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Amazing stories about plants
We look at the giant water lily, the snapdragon, geums and the Glastonbury Thorn Some plants impress by their sheer size, others by the outstanding beauty of their flowers and some by the curious nature of their growth or the shape of their leaves. There are plants, too, that have achieved fame because of the difficulties of their culture and the challenge they offer to gardeners. But is there any plant that better combines all these characteristics than the giant water lily of the Amazon, Victoria amazonica, with its 6ft [1.8m]-diameter leaves capable of supporting a child? This astonishing plant was discovered in the 1830s, but for some time resisted all attempts to grow it in England. Eventually, Sir William Hooker succeeded in raising it from seed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Surrey, and to this day it is treated there as an annual, with seed being sown in pots in January and placed in the water tank in May – three months later the leaves may be 6ft [1.8m] across. This is hardly a subject for the amateur’s greenhouse, for the water must be kept at a temperature of 85°F [30°C] and a single plant needs several cartloads of loam and cow manure. But such considerations did not deter Joseph Paxton, the Duke of Devonshire’s celebrated gardener, at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. When Sir William offered Paxton a seedling in 1849, he jumped at the opportunity, personally journeying to Kew to fetch it and planting it with his own hands. He had a tank built specially for it, but the amazing lily soon outgrew that and another had to be provided. In November, at Chatsworth, it flowered for the first time in England. No words could describe its grandeur and beauty, Paxton reported to the Duke. The flowers, 1ft [30cm] or more across, opened in the evening, white at first, soon becoming purplish-pink. A few years later Paxton was knighted – not for his triumph with the giant water lily, then called Victoria regia, in honour of the queen, but for his designs for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The leaves of the lily lie flat on the water, but turn up at the rim, and it is this boat-like construction that enables a child to be supported. It was, however, the strong ribs of the leaves, radiating from the centre, that interested Paxton and which he imitated, first in a new 42 AMATEUR GARDENING 8 FEBRUARY 2020
The giant water lily (Victoria amazonica) was said to be the inspiration for Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace in London (inset)
conservatory at Chatsworth and then in that remarkable prefabricated edifice we later knew as the Crystal Palace in London.
gardens, the flowers were beautiful and therefore he could not omit it. He said some had red flowers, some white and some were “red stript with white”. They were easily increased from the The snapdragon roots in autumn. Two centuries later [the English author] Any child who has ever pinched the Jane Loudon made the point that wild flower of a snapdragon or antirrhinum to make it open and close will agree that snapdragons are often found growing on it is appropriately named. Other old the top of old walls or among fragments names – calves’ snout, lion’s mouth and of limestone, and therefore the cultivated bulldog – were also expressive, while forms should be considered as “one of the name antirrhinum follows a similar the most ornamental plants for placing in train of thought, with anti meaning similar situations”. ‘resembling’ and rhinos a ‘snout’. Today, most of us have been brought Antirrhinum majus, the great up to regard the snapdragon as a snapdragon, was the wild bedding subject, unreliable as a species, originally a native perennial and to be treated of southern Europe, as a half-hardy annual. which came to us so When 4ft [1.2m]-tall long ago and took varieties were such a liking to our introduced from hospitable land America and we that it has virtually were told that become naturalised over there the snapdragon was a and is the parent of popular cut flower, the many fine garden we wondered forms we grow today. whatever they But how our The antirrhinum or snapdragon attitudes to a plant can is available in a range of heights would get up to next. and flower types The days of the change with changing times snapdragon’s glory, after Jane and changing fashions! In the Loudon’s time, were forgotten until the mid-17th century, [the English politician florists took the plant in hand and made and keen horticulturists] Sir Thomas it a popular exhibition subject. One such Hanmer included the snapdragon in plant reached a height of 7ft [2.1m] and his Garden Book almost apologetically, was no less than 5ft [1½m] in diameter. saying that although it was common in
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All photographs Alamy unless otherwise credited
The giant water lily
