Disporum - Eryngium (excluding Epimedium)

Disporum A genus of luscious Solomon's Seal relatives, for moist humusy shade.

Disporum aff. bodinieri £3.25 / £4
Branching stems to 2m, with lots of biscuity flowers, and rather olive green leaves. Came to us as D. megalanthum, which it ain't, but very nice anyway.

Disporum cantoniense
Clumps of strong, upright, olive green stems with little clusters of long, bell shaped flowers in late spring. We offer several forms of this variable species, all lovely:

i) B&L 12512 (£3 / £4) Flowers the same sombre purple ; a shade lower growing.

ii) DJHC 98485 (£3 / £4) A taller form, said to approach 2m when well established, with a bambooish air. Distinct in foliage. Few.

iii) 'Green Giant' (£3.50 / £5) A Dan Hinckley selection. Tall, again, with an olive cast to the foliage.

iv) 'Aureovariegata' (£3.25 / £4.50) Not a jazzy variegation, but a subtle two-tone green which when viewed from any distance gives the plant a different shade again.

Disporum flavens  £3 / £3.50
A delicate, ephemeral woodlander with rather large yellow flowers. 30cm.

Dryopteris tokyoensis £3 / £4
Japanese fern whose upright fronds have distinctive large pale green lobes. Deciduous. 90cm. Shade.

Echinacea 'Kim's Knee High' £3 / £4
One of the vivid pink mid-summer flowering purpurea hybrids. Shorter than others, but still Kim must have long legs. PBR - sorry.

Ellisiophyllum pinnatum BSWJ 197 £3 / £3.50
A pretty little woodlander ground cover plant, with pinnately lobed leaves and plenty of small white flowers in summer.

Elymus cinereus from Washington State £3 / £4
A really splendid blue-grey broad-leaved grass, reaching 2m in flower.

Eomecon chionantha £3 / £3.50
Poppy of the Dawn. Translucent white flowers of great, if fleeting beauty; grey foliage. It runs wild and free in a shady bed, even on heavy ground, popping up at intervals. Great if you value serendipity, not if you prefer regimented formality.

Epimedium (see SEPARATE PAGE)

Epipactis gigantea £3.50
Tall woodland orchid, flowers a blend of green, yellow and brown. Easy spreader given good humus rich soil.

Equisetum camtschatcense £3 / £4.50
A densely clumping horsetail, with medium thickness, leafless stems to 1m.
Wet ground, hardy here. Probably a form of hyemale.

Eragrostis curvula SH10 £3 / £4
A particularly nice form of a variable South African grass with light, airy 1.5m flower heads. Not hardy in the coldest areas.

Eragrostis curvula 'Totnes Burgundy' £3 / £4.50
Our own introduction. Long, arching stems of steely grey flowers in summer, as in the type. The mature leaves are dark wine red from midway. Best in a sunny, well-drained site or large pot. It always looks best against gravel, wood, stone or silver foliage, not against green or earth. Not hardy in the coldest areas.

Ericas from South Africa
Now for something completely different. South Africa, and the fynbos crescent of the Western Cape in particular, is the world's undisputed Erica centre. We have less than 20 species in the whole of Europe; South Africa has over 650 at last count.  One has to set aside preconceptions of low bushy small leaved plants with tiny purple, pink or white bellish flowers living on heaths. There are tiny wispy trailers and great lanky shrubs over 2m tall; there are leaves from tiny scales to those several centimetres long; plants from hot exposed places and cool shady crevices, flowers in just about every colour  imaginable - except, perhaps true blue - and an extraordinary diversity of  flower size and form. With the major exception of Erica gracilis, long popular as a pot plant in continental Europe, we have little recent experience of growing them in the Northern Hemisphere. There was a phase in the 19th century when they were fashionable glasshouse subjects, and it has generally been assumed that they are all frost tender. This is patently untrue, and it is unwise to assume that they can't ever be grown outside, as our collective experience of growing the Cape flora increases and as our climate becomes milder. Even so, unless you are using a cool greenhouse, we are working at the experimental end of horticulture here.Everything listed here requires acidic soil, although several apparently calcicole species are known. We grow all these plants in pots, in an acidic compost, much sandier than a standard ericaceous mix. We keep them in south facing cold frames, uncovered except for the coldest parts of the winter when we prop a light over them. They certainly freeze, but not for too long. Even this level of protection may not be necessary for many of them. In general: sun, acidic, well drained, plenty of moisture, mild climate. If this sounds like St Austell to you, you won't be surprised that several of these are being tried out down there. Away from the south coast, you're really going to have to protect them more, I expect.  Habitat notes relate to the wild, but it may help you in your experimentation. Flowering times are an indication, but not all have settled down to a regular pattern yet. Plenty more in the pipeline! Now there's a threat. For a modern, fabulously illustrated treatment of most African species in the wild, we recommend Schumann & Kirsten's 'Ericas of South Africa' (1992) which you can get easily from Keith's Plant Books - www.keithsplantbooks.co.uk - (he's not paying us for this, we just think he's a Good Thing).

Erica formosa £3.25 / £3.75
Lots of rounded shiny white flowers evenly studding a bushy plant in spring. Cooler, damper.

Erica glauca var. elegans £3.75
Green-white corolla, conspicuous pink sepals and bracts, spring. Surprising glaucous leaves. To 1m. FROM SPRING 08.

Erica grandiflora £3.75 / £4.50
Tall with long narrow leaves spiralling around the stems and long, bright orange red tubular flowers in summer. Showy! Stony slopes.

Erica holosericea £3.75 / £4.50
The pink corolla is surrounded by a ball of clear pink, persistent bracts, looking like it's in flower from late winter to late spring. Flowers sparse, but  very noticeable. Cooler positions, sometimes below rocks.

Erica micropotamus (= high altitude form of E. perspicua) £3.75
Purple, white-tipped long tubular flowers. Bushy but potentially tall. Spring. I think this tends to grow in open, moister habitats. FROM SPRING 08.

Erica patersonia (sp) £3.75
Bright yellow tubular flowers close packed on bold, leafy, little branched upright stems for the 'corn-on-the-cob' look. Marshes near the sea. FROM SPRING 08.

Erica plukenetii £3.75 / £4.50
Densely packed spikes of hanging flowers - red to white, these are unflowered still - on leafy stems, 60cm+.

Erigeron pumilis £3 / £4
I'm not an Erigeron fan, but this one is irresistible. Nodding buds open upright to loads of wild daisy sized pale pink, yellow centred heads on 60cm stems in early summer. Bulks up freely and seems perennial with us. From Janice Greening of Cornwall.

Erodium 'Whitwell Superb' £3 / £3.50
Flowers over a very, very long season, clear pink, unblotched. The leaves are very finely divided and a bit silvery.

Eryngium bourgatii Graham Stuart Thomas's selection £3 / £3.50
Spiny, curly, grey leaves veined white. Blue flowers on wiry stems to 50cm. Lovely in leaf and flower. For a well drained sunny spot.

Eryngium venustum £3 / £3.50
Elongated, deeply and 3-dimensionally lobed leaves are unique among the species which are at all widely cultivated. The rosettes are its great features; flowers ordinary green-white thimbly jobs. Sun, good drainage.

Eryngium tripartitum 'Jade Frost' £3.75 / £4.50
Very pretty variegation, a broad cream edge to each leaf of the generous rosette, neat and regular. It wil bulk up to form a multi-rosette clump, but slowly. Pale blue flower heads on 40cm stems. It's reckoned to have plant breeders rights, and these are bought in from tissue culture, since it's spectacularly slow and troublesome to propagate by any other means. I have to say that a plant looking very like this has been in cultivation for many years, but has always been extremely rare.

Eryngium x zabelii £3 / £3.50
Good blue spiky bracts. 40cm.