cotswold Garden Flowers. In the six years since, it’s turned out to be one of the most stunning clones of bears breech we’ve ever seen. Below is a garden photo taken this week. We don’t know if Ferguson is the former Duchess of York, or not, but the rest of the name needed a bit of nomenclatural clean-up. First, it’s not a clone of Acanthus spinosus, which is hopelessly mixed up in English and European horticulture. Instead it is a hybrid, probably of Acanthus spinosus and Acanthus hungaricus. The word “form” isn’t allowed either as part of the cultivar name, so the plant is now officially, Acanthus ‘Ferguson’. Since acanthus remain mostly solitary until the roots are cut or damaged, we’ve recently circled the plant, slicing through the ground with our sharpshooter shovel, to get offsets for propagation, which will probably take us a couple of years. We look forward to sharing this amazing beauty in the future.
So glad you plan to get this into production!