Summer Blues

We just love plants that flower in a true shade of blue, and there aren’t many, especially during the summer months. There are plenty of plants that flower horticulturally blue, which to those who aren’t color blind or prone to exaggeration, are actually purple. Ceratostigma willmottianum is one of those perennials we simply wouldn’t garden without. Hailing from Tibet to Central China, this clumping subshrub forms a 3′ tall x 3′ wide mass of stiff, upright-arching cinnamon-red stems, clothed with small fingernail-sized green leaves, which turn brilliant red before dropping in late fall. From mid-summer through October (NC), the plants are adorned with terminal clusters of true, cobalt-blue flowers. Willmott’s blue plumbago, or leadwort, is a clumper, not to be confused, with Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, which is a running species, grown in colder climates as a groundcover.

Chinese leadwort thrives in an array of well drained soils in full to part sun. When winter temperatures drop below 10 degrees F, the plants die to the ground. The specific epithet commemorates the eccentric English gardener/plantswoman Ellen Ann Willmott (1858-1934). The first plants in cultivation trace back to Ernest Wilson’s collections in Sichuan.