chinese herbs

Kadsura longipedunculata

Kad-zookes!

Imagine our surprise, when the odd evergreen vine, Kadsura longipedunculata began flowering for the first time last month. This woodland vine hails from Southern and Western China, where it’s prized for it’s medicinal uses. Reportedly, it is used to treat arthritis, cankers, digestive issues, infections, and as a perfume. This member of the Schisandraceae family

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Bells from Jiangxii

Hemiboea subacaulis var. jiangxiensis ‘Jiangxi Bells’ is looking great in the garden over the last month. This gem is an amazing new, hardy gesneriad from a joint collection by Scott McMahon (Atlanta Botanic Garden), and Mark Weathington (JCRA). Discovered in Jinggangshan, China, this seems to be a new species to cultivation. The 1′ wide, fuzzy-leaf

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Purple Velvet Bean

Looking lovely in the garden now is the Purple Velvet Bean vine, Mucuna cyclocarpa. This lowland native to Southeastern China makes a superb deciduous vine that flowers non-stop from mid-summer until fall. To us, the bizarre fleshy flower clusters look like those characters from the old Fruit of the Loom commercials. Interestingly, we must not

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Cremastra in your coffee?

Recently finished flowering in the garden is the fascinating Asian native orchid, Cremastra appendiculata. This widespread woodland species has a huge native range from the Assam region of India through China, to the Sakhalin Islands. In the garden, Cremastra is reasonably easy to grow, and quite similar although distantly related to two US native terrestrial

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Fall-flowering hemiboea

For several years, we’ve been fascinated with the genus, Hemiboea, a collection of 23 species of African Violet relatives, all native to China. We currently grow five of those, and two others that are still to be identified. On a 2020 trip to England, we picked up Hemiboea strigosa, which has been flowering beautifully here

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Pinto – A Subcompact Love Lily

One of our favorite love lilies in our 2003 introduction, Amorphophallus konjac ‘Pinto’. This amazing dwarf never has foliage that exceeds 16″ in height. Unfortunately, the ridiculously slow growth rate has kept us from offering it again since, but perhaps one day. Here is our parent plant in the garden this week. Even if you

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Mukdenia – a Rocky Sax

Mukdenia is an odd monotypic genus in the widespread Saxifrage family, along with cousins heuchera, tiarella, and the namesake saxifraga. The odd genus name honors the former city of Mukden in Manchuria, which is now known as Shenyang. Mukden was the site of the largest modern day battle, prior to WWI. In case you missed

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Meet Urophysa

Unless you’re a serious plant nerd, you’ve probably never heard of the plant genus, Urophysa. This small genus of only two species in the clematis family (Ranunculaceae) is only found growing in Karst cliff crevices in a few limited provinces of South Central China. In other words, they are quite rare. Urophysa henryi was originally

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Four favorites flowering today in the garden

  Epimedium ‘Pink Champagne’ is dazzling today in the garden, both for the great foliage and floral show.   Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’…WOW.  Variegated foliage and very cool flowers.  The key to growing this well is good drainage and immediately after flower, cut it back to near the ground.   Clematis ochroleuca is an

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