Epimedium 2013

Impressive flowers on that E. x omeiense 'Pale Fire Siblings', I see that I need all the forms of E. x omeiense (acuminatum x fangii), been enjoying 'Akane' which I added to my garden last year.

I believe the name of Epimedium 'Yokihi' is misspelled "Yohiki" in the Garden Vision catalog, but is spelled correctly on the Garden Vision web site:  http://www.epimediums.com/other-e-hybrids/

Mmmm, Myriad Year's is wonderful, I keep adding to my list!

I love E. brevicornu, but I've been trying to chase down the name "var. rotundifolia". I don't see that such a name was ever published, although the one synonym that E. brevicornu has, is E. rotundatum (1934).  That synonym is confirmed in Stearn's The Genus Epimedium, the online Flora of China, The Plant List, and others.  In this species the leaves are described as "acute or rounded", but somehow the name morphed into "var. rotundifolia" or "forma rotundatum" for those plants having more rounded leaves, but it's not a recognized name even though seen in nurseries as such. But don't let that put anyone off, it's a delightful species with clouds of white and yellow flowers.
"http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200008368
http://www.johnjearrard.co.uk/plants/epimedium/epimediumbrevicornurotund...

That's what I like, a complete set of something ;)

Gerrit, you did much better that I did photographing 'Akane', I've tried three times now, and each time the photos are blurry.  It's a wonderful color, nothing else quite like it, your plants show well raised up a bit, to see the bright flowers.  I'm going to move my small plant so that it can be seen and photographed better.

Trond - shouldn't be too hard for Ron (Longma) to find choice Epimedium in England, with the many find nurseries in the UK.

Gerrit, I don't remember Darrell Probst ever having a form of E. wushanense given as working name of 'nova', the term 'nova' is usually in conjunction with the syntax "PlantGenus sp. nova", indicating a new as-of-yet unpublished species for a given genus.  Darrell did introduce a dwarf extra spiny-leafed for of E. wushanense which was offered as E. wushanense "Spiny leaved forms", in other words, given a plant description versus a cultivar name.  Eventually, the plant was given a cultivar name by Tony Avent called E. wushanense 'Sandy Claws', a most regrettable name in opinion.

Ron, you asked for trade secrets on growing Epimedium.  Here are a few that come to mind.  Given them adequate space. They flourish with more light (sun) than shade in many cases; leaf coloring and flowering is best in a deciduous woodland that gets lots of sun when Epimedium are emerging and flowering.  While delicate looking, they do great in sun for at least a portion of the day, with foliage coloring best when there is sufficient sun. While fairly drought resistant, they do best with adequate moisture, the ones I have lost was due primarily to being stressed by drought.  They're not overly fussy about soil, but mixing in lots of decomposed bark mulch to a heavy soil works wonders and is much to their liking.

I have missed posting to these pages, will try and catch up.  Here's a selection of Epimedium photos taken this past weekend (May 18-19, 2013).

Probably the very best of Darrell Probst's epimedium hybrids is one called 'Pink Champagne'.  Mine is a young plant that's just getting going, but the plant form, speckled foliage, and strawberry pink flowers in above-the-foliage sprays make this a real winner.

Epimedium 'Lemon Zest' is yet another of Darrell's excellent hybrids, this one a vigorous hybrid of E. ecalcaratum, with many stems and innumerable yellow bells, with with a hint of vestigial spurs, a delightful long-flowering plant.

I often get colorful seedling-grown plants; here's one that has very bright foliage, worth growing just for the leaves.  This is a 3 year old plant from seed.

The next two show a selected hybrid of mine, between E. stellulatum and membranaceum, brilliant mottled foliage when first emerging then turning green, and airy sprays of white and yellow flowers that last until August.

Here's an odd one, E. x youngianum 'Sudama', a Japanese cultivar with curious small balloon-like red flowers that never open, and mostly concealed under the foliage.  However, the "foliage build" is excellent, with bronzy leaves amassed into a "table" of bright leaflets.

Epimedium grandiflorum 'Cranberry Sparkle' is a wild selection from high mountain location in Japan; rather late to emerge and late flowering, it has the closest to a true red flower of any Epimedium.  Another one introduced by Darrell Probst.

The small thimble-like yellow flowers of E. campanulatum are so cute, lacking any spurs, one of my favorites. In this vignette, we see three color forms of Iris cristata in the background.

In this view are two angle showing E. grandiflorum var. coelestre 'Alpine Beauty'.  This variety represents one of the few truly alpine Epimedium, emerging later and flowering later than most grandiforum types.  The flowers are a soft palest cream yellow, but with such substance and extra wide sepals. The foliage is also dense growing and an apply green color; a very fine epimedium.  The cultivar named 'Alpine Beauty' is a selected form introduced by Darrell Probst.

These two photos show two hybrids grown from E. davidii EMR (the 3 letters represent a collector's initials).  The resulting hybrids are rather different as you can see. The one on the left has clouds of tiny yellow flowers with pink sepals.  The one of the right is a prize, extremely floriferous with large elegant bright yellow spider flowers.  My original E. davidii EMR is a slow weak grower, I'm lucky to get 20 flowers in a season, but this hybrid from it produces impressive swarms of bright bloom.

Longma wrote:

The closest nursery to us has these for sale - Epimedium 'Black Sea' , Epimedium perralderianum and Epimedium x youngianum 'Shikinomai' .

We're thinking we should get one of each. Any comments on these three please?

Black Sea is a good one, a slow spreader, with leaves that turn a ruddy near glossy black color in late autumn (it's evergreen).  It has tallish sprays of light yellow-orange flowers, I posted a photo earlier:
http://nargs.org/smf/index.php?topic=1254.msg23277#msg23277

E. perralderianum I've never seen (rare in the US) but is very close to pinnatum ssp. colchicum and the hybrids between both species known as x perralchicum are what most people grow, such as the familiar one names 'Wisley' and 'Frohnleiten', with yellow verbascum-like flowers, handsome evergreen leaves nicely veining, and once again, a slow to moderate spreading habit (not a clumper). Wim Boens was just mentioning E. x youngianum 'Shikinomai', another I'm not familiar with, although it has white flowers, images do come up with Google.

Ron, "The Genus Epimedium" by Stearn is top notch, an essential "bible" on the genus, and other herbaceous Berberidaceae such as Podophyllum, Leontice, Diphylleia, Jeffersonia, Vancouveria, and a couple others. Published in 2002, a year after Stearn's death, it was up to date taxonomically on Epimedium at the time, although new species have been published since then.  I bought mine used but in great shape from Amazon.com at $50 (which is the original selling price), many other copies went as high as $200 for a copy, I was lucky to find the one that I did.

Dave, Epimedium seed can't be had successfully from seed exchanges, because the dry seed will be dead.  The seed must be sown fresh soon after collecting it in late spring (to early summer, depending on the species).  I sow mine immediately after the pods are ripe and starting to spill seed, the seed itself looks like little green lima beans with attached fleshy elaiosomes.  I collect seed in plastic sandwich bags, then sow within a week or two, using good compost in peat flats, cover the seed lightly, then top dress with decomposed pine back mulch, cover the flats with wire (prevent squirrels and chipmunks from digging/eating the seed), flats are kept in a shady spot all summer, and sprinkle with water every now and then to prevent dessication, they sit there exposed to weather all winter, then germinate like little beans in spring.  Jeffersonia is exactly the same.

gerrit wrote:

After having seen E. campanulatum and E. x ecalcaratum '...' with very special inflorescence, I show my Epimedium davidii with irregular formed petals. Each flower is different. And I'm fond of it.

Gerrit, that's a very fine looking Epi, and amusing too with the indefinitely shaped spurs.  And so floriferous!  What is your source for that plant?  I'm wondering if it might be a hybrid with ecalcaratum, because that feature, of variable vestigial to partly developed spurs, is a strong and unique characteristic of ecalcaratum.  It's hybrids, such as 'Lemon Zest' that I showed earlier, and 'Buttered Popcorn', another Darrell Probst hybrid just coming into bloom now, both show that same characteristic. 

I have some flowering-size seed-grown plants from 'Lemon Zest', and one in particular has flowers that look just like regular davidii, perhaps revealing parentage in 'Lemon Zest'.  I also have some hybrids (2nd generation) from E. stellulatum x membranaceum, and these second generation seedlings are showing forms similar to membranaceum, others following the stellulatum look; interesting to see the genetic tendencies and results in further generations.  I will post some photos later.

Gerrit, I regret that 'Egret' seems unavailable here in the US (if anyone knows otherwise, please let me know), it's another beauty, love the complimentary color of flowers with striking new foliage.

Dave, I wish you success on that E. x versicolor rhizome piece, I've not had good luck with small divisions of Epimedium, have only had good luck with divisions with enough root mass to support them; maybe we get too dry and hot here in the dog days of summer to keep such tiny pieces alive.

This will be an all-yellow 10-photo post.  When watching plants carefully, and observing hybrid offspring, it's rewarding to pay attention.  Working with some of the yellow species, the results have been fun, but I compare them to baby steps; small differences that can be built upon in further hybridization.

For basis, on the left is E. membranaceum.  It has very large yellow spider blooms, just starting into bloom recently (late by Epimedium standards). It is a perpetual bloomer, which can continue until frost, if weather conditions are fair (enough moisture, no drought). The flowers characteristic to note, is very long yellow petals (spurs, almost no "cup") and small whitish sepals.  On the right is a plant grown from seed of E. davidii "Wolong Select", this particular plant closely resembling the parent.  The characteristics to note; down-curved spurs, boxy cup, and red sepals (the sepals not very visible in this photo).

Two view of plants grown from seed collected on E. davidii "Wolong Select", pollinated with various Epis, including larger flowered types such as membranaceum.  Both photos show flowers from two hyrbids, the two flowers on the left look very much like E. davidii, except instead of small solid red sepals, here the sepals are larger and with yellow base color, spotted with red.  The flower on the right is another hybrid that looks like a miniature E. membranaceum, with whitish to transparent sepals, and almost no central cups.

Two more "overall" views of the same two E. davidii "Wolong Select" hybrids, the first one on the left shows the mini-membranaceum-like plant showing some mottled fresh flush of foliage, and on the right, an earlier view showing the nice basal foliage clumps of both, which look similar.

The next two show a hybrid flowering for the first time; (E. [stellulatum x membranaceum] x various selected), most of these end up looking like stellulatum with clouds of small flowers with broad white sepals and undersized yellow spurs and cup shorter than the sepals. This one surprised me by growing 18" tall with slender stems, and large yellow spider blooms like membranaceum, but with red sepals like davidii instead of white one.

On the left is my ever-blooming Spring-to-October (or November) Epimedium rhizomatosum x membranaceum hybrid, just starting to flower and showing lots of new colorful mottled foliage.  On the right is a poor photo of E. flavum, taken in the rain.  The flowers were fleeting, so didn't get a better photo. This one seems slow growing, a small plant that did nothing in two years years, this year flowering and showing its distinctive blooms, rather thin-textured but lovely open-cupped blooms of light yellow, no other yellow-flowered species looks quite like it.

Trond, your plant is E. x versicolor 'Sulphureum', an old standby that has proven its garden value for a nearly a century.  I have this in a couple places, but my biggest patch is down at the lower wooded edge of my property, far out of reach of a hose, growing under dry dry dry Sugar Maples, and after 25 years neglected there, they still persist and grow and flower well.

Maggi, it's an important point you make. Many people here are sold on the idea these are "shade plants" for woodland gardens, when in fact, they revel in bright open light, a half day of sun is best for most compact and vigorous growth, best flowering potential, and more intense leaf coloring.  They can be grown in full sun too, as long as they don't get totally parched.

I should show photos side-by-side of Epimedium "Mark's Star" (thanks for the name Wim :D ), where I grew several plants that got 1/2 day sun, and my original plants growing about 40' away in the north-facing constant shade of my house. The plants in shade all day, flowered 3 weeks later than those getting sun, those in sun were compact and amazingly floriferous, whereas those in full shadow grew more open and flowered well enough but modestly by comparison, a real eye-opener.

Sometimes one will see an aberrant 5-part Epimedium flower.  This year, I have noticed many species and cultivars (dozens) with one or more 5-part flowers, I only caught photos on two of them.

E. rhizomatosum is just coming into flower, one of the creeping species, and a long-season bloomer/repeat bloomer.  Here's a single anomalous 5-part flower.

Earlier, the giant Epimedium grandiflorum 'Red Queen' had several 5-part flowers, here's one such inflorescence, a single 5-part flower then the rest are normal 4-part flowers.

gerrit wrote:

Today a duet. Two Epimediums are intertwined in a ballet of elfs.

Epimedium acuminatum the purple one and
Epimedium ilicifolium. the yellow.

Collect seeds and sow, hold flats until spring 2014...HYBRIDS!