Saturday, January 2, 2021
Autumn Flowering bulbs by members.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Asarum
Asarum.
Asarum's are an acquired taste, they are more about foliage than the flowers, as the flowers don't jump out at you, you will be looking at the leaves and then your eyes will pick out the flowers. I don't know if you are meant to cut back the foliage as you do for Helleborus or Epimedium's, I do worry it would take too much out of the plant as the leaves are large and fleshy. Asarum's make a wonderful ground cover for deep shade, they revel in deep leaf litter and spent Camellia flowers. My apologies if these Asarum's are incorrectly named, but this is what we imported them as and I have nowhere to compare them with in Australia, I have done my best with the internet.
Asarum delavayi an imported plant from Chen Yi in China, we received two forms of this plant named as A. delavayi the leaves of one plant were dark green and covered in hairs the other plant has shiny foliage and no hairs at all. Flowers are the same on both plants.
As the leaves push through the earth they are folded in half and usually brown on their backs, and green on their inner side. I feed the Asarum's twice a year with pelletised chicken manure and potash.
Asarum maximum rare Chinese species, has a distinct smell of mushrooms and is endangered in the wild. Forms clumps of heart shaped leaves variegated or plain green, but mine are so badly eaten by slugs and snails I do not have a photo to show you of the foliage, the leaves are eaten as soon as they come through the soil. The flowers are quite large and have a distinct white edge to them fading to beige.
Asarum longorhizom E 11 this is the plant we imported from China named as A. longorhizom. There does not seem to be a flower on the internet that matches this flower, apologies for fuzzy photo as it has been planted in the garden and has not flowered for a long time so I have repotted it and I hope it will flower next year. Lovely long leaves, as I imagine that is where it received its name from. Hard to say if this Asarum like's deep leaf litter, like the rest of my Asarum's, but it tended to go backwards in the garden.
Asarum caudatum Winterwood Variegated the largest problem with this lovely small Asarum is it keeps reverting back to green leaf and loosing it variegation. Dan Hinkley in his book called "The Explorer's Garden" calls these "the woody vines of the genus Aristolochia, with their odd but charming pipes and the handsome ground covers the genus Asarum". Moist woodland plant covers a fairly large area, quite vigorous. Above and below.
Asarum hartwegii and Asarum splendends blending together to make a beautiful ground cover for shaded positions, in deep leaf litter and spent Camellia flower petals.
Harry Jan's plant explorer, tour leader and wonderful photographer has put together plants of China and sent to Di our president. Harry below photographing this dark almost black Primula at the Nottingham AGS conference. Harry was one of the speakers at the Nottingham AGS conference. Another Zoom meeting for our November 28th meeting at 7.30pm. Details will be sent out closer to the meeting.
AGS Victorian Group email address is; agsvicgroup@hotmail.com.au if you want to send us an email.