Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Time to go!


A busy 6:30am start to this morning as we sent a good portion of our Wisteria liner crop off to their new home!

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Two Purples


Reds, Oranges & Yellows there are in abundance but purple Witch Hazels are a rarer breed, here are two.

Hamamelis Amethyst was a seedling selected by Tim Brotzman. It's parentage is unknown but it probably has both H. vernalis & H. x intermedia blood. It sometimes is listed with the name 'Brotzman's Purple'. Hamamelis vernalis 'Purpurea' is a much older cultivar. There is a large & perhaps the only original plant at the Washigton Park Arboretum in Seattle. More recently this plant has been given the cultivar name 'Washigton Park' perhaps because the Latinized cultivar name 'Purpurea' is invalid.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Witch Hazel Overload!

We are up to about 40 types of Witch Hazel planted around the garden & nursery now with another 25 or so in pots waiting to be planted. Here is one that's still waiting to be planted.




It's Grafting Time

We are in the throws of Spring grafting here at Plantmad Nursery. Here are some Acer x 'Purple Haze' that we whip grafted & put on the callus bed this past weekend.

Acer griseum x pseudoplatanus 'Purple Haze'

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Two Witch hazels with some history!

Hamamelis mollis 'Coombe Wood' & Hamamelis japonica var. arborea

The larger flowered plant is Hamamelis mollis ‘Coombe Wood’. In his book Witch Hazels Chris Lane writes that ‘Combe Wood’ was the cultivar name given to the only seedling to germinate & survive from the first batch of H. mollis seed sent back from China to the Veitch Nursery in England by Charles Maries in 1879. Though it wasn’t identified as H. mollis until some 20 years later by George Nicholson the curator of Kew. It was then given the Cultivar Name ‘Coombe Wood’ (after the name of the Nursery where it was growing) & propagated.

The smaller flowered one is Hamamelis japonica var. arborea. In his book Chris writes that this was the first Hamamelis japonica to be sent back to Europe from Japan by the great plant hunter von Siebold in 1862. Originally as H. arborea & then as H. japonica var. arborea.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Callitropsis vietnamensis..
(Syn. Xanthocyparis vietnamensis)

We were given a branch of this unusual conifer to propagate today, Callitropsis vietnamensis was first discovered in Vietnam in 1999. It is closely related to the North American Alaskan Cedar Chamaecyparis nootkatensis recently renamed Callitropsis nootkatensis. Here's hoping we can put some roots on it!

A "Sweet Fern" that's not a Fern!

Sweetfern - Comptonia peregrina

Apparently a common native in Eastern North America from Quebec to Georgia Comptonia peregrina is rarely seen or offered for sale here on the West Coast even though it grows well here. This is probably because it doesn't root from softwood cuttings. It can however be propagated fairly easily from root cuttings.