While most everyone knows about, or has had a first hand experience with a persimmon, few gardeners have ventured to grow anything outside of two species, our native, Diospyros virginiana, and the Japanese persimmon, Diospyros kaki. Would you believe that there are an astounding 787 species of persimmon. In fruit this week at JLBG is
Parsimonius Persimmon Read More »
One of our favorite fall-flowering trees is the tropical-looking Schefflera delavayi. As a child, I was always enamored with schefflera on our family vacations to Florida, never dreaming it would be possible to grow these “tropicals” in our Raleigh garden. Fast forward 60 years, a number of “hardy” schefflera species in the Arailaceae family have
Delavay’s Schefflera is a now a Heap of Pleureum Read More »
We first posted an image of Hemiboea cavaleriei last year, but wanted to share an update image, now that our clump is more established. What an amazing show for the October and November woodland garden, until a frost arrives. Our plant gets a couple of hours or morning sun, then shade in the afternoon, where
The cast iron plant fall-flowering season has begun, and we happened to catch this amazing flower of Aspidistra quadripartita ‘Giraffe’ this week. Because these bizarre flowers are born at or near ground level, they are easy to miss, by all but the most obsessive gardeners. This is a little-known, low elevation species from Guangxi, China.
Four-Part Cast Iron Plant Read More »
We have long adored plants in the Melastomataceae, which are primarily represented in commercial horticulture by the genus, Tibouchina, and our native Rhexia. We have long searched our other members of the family that might have good winter hardiness, but with a less aggressive running habit than our native rhexias. In 2020, we obtained seed
We’re always excited when a new fern finds our garden to it’s liking, and such is the case with Cyrtomium tsinglingense ‘Li Ping’, which is now heading into it’s fifth year in the ground. This previously uncultivated species of holly fern is from a Mark Weathington collection in Shaanxi, China.
Sing-a-long Holly Fern Read More »
Flowering this week in the garden is the little-known, Hydrangea hypoglauca. Hydrangea taxonomy has been in a bit of flux, especially within the group of species that comprise the Hydrangea heteromalla complex. One of the taxonomic segregates from that group is Hydrangea hypoglauca, which hails from forested mountains between 600 and 12,000′ elevation in the
Recently flowering in the woodland garden at JLBG is another hardy gesneriad, the Chinese Lysionotus wilsonii. This gems hails from 2,000-6,000′ elevation in China’s Yunnan and Sichuan province, where it’s found in woodland valleys. That’s near the minimum elevational range at which we’d expect winter hardiness in Zone 7b/8a, so we are thrilled that it
I first met Juniperus chinensis ‘Aurea’ at the JC Raulston Arboretum in 2018, grown from cuttings taken at Richmond, Virginia’s Maymont Garden. We struggled to find a cultivar name, toying first with naming it Juniperus ‘Maymont Gold’. It wasn’t until horticultural cultivar historian, Larry Hatch, of Cultivar.org, told us that this is the true Juniperus
Putting on quite a show now is the little-known Chinese crape myrtle species, Lagerostroemia limii. In the wild, this lowland species is only found in the Chinese provinces of Fujian, Hubei, and Zhejiang. Unlike, Lagerostroemia indica and L. faureii which have smooth bark, this species has rough, furrowed bark. The leaves are also many times larger
Limii Crape Myrtle Read More »
