A very nice surprise!

Thanks to the generosity of Tim & Matt Nichols of MrMaple.com We have two very cool new plants for the Plantmad Garden & Collection.

Both members of one of my favorite plant families the Hamamelidaceae. One is a new dwarf cultivar of Disanthus cercidifolius called 'Rikyu'. The other is even more obscure, Rhodoleia henryi 'Takeshitea' an unusual evergreen Genus of Hamamelidaceae from China. The exciting part is that unlike some of the other Rhodoleia species this one may well be Zone 6 or 7 hardy. Time will tell but not until we have made a few backups :)

Rhodoleia henryi 'Takeshitea'

Disanthus cercidifolius 'Rikyu'

Winter is here folks!

Lows in the mid 20's & snow down to 1000' forecast for next week means Winter here in Oregon. Time to drain the irrigation pipes, put the snow supports in for the winter & lay out the frost blankets along the edges of the houses so that it can be quickly pulled across when needed. Roll on March!!

Ready for Winter!

Movin' Leaves!

Spreading last years composted leaves onto the garden so we have space to begin picking up this years! It never ends.....

Two new Stewartia!

Last Sunday we added two new Stewartia to the Plantmad collection thanks to Crispin Silva of Crispin's Creations Nursery. Crispin's own introduction Stewartia pseudocamellia 'Pilar Bella' and the interesting hybrid Stewartia x 'Scarlet Sentinel'. Scarlet Sentinel was a chance hybrid seedling from the Arnold Arboretum that is a cross between Stewartia pseudocamellia and Stewartia ovata var. grandiflora.

Fall color in the Prop House!

Fall Color in the Mist propagation house! When rooting the trays are lifted up off the floor but for the winter we want them to be sitting on the floor for better Winter protection. It make a huge difference in cold weather.

A Visit to Joy Creek Nursery

Some Hydrangeas from Joy Creek Nursery

Chiyoko & I took a rare Saturday afternoon off from the Plantmad Nursery & Garden last week & drove over to Scappoose to visit our friend Maurice at Joy Creek Nursery. We spent a lovely couple of hours walking round the Garden, Nursery and chatting with Maurice. We also came away with a great selection of older Japanese Cultivars of Hydrangea for the Plantmad Garden. A great way to spend an afternoon!

Lardizabala biternata

Lardizabala biternata flowering at the Miller Garden on 10/16/2015

Lardizabala is a monotonic Genus native to the central & Southern parts of Chile where it is actually grown for it's edible fruits. Here in the Pacific North West we are just happy to get the flowers! This particular plant is one of the oldest in the PNW as Elizabeth Miller was the first people in the North West to grow one of these.We were able to stick a few cuttings yesterday & have our fingers crossed.  

The Evergreen Wintersweet

Chimonanthus nitens

This Evergreen Wintersweet is not as spectacular as the more commonly grown Chimonanthus praecox or the 'Luteus' clones but in the fall it's covers in these tiny flowers. We picked our's up from Camelia Forest Nursery a few years ago and have been surprised by it hardiness, the foliage suffered no winter damage at 10F 2 years ago.

The "Other" Ironwood

For most of recent history The Persian Ironwood was thought to be a Monotypic plant, alone in it's Genus Parrotia. In 1992 though a curious plant previously classified as a Hamamelis was found to also be a Parrotia, the Chinese Iron Wood, Parrotia subaequalis. 3500 miles away from it's only relative another Iron Wood lived!

Over the past 10 years or so the plant has slowly made it's way into collections and nurseries that grow the weird and the wonderful. We hope to have our first crop of these plants available for sale in 2016.

It's a smaller less vigorous plant than it's Persian cousin but in my opinion it has far superior & reliably red to red crimson fall color. Here is a link to an Arnoldia article that will tell you everything you need to know about the plant and it's interesting history.

Parrotia subaequalis

Found on a Portland Street!

Over the past few years Portland Oregon, with the help of many volunteers has been conducting a thorough inventory of it's street tree inventory. In 2014 a tree was found growing happily on the verge that at first stumped the folks conducting the inventory. After some research and photos being e mailed around it was identified as Melliodendron xylocarpum a curious member of the Styracaceae Family.

We were asked to see if we could propagate a few, it was too late in the year for softwood cuttings but we had plenty of Halesia liners kicking around and so grafted a few scions onto Halesia carolina which to our surprise & delight lived!

Melliodendron xylocarpum

A Snowbell or a Silverbell.

Styrax japonicus CCG 14116

We picked up this interesting Styrax from Sue & Kelly at Far Reaches Farm last year. Collected by them in Guizhou China 2010. To me the foliage more closely resembles a Halesia but apparently the flowers keyed out to Styrax japonicus.

Schima argentea

Schima argentea

Yesterday's surprise was finding a few flowers on our still quite small Schima argentea.

A Clethra from Vietnam.

Clethra aff, petelotii FMWJ1340

We chopped this up for cuttings today, Clethra aff, petelotii FMWJ1340. A plant we got from Kelly & Sue at Far Reaches Farm a couple of years ago.

It's a Jungle out there folks....

It's a Jungle out there folks....

Full Up (Round One!)

The Plantmad Mist House

Posts to this blog & our Facebook page through the Summer months are few & far between. That's because when we are not slaving away on the nursery we are our hiking & climbing in the Oregon Cascades! I took a few moments though to post this photo of our now full mist house. We are not done though, now we take rooted material out & carry on sticking more!

A Dr. Who Plant!

Our Paris polyphylla flowering at Plantmad today.

Hell of a big Magnolia!

Magnolia macrophylla

Last year at 10 years old our Magnolia macrophylla put on it's first flower this year at 11 it has about 10. It's growing at about 3' per year so by 2020 I expect it to be the tallest tree in the Plantmad Garden.

Time to stick cuttings!

!

A shinny new poly cover on the prop house, let the Summer Cuttings Season begin!

Potting is Done!

Every year we set a goal of finishing all our new liner Potting by the end of May. We never make it but this year we came closer than we ever have before :^)

The final house of potted new liners.

Newer isn't always better!!

Wisteria floribunda 'Macrobotrys' has been around under one name or another for at least 400 years.

Glowingly written about by Kaempfer in the 1700's & again by Siebold in the 1830's. It takes longer to mature & begin flowering than many of the newer cultivars but those with a little patients will begreatly rewarded with the longest flower racemes of any Wisteria. Easily reaching 3' but 5' & 6' racemes are not unheard of!

 Wisteria floribunda 'Macrobotrys'

Flower Power!

New Wisteria are waking up!

Our newly grafted crop of Wisteria are now mostly off the callus bed, potted & are waking up!

Wisteria are beginning to flower

The Wisteria are beginning to flower here at Planmtmad, this is the variegated cultivar Wisteria floribunda 'Mon Nishiki'

A busy day on the Callus bed!

A busy day on the Callus bed today Wisteria coming off & about 25 cultivars of Hamamelis going on!

New Wisteria grafts ready to come off the Callus bed.

Back from the Dead!

I thought that we had lost all these seedlings of Syneilesis palmata to Botrytis last June when they all melted away! Luckily though I never got around to throwing the flats away! These are seedlings of the variegated 'Kikko' but I don't know if we will see any interesting variegation show up on them.

Time to gather the scions!

The annual harvest of Acer saccharum 'Monumentale' scions from our friends tree. Looks like we will need a taller ladder or longer poll pruner next year.

A Spring Glow and a Blue Sky!

Cornus mas 'Spring Glow'

While much of the Eastern side of America has been suffering one of their worst winters in years we here in the Northwest have hardly had a Winter! The average monthly temperature for February 2015 not only beat previous February's but was also warmer than the March Average! 

Daphniphyllum macropodum

Our first attempt at grafting up some variegated Daphniphyllum macropodum! Our fingers are crossed!

Chopping up some roots!

Comptonia peregrina roots

All of a sudden we had a lot of interest in & we sold out of  Comptonia peregrina (Sweetfern) so we thought that we better set to & make some more!

X Gordlinia grandiflora

Some of our first crop of the relatively new & exciting x Gordlinia grandiflora, this bi Generic hybrid is the fine work of Tom Ranney of North Carolina State University. It's a hybrid of Franklinia alatamaha and Gordonia lasianthus. Looking good on these dark days of January! For more information on the origins of this plant you can check out this link.

x Gordlinia grandiflora

Some Winter Orders

Always nice to pull a few Winter orders for early Shipment, it's a sign that Spring is on the way :^)..