Tropical plants
Tender exotic and tropical looking plants are very popular at the moment and are becoming more widely available. The advice is that they can be grown outside in the UK given sufficient winter protection. Many are described as root hardy down to several degrees of frost. It would still be a challenge getting them through our Welsh winters that have touched -25oC in recent years.Bananas
| Anyway we decided to have a go. Our first acquisition, from the Shrewsbury Flower Show, was a specimen of the 'Darjeeling banana', Musa sikkimensis. This is a fast growing species from northern India, up against the Himalayas. It has bright green leaves splashed with russet red patches. It seemed to grow a new leaf every week during the summer and is now a metre high. We're still not confident about overwintering it outside, so it is growing on in a cool greenhouse where it has even started to make a few new shoots from the base. Next year we might risk planting it outside. Apparently if you lag the stem with straw, inside a column of chicken wire, it will resprout from the top and get bigger each year. |  |
This is Ensete ventricosum, Maurelii, the Red Abyssinian banana, overwintering in the greenhouse at a minumum temperature of 6oC. Like most of the exotic plants it does well outside on the patio during the summer.
Musa lasiocarpa is our latest aquisition. It is a cold tolerant 'dwarf' banana plant that produces the most spectacular golden lotus yellow flower for up to 9 months! It is sacred to Buddhists and is capable of producing a flower even without leaves! This banana grows up to 6ft tall in the UK. The pseudostem (trunk) is green with a reddish tinge, broad at the base, tapering to a narrow top which gives an impressive conical appearance. Easy to grow and suckers readily.
Brugmansias
Brugmansias are named after Sebald Justin Brugmans, physician and professor of natural history at Leyden from 1786. Today they are called Angel's Trumpets. Native to South America, growing in the wild on the slopes of the Andes, they reach 20 or 30 feet in their natural surroundings but they can be pruned to any height. Ours are limited by the height of the greenhouse roof!
They can flower almost continuously given feed and water. On a winter's day there is nothing like stepping into the greenhouse and enjoying the intoxicating scent of the long pendulous flowers. Despite their beauty, all parts of the plant are highly toxic if ingested.
The American Brugmansia and Datura Society is a site for bruggy enthusiasts
The Kapok Tree
A friend from work gave me a seed from a kapok tree, Ceiba pentandra, that she picked up on holiday in Madeira. In one year the seedling grew into a fine healthy specimen about four feet tall. The following year it reached 10 feet, with a thick trunk covered in short downwardly pointing spines.Originally from South America but now found throught the tropics, this species grows into the tallest tree in the rain forest, reaching 200 feet. It is the the subject of many myths and legends. The Mayans believed that the Kapok, which they call Ceiba, was the tree of life, whose roots extend to the underworld and whose branches provide a pathway for the souls of the dead to reach the heavens.
It is definitely not hardy outside of the tropics. Sadly it was doomed to outgrow even the largest greenhouse. The other thing is, the flowers are pollinated by night flying fruit bats, which are a bit thin on the ground in Wales.
Above Left: A mature specimen of the kapok tree, about 200 feet high, showing the massive buttress roots. Below was our specimen at four-foot, with a stem an inch and a half in diameter, armed with hard conical spines. Even after cutting off the leading shoot, the tree grew over ten feet high. It lost all its leaves in the winter but grew beautiful new shoots in the spring
Papyrus
| Our favourite stand at the Flower Show was a garden designed by Hall Farm Nursery in Kinnerley. The most spectacular plant in the display was a clump of the Egyptian paper sedge, Cyperus papyrus, over 4 metres tall. This is another plant that has to be moved into the greenhouse in winter but ours has been happily sitting in the pond all summer with the water about half way up the pot. |  |
Ginger Lilies
Hedychiums are the ginger lilies. There are different species and hybrids but one of the best is the Kahili Ginger, Hedychium gardnerianum from the foothills of the Himalayas. |
This one is supposed to be reasonably cold hardy but we keep it in a large pot
outside in the summer rather than plant it out. It sends up strong shoots which
flower in the autumn. Being in the greenhouse over winter means it doesn't die
back and has a better start the following year. They also smell fantastic. In fact ours has done so well that this spring we have split our first plant into three by sawing up the rhizome. |
Gunnera
Gunnera is a native of Central and South America and is becoming a widely available in garden centres in Britain. It will outgrow most gardens, but given plenty of space and a wet area by a stream it will develop into a spectacular plant. Ours is well established and the leaves are tall enough to shelter under out of the rain. The flowers don't amount to much and, if they are cut off, all the energy goes into making even bigger leaves. The crowns need protection in winter. The best way is to cut off the foliage after the first frost and cover the shoots with a layer of straw. The leaves can be arranged upside down like a wigwam over the top and the whole lot held down with netting.
The crowns of the Gunnera are regularly submerged when the stream floods in spring, without any apparent ill effects.
Darmera peltata
This is the Indian rhubarb, another large leaved bog plant that tends to produce a huge clump. It dies back to nothing in the winter and then in the spring the flowering shoots arise from the bare earth before the leaves appear.
Skunk Cabbage
The American skunk cabbage, Lysichiton americanus, has a heavy, musky scent to attract pollinating insects to the inflorescences in the spring. The yellow flame-shaped flowers look magnificent reflected in the water and are followed by enormous paddle-shaped green leaves which remain until autumn. They make a great backdrop of lush foliage to show off other marginal plants such as the candelabra primulas in the photo below.
Skunk cabbage seems fully hardy and seeds itself in the surrounding mud. It is also easily propagated by splitting the clumps.
Bottle Brush
We have two species of Callistemon. The yellow one is planted permanently outside and has reached flowering size. The red variety C. citrinus about 4 feet high and has just produced its first flower buds. The leaves are narrowly lanceolate and an attractive grey green colour.The majority of Callistemon species are endemic to the more temperate regions of Australia, mostly along the east coast and south-west, and typically favour moist conditions, so when planted in gardens they thrive on regular watering. They have been grown in Europe since a specimen of Callistemon citrinus was introduced to Kew Gardens in London by Joseph Banks in 1789.
Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Rex'
T. rex is the monster plant beloved by Christopher Lloyd in his garden at Great Dixter. After a couple of seasons trying to track it down I finally cornered one on e-bay. Overwintering in a pot at the moment, it will be planted out next June. They can grow rapidly to 20 feet tall. At Powis, they mulch and leave the plant in the ground all winter. Perhaps safer is to lift and repot the parent plant at the season's end. Suckers left in the ground can also regenerate new shoots.
Oranges and Lemons
More Mediterranean than tropical but definitely bringing a touch of the exotic to Bwlch-y-Cibau. Our attempts to keep the gin and tonics served with a flourish are here.A few links to suppliers of tropical plants and seeds:
The Palm Centre
Easy Tropicals
Jungle Gardens
Turn it Tropical
The Big Plant Nursery
Urban Jungle
Chapel House Exotics
