Sanguisorba - Smilacina

Sanguisorba
Stout perennials for the border, all with smart pinnate leaves and bottle-brush flower heads late in the summer. Generally best in full sun and a moist, fertile soil.
See Julian's comprehensive article in The Plantsman for June 07 (brag, brag). I've given up following the Plant Finder on some of these cos I think I know better.

Sanguisorba albiflora £3 / £4
A shorter plant, of the obtusa persuasion, at 60cm or so. White flowers in chunky bottle brushes.

Sanguisorba canadensis £3 / £4
Tall and stately, approaching 2m in flower with long slender white inflorescences on red stems.

Sanguisorba aff. hakusanensis £3 / £4
A solid, compact one with fat pink inflorescences. 1m.

Sanguisorba magnifica £3.50 / £4.50
Michael Wickenden's unique collection from the Russian Far East, a distinct regional variant of the obtusa complex. 50cm, with grey green leaves and drooping, soft pink bottle brushes. Found on limestone cliffs (never a good sign) but has proved itself easy in the company of Acanthus spp. on the edge of a really sunny bank, where our heavy wet soil dries out in summer. Rather splendid.

Sanguisorba menziesii £3 / £3.50
Very distinctive blue-green foliage with reddish petioles. Maroon, drooping inflorescences. 60cm or so.

Sanguisorba obtusa white flowered £3 / £4
A white flowered form of this stout, splendidly glaucous-leaved. Not typical albiflora.

Sanguisorba officinalis 'Martin's Mulberry' £3.25 / £4.50
An excellent tall (1.8m), self supporting form of this variable species with ovoid maroon heads. Found in a Norfolk garden and distributed by the splendid people at West Acre Gardens. You don't want that floppy old 'Arnhem', honestly.

Sanguisorba officinalis 'Tanna' £3 / £4
A short (30cm), densely running, front of border plant with round leaflets and deep red globular flower heads.

Sanguisorba 'Pink Tanna' £3 / £4
Taller, around 60cm, wiry and with the same running habit. Clear pink, upright, slender flower spikes in early summer. A hybrid from Coen Jansen, and one of our favourites.

Sanguisorba 'Shiro-fukurin' £4 / £6
A Japanese variegated clone, tall and upright with large leaves and heavily cream-edged leaves. Everyone else who grows it talks about its apallingly high reversion rate, but somehow we must have acquired a stable bit. We propagate quite aggressively but hardly ever see a green shoot. Having said that, if you order in the autumn, you're running a small risk; in leaf in the spring we'll be sure yours is OK.

Sanguisorba tenuifolia var. alba £3 / £4
Delicate, finely divided bright green leaves in profusion. Narrow drooping white flower spikes resemble catkins more than bottle brushes. A very choice form.

Sanguisorba tenuifolia var. parviflora £3.50 / £4.50
Very like the previous plant, but the leaflets are even narrower and held more or less horizontal even when the plane of the leaf is inclined steeply upwards. This all sounds rather technical but the effect is very beautiful.

Sanguisorba teniufolia 'Pink Elephant' £3 / £4
A substantial 120cm plant with green leaves and good pink flowers.

Sanguisorba tenuifolia var. purpurea £3 / £4
A nice plant, but to optimists the name implies really dark purple flowers. They are
purple, but at the red-pink end of that difficult colour. 1m-ish. Late flowering with us.

Saruma henryi £3 / £3.75
Quite recently introduced from China, and likely to become a standard perennial for the woodland garden. The name is an anagram of the related Asarum, but it belongs to another world horticulturally - soft primrose yellow flowers over a long season among softly hairy leaves on 50cm aerial stems. Not difficult given a reasonably humusy soil, and will seed around benignly.

Sauromatum venosum £3 / £3.50
Bold, arisaema-like aroid. Very late into growth. Bold leaves with 9 leaflets, pale green petioles splodged purple. Long, horizontal, spotty spathes before the leaves in spring. Smells of a long-dead animal eaten then vomited by a dog. Can be hardy if mulched well. Very embarrassingly, previously sold as Amorphophallus bulbifer .

Saxifraga fortunei 'Mount Nachi' £3 / £3.50
Another nice form, with bronzed foliage, brown even, and good sized inflorescences of contrasting white flowers.

Saxifraga nipponica 'Pink Pagoda' £3 / £3.50
Evergreen hairy leaves in low mounds. Lots of  pink flowers in 30cm inflorescences. For moister shade.

Scabiosa farinosa £3 / £3.50
This sub-shrubby species has splendid thick, glossy dark green leaves, and forms a dense, low dome. Pale lavender blue flower heads are carried on short stems. Cuttings or seed are easy if after a few years it gets a bit twiggy. Unlike anything else we know, we've had it for 15 years and would not be without it. (I don't believe that S. 'Helen Dillon' is anything different.)

Schizostylis coccinea palest pink £3 / £4
In the search for a really excellent white, we've acquired all sorts of things which don't quite make it. This one (a Kevin Marsh special) is excellent, absolutely not white, but a well formed delicate pastel pink, with plenty of substantial flowers.

Schizostylis coccinea alba good form £3 / £4
We'd really like to thank the several people who've sent us their best white forms. This is, to us, the best we've seen. While the flowers are more starry (i.e. with narrower tepals) than some of the best pinks, they are much larger and more impressive than the sorts one usually sees. Also, it seems to get rust less readily than most. Thanks to Rob Senior for this good plant.

Scilla autumnalis £3
Our native, violet flowered Autumn Squill. From cultivated stock originating on the South Devon coast. Flowers in high summer here. For rock garden etc where it seeds around benignly.

Scilla peruviana £4.50
Seed raised plants of the usual Spanish forms of this large, blue flowered, winter growing bulb, hardy in milder parts of Britain where it can dry out a bit in summer. Watch this space for some African forms.

Scilla verna £3
Our native Spring Squill. Tiny bulbs with ground level leaves and pale blue flowers in spring. Quickly bulks up to form a fine colony in the rock garden or a pan. Sun. From a cultivated stock originating from West Cornwall. Some of the Continental forms seem less tight to the ground.

Sedum  varieties £3 / £4
Three of our favourites among the (far too) many big herbaceous cultivars: 'Carl' - lovely bright pink, tinge of red in the glaucous leaf, very compact; 'Matrona' pink flowers in large heads, leaves tinged purple. 'Xenox' 30cm, with dark leaves (spilt toner?) and reddish flowers.

Selinum wallichianum (syn. tenuifolium) £3 / £4
Very finely cut and beautifully held leaves, white-as-white flat flower heads, 1m+, for sun - Mr. Bowles reckoned it 'the queen of the umbellifers' - he wasn't wrong.

Semiaquilegia ecalcarata £3 / £3.50 
Little spurless violet aquilegia flowers on a well branched 50cm plant. An old favourite returns.

Senecio pulcher £3 / £3.75
Very large, vivid magenta, yellow-eyed daisies over dark, glossy, leathery leaves. Runs gently in rich, not boggy soil in full sun. Hardy south and west, as a rule of thumb. 40cm. Best of all, it flowers in October!

Seseli montanum £3 / £3.50
Not 100% confident of the name, but a distictive, very fine dark green leaved, floriferous, perennial umbellifer. Attracts favourable comments.

Silene dioica 'Inane' £3 / £4
Purple leaved male red campion. Very effective. The gender matters - it can't seed around. However, continuing the name saga, Rosie Castle, a friend of its discoverers, tells us that they are Martin and Jane, rather than Ian and Anne.

Siphocranion macranthum £3 / £3.50
Many, rather floppy stems carry small hairy leaves which take on purple tints and look, rather than feel, wonderfully velvety. Bright, rich purple flowers like a narrowly tubular snapdragon, in autumn. Very distinct. For a moist-but-well-drained soil away from bright sunlight.

Sisyrinchium palmifolium £3 / £4
The combination of bright yellow flowers and large, bold fans of leaves is unusual in a Sisyrinchium. Height to 50cm, not invasive.

Smilacina bicolor £3.25 / £3.75
A rather hairy North Korean, shorter than the next with greeny-cream flowers. Rare in gardens.

Smilacina racemosa AGM £3 / £4
Big fluffy heads of tiny, sweetly scented white flowers on slightly arching stems to 75cm, in early summer. A favourite from our days at Ness Gardens, where old clumps grace a moist, partially shaded area.