ROCK GARDEN QUARTERLY VOLUME 53 NUMBER 1 WINTER 1995 COVER: Aquilegia scopulorum with vespid wasp by Cindy Nelson-Nold of Lakewood, Colorado All Material Copyright © 1995 North American Rock Garden Society ROCK GARDEN QUARTERLY BULLETIN OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY formerly Bulletin of the American Rock Garden Society VOLUME 53 NUMBER 1 WINTER 1995 FEATURES Alpine Gesneriads of Europe, by Darrell Trout 3 Cassiopes and Phyllodoces, by Arthur Dome 17 Plants of Mt. Hutt, a New Zealand Preview, by Ethel Doyle 29 South Africa: Part II, by Panayoti Kelaidis 33 South African Sampler: A Dozen Gems for the Rock Garden, by Panayoti Kelaidis 54 The Vole Story, by Helen Sykes 59 DEPARTMENTS Plant Portrait 62 Books 65 Ramonda nathaliae 2 ROCK GARDEN QUARTERLY VOL. 53:1 ALPINE GESNERIADS OF EUROPE by Darrell Trout J. he Gesneriaceae, or gesneriad Institution and others brings the total family, is a diverse family of mostly Gesneriaceae of China to a count of 56 tropical and subtropical plants with genera and about 413 species. These distribution throughout the world, should provide new horticultural including the north and south temper• material for the rock garden and ate and tropical zones. The 125 genera, alpine house. Yet the choicest plants 2850-plus species include terrestrial for the rock garden or alpine house and epiphytic herbs, shrubs, vines remain the European genera Ramonda, and, rarely, small trees. Botanically, Jancaea, and Haberlea. and in appearance, it is not always easy to separate the family History Gesneriaceae from the closely related The family was named for Konrad Scrophulariaceae (Verbascum, Digitalis, von Gesner, a sixteenth century natu• Calceolaria), the Orobanchaceae, and ralist. Gesner influenced the develop• Bignoniaceae (Incarvillaea, Campsis). ment of a number of sciences. He When thinking of gesneriads most made studies and published major people think of tropical and rain forest works on plants and animals between plants but there are a number of mean• 1551 and 1565. His love of mountains ingful exceptions to that generaliza• and alpine plants led to his authoring tion. From Chile come the temperate what is considered to be the first trea• gesneriads Aster anther a, Mitraria, and tise on alpine plants, published in Sarmienta, which have been grown 1555. Gesner said, "I am resolved successfully outdoors in the Pacific henceforth...so long as life is granted Northwest and in the British Isles. The me by divine providence, every year Japanese Conandron and Opithandra to ascend several mountains or at least have been grown in USDA zones 2 one when plants are in full growth, and 3. The more recent introduction partly for knowledge of them, partly from China, Hemiboea henryi, has sur• for noble exercise and gladdening of vived several Long Island winters. the mind. How great indeed are the Recent botanizing in China by Dr. enjoyment and the delights of the spir• Laurence Skog of the Smithsonian it as it's affected by contemplating in 3 wonder the vastness of the mountains Baron. As a native of region of the and raising one's head as it were Pyrenees, this natural scientist made among the clouds." (One wonders the observation that in high mountains how rhapsodic Gesner would have the vertical zones of vegetation might been had he actually seen the alpines be equivalent to horizontal zones in a in his namesake family.) north-south relationship. Humboldt Considering the popularity of the later developed this concept in detail. most frequently cultivated genera (Saintpaulia, Sinningia, Columnea and Streptocarpus), it is surprising that the Ramonda alpine, hardy, and half-hardy gesneri- The three species of Ramonda are ads are not better known and more similar in appearance, all forming low- widely cultivated. growing rosettes of hairy, evergreen, The rock gardening community, crinkled, short-petioled leaves with particularly in Europe, knows and scalloped or irregularly toothed mar• thinks highly of these rock garden gins. Clusters of from two to six flow• plants. Reginald Farrer, writing in his ers emerge from the leaf axils. The 1907 classic My Rock-Gar den, refers to corolla is nearly regular with a very the alpine gesneriads as "a group of short tube and lobes that lay flat. The rock-plants before whom we ought to usual flower color is purple with a yel• go down in gratitude on our knees." low center, although pink and white Much earlier, in 1587, the recorded his• colors occur naturally in all three tory of the family begins with Jacques species. (In the early 1900s Farrer Dalechamps, Historia Generalis described named color selections, Plantarum, which included one of the although none pleased him as much as European alpines, Ramonda myconi, the ordinary form.) The stamens are which was there called Auricula ursi inserted at the base of the corolla on myconi. Dalechamps noted that it was short filaments. The fruit is a linear called Auricula ursi by Franciscus capsule. Myconus (or Myco'), but that it was Ramonda myconi (frequently misla- unlike the other auriculas. It was culti• belled R. pyrenaica or R. myconii; the vated in the Low Countries in 1604. In first an accurate site-name (Pyrenees) 1629 the noted British herbalist John that was applied later than the hon• Parkinson, in his Paradisus Terrestris, orific; the second, a misapplication of called it "Blew Bearews Eares with naming rules) has broad, oval, hairy Borage Leaves" (still keeping it with leaves 2-2.5" wide, irregularly toothed the alpine primulas), and it is likely around the margin of dull green. The that he also knew it in the garden. It flat rosettes frequently measure about was grown by Philip Miller in his gar• 8" across. It has a five-lobed corolla, den at Chelsea as early as 1731. one inch or more across. Flower stalks Linnaeus, in 1753, classified it as or scapes are about 6" long. It is Verbascum myconi in the eighth edition known only from the Pyrenees, on of Miller's Gardeners' Dictionary. both sides of the French-Spanish bor• In 1780 the genus name Ramonda der, where it is abundant. The other was applied in honor of Ramond de two species are endemic to the Balkan Carbonnieres, a French geologist and peninsula. statesman. For his work in populariz• Ramonda nathaliae, which was ing the concept of empire for named for the Queen of Serbia (Her Napoleon he was awarded the title of Highness Queen Natalija) was discov- 4 ROCK GARDEN QUARTERLY VOL. 53:1 ered by Sava Petrovic on the cliffs at justice to the beauty of these plants— Jelasnica, and later on the top of Suva let Reginald Farrer do that when he Planina. Sites have been confirmed in described R. nathaliae as, "wonderfully the north and south of Albania, with free in the flower," and "the flowers more likely to be found. are rather larger, earlier, and infinitely Ramonda serbica was discovered in more bright and delicate," and, "a 1847 by Josip Pancic on the mountain clump of Ramondia [sic] Nataliae [sic] in of Rtanj. It was also found in other good bloom beats every other beauti• sites, in what was then known as ful Ramondia [sic] quite into the back• Serbia, including Jelasnica and Sicevo ground." Graham Stuart Thomas said, Gorge near Nis. Additional sites in "To see those beautiful lilac flowers Albania, Bulgaria, and Epiraean projecting from the furry green Greece have been noted. There are no rosettes of Ramonda myconii [sic], set in sites where R. nathaliae and R. serbica a vertical crevice, is one of the great occur together. spring joys to me." The similar appearance of these two Balkan Peninsula species has caused some botanists to conclude they were Haberlea the same species. They both grow as Haberlea rhodopensis was introduced low rosettes of dark-green leaves with into cultivation in 1881 from sites in similar colored flowers and live on cal• the Rhodope Mountains in both north careous cliffs in mountainous regions. and south Bulgaria and northeast Although most botanists point to the Greece. The plants form large masses, four-lobed corolla of R. nathaliae ver• covering every nook and cranny on sus the five-lobed corolla of R. serbica the shady limestone cliffs at altitudes and the bluish anthers rather than yel• between 400 and 700 meters. This low, the Yugoslav botanist Kosanin species has the heart-stopping habit of stated, "The clearest morphological shrivelling up in the summer heat, yet difference is apparent in the shape of recovering when autumn mists and the leaves. The quadripartite nature of rain begin. the petals in R. nathaliae is variable, The leaves are tough (more leathery and while the insignificant differences than Ramonda), slightly hairy and in the length of filaments and anthers dark green with a serrated edge bear• may be lost in dried plants, the leaf ing a row of hairs projecting from the shape never varies." Ramonda serbica edge (described by some as a row of has a smoother leaf that is rhomboidal hairs on a toothbrush). Young plants in shape, quite strongly toothed, grow as flat rosettes, while older upturned at the edge, and which nar• plants have a tendency to produce rows gradually to a wide, short stem. tufts of the somewhat shiny leaves. The leaf of Ramonda nathaliae has a Buds are formed at the base of the more oval form, is not as deeply rosettes and are visible at the begin• toothed, and rounds directly into a ning of the growing season. The corol• substantially longer petiole. Ramonda la is almost twice the length of the serbica has fewer and smaller flowers brownish-purple, hairy calyx. The on longer scapes. Ramonda serbica has lilac-to-purple corolla is not flat as in a chromosome number of n=36, JR.