Friday 6 June 2014

This is actually a rather nice deep blue with little in the way of purple. It is a part of the 'horridula' group with spiny buds and foliage. There are lovely silver blues as well as white. It is I suppose now technically M. racemosa but this 'super species' shows great variation. A great advantage of these is that they are really tough plants flowering at 2 (usually) or 3 years old and would grow pretty well even in hot dry sites south of the Scottish border. It is winter dormant with resting buds below the soil surface. Seed from seed exchanges may well of course have some of the less desirable forms with coarse spiny foliage and a flower colour and spots on the leaves of purple. If you have a good colour it will probably breed true.