Beautiful in blue
‘True blue’ is rare enough in flowers.
Most are any colour but!
‘Flowering now’ is rare enough too
We are all missing the summer profusion of bloom.
‘True blue’ and ‘flowering now’ is rarer than……..
I don’t know what!
Lithodora rosmarinifolia has just stood a winter test. It hung its flowering heads on saturday in a horizontal snowstorm. Who can blame it? But on Sunday the flowers were back upright and unblemished when even the snowdrops were still flat to the floor.
And truth to tell as with a lot of mediterranean flora it is our wet rather than our cold which would be their undoing.
The cognoscenti will pick up the Boraginaceae link.
And Lithodora as a genus contains some of the clearest and most intense blues in this family.
Somehow it is clarity of colour rather than volume of blossom which makes this a clear note registering well across the winter garden.
As with many plants which have a long flowering period say January to March here, the display is the thinner for it.
But there are times when foliage studded with bloom is more telling than a florid mass!
The rest of the year it looks just like a mini rosemary.
You can google for all the info on this little evergreen shrublet. But I grow it in the best position my garden offers: full sun, shelter and well drained, gritty soil.
Associates well with Coronilla citrina/velutina which flowers at the same time. Yellow and blue is ever a good idea!
Lithodora means ‘stone gift’ in Greek.
Kind of says it all.
R
Robert Webber
The Hegarty Webber Partnership
Category: Design Bites, General, The Planty Stuff
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what a lovely post snow gift flower. – I didn’t know that one, – will have to find it out this summer.
Know you know your plants and all, Claire, so always pleased to be able to introduce plant to someone who is Wisley trained.
The expression ‘centre of excellence’ has been so abused that it is now a cliche, but Wisley….such a fund of knowledge in that place I always think.
BTW love your new look site.
best
R
That is amazing…here, we use Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, Linum lewisii, and Salvia chamaedryoides to get a nice blue. But with the rosemary-like foliage, that is amazing. Most of our rosemary plants in Abq are a paler blue. And no wet here!
Hi David,
Glad u liked!
Yes Ceratostigma plumbag. but also any of those.griffithii is a great plant cos of the plummy foliage.
Thanks for your comment.
Best
R