As of September 2025, we officially have a newly published hardy palm species, Sabal tamaulipensis, although it’s one that we’ve been growing since 1995, and offering for sale through Plant Delights since 2006. From the first time we laid eyes on it, we knew it constituted a new species, but our and other palm collectors
The Newest Species of Hardy Palm Read More »
We struggled for years to grow the commercial selections of the mostly heat-intolerant, North American native, alternate-leaf dogwood, Cornus alternifolia, which naturally ranges from Canada south to Alabama. It wasn’t until years 30 years ago when local botanist Jesse Perry provided us with seed from a local disjunct population, that we had plants to survive
The Lost Dogwood of Texas Read More »
I’ve recently returned from a speaking tour in the Pacific Northwest, that included talks at the Bellevue Botanical Garden and the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival, both in the Seattle area. This is my second opportunity to speak at the show, which I’d rate as one of the top in the county. I was also
Below is our clump of Yucca ‘Southern Twist’ in the garden this month. This is a plant we discovered in 2011, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and have also found as far south as the Florida panhandle. The only problem is that this plant doesn’t technically exist, according to the botanical literature. It’s possible that it has
The Mystery Soapwort Read More »
You would think with 220 new Aspidistra (cast iron plant) species discovered since 1980 that botanists would have found them all, but that seems to be far from the case. This oddity just flowered in our collection this month, and is obviously yet another new species. This is one of the final collections (2018) made
Cast-ing a Wider Net Read More »
In 2012 we received a small shipment of plants labeled Rohdea japonica, from the former Chen Yi Nursery in China. Although we grew many cultivated forms of the species from Japan, we were curious what it looked like in the wilds of China, since we’d never been able to study it there. We also ordered
Traveling down Rohdea Road Read More »
In 2022, we introduced Ruellia sp. nov. ‘Humility’, a new, still unpublished Southeast US native species, found in 2013, by our taxonomist, Zac Hill, in southern Alabama. Until it’s formally published with an official name, we gave it a cultivar. Not only is it easy to grow, and attractive in flower, but the October foliage
While most folks think of wabbits when the hear Peter Cottontail, I can’t help but think of a very special Mexican century plant, Agave albopilosa. Agave albopilosa is simply the most amazing agave species ever discovered, and one that took the succulent world by storm when it was first published in 2007. The small population
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One of the great plants to help the winter garden look less drab are the evergreen Solomon’s seals, of the genus, Disporopsis. This Bill Baker discovery in China, was later determined to be a new species, and in 2015, was named Disporopsis bakerorum, to honor Bill. Our oldest clumps are 20″ tall x 5′ wide.
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Flowering in early December, this is our first time to see blooms on a cast iron plant collected for us in 2018, by the late Alan Galloway in northern Vietnam. It didn’t take but a glance to realize that it represents another new, undescribed cast iron plant species. Our taxonomist, Zac Hill, has already been
A Cast of Hundreds Read More »
