The Alpine Gardener - June 2013

332 THE ALPINE GARDENER

Alpine Gardener the

JOURNAL OF THE ALPINE GARDEN SOCIETY

VOL. 81 No. 2 JUNE 2013 pp. 119-237

ISSN 1475-0449

the international society for the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock garden plants

Volume 81 No. 2

June 2013

Alpine Gardener THE

CONTENTS

121 EDITOR’S LETTER 123 ALPINE DIARY

123

The AGS’s Gold Medal-winning garden at Chelsea; readers’ letters.

133 ROBERT ROLFE

The delights and risks of planthunting in Turkey.

152 CONSERVATION

Barbara Jones assesses the future for Britain’s wild alpines.

166 BLACKTHORN

Robert Rolfe visits Robin and Sue White’s enviable garden.

188 NEW CROCUSES

166

Jānis Rukšāns describes seven new taxa from the Balkans and Turkey.

194 FRED STOKER

Barry Starling on the man who introduced the Farrer Medal.

202 PICTURE PERFECT The winners of the AGS Photographic Competition.

216 SHOWS ROUND-UP

188

Specimen plants from AGS shows in February and March this year.

June 2013 Volume 81 No 2

PRACTICAL GARDENING

142 UNUSUAL BULBS

Vic Aspland on the early spring bulbs that have found a home in his plunge beds.

146 HOW TO GROW IT

142 226

A new regular feature. Vic Aspland looks at Narcissus cyclamineus.

148 EXTENDING THE SAND BED

Tim Ingram makes room for more plants.

226 AUTUMN IN TURKEY Yiannis Christofides in the Lycian Mountains.

COVER PHOTOGRAPHS

Front: Saxifraga paniculata in Switzerland (Roger Brownbridge) Back: Crocus asumaniae in the Lycian Mountains, Turkey (Yiannis Christofides) ON THESE PAGES Left: The AGS garden at Chelsea; Colchicum autumnale at Blackthorn; Crucus speciosus subsp. sakariensis Right: Tulipa orithyioides; Biarum marmarisense; Fritillaria stenanthera shown by George Elder at the Kent Show

216

Published by the

Alpine Garden Society

The international society for the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock garden plants, small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulbs, hardy ferns and small shrubs AGS Centre, Avon Bank, Pershore, Worcestershire WR10 3JP, UK Tel: +44(0)1386 554790 Fax: +44(0)1386 554801 Email: ags@alpinegardensociety.net Director of the Alpine Garden Society: Christine McGregor Registered charity No. 207478 Annual subscriptions: Single (UK and Ireland) £28* Family (two people at same address) £32* Junior (under 18/student) £10 Overseas single US$54 £30 Overseas family US$60 £33 * £2 deduction for direct debit subscribers For details of life membership and joint life membership apply to the Alpine Garden Society at the address above.

Printed by Butler Tanner & Dennis, Caxton Road, Frome, Somerset BA11 1NE Price to non-members £6.00 Second-class postage paid at Rahway, New Jersey.

US Postmaster: send address corrections to AGS Bulletin, c/o Mercury Airfreight International Ltd. Inc., 2323 Randolph Avenue, Avenel, NJ 07001. USPS 450-210.

© The Alpine Garden Society ISSN 1475-0449

Editor: John Fitzpatrick Tel: +44(0)1981 580134 Email: editor@agsgroups.org Associate Editor: Robert Rolfe Tel: +44(0)1159 231928 Email: robert.rolfe@agsgroups.org Practical Gardening Correspondent: Vic Aspland CChem. MRSC Tel: +44(0)1384 396331 Email: vic.aspland@agsgroups.org Custodian AGS Digital Library: Jon Evans Tel: +44(0)1252 724416 Email: jon.evans@agsgroups.org Custodian AGS Slide Library: Peter Sheasby Tel/fax: +44(0)1295 720502 To advertise in The Alpine Gardener please call or email the AGS Centre (details above) The Editor welcomes contributions of articles and photographs. Please call or email the Editor to discuss relevant formats for photographs before sending. The Editor cannot accept responsibility for loss of, or damage to, articles, artwork or photographs sent by post.

The views expressed in The Alpine Gardener do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor or of the Alpine Garden Society. The Alpine Gardener is published four times a year in March, June, September and December.

www.alpinegardensociety.net

JOHN FITZPATRICK

Part of the Dutch bulb industry’s spring display at Keukenhof, near Amsterdam

W

ho could have foreseen, when the AGS shows season started in South Wales in February, what a year of ups and downs it would turn out to be.

After a promising start at Caerleon, with a good deal of colour on the benches, the weather refused to warm up and many plants decided that flowering was best delayed. And who at Caerleon would have put money on two of the next five shows being cancelled? The Loughborough Show was the first casualty after workmen at the venue fractured a gas main. Two weeks later, heavy snow and appalling road conditions forced the cancellation of the East Lancashire Show.

Then, in April, when the plants couldn’t hold back any longer, we were treated

JUNE 2013

Bouncing back from misfortune Editor ’s letter to two of the best AGS shows for many years. Both the Northumberland and Midland shows boasted over 800 plants on the benches. I was at the latter, where it was wonderful to see visitors enter the show hall and stare, open-mouthed, at the riot of colour on display.

The cool spring didn’t just affect the 121

FRED POINTON

EDITORIAL

Lachenalia rubida

UK. I had planned a visit to Keukenhof, the Dutch bulb industry’s showpiece garden, in April in the hope of seeing another feast of colour supplied by seven million bulbs. While there were tens of thousands of daffodils and crocuses in flower, most of the tulips were several weeks behind. This was somewhat compensated for by the bulb growers’ exhibition in Keukenhof ’s WillemAlexander Pavilion, where 100,000 tulips and other bulbs grown under cover provided the sort of colourful assault which, so far this year for me, only the Midland Show has matched.

I

n this issue we have restructured our coverage of AGS shows. Instead of publishing the full reports, we will 122

now present a digest of some of the more interesting plants exhibited (see page 216). The full reports can still be found on the AGS website and all the photographs from the shows can be seen in the digital library on the website.

The library contains about 8,000 images taken at shows from 2007 onwards. Members who log in to the website can view larger versions of these and can search the library using a variety of criteria including family, botanical name, exhibitor, show and awards.

While at the moment the library contains only show images, it is intended to extend it to include other photographs, donated by members, of plants in cultivation and in the wild. For more information, please contact the librarian, Jon Evans (details on title page).

A

mix-up with captions led to a photograph of a Lachenalia on page 12 of the last issue of The Alpine Gardener being wrongly named. The plant shown was not L. rubida but L. contaminata. Thank you to those readers who pointed this out, including Fred Pointon, whose photograph of the real L. rubida is shown here.

John Fitzpatrick  We’d like to hear your views about articles in The Alpine Gardener, and also about your experiences of growing plants or searching for them in the wild.

Please write to the Editor at AGS Centre (address on title page) or email editor@agsgroups.org.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

DOUG JOYCE

ALPINE DIARY

A range of cypripediums was among the highlights in the AGS garden at Chelsea

AGS and alpine nurseries win Gold Medals at Chelsea

T

he Alpine Garden Society was awarded a Gold Medal for its garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

The garden, designed by Ray Drew, the Society’s Director of Shows, was constructed on a raised platform and occupied a 22ft by 20ft plot (6.7m by 6.1m).

On one corner, steps led down to a patio decorated with planted containers, while the rest of the garden was intersected by a bark path, dividing a rock and scree area from a woodland,

JUNE 2013

from which ran a narrow stream into a boggy area.

Three alpine nurseries with exhibits in Chelsea’s Great Pavilion also picked up Gold Medals. Chris and Lorraine Birchall of Tale Valley Nursery in Devon were delighted to win a Chelsea Gold at their first attempt.

Gary McDermott of Harperley Hall Farm Nurseries in County Durham repeated his success of last year with a second Gold Medal, while Stella and David Rankin of Kevock Garden Plants in Midlothian won a first Gold to add to 123

JOHN FITZPATRICK

ALPINE DIARY

Ray Drew describes the AGS garden to Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

Right, Arisaema sikokianum and cypripediums in the woodland area and, below right, the patio with planted containers

the Silver-gilt they collected at Chelsea in 2011.

The AGS garden took a week to construct and featured 250 different plants, represented by some 1,200 specimens in total. One of the highlights was a selection of cypripediums, including a splendid stand of C. californicum. More than 80 pots of the slipper orchids were donated to the AGS garden by Camiel de Jong, who grows them commercially in the Netherlands.

Ray Drew said: ‘We’re extremely grateful to Camiel for his very generous 124

contribution.

The cypripediums certainly lifted the woodland area of the garden in a year when colour was in short supply.’

Other plants came from a variety of nurseries including Aberconwy in North Wales, The Forge Nurseries in Essex, Cambridge Alpines, Long Acre Plants in Somerset and Choice Landscapes in Cambridgeshire. A number of plants were lent by AGS members.

The garden was partly sponsored by Michael Agg of Choice Landscapes, who provided hard-landscaping materials, THE ALPINE GARDENER

JOHN FITZPATRICK

DOUG JOYCE

ALPINE DIARY

JUNE 2013

125

ALPINE DIARY

JOHN FITZPATRICK

JOHN FITZPATRICK

JOHN FITZPATRICK

Meconopsis punicea on the Harperley Hall Nursery display and, left, various Rhodohypoxis light up the exhibit by Tale Valley Nursery. Below, AGS Director Christine McGregor with Ray Drew during the build-up

126

THE ALPINE GARDENER

JOHN FITZPATRICK

ALPINE DIARY

Calceolaria ‘Walter Shrimpton’, grown by Tim Lever and planted in a slate trough made by Norman Read, was much admired by visitors to the AGS garden

bark, gravel and composts. Michael also lent four slate troughs for the display, which he had bought from AGS member Norman Read. The construction of the troughs was described in the March 2013 issue of The Alpine Gardener.

In the rock and scree area, plants that attracted much attention from visitors included Calceolaria ‘Walter Shrimpton’, the delicate peach and yellow Aquilegia grahamii, Androsace bulleyana and Dianthus squarrosus. Smaller versions of common garden plants also appealed, such as the white Antirrhinum sempervirens and the North American native Penstemon davidsonii.

JUNE 2013

While the cypripediums were undoubtedly the stars of the woodland area, with C. tibeticum and C. macranthos among them, other choice plants included Trillium camschatcense, Disporum megalanthum, Chloranthus japonicus and a wide range of dwarf ferns.

One challenge that faced Ray in the woodland area was that the birches supplied were too young and therefore too thin to provide sufficient bulk to the planting. ‘To overcome this,’ he said, ‘I inserted some birch logs into the garden to look like trees that had fallen. The thinner birches then gave the impression 127

ALPINE DIARY

JOHN FITZPATRICK

The bog area in the AGS garden featured dodecatheons, sarracenias, the yellow Primula sikkimensis var. pudibunda and, in the foreground, Anemone obtusiloba 128

THE ALPINE GARDENER

JOHN FITZPATRICK

ALPINE DIARY

From left, in yellow vests, Colin Rogers, Robert Rolfe, Tim Lever, John Humphries and Ray Drew engrossed in preparing labels for the AGS garden’s 1,200 plants

of regrowth.’ Many such problems present themselves in the building of a show garden. They have to be faced head on and solved. Ignoring them presents the judges with an opportunity to downgrade their marks.

In the bog area, a shortage of available candelabra primulas was compensated for by stands of dodecatheons, including D. dentatum and two varieties each of D. meadia and D. pulchellum. Other primulas such as the tall and highly scented Primula sikkimensis var. pudibunda and a quartet of P. sieboldii varieties – ‘Alba’, ‘Blush’, ‘Heart’s Desire’ JUNE 2013

and ‘Pink Laced’ – added colour to a lush planting scheme.

Ray added: ‘I’d like to thank all the team who worked on the garden, especially John Humphries, who led the build.

Creating something like this involves intensely hard work, but winning a Chelsea Gold Medal is worth it!’

Christine McGregor, Director of the AGS, said: ‘The garden was a great credit to the Society and all those who worked on it. Tens of thousands of people saw it during Chelsea week and this helps enormously to raise the profile of the AGS and to recruit new members.’

129

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From Stephen Scarr, Exeter, Devon.

I

wonder if members might be interested in seeing a photograph of dionysias in my sand bed, taken when their flowers contrasted with foliage silvered with frost.

In winter the bed is covered with a sheet of clear, corrugated plastic, but not in summer. So it is to my surprise and delight that the dionysias appear to be fine after being exposed to the wettest summer in many years, when even my leeks rotted.

I am trialling a small but expanding range of dionysias. Flowering starts in January with D. ‘Judith Bramley’, followed by D. ‘Monika’, then varieties of D. aretioides and D. tapetodes, ending with D. khuzistanica and D. involucrata.

My garden soil is a free draining sandy loam and I have created the Dionysia bed using three layers. At the base, and mostly dug into the ground, is an 8cm deep layer of one part garden soil to one part garden-collected stones, to improve drainage.

The mid-section is made up of a mix of four parts alkaline coarse sand to one part 6mm limestone grit. This is topped with a 1cm layer of 5mm granite grit – I believe it dries more quickly than limestone grit – and flat garden stones to provide surface crevices. The stones warm up quickly to help dry the plants’ leaves but also keep their roots a little moister and cooler during hot weather.

The surface of the bed is about 9cm above ground level.

When planting, I make holes 8cm square and 6cm deep and fill them 130

How I grow dionysias in an English garden Letters with a compost mix of three parts J. Arthur Bower’s washed grit-sand, one part 5mm limestone grit and one part sterilised garden soil (for me, dionysias do not grow well in just sand).

The oldest plant in the bed, D. tapetodes ‘Brimstone’, was planted on March 30, 2008. It is now 6cm in diameter and has made a very hard, tight cushion. Because of the lack of space, I remove varieties of D. aretioides every three to four years and take new cuttings.

The bed covers an area of about half a square metre and has 30 dionysias growing in it. It is covered around the beginning of August and uncovered at the beginning of February.

The corrugated plastic is laid on top of four bricks, one on each corner of the bed. It prevents rain from being blown onto the plants while allowing the free flow of air. On dry, sunny days in winter, the bed is uncovered to help keep the plants hard.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

ALPINE DIARY

Various frosted dionysias in Stephen Scarr’s specially constructed bed From Robert Amos, Bedfordshire Group Secretary.

I

would like to thank the AGS Centre for its support of the Bedfordshire Group’s recent show. Christine McGregor and Jackie Cooper were extremely helpful in providing publicity material and advertising the show in AGS News. The weather was appalling but I cannot blame them for that.

The AGS Centre is sometimes criticised for not doing enough for Local Groups but I think what they offer is superb: hosting for websites, mailshots to nearby members, free publicity material, and

JUNE 2013

the voucher scheme for new members to have a free year’s membership of a Local Group. All Local Groups should take advantage of these opportunities and if you think there is more that could be done (remembering that it cannot be easy for two people to administer a Society of around 7,000 members) please make a suggestion rather than just sit back and complain.

From John Rogers, Mill Hill, London.

I

am pleased to see that the AGS is encouraging members to sow 131

ALPINE DIARY

Orchis mascula photographed

by Audrey Gramshaw in North Yorkshire

wild flowers. For some time I have been attempting to propagate rare wild flowers such as field cowwheat (Melampyrum arvense), corn buttercup (Ranunculus arvensis) and other scarce and declining plants.

Some represent a challenge but are well worth the effort. All my seed originates from indigenous stock.

Although it may sound as though I am creating a ‘floral zoo’, the objective is to maintain a nucleus, and thus a continuation, of these species, some of which are on the verge of extinction in Britain.

For all who are concerned about the decline of our native flora, I believe all such projects to be worthwhile.

132

From Audrey Gramshaw, Ilkley, West Yorkshire.

I

t was a pleasure to read Robert Rolfe’s article on British wild flowers in the March 2013 issue of The Alpine Gardener and to see how well they compare with the flora from more ‘exotic’ places.

I discussed the article with a botanist friend and showed her my photographs of wild flowers. She suggested I send my image of Orchis mascula to compare with the bicoloured versions found in Derbyshire. I took it in 1993 in a lovely meadow near the River Nidd at Cattal, North Yorkshire. I remember the flowers having a ‘pearly’ sheen. Regretfully, I haven’t been there since.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

ALPINE DIARY

I

t’s infuriating that pests, like gardeners (I’ll refrain from alluding to those few acquisitive gardeners who are also, by common consent, utter pests), tend to target the most ornamental of plants. The lily beetle can in a few hours reduce to tatters the foliage of anything liliaceous. Don’t believe the advice that predation doesn’t start until May – triggered by warm weather early last year, the blighters were already munching away in March.

Aphids infest Calceolaria uniflora before almost any other alpine plant grown under glass, where also red spider mite will lay waste to the choicest violas, delighting by way of an amuse-bouche in the persecution of Campanula morettiana. Why on earth didn’t the Almighty make ground elder, the dandelion and other rampant weeds their preferred food instead?

On the subject of Viola, some years ago I was sent seed of V. betonicifolia, one of the few species distributed on both sides of the Equator. Remarkably it occurs all the way from Kashmir, Afghanistan and Pakistan to an assortment of Chinese provinces, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, eastern Australia (Botany Bay is one of the earliest recorded sites for subsp. betonicifolia) and Tasmania. Generally found at under 1,500m (4,920ft), whether in coastal marshland, thickets, by roadsides, in montane grassland or along forest margins, it occasionally ascends to reach 2,500m (8,200ft). Very few of the other 500-plus members of the genus cover such a wide span. On the contrary, JUNE 2013

Risking arrest to pursue the arresting Turkish flora ROBERT ROLFE some are confined to just one or two mountains.

Inevitably the flowering season varies greatly from one region to another.

Generally quoted as February to May, you can certainly broaden this to include October in its most south-easterly localities. The ground colour is often described as violet or blue-purple with darker veining. My version is bluishwhite with purplish pencilling on the lower three petals and vestigial grooving on the upper two.

There are numerous other permutations, of course. I’ve seen one that has broader, snow-white petals, prominently royal blue-veined with attractive slight ‘bleeding’. Even in full sun, the bolt upright and wiry stems reach 10cm. The leaves are of similar height but up to five times as long as 133

ALPINE DIARY

Robert Rolfe’s Viola betonicifolia has bluish-white petals with purplish pencilling

they are broad, rather than the heartshape common to so many ‘violet’ representatives, hence a common name, arrow-leaf violet. The flowers produced by my plant are small, around 15mm across, and scarcely fragrant, but their decorative patterning and demure appearance in quantity at the end of April make them very welcome.

Given the chance, it would be worth growing various forms of this quietly attractive and beguiling species. But despite the ease with which it can be raised from seed, commercial sources are almost non-existent. Nurturing such plants is, and always has been, a minority pursuit. Nowadays, the overwhelming preference is to motor to the nearest garden centre, scoop up a few trays of 134

floriferous bedding pansies and wheel them towards the checkout. A long-gone ‘plantsman’ gardener opined that if a rare plant suddenly became widely available, it would forfeit much of its cachet. Such turnarounds are very unusual indeed.

On the whole, rare plants remain that way for understandable reasons.

This certainly applies to the aforementioned Campanula morettiana, an Italian native that is among the finest of its genus but long-recognised as a challenge to grow well. As for a whiteflowered form, it’s fully ten years since I last came across one. Broadwell Alpines in particular used to list it reliably, for proprietor Joe Elliott grew plants to the highest standard, neatly lined-out row after row in his main alpine house. But THE ALPINE GARDENER

ALPINE DIARY

The rarely seen white form of the challenging Campanula morettiana

by charging more for it than any other item in his catalogue he, too, one infers, sometimes struggled with what he listed as this ‘rare and exceedingly beautiful’ plant. That said, in the 1970s he had enough spare seed to include it in a list at the back of his catalogue, counselling that it wouldn’t ‘come 100% true but a good proportion should be white’.

Several times I enjoyed fleeting success. Joe’s plants were always posted still in their small, clay long toms, so fastidiously cocooned with cotton wool that the flowers of those sent in early autumn survived the journey unbruised.

Reading through the 1933 volume of The New Flora and Silva (no longer ‘new’, of course: it ceased publication long ago), I chanced on a note by Fred JUNE 2013

Stoker drawing attention to this plant.

‘The albino form has not been hitherto recorded,’ readers were told. ‘It was collected last year by Miss Amy Cobbe near the Rolle Pass and sent to me. The plant was growing on a face of dolomite rock in company with its blue brethren.’

Elsewhere in the same volume, C. Regel, a Lithuanian correspondent, recounted his plant-hunting escapades in western Turkey. Back in 1933, and notwithstanding the much earlier journeys of Tournefort, Boissier and others, it was still possible to write of Bereket Dağ and Tachtaly (Tahtali) Dağ as belonging to a ‘region which is entirely unknown to botanists’. This observation was underlined by the discovery of Crocus wattiorum at the 135

ALPINE DIARY base of the latter mountain as recently as 1986, and the naming of Colchicum baytopiorum (from Gulluck Dağ, also in Antalya Province) three years earlier.

You can even ascend the latter 2,366m (7,750ft) peak by cable car these days – a rare facility in Turkey.

C. Regel stayed in Antalya, making contact with the chief of police the day after he arrived, but all did not go well. Permission to visit the Lycian Taurus was withheld and within a week he was ordered to leave, having been questioned over a report that he had been in his hotel room the previous evening, aiming a firearm at the ceiling.

In reality ‘the weapon was a flit-sprayer and... instead of shooting, I had been destroying mosquitoes... To the Turks a botanist is a suspicious person; the scope of his journey is unintelligible and they suspect something else’.

It should be said that, on the whole, Turks are incredibly hospitable and that the army and police forces sometimes have good reason to be jumpy about foreigners driving around, ostensibly innocently, in the east and south-east of the country especially.

Several AGS members, past and present, have been arrested while attempting to reach the mountains along the border areas. But not for long, and never has the outcome been untoward.

My experience has been that the curiosity you engender – particularly if you are travelling alone − nourishes contact with people who help out in whatever way they can. Government geologists; taxi drivers who delight in introducing you to their families, and will tackle awful, rutted routes without 136

a moment’s hesitation; the mayor of a small town; a mine owner who gave up his office so that I had somewhere to sleep; two lorry drivers, flagged down by villagers, who made a 30-mile detour after I missed the long-distance coach; the owner of a trout farm whose pools were part-shaded by the largest fig trees I’ve ever seen: all came to my aid.

Such acts of kindness, altruistic in the main, have occasionally been to the advantage of both parties. While staying in a family-run hotel above the town of Fethiye, I was grateful, but also puzzled, when the elder son, in his mid-twenties, volunteered to drive me to the top of nearby Baba Dağ, then wait lower down until late afternoon on his one day off.

All became clear when, after kissing his wife goodbye, he explained that it would be necessary to go first into town ‘in order to pick something up’. That ‘something’ was his girlfriend.

Baba Dağ, especially famed for the endemic, late winter-flowering Sternbergia candida, is well worth exploring at various other times of the year – in autumn, for instance, when one of the showiest of eastern Mediterranean colchicums, the pink and white chequered C. macrophyllum, is in bloom.

At the time of my visit, in early summer, only the withered remnants of its oncelush foliage were evident, sometimes strewn along the stony side-tracks in abundance. In June you can expect to find Omphalodes luciliae brightening rather shady vertical limestone crevices with its soft blue flowers. Lamium microphyllum is in the adjacent screes, which offer commanding views of the coastline far below. Only the paragliders THE ALPINE GARDENER

ALPINE DIARY

Colchicum baytopiorum, a native of Gulluck Dağ in Turkey’s Antalya Province

who swish by overhead enjoy a better vantage point.

A couple of miles back down the road, there is a vast crag that shelters a vaulted cavern, reached by crunching one’s way a little uncertainly up a slope consisting of innumerable rock fragments and boulders that have tumbled from on high. It took a huffing, puffing scramble to get within close viewing distance, so I left my rucksack and almost everything bar my camera and bottle of water at the roadside. As soon as the mouth of the cavern was reached, the coolness, the subdued light and the silence of the enclave made the experience akin to entering an old, stone-built church on a hot day.

JUNE 2013

I wasn’t expecting to find anything other than ferns in the sheer rock walls. Yet on looking upwards, both in the walls and on the arching roof, I saw numerous plants of a very dwarf geranium, Geranium glaberrimum, welling out from the joints of the lichenpatterned grey rock. I found it there and there alone, so was later surprised to read that it generally favours ‘crevices on broken ground at the top of cliffs’ in its scattering of south-west Turkish haunts.

Those I found grew only in the most vertiginous of places, as indicated by the presence of three roosting bats under a narrow ledge alongside the only plants to which I could get near.

Like many geraniums, when the 137

ALPINE DIARY display reaches its crescendo the older flowers shed their petals liberally. The cavern floor was in places covered in what looked like pink confetti. Without a telephoto lens, photography was untenable. So, scratched, covered in dust and alarmed by a sudden rock fall barely 100 metres distant, I retraced my steps, retrieved my rucksack and headed downhill.

It’s unlikely that this species has been introduced to cultivation on any more than a handful of occasions, but it has certainly been grown for over 30 years.

In the alpine house it flowers in May and June, after which a trimming of the spent stems is advocated. The foliage can yellow alarmingly if its part-shade requirement is overlooked, unlike close relative G. lasiopus, which has slightly smaller, crinkly rather than smoothtextured flowers, and densely silveryhairy rather than glabrous leaves, and is something of a sun-lover. The introduction I grow is from Salir Dağ, yet another coastal mountain in southwest Turkey, but apparently there are records from close to Fethiye: a case of mistaken identity? I could distinguish them not just from leaf texture but from the smell of their bruised foliage alone, with that of G. glaberrimum pronounced, spicy and rather apple-like, that of G. lasiopus much fainter, with a suggestion of lemon.

Of my two alpine houses, temperatures in the one closest to the house often soar in the summer despite attempts to keep things cooler by removing several panes of glass from the back, leaving the door permanently ajar, and the application of shading. Most occupants are happy 138

enough until early summer, when they need transferring to more shaded, less torrid spots, and even in what I loosely term the Turkish quarter, only avid sunlovers such as the silver-leaved Potentilla pulvinaris , brilliant yellow in bloom, are left there the year round.

In the first group, Corydalis tauricola is in flower by the first week of March.

Yet another of Peter Davis’s Turkish trophies, dating from 1963 (E.K. Balls made the initial discovery 30 years earlier), it was at first deemed a subspecies of C. solida. It’s one of those obliging plants that takes to garden life with aplomb, clumping up reliably and flowering in its third year from seed (i.e. two years after germinating). Yet Líden and Zetterlund (Corydalis, 1997) report that in the Amanus Mountains, growing in hornbeam woodland with Cyclamen pseudibericum, it was ‘the frailest, most pathetic plant to be seen and the tubers hardly reached the size of a pea’, for all that it tends to be largerflowered there than populations to the west. My stock is very uniform, with racemes of up to 20 dark-nosed, light pinkish-purple flowers, and although I started off with just one tuber, seed has been set regularly. The nearest garden in which I know of it growing lies six miles away: it would take an extraordinarily determined insect to detect and transfer pollen over such a distance!

Also preferring a cooler (and in this case a drier) summer, but earlier still in bloom, Iris histrioides serves notice that winter is drawing to a close. Some years ago I visited one of several Turkish mountains called Ak Dağ – this one a two-hour drive south from Samsun THE ALPINE GARDENER

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The dwarf Geranium glaberrimum, found in a cavern alongside roosting bats JUNE 2013

139

ALPINE DIARY airport on the Black Sea coast − where this species has its stronghold, flowering in March and April. This site had other merits, a hillside massed with unusually large-flowered mounds of Daphne oleoides chief among them. But my visit in June confirmed that when it comes to seeking dormant or soon to become dormant plants, unless you have a sixth sense or know precisely where to look, it’s a job better left to others.

One such man is Norman Stevens, whose knowledge of western and Central Asian irises in the field and in cultivation is formidable. His 1991 find Iris reticulata ‘Halkis’ is nowadays widely available. And when in search of another ‘retic’, the somewhat idiosyncratic I. pamphylica, he knew that he had come to the right place when, having opened the car door and taken just a few steps, something brushed against his trouser leg: a seed capsule of the Iris, hoist on high in a manner only otherwise seen in the Iranian I. zagrica!

Interest in the reticulate irises – those classified within subgenus Hermodactyloides – has burgeoned of late, with introductions from Turkey, Armenia and Iran more diverse than at any time since the 1960s, which saw a similar influx of new material. One hopes that, this time round, more of the material can be established and propagated. The signs are reassuring.

Already a scattering have been offered from cultivated second or third generations. Others have received clonal names and been made available.

In tandem with such efforts, longstanding clones of Iris histrioides in particular have enjoyed a renaissance.

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I own a 1967 pamphlet, based on a lecture given by Oliver Wyatt and rather awkwardly titled The Young Garden Lover and some Plants he should Love, for all that its aims remain laudable. In it is a colour plate of the iris growing at the edge of a border by the hundreds upon hundreds, mixed with snowdrops, yellow crocuses and Cyclamen coum.

The effect is enchanting.

Pronouncing Iris histrioides ‘quite delightful and very easy to grow’, Wyatt recalled: ‘I was given originally eight of it and in eight years I had 1,200 blooms...

I used to dig the bulbs up annually; underneath you’d find tiny little bulbs which look like grains of wheat and I used to pick them off the root of the bulb, put them in a box or a pot, and in about three years they bloomed too and they increased profusely. Alas, they then got a nasty disease called Ink Disease from which they got black spots on the bulbs and a vast number were killed off.’

This species is especially associated with the Dutch firm of Van Tubergen Ltd, and stocks catalogued as ‘histrioides major’ were sold very affordably for much of the last century. I have their autumn 1982 catalogue, where it is offered at £6.95 for 50 bulbs, with the description ‘very large deep blue blooms; the falls are white speckled...

Height 2-3”.’

At present £7.00 for three bulbs is the going rate, but at least it’s starting to appear in bulb lists again, unless you are of the school of thought that judges today’s ‘Major’ a different entity. I. h.

‘Angel’s Tears’ and I. h. ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’ have also been reared again in large numbers. What one dearly hopes THE ALPINE GARDENER

ALPINE DIARY

The flowers of Iris reticulata ‘White Caucasus’, which can emerge at great speed

doesn’t also return in force is Drechslera iridis, the dreaded Iris Ink Disease.

Ten years ago we published an article by Alan McMurtrie (vol. 71, pages 99-109) discussing the many reticulate irises he had raised from seed, and highlighting his breeding work with Iris sophenensis x danfordiae, which had already produced an extraordinary range of colours and patternings in second-generation seedlings. Further selections have been made each spring since, as a check of his website (www.reticulatas.com) reveals.

In the meantime, stocks grown on in the Netherlands have progressed to the stage where some of those named can be distributed.

There’s something to suit all tastes, from the conservative to the outré JUNE 2013

and the avant-garde. But it’s a species selection rather than a hybrid, Iris reticulata ‘White Caucasus’, that I like most. This chance albino of Armenian extraction first bloomed for Alan in 1994 and has beautifully formed flowers of good substance. Some bulbs produce two, and the speed with which these can develop is astonishing.

The potful photographed, taken indoors overnight after a severe frost was forecast, had burst into full bloom by the next morning! The progress of a new seedling from its initial release by the raiser to a commercial listing can take ten years or more. The awakening of a tightly furled bud, on this showing, can be accomplished in well under ten hours.

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The perfect home for unusual winter bulbs

T

he two raised plunge beds that I described in 2007 (The Alpine Gardener, volume 75, page 159) were initially constructed to make a collection of alpines self-sufficient while we were on holiday during the summer.

Since that time, the range of plants grown in them has undergone a gentle evolution. Although the primulas, saxifrages, Cyclamen and so on are still there, I have gradually been acquiring some of the ‘less usual’ bulbous plants.

What do I mean by this? They include plants that are too small to make an impact in the open garden (and might be devoured by slugs anyway), flower at odd times (especially in winter) or are unusual for other reasons. This was not planned. I just happened to see the occasional oddity and think: ‘That’s interesting, I’ll have it.’

I will begin with a couple of colchicums.

These came from the collection of the late, lamented Jim Archibald, one of the great collectors and introducers of plants of recent times.

Some time after his death, Bob and Rannveig Wallis gave a lecture to the Birmingham Group of the AGS and brought with them some of Jim’s bulbs to sell. Two packets bore the names Colchicum atticum and Colchicum hungaricum. I deduced from the small size of the corms that they would be of no use in the garden but just right for the

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Vic Aspland’s raised plunge beds have taken on an unintended role as a home for unusual bulbs. Here he looks at some of those that bring welcome colour to late winter

plunge. And how right I was. C. atticum came into flower at Christmas and continued for about six weeks, through some of the coldest weather we have had. The petals have lots of filamentary extensions, giving the cluster of flowers an informal, unkempt look. It is definitely ‘different’.

C. hungaricum has a more conventional look, with pink petals, but the anthers are black before they dehisce (open to expose the pollen). The first flower, about 5cm tall, opened in the first week of January. The flowers are produced in succession, so the display is long-lasting (the picture was taken on February 15 and they were still looking good in the middle of March). Not bad for two plants in 8cm pots.

C. doerfleri var. galicicum is another dwarf which began flowering on January 1. As yet I only have two corms, so the display is unspectacular, but I have mentally graded it as ‘a nice little thing’.

My thoughts now turn to the closely THE ALPINE GARDENER

UNUSUAL BULBS

Colchicum hungaricum, grown from Jim Archibald’s stock, offers a long-lasting display

related Merendera montana (syn. pyrenaica). This autumn-flowering corm is much to the taste of slugs, so it is not possible to grow it in our garden and it was elevated to the plunge. Experience showed that my original purchase contained four different clones, with differently shaped flowers and different flowering times. These were segregated into separate pots at repotting time and are now being bulked up. The odd thing is that slugs will climb up to the plunge when the buds are first pushing through the compost, but only to get to one particular clone. The others are untouched.

Next on my list is Gymnospermium.

The two species that I grow are unusual for a couple of reasons. The first is JUNE 2013

that they have a tuber which does not increase vegetatively. Buy a small one, grow it on for ten years and you end up with a large one. In this way they are like cyclamen. The second is that they are classed as members of the family Berberidaceae. Initially I bought a tuber of each of two species: G. albertii and G. altaicum. Both flower in February and March and unfortunately both appear to be self-sterile. It took me several years to find a second specimen of G. albertii, but this year they flowered at the same time and I now have swelling seed pods.

Everything about these plants says: ‘I am different.’

I found Tulipa orithyioides at a 2009 AGS show, offered for sale by Ad Hoc Plants, who provided lots of interesting 143

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things in small numbers. From a single bulb, it has increased to five plus a few tiny offsets. The flowers are multicoloured, featuring white, yellow, red, black and dark bronze, and each bulb produces two. It is neat, compact and very hardy.

My photograph was taken after the snow had melted on a miserably cold and wet day. Richard Wilford, in his book Tulips, describes the location of the group that includes this species as ‘centred in the mountains of Central Asia’. I know of no species that flowers earlier. Now there is a challenge for you!

Similarly hardy is Cyclamen alpinum.

From the western Taurus Mountains in Turkey, it reaches considerable altitudes.

I have seen it in flower with the ground around it frozen solid and sparkling 144

with ice crystals, so it is no surprise that it does well in the plunge. What makes this Cyclamen different? Unlike the other species, in which the petals reflex, in this case they stand out at right angles, giving the flowers a profile much like a ship’s propeller.

Like Gymnospermium albertii, Corydalis schanginii subsp. schanginii has an underground tuber which increases in size but remains a single tuber (at least in my experience), so I have acquired two in the hope of getting seed. It appears regularly at the early shows and is given more cachet than the many forms of Corydalis solida, yet with me it has proved to be just as easy to grow. It has a spot in the bulb plunge a little way from the tulip.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

UNUSUAL BULBS

Crocus dalmaticus increases steadily in a well-drained compost.

Left, the hardy and earlyflowering Tulipa orithyioides

This year I removed the covers from this plunge so that the bulbs would receive all the snow, frost and rain that our winter could throw at them, ‘just to see what would happen’, reasoning that in the mountains they would have even harsher conditions. Unsurprisingly, C. schanginii subsp. schanginii was more compact than the specimens seen on the show bench.

My wife Janet also grows C. wendelboi here. Uncommon in cultivation, it is much smaller in all its parts but no less attractive. It is the kind of plant that attracts epithets such as tiny, neat, concise or, perish the thought, elfin!

For crocophiles, I will show just one Crocus. C. dalmaticus flowers in early March with me, and is very attractive JUNE 2013

to drone flies and early-flying bumble bees. With no special treatment other than well-drained sandy compost, it increases steadily. What more could one ask? Other species in the plunge include C. fleischeri, C. chrysanthus (including two different white clones) and C. tommasinianus. Yes, I know that the latter is common, cheap, easy, and can be naturalised in a lawn, but it is interesting to collect some of the named variants, of which perhaps the most spectacular is ‘Pictus’.

I continue to seek small winterflowering bulbs to add interest to this low season of the year, and each year, when the flowers open, I marvel at their hardiness. They keep my spirits up until the alpine rush begins in spring.

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HOW TO GROW IT

W

Narcissus cyclamineus

hen faced with this Narcissus, writers of bulb catalogues and books instinctively reach for adjectives such as cute or diminutive.

This is excusable because it is unique in the genus and immediately identifiable due to its long flower tube and the petals swept back by about 180 degrees.

If you are seduced by the photograph and want to have it in your garden, you will find that it is unique in other ways. You may seek it in the ordinary autumn bulb sales in vain, for it is rarely offered in the dry state. The reason for this lies in its native habitats in northern Portugal and northern Spain – damp and heavy acidic soils in valley bottoms.

An examination of the skin covering the bulb shows that it is very thin compared with the multiple skins developed by many species, and so does little to prevent dehydration if the bulbs are stored dry. Indeed, it is one of the few species that is not improved by a dry, summer-dormant period.

The best way to obtain this plant is as a pot-grown specimen, in flower, in late winter (in the garden mine flower between late February and early April).

A number of our well-known alpine nurserymen (Aberconwy, for example) usually have it for sale at the early AGS shows. I think it is best to take the plant home, knock it out of its pot and plant as soon as possible, provided that the soil is not frozen.

As for position, bear in mind its native

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A charmer that looks after itself In this new feature, an expert chooses a favourite plant and offers advice on how he or she grows it. To begin, Vic Aspland describes his experiences with Narcissus cyclamineus habitat. If you have a substantial, moist soil, then anywhere will do. In my freedraining heathland soil, I made my first plantings in a west-facing border so that the shade until about midday would help to offset the somewhat dry summer conditions (last summer excluded, of course). There they have seeded down without any input from me. I do not collect the seeds because they seem well able to look after themselves. Seedlings flower in the third year.

Close study shows that when the capsules open, the seeds bear a moist membrane that is attractive to ants. They will take away the seeds and sow them for you. Some ants must work very hard because in recent years I have found seedlings coming into flower on the opposite side of the lawn from my first THE ALPINE GARDENER

PAUL CUMBLETON

HOW TO GROW IT

Narcissus cyclamineus at RHS Garden Wisley and, below, in the snow in Vic Aspland’s garden

plants, a distance of perhaps 30ft (10m), and in full sun, too.

That they succeed in this sunny position perplexed me at first, until I remembered our previous garden, which had very dry, sandy soil. There they seeded into the margin of the lawn.

When we were preparing to move, we decided that they were too precious to leave and so dug them up. This proved to be not as simple as expected, for the bulbs were located around 6in (15cm) JUNE 2013

deep. Clearly, this was a response to the drier conditions.

Betty Thomas, an AGS member who lives near us in the West Midlands, has a large colony that freely seeds down a quite steep and grassy bank, so association with other plants seems to be quite congenial.

It is tempting to write of a plant that ‘every garden should have it’, but if any plant qualifies for this description, Narcissus cyclamineus surely must do so.

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Plants await their new home

Need a bigger bed?

Don’t move, just build an extension 148

Turf is removed from the chosen area

G

ardening with trees and shrubs, or even perennials, requires a good deal more space to move into as your fascination with the plants deepens.

With alpines, however, even small incursions into the lawn can pay big dividends.

The relatively small sand bed in our front garden is now fairly packed with plants and new acquisitions last autumn required more room in which to show themselves off properly.

To extend the bed is quite easy, as the photographs show, but even adapting this very small area has required the THE ALPINE GARDENER

SAND BED

Soil is excavated to a depth of 30cm

With new plants queuing up for a home, Tim Ingram decides to sacrifice some more lawn to build an extension to his sand bed removal of around half a ton of soil and infilling with fine sharp grit. A hard morning’s work!

The ‘sand’ used is very fine potting grit derived from shattered flint, which is shown in close-up overleaf. It would be interesting to compare results with sharp sand or ballast, which are more JUNE 2013

The hole is filled with the gritty mix

usually used in sand beds. As I have mentioned before (The Alpine Gardener, volume 79, pages 468-481), it is probable that these materials would hold more moisture and require less watering than I have had to do in dry periods.

I had two large pieces of tufa left over from the construction of a raised bed and have added these to the extension to provide some relief. It would have been good to use a lot more tufa in the bed. David Sellars, a North American grower with experience of combining sand beds and tufa, recommends that the two associate very well. I expect that there would be a very good transfer of 149

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A close-up of the grit used

moisture from deep sand to blocks of tufa. Even the two blocks here make an appealing feature.

Positioning plants and planting them is very enjoyable and easy in sand. I don’t clean the roots of the compost in which the plants have been grown, as some growers recommend, but I do pay close attention to watering the newly planted area over the first few weeks. It can take a year or even more for some plants to establish properly and grow away, but as a consequence they stay tight and in character and are much less prone to pests and diseases.

This new area provides space for about 25 plants and there will be the opportunity to establish more in the tufa 150

The blocks of tufa are put in place

blocks, which have ready-made holes to accommodate them.

Last October, the plants had a month or more of good growing weather in which to begin to establish themselves.

Around the end of October, the bed was covered with Dutch lights through to early spring. Little if any watering is normally necessary over this period unless we have long spells of unseasonably dry and warmish weather (usually in late winter turning into spring).

What of the plants? They vary considerably and with some selections I am becoming quite adventurous!

They include several choice campanulas that generally succeed in sand, THE ALPINE GARDENER

SAND BED

The plants are positioned

The completed extension

silver saxifrages, succulents such as Delosperma cooperi and Rhodiola trollii, various Dianthus, Onosma (often shortlived but very appealing), Pulsatilla vernalis (again – I would really like to establish this), and a good number of others from various genera.

As with the other sections of the bed, I have made drawings to keep a record of the planting. This is particularly important when one wishes to propagate from the plants, which is one of my primary aims.

I have also begun recording newly planted sections of the garden photographically and appending plant names on a wide border around printed copies of my photographs. However

much one thinks that plants’ names will remain in the mind, they quite quickly become lost unless the plants are being managed all the time.

After enjoying quite good success with many plants on the initial section of the sand bed, I look forward to seeing how this new planting develops this year – and am keeping my fingers crossed that rabbits don’t discover it!

A year on from the initial planting, most plants had adapted to the sand but some had grown very slowly. I therefore decided that they would benefit from a supplementary feed, and this spring I have top-dressed the bed with Vitax Q4 (a base fertilizer used in John Innes composts).

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151

Can the AGS help to conserve alpines in places like this?

Dr Barbara Jones, an upland ecologist and AGS member, assesses the future for Britain’s wild alpines and suggests a way in which the AGS could become involved in their conservation

The dramatic Cwm Idwal in North Wales and, inset, Silene acaulis, one of its resident plants.

Pictures: Barbara Jones

CONSERVATION TOM DODD

Saxifraga stellaris can be found in North Wales, Scotland and the North of England

Y

ou know what it’s like. You slog uphill for what feels like hours, it’s often wet above, under foot, or both. When you arrive, what do you see but a few sorry looking patches of Saxifraga oppositifolia or Silene acaulis – if you’re lucky.

It’s no wonder that few people are interested in alpines in the British mountains when we can go to the Alps and see them easily and in abundance, even growing by the side of the road.

And usually in better weather.

Arctic-alpine plants in Britain, somewhat outside their normal range in the world’s high mountains or arctic

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regions, have a difficult time in our relatively mild and wet climate. They are remnants of vegetation that was more widespread after the retreat of the ice around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. As conditions warmed, plants more suited to the changing environment came to dominate, resulting in the retreat of the true ‘mountain’ vegetation to just a few sites on steep, ungrazed, north-facing cliffs, where the cool temperatures and lack of competition from more vigorous plants allow them to maintain a foothold.

Their rarity in Britain and their position right on the edge of their range means it is important that we THE ALPINE GARDENER

TOM DODD

CONSERVATION

Lloydia serotina is today found on just six cliff faces in Snowdonia

try to conserve them, particularly in the face of intensive pressures on land use and environmental change. In the past, their presence has been reduced by the grazing of high numbers of stock and by the collection of plants and seeds for herbaria and garden use.

Today, demands on the uplands are changing but also increasing to include agriculture, energy, water supply, recreation and quarrying. In the face of these big players, what future do arcticalpine plants have in the British Isles?

The conservation battle Conservation of our mountain plants JUNE 2013

is essential to their survival and there are a number of tactics that can be employed to try to rescue and expand the populations under threat. We will never have extensive, species-rich alpine meadows, but we should have more of our accessible rocky areas supporting alpine plants. Instead, many are restricted to steep cliff faces, beyond the reach of grazing animals.

To survey these sites often requires a head for heights and the use of ropes in fieldwork that is as challenging as any biological fieldwork can be. Many of the remaining plant populations are small and isolated and could eventually 155

CONSERVATION NIGEL JONES

Barbara Jones monitoring a population of alpines in North Wales

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THE ALPINE GARDENER

BARBARA JONES

CONSERVATION

The white flowers of Saxifraga hypnoides flourishing where sheep used to graze

be lost. Lloydia serotina, for example, is restricted to just six cliff faces in Snowdonia, with tiny numbers at some sites.

You would think that the obvious solution here would be to reduce or remove grazing animals, but that is not easily done. Apart from the political and social pressures to retain sheep farming as an upland enterprise, most mountain land is unfenced and so a reduction of animal numbers in one place can often just draw in sheep from adjoining land.

Fencing is expensive and most people don’t like to see fences in the mountains.

A reduction in grazing is possible in some places, however. Many AGS members have been to Cwm Idwal, JUNE 2013

a National Nature Reserve in North Wales, famed for its alpine plants. That said, these plants have been damaged by high levels of grazing and, over the years, have declined and retreated to the more inaccessible cliff faces.

An agreement to remove sheep from the Cwm came into force in 1999 and, even though ecological changes are slow in the mountains, things have already improved. Saxifraga hypnoides is spreading rapidly, Saxifraga oppositifolia is even growing in some of the grassland and Oxyria digyna, Thymus polytrichus and Sedum rosea are all increasing in numbers. Go there in July to see masses of the beautiful yellow bog asphodel, Narthecium ossifragum, and you will 157

CONSERVATION BARBARA JONES

A rejuvenated colony of Narthecium ossifragum at Cwm Idwal

witness what a change in management can do.

But what about the rarities, whose numbers are so low that an extra helping hand is needed? An example is Saxifraga cespitosa, which is very rare in Britain.

It grows in a few places in Scotland and there is a tiny population (fewer than ten plants) in North Wales. The helping hand here involved the reintroduction of plants in the mid-1970s from seed collected from the site and grown on in a botanic garden. However, from more than 300 seeds and plants introduced, 158

we are now back to just a handful. Do we give up or should we try again?

Woodsia ilvensis, a fern commonly found in more arctic environments, is also very rare in the British mountains and has been the subject of reintroductions in Scotland and England. These and other mountain plants we value, such as Lloydia serotina and the wonderfully hairy Cerastium alpinum, grow happily and in abundance in many other parts of the world, so in these times of limited resources for conservation, perhaps we should concentrate our efforts on plants THE ALPINE GARDENER

TOM DODD

CONSERVATION

Sedum rosea is increasing in numbers in protected areas

in Britain which are rare in a global context. Do people really care about these tiny alpine plants, which are never seen by 99 per cent of visitors to North Wales anyway?

Climate change Conservation isn’t an easy option and the challenges will become more difficult in the next few years. One reason for this is that mountain plants have yet another demon in the wings – one which the doomsayers predict will be the death knell for alpines in JUNE 2013

Britain. Climate change is something that we are all aware of, but its long-term consequences cannot be known. There are so many interacting factors that it is very difficult to say how our native alpines will be affected.

If winters become milder, the loss of a reliable cold spell to give many species a period of rest could be problematic. On the other hand, there is the possibility that we may have colder winters due to melting arctic ice cutting off the North Atlantic Drift and its attendant warming influence.

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CONSERVATION BARBARA JONES

Perched high in Snowdonia, a cliff that supports Dryas octopetala 160

THE ALPINE GARDENER

BARBARA JONES

CONSERVATION

Saxifraga oppositifolia growing among grass

Whatever happens climatically, British alpines can’t move far. There is limited space to retreat uphill and our mountain ranges are somewhat isolated.

For example, plants would find it hard to move from Snowdonia to the Lake District over the heavily populated lowlands of Cheshire and Lancashire.

The main thing we can do for now is to keep the plants as healthy as possible and provide opportunities for them to increase in number. This would allow more pollen to be produced and therefore an improved gene exchange between populations. A more diverse genetic base should, we hope, allow plants to cope with changing conditions.

JUNE 2013

In North Wales, we have set up a longterm programme to monitor six alpine species at 40 sites in Snowdonia so we can notice any trends related to climate change as early as possible. If changes are found, we will have to decide what action to take.

Wildness or gardening?

One tool in our armoury is to use research to find out whether alpine plants have any genetic diversity. If so, is it the right kind of diversity to allow them to adapt to a changing climate?

Work is now being undertaken on some species, such as Arabis petraea, to look at just this. Does it have the right 161

CONSERVATION BARBARA JONES

Silene acaulis on a Welsh mountainside

kind of diversity to cope with rising temperatures or increasing rainfall?

We must use these techniques to look at other species with low numbers in Britain, such as Lloydia serotina and Saxifraga cespitosa, to see if they have a future in a changing world. Then the difficult questions arise. If it looks like they may not be able to cope with climate change, do we shrug our shoulders, say we did our best and let them become extinct in Britain? Or do we take a more pragmatic approach and cross them with plants from other parts of Britain or from abroad to see if we can produce a hardier 162

race? This is done all the time in botanic gardens, nurseries and in agriculture, so why should it not be done to ensure we can keep these plants in Britain? We could even produce genetically modified plants to cope with higher temperatures or more moisture. Most people wouldn’t know any difference – they hardly notice the plants anyway. Also, the plants would look just the same, so why worry? However, things would be subtly different and we would know this.

How far are we prepared to go to save our British alpines? Some of what we do already in conservation almost amounts THE ALPINE GARDENER

TOM DODD

CONSERVATION

A colony of rock plants in Snowdonia, including Sedum rosea

to ‘gardening’, but do we really want to manage our wild plants in the way we look after our gardens? Apart from the amount of work involved, there is the ethical matter of the increasing loss of wildness. We don’t really have wilderness in Britain any more, but we can pretend we are in wild places in our mountains and at least we know that the alpines have been growing there unmolested for thousands of years.

It’s tempting to keep our plants as they are for as long as we can, but it may be in the not too distant future that we will have to take decisions which could JUNE 2013

result in alpine gardening taking on a whole new meaning.

Can the AGS help?

Specimens of many alpine species grow in botanic gardens and seed is held in Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank.

These form an important back-up to our conservation efforts in the field and can provide material for reintroduction in case the worst happens and a species is lost from a site due to man’s activities.

Botanic gardens are also important places to teach and enthuse people about these plants and encourage public 163

CONSERVATION support for their conservation. However, we are finding it increasingly difficult to commission work from botanic gardens and universities. They are busy places and need to make their way in a world of decreasing central funding, meaning they have to charge an often substantial amount for their services. Also, it often isn’t worth their while to take on what, to them, is a small contract to grow on a particular species and maintain it in cultivation, or to propagate it to produce material for reintroduction over a number of years. They also may not have the expertise required to grow some of the more demanding species.

This is where I can see a role for the AGS. Not, I hasten to add, in trying to ‘improve’ the flora of the British mountains as Arthur Bulley and Kew tried to do in 1921 by planting 88 species of alpines from all over the world on Snowdon.

Members of the AGS must have more expertise than most in growing and maintaining alpine species in gardens.

Some of you will have cultivated particular species which even botanic gardens find difficult to grow.

As conservationists, there are times when we need someone to grow these plants and maintain them, free from contamination or crossing, as pure stock and to increase their numbers.

An example of this is in Cumbria, where Natural England is planting out a number of downy willow (Salix lapponum) in the mountains to replace those lost by years of overgrazing. The conservation officer had no option but to propagate and grow these in his own garden, but would probably have welcomed help from an 164

expert in growing this species. In recent years I needed juniper cuttings to be grown on to provide enough plants for reintroduction. Aberconwy Nursery in North Wales very kindly and successfully provided me with many healthy plants, but they are a commercial nursery and there are bounds to their altruism.

As man’s impact on the natural world increases, there are going to be more and more instances such as these and consequently a greater need for expertise in growing plants for reintroduction.

Perhaps the AGS could play a useful role in providing this expertise. A first step could be for interested members to say which species they are skilled in growing and what they would be prepared to do – growing and maintaining plants, providing seed, cuttings, propagating material and so on.

Once a list has been made, the AGS could let the relevant conservation organisations, botanic gardens and research institutions know that a pool of skilled growers is ready to help if and when required.

There would most probably be no payment for this, but you would have the satisfaction and pleasure of playing a part in the conservation of arcticalpines, one of the most important elements of the British flora.  The AGS is setting up a Conservation Task Force to consider this and other ways to preserve wild plants and to increase awareness of their plight. If you have any suggestions about how to do this, please send them to the Editor.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

JOHN FITZPATRICK

CONSERVATION

Cwm Idwal, where heather is growing back after grazing was stopped

 Dr Barbara Jones, the author of this article, has had a lifelong interest in mountains and has explored several mountain ranges of the world.

Her initial interest was through climbing and mountaineering, but that developed into an appreciation of mountains as a whole including their geomorphology, ecology and vegetation.

Between 1985 and 2011 she worked in Scotland and in Wales for the Nature Conservancy Council and JUNE 2013

the Countryside Council for Wales, and was CCW’s Upland Ecologist from 1999 to 2011, working on the ecology, research, conservation and management of the Welsh uplands.

She has undertaken research into the ecology, genetics and conservation of the Snowdon lily. Barbara has regularly appeared on television programmes, usually seen hanging off ropes while looking at mountain plants. She is now self-employed, continuing to work on the conservation of mountain flora.

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In this, the first of a three-part series, Robert Rolfe visits the garden of Robin and Sue White in Hampshire to savour a tour de force of plants and planting

Crafted over 25 years: a garden for all seasons

P

icture the scene at Blackthorn Nursery on a mid-May Saturday morning in the early 1990s. It’s barely nine o’clock, yet the car park, hidden from the road by a strip of woodland, is almost full. Among those with wallets in waiting is a man who has driven down to Hampshire from Northumberland. Some customers, having made their purchases, will motor east along the A31 to scrutinise John Coke and Marina Christopher’s Green Farm Plants nursery at Bentley, and a few will journey on to Kent, adding plants from Elizabeth Strangman’s Washfield Nursery to their haul.

The centre of operations at Blackthorn is a small metal shed, draped with Clematis tibetana var. vernayi ‘Orange Peel’ LS&E 13342, Rosa brunonii and 166

another rambler, R. ‘Bobbie James’. At the front is a frequently replenished display table, with outstanding plants in full flower by the score. On this occasion there’s Daphne petraea ‘Cima Tombea’ (‘Watt’s clone’ at that time; it wasn’t officially christened until 2004). There’s also D. ‘Kilmeston’, a chance mid-1980s cross between D. petraea ‘Grandiflora’ and D. jasminea (= x whiteorum), as well as a gleaming white group of Ranunculus THE ALPINE GARDENER

A view across one of the raised beds, with saxifrages clinging to a tufa wall

parnassifolius, Penstemon hallii in full, violet-blue flower, and its Colorado confederate P. virens alongside.

Keeping a weather eye on these, the very capable Molly Wadsworth assists nursery co-proprietor Sue White to pack plants and add up customers’ bills. Robin White, meanwhile, sources replacement plants from the tunnels and stock beds that occupy much of the fiveacre property.

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The Whites first opened a small wholesale nursery near to Salisbury in 1976 and one of their earliest visits was to Joe Elliott’s Broadwell Nursery in Gloucestershire. Long before then, Robin had worked at Toynbees, where his enthusiasm for alpine plants was first nurtured. Ken Aslet ran the alpine department there before moving to RHS Wisley in 1959, retiring as superintendent of the rock garden 167

BLACKTHORN in 1975. A few Broadwell plants are still grown at Blackthorn, including the beguiling Viola cornuta ‘Minor’, discovered by Joe in the Pyrenees and listed by him as ‘a charming miniature form ... [that] makes a low mat of small crimped leaves and has freely-produced lavender flowers on three-inch stems’.

Since it readily mates with other forms of V. cornuta in the garden, propagation by cuttings or division is necessary. The well-drained, well-maintained borders at Blackthorn are much to its liking, where it associates with other longperforming representatives of the genus such as the cheerful V. ‘Maggie Mott’, V. ‘Helen Dillon’ and V. ‘Huntercombe Purple’.

In 1983 the Whites moved to just east of Winchester, choosing the Hampshire village of Kilmeston, at first living in a mobile home while they built not just the nursery beds, footings, frames and polytunnels but also their ostensibly ‘period’ house. They opened for business as Blackthorn Nursery, switching from a wholesale to a retail business between 1986 and 1990. They were encouraged in this by their sales at AGS shows, having been first vetted by Charles Hollidge, an influential Woking member of the Society, whose headquarters then were in that town.

Blackthorn Nursery closed to the public in 2008, yet plants are still produced in their many thousands – the habit dies hard. A large number are passed to friends such as John Massey at Ashwood Nurseries, or sold at a handful of AGS shows. The remainder are deployed in the garden, which has been greatly developed and expanded 168

in recent years, taking in areas where polytunnels and stock beds (a number remain) once held sway.

This article deals with around a third of the garden, stretching from the house to the main road. Only a few areas are in full light throughout the day. But, at every turn, ground-level or slightly raised informal beds and banks have been made whose well-thought-out, differing aspects are bathed in sun for at least part of the day. This is particularly the case in the first four months of the year, before the woodland fringe, most evident along the southern and eastern perimeters, comes into full leaf. Yet, without exaggerating, it can be stated that the floral display is sustained in prime rather than perfunctory fashion right through to the autumn. Various trees were planted at the outset. Two mighty specimens of Alnus cordata (Italian alder) now predominate, upright in their bearing and 30ft (9m) tall, with young foliage that glistens in the spring sunshine.

The chalk bedrock doesn’t outcrop here, but is present at anything between four and 12 feet deep, as the Whites discovered during the building of their home. There is a thick overlay of fertile, heavy clay which is prevailingly alkaline. Yet by means of lavish annual topdressings of lime-free leaf-mould, the construction of beds above the water table, and a deliberate policy of providing enclaves where calcifuges can grow, plants you might not expect to thrive do just that. I’ve an old photograph of Corydalis cashmeriana showing it every bit as happy in Hampshire as it famously is in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

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Violas flourish in the well-drained borders at Blackthorn

Two further articles on Blackthorn will look at petiolarid primulas, Shortia uniflora and Nomocharis in their prime under shelter, while in the open garden autumn gentian hybrids perform well. So does Rhodohypoxis baurii in a newly developed alpine lawn, whose planting was inspired by a visit to the Drakensberg, where it presented itself in multitudes in alpine turf. Robin and Sue’s ideas for garden plantings come from a variety of sources. The most satisfactory arise from an amalgam of trips to see plants in the wild, visits to an array of skilfully planted gardens and, most importantly, what can only be described as horticultural nous.

As with any good garden, it pays to go round once, taking your bearings, then JUNE 2013

re-trace your steps to savour certain areas at leisure. Accordingly, for all that the main elements of the garden are considered here in sequential order, there will be an element of meandering in order to incorporate a generous crosssection (though certainly not all) of the many plants on display.

The word ‘fedge’ is seldom used these days, yet how well it encapsulates the blend of hedging – in this case mainly hawthorn − and fencing. Along with wire netting, this serves to keep the Whites’ two cherished pointers within. One of them, rescue dog Poppy, managed to bowl into a Farrer Medal-winning Daphne x hendersonii ‘Blackthorn Rose’ last year, breaking off one of the main boughs: her owners simply shrugged 169

BLACKTHORN their shoulders. The fedge also excludes two-legged would-be infiltrators.

Happily, a few plants have spread to the roadside, along the verge and in the hedgerow. In spring, the flowers of primroses and celandines are followed

by Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae, bluebells and wood anemones. In September and October, a few Cyclamen hederifolium hint at what lies out of sight.

On the right, as you drive down the short, narrow lane, there is a strip of woodland where the owners’ policy of letting plants seed around and establish themselves is particularly evident. This area is a restrained riot of subtle colour for much of the spring, where both natives and harmonious species from much further afield thrive. At the very end of that season, Tulipa sprengeri makes its bright red presence abundantly felt, while the eastern Asian Lilium hansonii provides a heavily speckled, orangey echo as late as July. L. martagon and an occasional British native, Campanula trachelium (the nettle-leaved bellflower) bolster the high-summer display.

Cyclamen hederifolium is here, too, as in various other parts of the garden, providing a reprise of the springtime glories from summer to mid-autumn, alongside well-established clumps of colchicums and a select set of other autumnal performers. The menace of honey fungus has meant that any daphnes planted in this area have succumbed, but some shrubs and trees (Corylopsis, Magnolia and Pieris) have endured. One bed has been made from sleepers, now agreeably mossed over, enclosing an old tree stump to form 170

The heavily speckled Lilium hansonii

what has been termed a stump garden.

In this site subtle additions such as the mouse plant, Arisarum proboscideum, can nestle into the corky contours, while showier occupants, erythroniums especially, happily seed around.

Extolled in these pages over 40 years ago (AGS Bulletin vol. 39, pages 2589) with the recommendation that ‘Plants established on stumps are also very much easier to move without damage than those disturbed when reconstructing stone edifices’, there seems to have been a revival of interest in such constructions recently. At RBG Edinburgh, the woodland beds were extensively replanted last year, with species of Paris, Trillium, Gentiana, Lilium, ferns and others clothing the part-bleached wood.

At the outset, the Whites made THE ALPINE GARDENER

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The golden Milium effusum ‘Aureum’ illuminates a woodland planting JUNE 2013

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BLACKTHORN deliberate plantings to afford a core group of associations. They were mindful that the conditions would encourage some to seed. The best have been left to their own devices and generally encouraged, the remainder removed before they made a nuisance of themselves. It all depends on what you view as an acceptable balance. As an example, Milium effusum ‘Aureum’ is one of the most useful grasses for a shaded spot, its golden foliage most striking in (mild) winters and spring, when it illuminates its neighbours beautifully. At Blackthorn it is interplanted with Anemone nemorosa, Uvularia grandiflora, colchicums and hardy geraniums. A Cretan form of Geranium asphodeloides, which produces masses of small, distinctive, white or pink flowers for months on end, is the most useful of these for imparting an informal effect. But, as anyone who has at first enjoyed another very ornamental grass, Briza maxima, but then quickly been obliged to remove it by the sackload will recognise, the progress of the Milium needs monitoring to prevent it from taking over.

The Milium goes by the common name of ‘Bowles’s golden wood millet grass’, and sometimes nestles next to Cyclamen hederifolium Bowles’s Apollo Group, again a superlative foliage plant.

They have, of course, a common source.

Several miniature daffodils close by are among the early-risers. In particular, and putatively from the same origin, Narcissus ‘Bowles’s Early Sulphur’, a dwarf ‘trumpeter’, can bloom fully eight weeks in a favourable year. The Whites received their bulbs from a customer who was a relative of Amy Doncaster, a 172

veteran gardener who lived not far away, in Chandlers Ford, and had known E.A. Bowles. ‘Bowles’s Early Sulphur’ is rather slow to increase, so most have been handed on in this manner.

Kath Dryden very occasionally had bulbs to spare, writing in her autumn 1998 list: ‘It has taken many years of ‘chipping’ to acquire a small stock of this precious piece of history. From the late Frank Whaley’s [Sevenoaks, Kent] garden. An early, small, dainty trumpet daffodil’. It was offered at twice the price of any of the other rarities paraded that year and sold out in a trice. Curiously, it isn’t mentioned in any of Bowles’s books (not even his A Handbook of Narcissus) nor in his correspondence. Stocks in some gardens, up to 20cm, the corona not six-lobed nor palest green at the base, misleadingly carry the same name: another horticultural tangle that will be unravelled only if a single-minded investigator makes it his or her purpose to do so.

Appearing as early as the first week of February, but at its best around the end of that month, Narcissus cyclamineus in general likes a rich acid soil in part shade, but has endured here and there at Blackthorn. Better still, it has consorted with N. ‘Tête-à-tête’, giving rise to a handsome dwarf newcomer, distributed to various friends under the name N. ‘Sunshine Sue’. In late March, the dwarf (15-20cm), pale lemon, saffron yellowtrumpeted Narcissus pseudonarcissus is resplendent by the thousand, interspersed with primroses, Anemone blanda and scillas. This elegant, arguably native daffodil is fondly remembered

by Robin and Sue from their early THE ALPINE GARDENER

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A few of the thousands of Narcissus pseudonarcissus at Blackthorn

married days at Landford, midway between Salisbury and Southampton to the south-east. It grew profusely in the surrounding woodlands, which they periodically visited as a respite from putting into good order a derelict walled garden. This they took on during the infamous drought of summer 1976, at first raising vegetables, then bedding plants, in order to provide a welcome income. While continuing to enjoy the Lent lily’s short-lived period of glory, Sue White ponders whether it is seeding around so freely that it has become rather too much of a good thing. But presented with such a display, who JUNE 2013

could heartlessly go about the business of dead-heading, or removing bulbs?

Also in its favour, the daffodil fades from the scene soon after flowering, as the woodland canopy reaches its halfway stage of development. By then a range of fritillarias including F. meleagris, F. pontica, F. lusitanica, F. messanensis, F. pyrenaica and F. verticillata are in flower.

Further back, drifts of Erythronium revolutum (some from the population that puts on such a tremendous display at Knighthayes Court in Devon) have established primarily from seed, at first deliberately strewn around but nowadays left to spread unaided. Wood anemones 173

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Clumps of Anemone ranunculoides ‘Pleniflora’ have been skilfully placed 174

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BLACKTHORN (predominantly single, soft lemon A. x lipsiensis ‘Pallida’ and double versions of its parents, A. nemorosa ‘Vestal’ and A. ranunculoides ‘Pleniflora’) soften the edges of the informal paths, with repeat clumps that look as if they have placed themselves here and there by chance, but whose positioning was skilfully premeditated.

Early in the year, sometimes in late January, snowdrops predominate.

This is not a garden in which rare varieties abound. Sensibly the owners prefer to select just a few that enjoy life at Blackthorn. The earliest of them, Galanthus ‘S. Arnott’, is arguably the best general purpose snowdrop ever raised. Like many of its ilk it has a contentious origin but after at least 60 years it continues to go from strength to strength. Another two, far less seen, are equally deserving of a place. G. plicatus ‘Washfield Warham’ can apparently be traced back to E.A. Bowles. Last year I attended the 90th birthday bash of Ray Cobb, who met Bowles decades ago, received bulbs of this from him and gave some to Elizabeth Strangman at Washfield Nursery. She and the Whites have much in common and have long exchanged plants. A first-rate snowdrop, G. ‘Silverwells’, also came to Blackthorn from her, a G. ‘Atkinsii’ doppelganger associated with Edrom Nurseries foundresses the Misses Logan-Home and later distributed by Jim Jermyn (in spring 1997 he listed it as ‘The largest of all the snowdrops we offer’).

Robin White was a fairly frequent exhibitor at RHS London shows, starting in January 1990. While Jim seduced his customers with Petiolarid primulas and JUNE 2013

snowdrops such as ‘Silverwells’, Robin’s early season displays predominantly featured at that time novel hybrid hellebores between H. niger and H. argutifolius, and H. niger and H. x sternii, to crowd-pleasing effect.

Blackthorn is only a 90-minute train journey from London, but Robin seldom travels there these days. ‘Why would we wish to be anywhere else?’ he beamed as he surveyed the garden in its full spring glory. The Whites have, even so, latterly taken to visiting Devon or Cornwall from time to time. The coastal profusion and mix of wildflowers has both delighted and inspired them further in their naturalistic, non-interventionist style of native and non-native blends back at Blackthorn, which has developed over 25 years.

Close to the house, there are more structured and precise borders. Here, too, the plantings are seemingly unconstrained and successional rather than ‘a few weeks and that’s your lot’.

Later in the season, when plants are propped up with a few unobtrusive pea sticks rather than marshalled into formal ranks and rows, these borders are equally an inspiration. There is a high humus bed, kept moist throughout the year, by the kitchen door. Around the perimeter of the house, other borders differ markedly in style and the plants chosen from one to another.

The border beneath the kitchen window is notable not just for its vegetation but for an eye-level bird feeder where nuthatches and two families of greater spotted woodpeckers very regularly swoop down from the surrounding trees, almost within touching distance if 175

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A flamboyant stand of Cypripedium Ulla Silkens gx.

the glass panes didn’t provide a barrier.

Being bird-keen seems to go hand in hand with alpine gardeners: at the Askival nursery in Scotland, Mike and Polly Stone had a similarly positioned bird table, where coal tits, goldfinches, siskins and others entertained their visitors.

On leaving Robin and Sue’s house – perhaps having admired on the wall an aerial photograph of the nursery when it was in full production, the number of polytunnels daunting for such a modest workforce – on the right one encounters the finest of the peripheral beds at shin height, extending some ten paces. In late summer and early autumn it is enlivened by the low, long-performing, purplish-blue but 176

white-eyed Geranium wallichianum, a predominantly Himalayan native that has some decidedly pink forms, though deservedly the most popular is ‘Buxton’s Variety’ (‘Buxton’s Blue’ incorrectly). At one time, the Blackthorn catalogue cautioned that ‘hot and/or dry conditions turn the flowers lilacmagenta’. It usefully clothes those areas that early on parade first the rich yellow Crocus herbertii, followed by dwarf daffodils and Anemonella thalictroides.

Erythronium revolutum is here, too, in good numbers, but not E. oregonum, which would have provided a cool cream contrast. The owners surmise that it is rather too damp, given that the species grows well in raised woodland beds nearby.

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Corydalis omeiana

The garden is home to a robust Cypripedium calceolus. It was obtained from Kath Dryden and represents the European mainland form of the species, decidedly more vigorous than the native, Sainsbury Foundationpropagated plants. It has produced seed pods in recent years and is suspected of having very modestly self-sown. Time will tell, for a minimum of five years’ growth is necessary before a seedling first blooms. Other cypripediums grow much more easily, and a showy clump of Cypripedium Ulla Silkens gx, (C. reginae x flavum, but inclining towards the former) delivers the bed’s crowning performance in mid-June. One of the earliest and still among the best of the man-made hybrids, last year it flaunted JUNE 2013

some 40 flowers. Shaded from the midday sun in the summer, so that it is ‘lit’ principally in the early morning and in the evening, it has been in this position for almost ten years, improving its performance annually.

The supporting cast is principally formed of dactylorhizas, the most striking of them pure white, representing Gerry Mundey’s deliberate cross between albino forms of D. fuchsii and D. maderensis in the 1970s. Gerry, who gardened at Redlynch, just a couple of miles from the Whites’ former Wiltshire home, tongue-in-cheek named this cross D. ‘Eskimo Nell’. At Blackthorn, its offspring has been christened D. ‘Robin’s White’, the foliage similarly slightly yellow-flecked after flowering, which suggests that albinism might confer this consequence.

Surrounding it, and seeding appreciably, is Corydalis omeiana, yet another plant named for the floriferous south-west Chinese mountain on which, at around 2,500-2,900m, it is reportedly widespread. This late-flowering member of the C. flexuosa alliance was initially – and perhaps still is, in some gardens and catalogues – misidentified as C. elata, a localised, forest-dwelling species from central Sichuan, also now in cultivation.

C. omeiana isn’t self-fertile, but if two clones co-exist, or if any close relatives are within pollinator range, it soon sets to work. Also around this time the first of the roscoeas are in flower, the frontrunner being R. cautleyoides “Blackthorn strain” (in double quotes because the useful term ‘strain’ is proscribed). This plant is in every permutation from white or white-striped purplish to almost pure 177

The Dactylorhiza bank, created on a former spoil heap

purple, perhaps surprisingly all the issue of a pale yellow progenitor.

An adjacent border, agreeably but quietly planted, has one quirk: in the bole of a rose bush, at a height of 50cm, a spontaneous seedling of Fritillaria meleagris has slowly come to maturity.

Has anyone seen a less likely billet? It is an indication of how much the snake’shead fritillary is at home in this garden.

The main lawn, some 30 yards distant, is backed by a large, turfed mound rising to almost head-height. This is now one of the showpieces of the garden, although it started life as the spoil heap when the foundations of the house were dug out.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus has found this habitat much to its liking, but in midApril it hands the baton to Fritillaria 178

meleagris, slightly overlapping by around a week in most years. It’s noticeable that white-flowered rather than purple chequered seedlings predominate. In almost every other garden known to me, the reverse is true. Along the fringes, and also infiltrating, clumps of lowergrowing Anemone x lipsiensis ‘Pallida’ are slowly building up.

A return to this area in mid-June will see the delicate meadow grasses in quaking, shimmering abundance, a support cast to a multitudinous colony of dactylorhizas.

These early to midsummer-flowering orchids, which, when suited, can increase by seed exponentially, are very much at home here. Many readers will know of Twyford Down, between Kilmeston and Winchester to the west, an area of THE ALPINE GARDENER

wildflower-rich chalk downland which was in part carved up to facilitate an extension of the M3 motorway, despite a much-publicised protest in 1992. Much of that habitat endures, and there are other orchid-rich sites close by, such as Old Winchester Hill. But the Blackthorn garden populations have arisen from just three Dactylorhiza fuchsii (a gift from a nursery customer in whose garden the species abounded) and a similar number of D. praetermissa (the southern marsh orchid, which occurs alongside chalk streams in various parts of Hampshire) from Blooms of Bressingham. The latter are responsible for the darkest lilac/ purple-pink seedlings (D. foliosa and D. ‘Atlanta’ are also grown and implicated).

Over the course of at least 20 years the JUNE 2013

whole bank has become home to their offspring, together with others whose seed was doubtless carried on the wind.

In Orchids of the British Isles, Michael Foley gives a figure of 2,000-5,000 seeds per capsule, never mind spike, and suggests seed can be airborne for hundreds of miles.

Crosses between D. fuchsii and D. praetermissa from this population has been distributed as D. x grandis ‘Blackthorn hybrids’. They occur in every shade of lilac-pink and purplepink, some with large flowers carried in chubby spikes. The ‘Bressingham’ influence, however, is seen in those more readily clump-forming plants with more elongated, tapering inflorescences, and flowering two to three weeks earlier, but 179

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A colony of Fritillaria meleagris where, unusually, the white form dominates

all with richly patterned leaves. Their flowering coincides with that of a haze of buttercups, but their seed isn’t ripe until late summer, making mid to late August the optimum time to strim the bank in preparation for the emergence of the first autumn bulbs.

Along its crest, the mound has been planted with a trio of silver birches, where in summer the umbellifer Pimpinella major ‘Rosea’ provides a pink echo of the marginal colonies of red campion (Silene dioica) from back in May. On its opposite side the bank falls away to form another woodland bed, slightly raised, where trilliums and other woodlanders abound. Corydalis ‘Kingfisher’ (Keith Lever’s cross between C. cashmeriana 180

and C. flexuosa) does particularly well here, its brilliant blue a highlight in mid to late April. Opposite, a rather dry border along the boundary is home to Helleborus x hybridus in variety, a onetime speciality of the nursery dating back over 25 years, and also Cyclamen hederifolium. Both are tough customers once established but need nurturing in their first few years in order to establish.

This outlying bed roughly echoes the rear curvature of the mound back towards the house, where it broadens into a border that, in the first half of April, is the stage for a display of Erythronium hybrids in quantity. Four or five of the genus mingle here, but the stand-out display is provided by Keith Wiley’s E. THE ALPINE GARDENER

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Erythronium ‘Joanna’ and E. ‘Janice’, just two of many hybrids at Blackthorn

‘Janice’, an E. revolutum hybrid described in his 2006 Wildside Nursery catalogue as having ‘good pink flowers produced in such numbers as to provide solid pink patches of colour once established’. Close by is the predominantly yellow but pinkinfused E. ‘Joanna’, a Willem van Eeden raising (E. tuolumnense x revolutum the probable parents), forming an AngloDutch alliance.

The Whites, however, feel that E. ‘Sundisc’ is the best of the E. tuolumnense hybrids, very likely with E. californicum ‘White Beauty’, which has notably attractive foliage. It is hereabouts, as is another ‘White Beauty’ hybrid, again from Keith Wiley, E. ‘Rosalind’. He described it as having JUNE 2013

‘beautiful pink-flushed and edged white flowers with a red eye’. Also present is the E. californicum offspring E. ‘John Brookes’, creamy yellow in flower and with handsome, ‘silver-marked’ foliage.

Slightly discordantly, the part-North African Epimedium x perralchicum ‘Wisley’ (the genus is principally Chinese, though with outliers through to western Europe) is all around and its foliage fills in when the trout lilies retreat underground, its yellow flowers coinciding with their displays.

Just beyond is a planting that combines subalpines and herbaceous perennials with native plants in an appealing mélange of blues, pinks, purples and white. At their best by mid-June are 181

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Kabschia and silver saxifrages thriving in tufa

Aruncus dioicus, Leucanthemum ‘Snowcap’, several Geranium cultivars including the 45cm tall ‘Johnson’s Blue’ and the taller G. clarkei ‘Kashmir Pink’ (one of many Blackthorn raisings), nepetas and foxgloves. These are followed by a second wave taking in taller campanulas, Allium cristophii and Eryngium giganteum. The geraniums are invaluable, performing tirelessly and forging a link between the displays.

Viewed from the house, this forms a subtle-hued and informal backdrop to a feature dominated by Daphne hybrids. It was constructed in 1999 using ‘slices’ of tufa up to 15cm wide, placed on end (and 182

end to end) to form terraces. By drilling and chiselling holes in the relatively soft rock, niches have been created where kabschia and silver saxifrages cohabit with Ramonda myconi, on occasion seeding into one another. There is much else as well, whether you inspect the rocks themselves or the rich scree pockets and seams that lie in between.

To the right a more open, southeast-facing slope has been planted with an array of sun-lovers. At the top, reached by shallow steps made from wooden battens, is a seat weathered to a silvery-grey but not, one suspects, much sat upon: there’s always work THE ALPINE GARDENER

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Dactylorhizas growing alongside the pond, Blackthorn’s only water feature

to be done. Hereabouts you will find a phenomenal Physoplexis comosa, last year boasting over 50 heads of lavenderblue flower, and both Viola cazorlensis and V. delphinantha, unusually at home without any cover, though their flower buds are vulnerable to late frosts.

This area is also home to Rhodanthemum hosmariense, first placed in Chrysanthemum, then reassigned to Leucanthemum. Named after Beni Hosmar, near Tetuan in Spanish Morocco, it is an invaluable introduction that flowers for months on end. The tufa faces harbour kabschia and silver saxifrages in quantity and variety, some JUNE 2013

such as S. ‘Faldonside’, S. ‘Jenkinsiae’ and S. ‘Cranbourne’ dating back to 1976 stock material from Toynbees. Later, hybrids such as S. ‘Cumulus’ and species including the Caucasian S. dinnikii also excel. A surprising diversity of other alpines has settled down here and seeded around. For example, the Chinese Corydalis kokiana forms a bluish swathe in late spring and is both dwarfer and stronger-coloured in flower than when grown under glass.

The other end of the tufa rampart slopes gently up towards a pond. This is the size of an average sitting room, with water lilies and lush marginal 183

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Rhodanthemum hosmariense flowers for months at Blackthorn 184

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Rosa multiflora, the largest alpine in the garden, deserves to be more widely grown

plantings – rodgersias, bergenias, irises, pulmonarias in the shade (the last far less susceptible to mildew if so positioned). A deliberately unmown, 40cm wide fringe of turf harbours a diverse and steadily increasing colony of dactylorhizas. The pond is the only water feature in the garden and it affords a focal point of quiet contemplation.

In the second half of June and early July, the scent of a huge Rosa multiflora not far behind gives added pleasure. Loosely speaking, at around 15ft tall it could be termed the largest alpine in the garden, for it was raised from seed sent back by the AGS 1988 Japan expedition. A native JUNE 2013

there of Hokkaido, Honshu and Shikoku, it is also recorded from North Korea and eastern China. It has naturalised in the USA since the 19th century, where it is sometimes considered a nuisance, so robust in growth that it ‘can hold a car which runs off the road’, according to one report. First introduced around 1862, it remains an uncommon garden plant. Its tolerance of dry, heavy soils and, more especially, its lavish panicles of 20 to 30 dog roses, whitish and enlivened by dark-tipped stamens, are surely grounds for inclusion even in the gardens of resolute anti-rosarians.

Having come round full circle, the 185

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Establishing Crocus nudiflorus takes time and some luck 186

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Colchicum bivonae, originating from Pieria in Greece

spectacle is not quite at an end. In a final flourish, the mound yields a further display in early autumn when Crocus nudiflorus by the hundred forms an extensive purple haze over the area. It is ‘wild’ in a few parts of England, spreads stoloniferously as well as seeding around, and normally flowers early on among the autumnal species, so you would think it an obvious choice for naturalising. But establishing a colony takes time and a measure of luck: there aren’t many gardens where it has taken hold so effectively. It also revels in the borders but tends to flop easily, preferring the support of short turf, like the eastern European C. banaticus, JUNE 2013

which also spreads here in its typically lavender and later-flowering white forms.

Colchicum autumnale ‘Album’ is a relative late-riser, but a few weeks beforehand, both in the woodland backing onto the road and to one side of the mound, Colchicum bivonae is resplendent. This, an August to October performer with a natural distribution from Sardinia eastwards to north-west Turkey, is represented at Blackthorn by Peter and Penny Watt’s collection from Pieria, Greece, at 1,000m on northfacing slopes. Unlike some examples, it increases well and has settled down to form good colonies. What better finale could one ask for?

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NEW CROCUSES

Jānis Rukšāns, the author of the book Crocuses: A Complete Guide to the Genus, describes seven new crocuses from the Balkans and Turkey.

The full text of this research, including a full key for Crocus speciosus, will be published on the AGS website and incorporated into the online AGS Encyclopaedia of Alpines. As a separate paper, it is available to members free of charge (UK postage and handling £2; Europe £3; rest of the world £4). Order a copy on the AGS website by following the link for the book shop.

S

even new taxa of Crocus L. from the Balkans and Turkey are described, including the required Latin text for their registration.

Crocus speciosus subsp. sakariensis Crocus speciosus subsp. bolensis Crocus speciosus subsp. hellenicus Crocus speciosus subsp. elegans Crocus vaclavii Crocus macedonicus Crocus laevigatus subsp. pumilus C. speciosus subsp. sakariensis Rukšāns, subsp. nov. a subsp. specioso fauce lutea, cormi tunico papyraceo, basi in fibras parallelas fisso sine collum, floribus minoribus differt. A subsp. ilgazensis et xantholaimos stylus ad apices antherarum divisus ramosissimus differt.

Typus: Turkey, SE of Sakarya, foothills of Elmacik Da., 2012-10-31, alt. 85m.

Holo: Gatersleben, GAT 19548; Iso: GB. The general description is the same as that of subsp. speciosus but with the following characteristics: corm tunics membranous, without basal rings, flower tube up to 10cm long, perianth segments 30-35mm long, throat deep

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Seven new crocuses described yellow. Stigma many-branched, well overtopping anthers. Leaves 3-6mm wide. 2n=?.

Habitat: In shade under Corylus and among young plantings in full sun, on humus-rich gravelly clay at 50m-150m altitude.

Flowering period: OctoberNovember.

Type locality: Turkey: Sakarya.

Distribution: Known only from the type locality.

C. speciosus subsp. bolensis Rukšāns, subsp. nov. a subsp. specioso stylus ramus inferus apices antherarum finis differt, a subsp. ilgazensis stylus ramosissimus, a subsp. xantholaimos faucis albus differt. Typus: Turkey, THE ALPINE GARDENER

NEW CROCUSES

Crocus speciosus subsp. sakariensis and, below, Crocus speciosus subsp. bolensis

Bolu, heights above Lake Abant. Holo: Gatersleben, GAT 19558.

The general description is the same as that of subsp. speciosus but with the following characteristics: stigma wellbranched but terminating below the tips of anthers. Flowers smaller than in the type subspecies, generally nicely striped. Separable from subsp. ilgazensis by the distinctly many-branched stigma, and from subsp. xantholaimos by the white throat. 2n=8.

Habitat: In open alpine turf (yaila) and in clearings of Pinus and Abies forests. Altitude 850m-1,700m.

Flowering period: OctoberNovember.

Type locality: Turkey: Heights above Lake Abant.

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NEW CROCUSES Distribution: Turkey: Abant, Bolu and Gokceler Dağ.

C. speciosus subsp. hellenicus Rukšāns, subsp. nov. a subsp. specioso cormi tunico papyraceo basi in fibres parallelas fisso, cum tunica basalis indistinctus (hebdomadalis evolutus), sine collum differt. Typus: Greece, Ioannina, Vikos Gorge, nr. Monodendri. 2012-10-12.

Holo: Gatersleben, GAT 19551. Fokida: GAT 20316 (Greece, nr. Varnakovo Monastery, ex culturae in horto Jānis Rukšāns, 2012-11-07).

The general description is the same as that of subsp. speciosus but with the following characteristics: corm tunics membranous, with weakly developed basal rings, without prolonged neck.

Leaves narrow – 1-3(4)mm wide. 2n=?.

Habitat: In yailas at forest edges and on mossy slopes, on limestone. Altitude 500m-1,350m.

Flowering period: OctoberNovember.

Type locality: Greece, Ioannina, Vikos Canyon, near Monodendri.

Distribution: Greece. Three disjunct localities in Ioannina, Etoloakarnania and Fokida.

C. speciosus subsp. elegans Rukšāns, subsp. nov. a subsp. specioso antherae albae(?) et cormi tunico papyraceo basi in fibres parallelas fisso, cum tunica basalis indistinctus sed cum collum papyraceo differt. Typus: Turkey, Konya prov., Esereyrek Da. Holo: GB. The general description is the same as that of subsp. speciosus but with the following characteristics: corm tunics membranous, splitting longitudinally 190

Crocus speciosus subsp. hellenicus

into stripes, basal rings indistinct.

Long neck formed by persistent old cataphylls, but thin and very brittle, so careful digging is needed for observation. Anthers white (?). 2n = 18.

Habitat: In clearings and edges of Abies forests and rocky outcrops.

Altitude 1,400m-1,700m.

Flowering period: OctoberNovember.

Type locality: Turkey: Konya province, south of Suğla Gölü.

Distribution: Turkey: Geyik Dağlari (known from two localities) and Görece Daği(?).

Crocus vaclavii Rukšāns species nova.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

NEW CROCUSES

Crocus speciosus subsp. elegans

Cormi tunicae coriacea cum annulis ad basem. Annuli sine manifeste dentes.

Folia 2-3,5-5 (n = 45), 2.5-3mm lata, glabra, subter sine costis, bene evoluta ad florationem. Corolla fauce aurantiaca, glabra. Segmenta caerulea. Segmenta exteriora extus plerumque striata vel pinata violaceo, raro maculata.

Filamenta saturate lutea, 8-10mm longa, papillosa. Antherae 11-15mm longae, luteae vel cum connectivo nigro vel griseo (20%). Stigma antheris plerumque aequalis, rami stigmatici 5mm longa.

Capsula non visa. Typus: Greece, Macedonia, Athos, seaside wet meadow at only 5-10m above sea level, coarse gravelly soil formed from decomposed JUNE 2013

Crocus vaclavii

granite, 03-03-2013. Holo: GAT 23017; Iso: GB. This new crocus belongs to the species in the ‘biflorus’ group without ribs in the grooves on the underside of the leaves. In its part-black anthers it most resembles Crocus stridii, but C. stridii is much leafier, having 5-8 leaves, and its throat is papillose.

The flowers of C. alexandri invariably have white throats. C. biflorus (type) has narrower leaves (only 0.5-2.0mm wide), its anthers are shorter (5-11mm long) and it grows on limestonebased formations. Compared with C. bifloriformis and C. babadagensis from the opposite coast of the sea (western 191

NEW CROCUSES

Left, Crocus macedonicus and, right, Crocus laevigatus subsp. pumilus

Turkey), the new species is less leafy and its flowers are blue-coloured on the outside and inside.

Habitat: On decomposed granitebased seaside meadows in grass.

Altitude 5m-650m.

Flowering period: January-March.

Type locality: Greece, Macedonia, east coast of the Athos peninsula.

Distribution: Greece, Athos peninsula. A very local endemic.

Crocus macedonicus Rukšāns species nova. Cormi tunicae fibrosis apice cum collum (5-)6-8(-10.5) centrimetrum longum plerumque persistens. Folia (4)5-7(-9), synantha, 1(-1.5) mm lata, margine glabra. Flores autumnales, plerumque solitarii (-3). Perigonium 192

saturate lilacino-coeruleum, prope basin valde purpureo venosum. Fauce album. Filamenta alba, antherae flavae. Stylus in ramos tres stigmaticos, rubros, apice expansos divisus, quam antherae aequans or superans. Crocus pallasii affinitas sed collum longum et folia numero minor bone differt.

Typus: Greece, Macedonia, NE Ossa.

Holo: GAT 20314 (ex culturae in horto Jānis Rukšāns, 2012-12-08); Iso: GAT 20315.

Similar to Crocus pallasii but with a much longer and very distinctly fibrelike neck formed by old tunics of corm and less leafy than C. pallasii.

Habitat: On limestone-based mountain slopes in short turf. Altitude 350m-700m.

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NEW CROCUSES

Flowering period: OctoberNovember.

Type locality: Greece, Macedonia, north-east of Ossa.

Distribution: Greece, Macedonia, Vertisko ridge. The latest research shows that it is more widespread than was at first supposed. We found it at every stop on the southern slopes of Vertisko ridge in a westerly direction starting from Sochos. Locally it was very abundant. On abandoned cultivated fields its leaves covered the ground like grass.

Crocus laevigatus subsp. pumilus Rukšāns subsp. nova a subsp. typica flores minoribus et inodori bone differt. Typus: Greece, Crete, Omalos JUNE 2013

Plateau, alt. 940m, ex culturae in horto Jānis Rukšāns, 2012-10-23.

Holo: GAT 20317; Iso: GB. Compared with the type subspecies the new one has smaller flowers and they are odourless.

Habitat: Open stony and rocky places or in sparse scrub. Altitude 10m-1,520m.

Flowering period: OctoberDecember.

Type locality: Greece, Crete, Omalos Plateau.

Distribution: Greece: the island of Crete – widespread throughout the island.  Correspondence regarding these descriptions should be sent to Jānis Rukšāns at janis.bulb@hawk.lv 193

DR FRED STOKER

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s an admirer of Reginald Farrer, I enjoyed the article in the December 2012 issue of The Alpine Gardener (page 427) about his life and how he inspired the introduction of the Alpine Garden Society’s Farrer Medal, awarded to the best plant at each of our shows.

However, it was the opening sentence that interested me greatly and stirred memories. This stated that Dr F. Stoker had won the first Farrer Medal with the lovely but tender Japanese gesneriad Conandron ramondioides. In his writings, Farrer eulogised about this plant, but also suggested ‘that a glorified potato has intermarried with Ramonda nathaliae’.

That Dr Stoker should have won the first Farrer Medal was perhaps appropriate because it was he who initiated the award and paid for the first batch of solid silver medals to be struck.

Dr Fred Stoker, a founder member of the AGS when it was set up in 1929, was a regular contributor of articles to the Society’s Bulletin in those early years.

His lengthy piece entitled An Account of Certain Shrubs Suitable for Cultivation in the Rock Garden was also published separately as a hard-cover booklet.

He wrote, too, the book A Gardener’s Progress, published in 1938, in which he charts his progression from a small back yard to The Summit, a large garden adjacent to Epping Forest at Loughton, Essex. His writing is entertaining, blending humour with erudite comments on plant requirements, soils and so on. He had a keen analytical

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Fred Stoker’s sinks are still going strong today Barry Starling presents an appreciation of Dr Fred Stoker, a founder member of the AGS who introduced the Farrer Medal and whose eight stone sinks were purchased by Barry for £1 each mind and a good grasp of the scientific reasoning of his day.

Fred Stoker had a particular affection for plants of the family Ericaceae and obtained remarkably good results with its more difficult members in the Essex environment. He was not always successful, however. His notes on the smallest of cassiopes, Cassiope hypnoides, state that botanist David Don named the plant ‘on account of its proneness to assume the hypnotic state; a state, incidentally, from which it seldom recovers’.

He goes on to say, borrowing from Shakespeare, that ‘(Alfred) Rehder advises the plant be grown in sun, in contrast to other members of the genus.

THE ALPINE GARDENER

PETER SHEASBY

DR FRED STOKER

Cassiope hypnoides, which is prone to assuming a ‘hypnotic state’ in cultivation

Maybe sunlight has a different quality in the USA, for neither sun nor moon or other orb of heaven serves to mellow the winter of its discontent in Britain’.

Writing of the non-alpine Gaultheria (Pernettya, as it was then) mucronata in A Gardener’s Progress, he states: ‘The pseudo-dioeciousness of P. mucronata has brought a blush to virgin cheeks on more than one occasion. There was, for instance, The Case of the Maiden Ladies.

Two sisters they were, who, admiring a fruiting specimen at one of the RHS’s fortnightly shows, bought it. The plant grew but did not fruit, After three years they met the vendor again and revealed their disappointment. “Ah,” said he, in the most everyday manner, “to make JUNE 2013

Dr Fred Stoker 195

DR FRED STOKER PETER SHEASBY

Gaultheria tasmanica, which Fred Stoker said ‘may be sat upon without discomfort’

it berry you must have a male as well.”

The ladies looked aside, conversed in whispers, returned to the attack and ordered “a gentleman plant”.’

The plant was delivered and Dr Stoker continued: ‘Relating their adventures to a bosom friend, the younger sister took up the tale. “To be quite truthful, we scarcely knew what to do, so we asked Ellen (a maid of 40 years). We thought she would know: her sister married a sailor. Ellen thought and then said, “Give him to me.” She took him into the garden and planted him beside the lady, thoroughly mingling their roots. And now we are hoping for the best.’

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Whether Fred Stoker employed this method he does not state, but in his article on dwarf shrubs he warns that G. mucronata is not suitable for the rock garden because ‘beautiful in fruit though it be, it is of a boisterousness so irrepressible that no ordinary measure can restrain it’. About ten years after his death in 1943, I had an opportunity to see the garden at The Summit. By this time Gaultheria mucronata had obliterated the rock garden and become a thicket ten metres in diameter.

After Stoker’s death, his wife Mary maintained the garden with the help of a full-time, elderly gardener. Apart from THE ALPINE GARDENER

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DR FRED STOKER

BARRY STARLING

A curtain of trailing branches on the unusual Picea breweriana

Epigaea gaultherioides

the Gaultheria, I recall an extensive drift of Trillium grandiflorum in the woodland and a six or seven-metre high specimen of the rare conifer Picea breweriana, JUNE 2013

with long, trailing, slender branches, sombre and dark green – almost as if it was mourning for the treasures that had perished close by.

One surprising survivor was Epigaea gaultherioides as a prostrate mat about 60cm in diameter, which in early spring sported 4cm diameter, funnel-shaped pink flowers emerging from between 8cm long ovate leaves. It must grow in shade and though not completely hardy, the abundant growth of its neighbours had protected it through the years.

In the early Sixties, Mary Stoker died, and although the terms of her will were designed to secure the future of 197

DR FRED STOKER the garden, the will was contested by a relative and these conditions were set aside. This resulted in planning permission being granted for a housing development on the site.

In Dr Stoker’s obituary in the AGS Bulletin (volume 11, page 245), Dr Paul Giuseppi wrote: ‘As long as this garden lasts, Dr Stoker’s memory will remain fresh in the minds of those who know and love it.’ Sadly, about 20 years after his death, the garden was lost.

Due to a remarkable turn of events a small part of Dr Stoker’s heritage remains to this day. Out of the blue I was given the opportunity to buy the Stokers’ eight stone sinks at £1 each providing I organised their transport from the site. By chance the 40th birthday of the formidable alpine plantswoman Kath Dryden coincided with my acquisition of the sinks and as, at that time, she lived within a quarter of a mile of The Summit, I was able to drop off one of the larger sinks as a present. It was manhandled into her garden and mounted on piles of bricks, Kath deciding to maintain the connection with Fred Stoker by planting it up with Ericaceae.

She started with a form of Rhododendron cephalanthum with tiny, Daphne-like inflorescences, each flower pink with a white rim to the corolla. This plant was later dug up for an excursion to Vincent Square, where it obtained an RHS Award of Merit subject to naming. Kath decided to give this little Rhododendron her mother’s maiden name, ‘Winifred Murray’.

Another early planting was Pieris (Arcterica) nana ‘Redshank’, also an Award of Merit holder, which formed 198

a low mat of dark green, 8mm long leaves over which crimson-stemmed, short, hooked racemes of creamy-white bells were clasped by deep red calyces.

From Roy Elliott came the wiry-stemmed Gaultheria tasmanica in the unusual form with creamy yellow fruits. Of this plant Dr Stoker had written: ‘Very distinct in that this species alone of the genus may be sat upon without discomfort.’

At about this time Kath and I were invited to visit dear Anna Griffith for afternoon tea and a perusal of her island garden on the River Cam. Anna specialised in the smallest of alpines and would travel by train from Cambridge to the RHS Halls in London with a basket on her arm containing half a dozen tiny but perfect alpines in pots smaller than 12cm. Over a number of years her plant of Farrer’s ‘Woolly Hair the Dwarf ’ – Eritrichium nanum, with china-blue flowers set among the silver-grey foliage – made that journey, invariably to return with a red ‘First Prize’ sticker. Another occupant of the basket was Gaultheria microphylla (syn. antarctica), the smallest of the gaultherias. I believe that Clarence Elliott had given the plant to Anna and she was one of the few people able to grow it successfully. In early summer this tiny plant would produce a sprinkling of white bells, while towards autumn the pea-sized, blush-white fruits would appear. From our visit to Anna’s garden, Kath returned with a minute propagation of the little Gaultheria for her sink.

The only other plant I can remember occupying the sink was, as seemed appropriate at the time, Phyllodoce x intermedia ‘Fred Stoker’, a hybrid THE ALPINE GARDENER

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DR FRED STOKER

Phyllodoce x intermedia ‘Fred Stoker’ offers a large crop of lilac-pink bells

between P. empetriformis and P. glanduliflora. This good garden plant regularly rewarded its cultivator with a large crop of lilac-pink, urceolate bells.

Whether, because of its namesake, it considered itself justified in dominating its domain I am not sure, but the time came when it had to be expelled from the sink and located in the peat bed, where it could compete with plants of its own size and vigour.

Fred Stoker would have been delighted that one of his sinks was to pass into the hands of a future AGS President and fellow recipient of the RHS’s highest award, the Victoria Medal of Honour.

JUNE 2013

Of the other seven sinks, one of them was auctioned at an open-garden meeting of the then newly formed Epping Forest Group of the AGS and raised the princely sum of £5 for group funds. The remaining six came with me to Devon almost 30 years ago and all have been planted up ever since. Two contain small Ericaceae and another a Shortia and its relatives. The Shortia, however, is not one which Dr Stoker would have known because it is a more recent hybrid between the North American S. galacifolia and S. uniflora var. grandiflora named S. x intertexta ‘Leona’. An Award of Merit plant, it is at 199

DR FRED STOKER

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home in the garden or in a container and prefers shady or semi-shady woodland conditions, flowering freely each April.

The one in the sink, growing in a large block of Swedish peat, produces 2.5cm diameter, pink, fringed flowers atop slender pedicels up to 10cm long. The round leaves on petioles up to 8cm long turn burnished red, often with yellow veining, adding to their attraction during winter. This cross was raised by the late Steve Doonan and Phil Pearson at their Grand Ridge Nursery in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, USA, and received its Award of Merit in 1999.

Alongside the Shortia is Berneuxia yunnanensis with narrowly elliptic leaves which also turn red as the cold weather approaches. In spring fleshy red stems bear clusters of up to eight white flowers with prominent anthers extending beyond the five separate petals. The smallest member of the same family, Diapensia lapponica var. obovata, has established itself in the vertical side of the peat block but, disappointingly, is reluctant to flower. Gaultheria hispidula and Pieris nana scramble around the base of the peat block and are gradually scaling its walls.

One of the ericaceous sinks is home to two very small, yellow-flowered species of Rhododendron, one the deciduous R. lowndesii and the other R. ludlowii, from Tibet. R. lowndesii forms a 15cm high thicket above which 15mm diameter rotate, yellow flowers are borne on short, bristly pedicels. R. ludlowii, of similar stature, persists as a small shrub, never looking very happy but always managing to push up a few of its unusually large,

Rhododendron keiskei var. ozawae ‘Yaku Fairy’

bell-shaped flowers. Both set seed that germinates readily but the seedlings are less easy to bring to maturity.

Among the other denizens of this sink is an excellent form of Phyllodoce nipponica given to me by Brian Russ.

It is shorter in stature than the typical P. nipponica, making a table-top of dark green, needle-like foliage about 10cm high. This, in May, is completely obscured by clusters of up to ten white bells held aloft on filament-thin pedicels.

The second ericaceous sink is home to two more of the smallest alpine rhododendrons. A dwarfer than usual form of Frank Kingdon Ward’s ‘Pink Baby’, R. pumilum, from Aberconwy Nursery, is just 15cm high and 20cm wide. It produces its pink thimbles in THE ALPINE GARDENER

BARRY STARLING

DR FRED STOKER

Shortia x intertexta ‘Leona’ doing well in Barry Starling’s garden

May and often again in September.

It seems to retain its leaves more consistently than the taller forms of this species. Totally prostrate R. keiskei var. ozawae ‘Yaku Fairy’, with creamyellow flowers in May, could eventually outgrow its space as the original plant, in the open garden, has spread to 60cm in diameter in 52 years!

Sharing this sink with the rhododendrons are two minute forms of Cassiope lycopodioides – C. l. var. gracilis and C. l. ‘Suzuki’. Both have arching, thread-like stems that never top 3cm above ground. Flower buds emerge from the axils of the incredibly small, adpressed leaves. So numerous are the white bells that the plant beneath may be completely hidden. With them is their JUNE 2013

close cousin Harrimanella stellariana, with bright green leaves at near right angles to the laxly upright stems. This plant has fewer but larger white corollas set in amber-tinged calyces. Leiophyllum buxifolium var. nanum, from the eastern USA, also does its best to smother its tiny-leaved twigs with star-like pink and white flowers. Of this Dr Stoker writes: ‘An attractive and sparkling little plant in flower.’

The remaining troughs hold more treasures and, yes, more mundane plants as well. But all, I think, would meet with Dr Stoker’s approval.

My hope is that, when I am past tending them, others will continue with this legacy from the man who gave us the Farrer Medal.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

T

he annual AGS Photographic Competition, now in its nineteenth year, has witnessed many changes since the first winning images were published in March 1995.

Perhaps it is a sign of my age that I should be perpetually amazed at the speed of technological advances in almost all spheres of life: what is cuttingedge today is mainstream and utilitarian tomorrow. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the communication, computer and electronics industries, with one result being the photographic digital revolution. In little more than ten years, digital cameras have advanced from a technophile’s novelty to essential photographic kit.

Few today would purchase a mobile phone without an integrated camera, GPS capability and internet access.

It has never been easier for us to take, view, edit and share photographs with just about anyone on the planet. It is therefore surprising that fewer than five in every thousand AGS members can be considered as regular or occasional supporters of this competition.

One can speculate on the possible reasons for such muted enthusiasm but I would guess that, aside from the excuses

Take part in our pictorial celebration of nature Doug Joyce presents the results of the 2012 AGS Photographic Competition, sponsored by Greentours, and encourages members to take part in the 2013 contest, which offers cash prizes for the winners of a busy lifestyle and a reticence to get to grips with new technology, the ‘my pictures are simply not good enough’ syndrome persists. But while ‘advanced photography’ can be a challenge, the rewards from even a modest understanding of simple techniques can

F

or the technically minded, wherever possible camera make, model and type have been listed here with the actual lens focal length setting, and in parenthesis the equivalent focal length (EFL) in a standard-frame 35mm SLR film camera (or full-frame DSLR). The latter value (EFL) enables a direct comparison of the picture angle across all camera models, thereby instantly distinguishing wide-angle (<35mm), from standard/normal (35-85mm) or telephoto scenes (>85mm), the diagonal viewing-angles equating to greater than 63° for wide-angle scenes and to less than 29° for telephoto shots.

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be instantly quite magical. Remember, most images can be pepped-up in terms of composition, detail, colour, highlights and contrast with just a few clicks of a computer mouse.

However, each year newcomers to the competition do impress the judges sufficiently to claim a share of the cash prizes. If you decide to enter the 2013 contest, it is important to study the rules and consider how they affect the judges’ choices. By referring to previous competitions, either in past copies of The Alpine Gardener or by visiting the AGS website, you can get a feel for what is sought and what looks good in print.

Photographers may enter up to three JUNE 2013

Class 1: First Hilary Birks, Bjørndalstræ, Norway.

Meconopsis horridula at Pang La, Tibet (5,000m). August 2009.

Camera: Pentax *ist DL2 (DSLR), lens at a focal length of 43mm (equivalent 64mm): exposure 1/60sec at f27, ISO 400.

photographs in each of the five classes.

Compositions in classes one, two and four should retain a natural quality, and may be corrected for visual quality using the normal tools of digital processing.

Photographs may be submitted either by post (on a disk or as transparencies) 203

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

Class 1: Second (shown on the front cover of this issue) Roger Brownbridge, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK. Saxifraga paniculata at Männlichen, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland.

June 2012.

Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ28 (compact) lens at a focal length of 4.8mm (equivalent 27mm), exposure 1/400sec at f7.1, ISO 100.

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Class 1: Third Roger Brownbridge, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK. Papaver alpinum subsp. rhaeticum at Morteratsch Glacier, Engadine, Switzerland. June 2011.

Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ28 (compact) lens at a focal length of 4.8mm (equivalent 27mm), exposure 1/400sec at f7.1, ISO 100.

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PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

Class 2: First Zeng Gang, Sichuan Alpine Ecology Study Centre, China.

Meconopsis balangensis at Balangshan, Sichuan Province, China. August 2012.

Camera: Nikon D3X (DSLR), fitted with a Nikkor 200mm micro lens (equivalent 200mm, closeup), exposure 1/200sec at f5.6, ISO 100.

or sent by email. For judging purposes, all images must be capable of being projected onto a screen and of a sufficient resolution for publication in this journal. The complete rules are on the AGS website. Follow the link for ‘Images’ (www.alpinegardensociety.net).

JUNE 2013

Class One: An alpine or rock plant in a natural (wild) landscape, with both plant(s) and landscape featured.

Care should be taken to feature prominently a plant or group of plants in an alpine setting. The scenery should support and not dominate the 205

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

Class 2: Second Joan McCaughey, Ballinderry Upper, Lisburn, Northern Ireland.

Viola atropupurea at Parque Provincial Volcan Domuyo (2,000m), Patagonia, Argentina.

January 2011.

Camera: Canon PowerShot G12 (compact), lens at a focal length of 6.1mm (equivalent 28mm), exposure 1/320sec at f4, ISO 400.

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composition, but convey a sense of context and geographical location.

This year two entrants, Hilary Birks and Roger Brownbridge, were chosen as prize-winners with alpine scenes from very different parts of the world. Hilary travelled to Tibet for her inspiring portrayal of a lone Meconopsis horridula, while Roger stayed much closer to home, in the European Alps, with two scenes: one of Saxifraga paniculata and the other of Papaver alpinum subsp. rhaeticum.

While all three compositions feature their chosen subjects prominently, the THE ALPINE GARDENER

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

landscapes tell very different narratives.

Hilary’s Tibetan scene has a hardedged beauty, enigmatic and a little unwelcoming. In contrast, Roger’s alpine landscapes are softer, dreamier and alluring, with fluffy clouds, green pastures, swirling glaciers and mountain streams. All three share that essential common theme of a sense of space and context.

Class Two: Portrait of an alpine or rock plant in the wild, featuring the entire plant.

In this class the essential element is to feature a plant in its entirety (more JUNE 2013

Class 2: Third Joan McCaughey, Ballinderry Upper, Lisburn, Northern Ireland.

Caiophora coronata below Laguna del Diamante (2,500m), Mendoza, Argentina. January 2011.

Camera: Canon PowerShot G12 (compact), lens at a focal length of 6.1mm (equivalent 28mm), exposure 1/1250sec at f5, ISO 1000.

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Class 3: First Tony Duffey, Southport, Merseyside, UK. Aristolochia baetica at Grazalema National Park, Andalucia, Spain.

May 2012.

Camera: Pentax K 10D (DSLR), fitted with a 70-300mm Sigma lens with macro attachment at a focal length of 300mm (equivalent 450mm), exposure 1/350sec at f6.7, ISO 200.

in the manner of a botanical study), including all flowers, leaves and stems.

The immediate scenery need only suggest the feeling of a wild place.

Zeng Gang’s and Joan McCaughey’s photographs captured the judges’ votes in this class. Each was affected in a 208

different way by the capabilities of their camera equipment and the conditions under which they were working. Zeng Gang was able to make use of a telephoto macro lens (200mm), with precise spot-focusing and exposure, to isolate a portrait of Meconopsis balangensis, THE ALPINE GARDENER

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

capturing form, colour and texture in remarkable detail. The wide aperture (f5.6) lens setting has further allowed him to display the single flower in sharp relief against a dark recess in the cliff face beyond.

Joan was faced with a very different problem: how to take close portraits of alpines in a windy and sometimes poorly lit environment using a compact digital camera? Her choice was been to increase the ISO and shutter speeds to limit any motion-blurring, while retaining an adequate depth of field. This has resulted in slightly elevated levels of ‘noise’ in the darker tones of the photograph of Viola atropurpurea, but without perceptible loss of image quality. The brighter image JUNE 2013

Class 3: Second Celia Sawyer, Oxford, UK. Pulsatilla vulgaris in cultivation in own garden. March 2012.

Camera: Nikon D80 (DSLR), fitted with a Nikkor 105mm micro lens (equivalent 157mm, close-up), exposure 1/50sec at f18, ISO400, tripod used.

of Caiophora coronata has been less affected by this.

Class Three: Close-up detail of an alpine or rock plant in the wild or in cultivation, with leaves included as appropriate.

Here the photographer’s objective should be to reveal the more intimate 209

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Class 3: Third Zeng Gang, Sichuan Alpine Ecology Study Centre, China.

Lilium lankongense at Balang Shan, Sichuan Province, China. August 2012.

Camera: Nikon D3X (DSLR), fitted with a Nikkor 200mm micro lens (equivalent 200mm, close-up), exposure 1/80sec at f16, ISO 250.

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Class 4: First and overall competition winner Alan Pearson, Gilesgate, Durham, UK. Libelloides coccajus (owlfly) at Portillo de los Valles, Sobrarbe, Aragonese Pyrenees.

June 2011.

Camera: Olympus E-300 (FourThirds, Compact System Camera), fitted with a 40- 150mm Zuiko lens at 150mm (equivalent approx.

300mm), exposure 1/250sec at f5, ISO 100.

beauty of alpines by emphasising any features of special interest, such as individual flower(s), groups of leaves or floral structures. In the wild, in the garden or in the studio, natural or artificial lighting, anything creative is acceptable.

One of the opportunities of this class is to be able display images that do JUNE 2013

not sit comfortably elsewhere in the competition. Many plants lack the endearing architectural qualities of alpine cushions, being either too tall or simply too untidy as suitable subjects for whole-plant portraiture. Both Tony Duffey and Zeng Gang have chosen to feature, in detail, individual flowers, respectively Aristolochia baetica and 211

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Class 4: Second Bill Raymond, Iwerne Minster, Blandford, Dorset, UK. Volucella inflata (hoverfly) in the Jura Mountains, France. August 2011.

Camera: Canon PowerShot S95 (compact), lens at a focal length of 6mm (equivalent 28mm), exposure 1/60sec at f2.5, ISO 80.

Lilium lankongense. Both have used similar telephoto/macro tactics to isolate flowers from a busy scrub of distracting herbage by controlling perspective and depth of field. For this style to work well, however, special care has to be taken to preserve maximum crispness in colour and detail. Celia Sawyer earned a well-deserved second prize for a more complex but well-balanced composition featuring Pulsatilla vulgaris. Pulsatillas are better proportioned for all manner of photographic framing and styles, 212

including close-ups. They are rich in colour and detail and Celia clearly adores them. She, too, has made use of a longer focal length lens to control depth of field, albeit using a smaller aperture at closer range to allow additional depth in the foreground: sound practice, but more difficult to achieve with a compact digital camera.

Class Four: Alpine fauna in the wild, in a mountain landscape or in association with alpine plants.

Wild flowers are always accompanied THE ALPINE GARDENER

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Class 4: Third Joan McCaughey, Ballinderry Upper, Lisburn, Northern Ireland.

Grazing guanacos at Laguna del Diamante (3,300m), Mendoza, Argentina.

January 2011.

Camera: Canon PowerShot G12 (compact), lens at a focal length of 21.5mm (equivalent 100mm), exposure 1/1000sec at f4, ISO 1000.

by fauna from the large to the minuscule.

The majority are a welcome distraction in the alpine world, but please resist the temptation to portray the family pet.

Photographic entries commonly include insects, lizards, birds and mammals. Butterflies and other bright and shiny insects always have photographic appeal but many other members of the animal kingdom JUNE 2013

can look decidedly inanimate when basking or resting. Perhaps it is simply a matter of how we are generally used to observing them, motionless or in flight? This year, somewhat surprisingly, photographs of flies dominated the winners’ list with Alan Pearson’s owlfly being awarded both first prize in its class and overall competition winner.

In second place, Bill Raymond’s image 213

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

of a hoverfly also offered captivating colours and fine detail. Awarded third prize, and a complete contrast, was Joan McCaughey’s strange ‘collage’ of guanacos grazing on a remote Andean hillside. Here the reality appears almost surreal and comical.

Class Five: The Art Gallery – a photographic work of alpine artistry using any advanced software techniques to create an artistic image.

Image manipulation is akin to the great ‘Marmite debate’ – you either love it or hate it. For better or worse, the limiting factor is one’s imagination rather than the technical possibilities.

Even the novice is able to make either 214

Class 5: First Diane Clement, Wolverhampton, UK. Picea abies at Pontresina, Switzerland. July 2011.

Image manipulated using Photoshop Elements. Foreground masked-off and a posterisation filter applied to background.

Foreground then sharpened with unsharp mask.

random or deliberate changes in colour, texture, shape and composition with comparative ease. Most of our entrants tend to select quite basic tools to create new images.

All prize-winners this year have used THE ALPINE GARDENER

PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITION

Class 5: Second Celia Sawyer, Oxford, UK. Meconopsis cambrica var. aurantiaca.

Image manipulated in Photoshop Elements 9 using plastic wrap.

Class 5: Third Tony Duffey, Southport, Merseyside, UK. Echinocereus scheeri from a scanned original image on Kodak Elitechrome Extra Colour slide film.

Manipulated with a dry brush filter before being adjusted in Levels and Colour Adjustments to create a painterly effect.

filters to a large degree. Diane Clement, for example, has used ‘posterisation’ to simplify background elements before strongly sharpening selected parts of Picea abies in the foreground, thereby adding a crisp and strong 3-D quality to a perhaps previously undistinguished composition. In a similar manner, Celia Sawyer has chosen to use a ‘plastic wrap’ filter to transform her close-up of Meconopsis cambrica into a more fluid work of art. And following the theme of fine art, Tony Duffey has used a ‘dryJUNE 2013

brush’ filter to simulate a ‘tempera’ effect on a flower of Echinocereus scheeri, further enhanced by manipulating depth of colour.

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PLANTS FROM OUR SHOWS This new feature replaces individual show reports in The Alpine Gardener. Robert Rolfe focuses on some of the plants exhibited at the six AGS shows during February and March this year. The full show reports and more pictures can be seen on the AGS website

I

n an ordinary year, the shows following the mid-February display at Caerleon reflect the rapid progress of spring countrywide. Not so in 2013, when a sustained absence of sunshine and relentlessly low temperatures, not just at night but during the daytime as well, put many plants into the equivalent of cold-store stasis.

As such it was possible for some exhibitors to stage snowdrops still in their prime throughout March and indeed into April. Crocuses were also seen in good numbers and in excellent form, for all that some of them ordinarily peak before the show season gets under way. A clump of Crocus minimus in my garden delayed until the third week of April before bursting into full flower!

In 1969, a show reporter marvelled that crocuses were still in bloom and that there ‘was hardly a leaf to be seen on the hedgerows of any road around Harrogate’, where a show was staged from April 24-26. Then, as now, exhibitors took the challenge in their stride.

This year’s South Wales Show offered a vintage array of crocuses, with around 30 taxa flaunting their charms on one of the few bright days of late winter. For sheer ebullience, a large pan of the principally western Italian Crocus etruscus (it is also recorded from Corsica) was a veritable

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Crocuses in fine fettle at early shows SHOWS FEATURED: South Wales, Early Spring, Blackpool, Kent, London and Cleveland COMPILED FROM REPORTS BY: Tim Lever, Don Peace, John Richards, Robert Amos, John Good and Chris Lilley PHOTOGRAPHERS: Jon Evans, Doug Joyce, Don Peace, Jim Almond and Robert Rolfe

show-stopper. The flowers, much richer in their lilac hue than the standard ‘trade’ form, and indeed than named clones such as ‘Rosalind’ and the more hearty ‘Zwanenburg’, jostled huggermugger in a clump that filled a 26cm half-pot. The netted corms demonstrate a willingness to increase by division if given a cool summer rest. Jim McGregor had been given a panful of seedlings by fellow exhibitor Brian Burrow many years ago, and had grown these on THE ALPINE GARDENER

Jim McGregor’s pan of Crocus etruscus and, below, Crocus abantensis shown

by Ivor Betteridge

without being forced to separate them.

So very even was their appearance that they gave the impression of representing a single clone. Some forms – Mike Salmon’s introduction from Larderello, for example – are ‘feathered’ lilac on their tepal exteriors.

Crocus abantensis also has a reticulate corm tunic but is classified in a separate series (Verni rather than Reticulati), allying it with, among others, the Serbian C. kosaninii − of which a seed-raised group was shown in exemplary condition a month later at the Blackpool Show by Alan Furness.

C. abantensis is named for the large north-west Turkish lake on whose surrounding mountain slopes it flowers abundantly in March. At Caerleon, Ivor Betteridge’s pristine clump, the indigoblue flowers huddled down against the topdressing, had surely benefitted from the previous damp summer, for this is a snow-melt species that resents JUNE 2013

the ‘baking’ recommended for some others during their dormancy. In the wild, white forms have been recorded but these are seldom seen in cultivation.

Arguably Turkey is the Crocus aficionado’s happiest hunting ground, but neighbouring Greece is also home to a goodly number of species, spread from the northern borderlands right down to the southern Peloponnese, and a diversity of the islands. On just a handful of mountains that mark the border with Macedonia, the predominantly deep purple C. pelistericus grows on stream 217

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FARRER MEDAL WINNERS SOUTH WALES Dionysia archibaldii JLMS 02-87/PMR1 (Paul & Gill Ranson) EARLY SPRING Iris ‘Frank Elder’ (Don Peace) BLACKPOOL (Forrest Medal under SRGC rules) Cyclamen alpinum forma leucanthemum (Dave Riley) KENT Corydalis darwasica (George Elder) LONDON Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’ (Cecilia Coller) CLEVELAND Dionysia bryoides (Derek Pickard)

banks and in saturated meadows at up to 2,450m (8,000ft). The populations are extensive, involving millions of plants.

At the Early Spring Show, John Dixon’s entry won the class for ‘one pan bulbous plant grown from seed’. These were firstgeneration seedlings, sown in January 2000 and derived from MESE 380, a prize of the Society’s Macedonia and Epiros Seed Expedition the previous year.

Repotted en bloc, seedling variability was apparent in the flower coloration, and deliberate cross-pollination has produced several good crops of seed in recent years. Other growers have found this species one of the more difficult to establish, hence its rare appearances in nurserymen’s catalogues. Some have gone to the extreme of standing their pots in a shallow depth of water all summer long, whereas John increased his stock simply by leaving the pot in a frame adjoining one of his alpine houses, watered whenever he is passing and shaded with green netting.

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At the same show, John also had a very good clump of Crocus malyi, triggering memories of the only Farrer Medal that has gone to this species, shown by Alan Edwards at the same Harlow venue 20 years ago. Although long-known in cultivation, its present popularity in gardens dates from the mid-1970s, when John Marr’s Gospic stock (JRM 3108) was received.

Various other samplings of this Croatian endemic from the Velebit Mountains have been sent back since then and a few have been given clonal names (‘Ballerina’, ‘Sveti Roc’). But if you seek a large-flowered, pure white spring crocus with an orange-yellow throat and similarly coloured, prominent styles, none of them will disappoint. Often recommended for the cold frame or alpine house, it will grow satisfactorily outdoors if given a well-drained and sunny spot, but seldom produces the handsome clumps that can be built up under glass.

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Crocus malyi and, below, Crocus pelistericus, both exhibited

by John Dixon at the Early Spring Show in Harlow

C. pelistericus behaves well in a show hall, its segments holding their form throughout the day, whereas C. malyi starts off well, but the least suspicion of warmth, brought about by school hall radiators, aisles crowded with showgoers, or both, leads it to ‘flop’. It comes from subalpine altitudes at up to 1,000m (3,300ft) and occupies a range of JUNE 2013

habitats, from pine forest margins and sparse turf to slopes flecked with limestone boulders.

An act of clumsiness (a workman managed to drill into a gas main) followed a fortnight later by an act of God (heavy snow in the Pennines) robbed the spring calendar of the Loughborough and East Lancashire shows respectively. Thankfully, on the Saturday between, both the Blackpool and the Kent shows went ahead s u c c e s s f u l l y .

This digest is weighted towards tuberous, cormous, bulbous and rhizomatous plants: not the consequence of preferential treatment but rather a reflection of those plant groups that, on the whole, bounced back best after a protracted winter followed by a very uncertain start to spring.

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At Blackpool, European primulas were much in evidence, with Martin Rogerson’s Primula ‘Joan Hughes’ considered for the Farrer Medal, and its dwarfer back-cross with P. allionii, P. ‘Lepus’ (shown by Geoff Rollinson), among the pick of the genus on display.

Petiolarid primulas, often present in good numbers at this event, were doubtless discomfited by the low winter temperatures, though Henry and Margaret Taylor brought down from Dundee a couple of first-rate examples.

Their journeys to the north-west Himalaya have been consistently fruitful and various plants have entered cultivation in consequence, among them a high-altitude form of Primula sessilis that grows on exposed mountain slopes at 4,000m (13,100ft). High altitude and implacable hardiness do not always go hand in hand, but as a general rule, highlanders are are much hardier than their lowland counterparts, which 220

blacken and wilt when a hard winter sets in. First collected in 1931, for almost a century this species was considered a variant of P. petiolaris, or else was allied with the more heavily farinose P. nana, part of whose territory it shares.

The Taylors are inveterate hybridists of long standing (their 1977 raising P. ‘Tantallon’, between P. nana and P. bhutanica, helped win Alan Oatway most first prize points in the Novice Section). More recently they have engineered the cross P. nana x sessilis, a THE ALPINE GARDENER

Galanthus ikariae, grown by Don Peace.

Left, Martin Rogerson’s Primula ‘Joan Hughes’ and, below left, Primula nana x sessilis exhibited by Henry and Margaret Taylor

promising hybrid that is dwarf in habit and with deep pink flowers. As with all these petiolarids, the seed should be sown as soon as the capsules gape, in late spring or early summer.

Don Peace staged notable entries of snowdrops at all the early shows, including a small six-pan winning display at the Early Spring Show. But his tour de force was at Blackpool, where a fine form of Galanthus ikariae, raised from seed long ago, was much admired.

Described from a collection on Ikaria in the late 19th century, this appealingly dumpy species has since been found on several nearby Aegean islands, invariably preferring deciduous woodland sites, on limestone and schist, often near to rivers or streams. Its close resemblance to the much more vigorous and hardy G. woronowii is belied by the large green mark on the ‘inners’ which extends to the sinus. Also, the broad green leaves, up to 3cm wide, are matt, not shiny.

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Once again, it seemed that the cool weather had helped this exhibit maintain a splendidly compact manner.

Down in Rainham at the Kent Show, Corydalis darwasica, grown by George Elder, received the Farrer Medal. This followed on from several very good exhibits of its Section Leonticoides stablemate, C. popovii, at the earliest shows. George’s plant was notably compact, for its shoots have a marked tendency to etiolate soon after emergence unless grown in a bright, well-ventilated billet under glass. A native of Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it occurs at rather higher altitudes than most of its relatives and as such copes better with sustained cold, although the deep-seated tuber much prefers to be housed in a plunged rather than a free-standing pot, so limiting its vulnerability to penetrating frosts.

George staged another Uzbekistan native, Fritillaria stenanthera, which 221

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Corydalis darwasica won the Farrer Medal at the Kent Show for George Elder.

Right, Peter Jacob’s Tecophilaea cyanocrocus

received the Northdown Trophy for the best plant in a 19cm pot. Little known in gardens until the 1980s, it and F. gibbosa were the principal representatives of the Rhinopetalum group in gardens for the next 20 or so years. It is nowadays less often shown, as its once very seldomseen and close relatives F. ariana, F. gibbosa and F. karelinii have taken centre stage. This was a good pink version (some can be rather insipid) and very generously flowered.

A high standard of cultivation was also evident in the Intermediate Section, where Peter Jacob’s lavish grouping of Tecophilaea cyanocrocus, the earliest in a run of vintage displays on the show bench for this species that lasted well into April, gained him the Kath Dryden Award. This was fitting, for it was one of her favourite plants, which she 222

instructed should be grown in ‘a rich, well-drained soil, not too arid in summer’, each corm producing an offset that reaches flowering size within two or three years. Bees in her greenhouses brought about the Storm Cloud Group, having transferred pollen between the cultivars ‘Violacea’ and ‘Leichtlinii’.

Peter’s exhibit was shown as the latter, but had the sumptuous, cobalt-blue flowers typical of the species as seen in cultivation, without the more pervasively white, almost picotee coloration that is the hallmark of ‘Leichtlinii’.

Kath was a great champion of the London Show and would have been delighted to see the populous display this year, the benches arranged in horseshoe fashion to corral the RHS daffodil competition. Her friend Joy Bishop, another stalwart supporter of THE ALPINE GARDENER

the show and its onetime secretary, exhibited a range of beautiful plants.

Her potful of the ephemeral and therefore difficult to stage bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) won the Audrey Bartholomew Memorial Spoon for the best plant from North America.

The bloodroot is an easy plant to grow in a semi-shaded spot with good leafy soil, through which it can push its thick, fleshy runners. Older gardening books suggest that if you divide this plant, it is necessary to staunch the flow of ‘blood’ with powdered charcoal or talc. This is unduly alarmist: if conducted as soon as the flowers shatter, or in early autumn as the foliage dies down, division is s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d .

Considered for best in show and awarded a Certificate of Merit was Barry Tattersall’s impeccable Anacamptis (syn.

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Orchis) papilionacea subsp. heroica. The separation of Anacamptis papilionacea into subspecies and/or variants does not always convince, for it can be difficult to apply such names when you see these plants in the wild. Even the popular name ‘Butterfly Orchid’ is apt to confuse: many will think of the British natives Platanthera bifolia and P. chlorantha in that context. This mainly Mediterranean plant, in this guise distributed from the Peloponnese to south-western Turkey, has very showily bicoloured flowers, the hood dark pinkish-red and up to 20mm long, the crenate labellum fan-shaped, much paler and intricately marked with an elegant crazing of fine lines.

Occasionally forming small clumps, it is a species found mainly in garrigue but is hardier than this habitat might suggest, for Barry grows this and other terrestrial 223

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Joy Bishop’s Sanguinaria canadensis at the London Show orchids without heat.

And so to the Easter weekend, when the temporarily relocated Cleveland Show took place on a brilliantly sunny Saturday, though a blustery wind made the job of taking the plants outdoors to photograph them a chilly challenge. At least the extended period of cold weather had given locally based exhibitor Derek Pickard the opportunity to exhibit his dionysias in peak condition. In particular he staged seven Dionysia bryoides, a species in whose cultivation he excels, all grown from his own seed and each gaining a first prize in its respective class. A richly coloured, almost violet-pink exemplar – sown in November 1996 and now in its final long 224

tom pot (trying to repot a mature specimen is fraught with difficulty) – was unanimously awarded the Farrer Medal. Another, with lighter-coloured flowers, gained a Certificate of Merit.

The genus, often a mainstay of the early shows, was less in evidence this year, partly because some species were running late, their appearance delayed by up to a month on the show benches, and partly because the cold weather shrivelled the first crop of flowers. In a more favourable season, these linger without discoloration or loss of substance and augment the second or third flush, leading to an optimum covering of the cushion.

A plant with a much longer history in THE ALPINE GARDENER

Dionysia bryoides won the Farrer Medal at the Cleveland Show for Derek Pickard

cultivation, dating back to the 18th century, Primula marginata is rivalled only by its occasional co-cliff dweller P. allionii among the European species as an alpine-house plant. It will also grow well outdoors, particularly in a rich limestone scree or in a wall, but in such sites the heavy coating of farina is soon washed off, leaving only a trace around the toothed margins of the leaves. Under glass the new foliage is seen at its best, though you will have spent hours painstakingly removing the mass of senescent leaves a few months previously in order to see it displayed to full a d v a n t a g e .

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Brian and Shelagh Smethurst presented a mature plant labelled ‘Oak Leaf Form’, which looked very much like the clone distributed as ‘Laciniata’. This had typical violet-blue flowers and deeply, very regularly toothed leaves that formed a perfect foil. Sometimes older plants become rather straggly and unkempt. The solution is a fairly ruthless cutting back after flowering or early in spring, though doing so at this time forfeits the coming season’s display but offers ideal material for propagation. The severed shoots, shortened to around 3-5cm in length and with any dead foliage stripped away, can be dibbed into a tray of moist sharp sand without too much ceremony. A high proportion can then be expected to take root.

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Autumn colours on Alaca Dağ, with many Acer hyrcanum

Lycian treasures: the gems of SW Turkey in autumn 226

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he wealth of bulbous flora in Turkey needs no introduction.

With more than 70 species of Crocus, a large number of bewildering Colchicum and exotic looking Biarum, Turkey hosts one of the richest floras in the world.

Turkey is a vast country, but even a small area can host many interesting species. The flowering season is a long one, beginning in September, and autumn is a good time to see many of the bulbs in flower.

Turkey is characterised by a very THE ALPINE GARDENER

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A view through Cedrus libani

Yiannis Christofides presents a portfolio of autumnal photographs from the Lycian Mountains in Turkey’s Antalya Province complex geology, linked with the evolution of the ancient Tethys Ocean.

The Lycian mountains are composed of limestone, while overlying parts of the area are the allochthonous (meaning JUNE 2013

An ancient Lycian tomb at Phellos 227

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Two images of Crocus cancellatus subsp. lycius and, above, Anatololacerta oertzeni

sediment or rock that originated at a distance from its present position) Lycian Nappes.

This photo-essay focuses on the autumn-flowering bulbs of some of the mountains of south-western Turkey, the area known in the ancient world as Lycia and occupying the coast between Caria and Pamphylia.

The region is a peninsula projecting southward from the great mountain masses of the interior. For the most part 228

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Two forms of Colchicum balansae and, above, the beautiful Galanthus peshmenii

it is a rugged and mountainous terrain, traversed by offshoots of the Taurus range. The Ak and Bey Dağlari ranges, with a number of smaller mountains, dominate the region and impressive Cedrus libani forests cover large areas of the slopes.

The area is rich in Lycian, Hellenistic, Roman and Ottoman archaeological remains. Lycian tombs are the most characteristic objects to be seen. They are often richly decorated and attest to JUNE 2013

the fascinating civilisation that created them.

Most visitors to the area will arrive at the regional capital of Antalya. One of the first ancient towns to be visited is Termessos, which in common with other archaeological areas is also a fruitful botanical site. Here one will find Colchicum baytopiorum and Crocus cancellatus subsp. lycius, the commonest Crocus of the area. It is easily identified by its feathery style and 229

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yellow anthers. (C. cancellatus subsp. pamphylicus has white anthers.)

The valley inland from Kemer will provide the beautiful Galanthus peshmenii, Colchicum balansae, C. troodi and the wispy Dianthus orientalis.

Further west along the coast, the road leading up to ancient Phaselis provides some of the most spectacular displays of Cyclamen anywhere. Cyclamen graecum is the commonest to be found here. A bizarre member of the Arum 230

THE ALPINE GARDENER A rejuvenated colony of Narthecium ossifragum at Cwm Idwal

The bizarre Biarum marmarisense and, below, Biarum pyramii Opposite page: the delicate flower of Dianthus orientalis and, inset, Scilla autumnalis, found among coastal rocks

family, Biarum marmarisense, one of two autumn-flowering species, is also to be found nearby. The other is Biarum pyramii, which grows in the mountains further inland. The Alaca mountains, inland from Finike, provide incredible displays of autumn colour, mostly due to Acer hyrcanum.

The pretty town of Kas makes a suitable base for excursions further inland. Kas is ancient Antiphellus, the port town of nearby Phellus, and has some of the finest Lycian tombs.

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The elegant Colchicum stevenii and, left, flowers of the diminutive Narcissus serotinus

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Crocus mathewii displays its distinctive purple basal blotch.

Below, Crocus pallasii

Saxifraga oppositifolia growing among grass

Kekova island, with its sunken ancient city, is also a worth a visit. The coastal rocks provide interesting displays of Colchicum stevenii, Scilla autumnalis, Muscari parviflorum and Narcissus serotinus.

The Ak Daglari range to the north hosts all four crocuses to be found in this area.

Crocus cancellatus subsp. lycius, with its beautiful feathering, can be found at most altitudes. C. asumaniae has a simple tripartite style, longer than the JUNE 2013

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Colchicum boissieri and, left, the speckled C. variegatum

anthers, C. mathewii has its beautiful basal purple blotch and C. pallasii has a very short tripartite style, usually reddish in colour. Some individuals of the latter have rhombic petals, which make them particularly attractive. It is a common high-altitude Crocus, found in all the mountains of the area, often with Colchicum boissieri. The most striking Colchicum around here, however, is the tessellated C. variegatum, which is worth searching for in the lowlands.

Two rare gems of the mountains 234

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EXPLORATION: TURKEY

Sternbergia clusiana and, right, the tiny S. colchiciflora

represent the biggest and smallest members of their genus. Sternbergia clusiana has flowers up to 14cm in diameter, while Sternbergia colchiciflora hardly manages 3cm.

Autumn is, of course, a good time to see the fruits of many interesting plants such as Arbutus andrachne, A. unedo and Amygdalus, Prunus and Rosa species. Other plants such as Paliurus spina-christi and Ephedra campylopoda also have attractive fruit.

Many other plants, such as the JUNE 2013

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The attractive fruit of Paliurus spinachristi. Below, an ancient stone carving at Arykanda and, right, a caterpillar of the spurge hawk moth, Hyles euphorbiae

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The beautiful Dianthus zonatus and, below, the fruits of Arbutus andrachne

striking Dianthus zonatus and Salvia pisidica, will produce a few out-ofseason flowers, as will a number of the hundreds of Verbascum species that grow in Turkey. Inquisitive lizards and tropically coloured hawk-moth caterpillars are among a variety of other very photogenic subjects.  Dr Yiannis Christofides is the author of Orchids of Cyprus, lives in Platres, Cyprus, and leads botanical trips to Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

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