The botanical world has long been a tug of war between the taxonomic world of lumpers and splitters. Lumpers prefer to combine as many plants as they can into a single genus or species, while splitters prefer to categorize in the opposite direction, creating new genera and species when they feel the science dictates. We
Re-arranging Limbs on the Family Tree – When is an Agave not an Agave? Read More »
Just back from the center of xMangave breeding at Walters Gardens in Michigan. xMangave are mesmerizing hybrids between Manfreda and Agave. Here are a few photos from the display garden there. Below is a variegated sport of M. ‘Mission to Mars’. These have reached 5′ in width. Mangave ‘Foxy Lady’ is a variegated sport of
Still Mad about Mangaves Read More »
While we leave all the fancy mangave creations to our friend Hans Hansen at Walters Gardens, we continue our work on creating more winter hardy (to 0 degrees F) hybrids. Over the last couple of years, we’ve made several crosses using some of Hans’ hardiest Agave ovatifolia based F1 generation selections, like xMangave ‘Blue Mammoth’
A couple of years ago, we made bi-generic crosses of the North American Manfreda maculosa and the naturally occurring hybrid Mexican tuberose, Polianthes x bundrantii ‘Mexican Firecracker’. These fascinating plants were still in full flower prior to our first hard freeze in the last few days. These are images of our top three clones, which
Poli wants a Freda Read More »
One of many great attributes of mangaves, compared to one of their parents, agaves, is that they don’t die after flowering. Agaves are mostly monocarpic, which mean that they behave like bromeliads, where each rosette grows to maturity, then dies after flowering. Those species of agave which offset, live on after flowering, by means of
Last year, we saw a listing for a new Mangave, M. ‘Purple Passion’ on the availability of a West Coast liner producer, so we ordered some to try. It was immediately evident when we unpacked the shipment, that the plants didn’t look anything like a mangave, nor did what we received match the image that
The Purple Passion Mystery Read More »
Looking nice this week is this cool selection of the North American (Northern Mexico) native Manfreda undulata. All commercial forms of this are heavily spotted, but we really love this this amazingly rippled-leaf form that we picked up at Bob Brown’s wonderful UK nursery a few years ago on a UK plant roundup trip. We’ve
