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.