Wednesday was a lovely day and seems such a long time ago. I looked at the forecast and got some pictures taken then and on Thursday. I did a quick loop of the garden this morning and it’s looking battered and soggy with most of the pot stuff lying down.
One.
Camellia sasanqua ‘Navajo’. This is not what is happening today. It happened on Thursday and got blown to pieces on Friday, but there are lots more buds waiting for a break in the weather, a couple should be out by tomorrow. It’s my first bloom on an outdoors, in the ground Camellia for this season. The autumn flowering sasanqua varieties need more light and warmth than other Camellias and this one is at the front of the house in full sun. I was taking pictures of sasanquas at Mt Edgcumbe earlier in the week, wrote a piece on the other blog if you’re interested.
Two.
Hesperantha coccinea white form. This came originally from Cally Gardens, via a gardening friend and I don’t have a cultivar name for it. There are a number of white forms around; this is a pure white with no pink at all and seems quite vigorous. It’s still in a pot, I haven’t fond the spot for it yet.
Three.
Salvia confertiflora. We managed to get a poor plant of this through last winter and took cuttings early. They’re nice young plants in pots now but need nursing through the winter and planting in the spring. It could then get to six feet and be magnificent. That’s the plan at any rate.
Four.
Solanum pyracanthos. We were given a small plant of this earlier this year and I put it in my 21 July six. If I’d looked after it better it would have transcended interesting and made it to magnificent, but it wasn’t that sort of year. I suppose it could have died but it’s survived to produce a single typical Solanum flower. Hurrah.
Five.
Araiostegia parvipinnata BSWJ1608
Seems mostly to come up as A. parvipinnula on Google, but still listed as A. parvipinnata on Crûg’s website, from whom I got it, along with A. pulchra HWJ1006, which if anything has a slightly finer leaf. Bob Brown (Cotswold Garden Flowers) lists A. parvipinnula but suggests it may be the same as A. hymenophylloides. It’s a mess.
At the beginning of the year I split my 10 litre pot of it into three, one bit went to a gardening friend, one into my garden and the last third back into a pot. The bit I gave away has done best, of course. My planted chunk struggled in the drought but is looking happier now and has put out new fronds in recent weeks. The multiply pinnate fronds grow from surface rhizomes covered in golden scales, a feature much easier to appreciate in a pot than in the ground. They come over the sides of the pot like hairy caterpillars.
In its pot and especially while I had it growing under glass, it was getting 2 ft tall. In the ground it seems likely to be much shorter, perhaps only half the height. I could see it spreading quite enthusiastically in moist woodsy conditions and a mild climate. Crûg say it has thrived in their (North Wales) garden for years.
The bright yellow thing is Disporum viridescens, showing it has another string to its bow.
Six.
A fortnight back, I had a picture of an unknown beastie’s eggs on a cutting I’d taken of Colletia. They hatched midweek into tiny caterpillars about 2mm long. They looked to me like sawflies of some sort. Readers, I have to inform you that they met with an unfortunate accident shortly after the picture was taken. Really regrettable, but these things happen. On the plus side, they won’t be setting out to munch every leaf in my greenhouse, not that I’d have minded.
And that is it for another week. Lots more sixers will be linking in to The Propagators blog with their contributions. There’ll be more shared misery this week than escapist loveliness, but there’ll be a bit of that I hope.
garden ruminations 
Sawflies have been all over my garden this year so regrettably accidents have been quite common here too. Beautiful photos of beautiful flowers.
LikeLike
Good riddance to those creatures! Wow a six foot high salvia-I can’t imagine. Like John K I always have to find out what many of your plants are, as I haven’t heard of them before. Hesperantha is the latest one: lucky the name has recently changed as the previous one was unpronounceable. It’s very pretty, I think.
LikeLike
It’s a rare treat to get a name changed to something easier to say. I’ve been calling it Schizostylis for a long time and find it easier to remember.
LikeLike
I love your 6. Wow, that Solanum looks fiercesome. What a beautiful pure white Hesperantha. The one I bought from Beth Chatto is called ‘Good white Form’ but it is tinged with pale pink.
LikeLike
My Hesperantha has a Cally Gardens label saying Schizostylis ‘Alba’. I thought alba was a rather sickly form with a hint of pink but may have encountered something with the wrong name. Bob Brown rates ‘Good White’ 8/10, alba he gives 3 and ‘Snow Maiden’ just 2. Being from Cally it could be something good that Michael Wickenden acquired that didn’t have a cultivar name.
LikeLike
Beautiful photos Jim, even the bad guys. The camellia is lovely, the solanum scary and the salvia wonderful. What do you think about the smell of the salvia leaves?
LikeLike
I had to scurry out and smell the leaves, not having done so on that particular one. So glad I made the effort. Took a deep breath of the dustbin on the way back in, to clear my head.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha! They say they smell like either meat (?) or peanut butter, I think that is a very positive assessment. 🙂
LikeLike
Peanut butter? That’s Melianthus surely. Nothing like it. I don’t do meat.
LikeLike
Jim, lovely Six. Kill them! Death to sawfly. Accident is too good for them. Set phasers to kill.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The Salvia is magnificent – lovely lush hairy lips and that spiky plant is unusual though I wouldn’t want to get too close. I do so love visiting your garden. I never even associated Camellias with autumn flowering so I have learned something else today. Last year I had sawfly on my Corkscrew hazel. Picked a lot off, sprayed a lot with soapy water and this year not a sign of them. Ugly things that destroy plants in an instant.
LikeLike
Your Number 4 looks frightening!! Pretty flower but don’t get too close trying to detect the perfume! Those tiny grubs are rather scary, too. The rest of your Six-on-Saturday are pretty and interesting, as usual. I wonder whether the camelia will survive the frosts?
LikeLike
Those tiny grubs aren’t scary any more! The Camellia would get frosted but we don’t get much frost and the blooms don’t last very long anyway. There’ll be more to come for several weeks. The best thing about that plant is it’s just outside the front window and I don’t have to go outside to enjoy it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Both the Salvia and Hesperantha look gorgeous! Happy to hear everything will recover from the wind!
LikeLike
I don’t like to complain too much about our 60mph gusts when Florida has just been whacked with 155mph sustained wind. Unimaginable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reading your blog takes too long 😉 I mean I just have to wander off finding out more about the unusual (for me) plants you grow as I seek to diversify from all the routine stuff. I’ve scoured the news sites but can’t find any mention of scores killed in a Cornish greenhouse accident. Based on my experience, check very carefully for another tiny colony. Twice I’ve (accidentally, of course) exterminated a large group of caterpillars only to find later there was a small one some way away. The third time I looked hard and found that hanger-on group. And given that we have all these confusing plant name changes to cope with, why do they still insist on tagging a white flower as “coccinea”?
LikeLike
Just been and checked the cuttings, no more on them. I’ll keep a close watch on the other stuff nearby. I’m very glad you’re interested enough in the things I put on to go looking for more information, makes it all worthwhile.
LikeLike
It was a happy accident (not for them ….) . Thanks for sharing their birth
Stunning close-up of red salvia flowers !
LikeLiked by 1 person