Wednesday, September 2 – Nursery Time
Our day began by heading east for the one-hour drive to Pistoia. I had read about a couple of small specialty nurseries on-line, so we dropped in along the route, sans appointment. The first was Vivao Rhododendron Nursery, near Lucca, which specializes in both Rhododendron and Camellia. Despite the language barrier, we enjoyed a lovely tour through the garden and nursery. Among the well grown heirloom Italian camellia varieties, was a flowering specimen of the still rare, everblooming, Camellia azalea.
Our second stop of the day was La Casina di San Lorenzo Nursery, also near Lucca. On-line, they boast having over 1200 plant taxa. The nursery staff was busy loading plants for the Murabilia Festival, but we were allowed to wander on our own. The organizational skills and nursery maintenance sadly made it a bit difficult to find much of interest.
From there, we headed further east to the town of Pistoia, considered the center of the European nursery industry. This small town houses over 100 wholesale nurseries. We had arranged to meet one of my on-line plant acquaintances, Frederic Julien of Vannucci Piante, for lunch. Frederic, who goes by the Facebook name of Frederic Yucca, is an amazing French plantsman, who works primarily in France as their regional sales representative. Although we had already scheduled a tour of Vannucci for the next day, Frederic was not available then, hence our lunch meeting.
Although I’d heard of Vannucci Piante prior to our trip, nothing could have prepared me for our lunch stop at the nursery. I’m simply not used to wholesale nurseries having their own restaurants, and certainly not having their own hotel/restaurant combination, that serves customers and visitors at no charge. When I update my book, So, You Think you Want to Start a Nursery, I’ll need to include a chapter on this.
We spent a couple of hours, enjoying the food, and talking plants and plant breeding. Frederic is an incredibly knowledgeable plant breeder, who works with yucca, erythrina, and other eclectic taxa. His first commercial introduction, Yucca ‘French Flag’, a hybrid of two North American native species, Yucca rostrata x filamentosa, is scheduled to arrive in North America next year.
With several hours of daylight remaining after lunch, we headed into a different nearby section of the Apennine Alps. Our first stop at 2150’ elevation was home to two distinct Polypodium ferns. There are three native species in the region, along with interspecific hybrids, each with different sizes and frond emergent times. Here, we found what we think is Polypodium vulgare and Polypodium interjectum. One of the overstory trees at the site, that was new to me is the attractive Italian Downy Oak, Quercus pubescens.
Our final stop for the day was at 2380’ elevation, where the road abruptly and unexpectedly ended. Here we found magnificent specimens of European beech, Fagus sylvatica, in full seed. This is another species that needs new genetics from warmer locations to extend its growable range further south in the US. Also, clinging to the steep bank was the amazing Acer opalus, a little-known, Italian maple. The other breathtaking tree here, which we’d seen scattered throughout the trip was the sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa.
The perennial vegetation on the dry, rocky uplifts, was quite sparse. One plant that did catch my eye, however, was Italian curry, Helichrysum italicum. While John tells us that it’s widely grown in the UK, it seems virtually unknown in US gardens.
With daylight fading, it was time to turn around and head back to Lucca for the evening. By now, we had become accustomed to the extremely narrow, often one lane roads through the Italian mountains, so we didn’t think twice when Google routed us down a very narrow road on a 45-degree slope, where you could literally reach out and shake hands with the neighbors.
Even as a group of women and children pointed at us with concerned looks, we simply waved as we passed…until I noticed that just ahead, the narrow, left turn had switched from a narrow road to a walking path. As we came to a sudden stop, the next-door neighbor, who fortunately spoke a bit of broken English, ran outside shaking his finger. We communicated back by pointing to our cell phone, trying to cast blame away from the idiot tourists. The neighbor was incredibly generous, offering to move his car, and allow us to exit through his driveway, and back to a drivable road. Whew…disaster diverted. I can’t say enough about the friendliness and generosity of the Italian people we’ve encountered.
Part 4 coming tomorrow!