Hello neighbor! I have some Cupheas in my secret sowing stash that I could split with you (25 seeds per type.) I have Cuphea llavea, batface Cuphea Cuphea miniata, 'Summer Medley' Cuphea x purpurea, 'Firefly' In addition, I have some interesting Salvias and other things that you might enjoy on my trade list. In return, I am very interested in your Rudbeckia, 'Cherry Brandy' Viscaria, 'Blue Angel' Nemophila, 'Total Eclipse' Stachys albotomentosa, "Hidalgo" Mimulus naiandinus, 'Mega' ("Blushing Monkeyflower") Cypella coelestis Thanks, Susan

To be fair it all can be really confusing. Every year out at the park in the median salvia row things it gets murkier and murkier. An example there is the microphylla Neurepia row which was originally a dozen plants. There are still about a dozen plants in that section but nearly half of them have dark calyxes and even those that don't I am uncertain about. It is no longer possible for me to pass along any plant in that section with any confidence of its provenence, so I don't. There is a plant blooming nicely that is very like greggi Coral, but is it? Yellow cultivars there have been attempted several times and all have failed to winter over more than one year. Did this one survive when all the others failed? The only thing I can think to do is buy another Coral and put it right next to this plant. Another peril of park planting is keeping tags in place, and it is a battle that is pretty much always lost. Greggii and microphylla produce a lot of very similar seedlings and in a lot of cases it takes an observer more perceptive than me to detect the differences. The last thing I would want to do is name something that is really someone elses discovery. That would be outright theft from my point of view.

I have the most gorgeous huge mounds of two colored Hot Lips, easily 3 ft. tall and as wide, growing in the worst sandy soil you can find, and dry as a desert. I piled leaves and horse manure around each plant and sprinkle with water once a day. It's been close to 90 here for several weeks so the conditions are not great. If the plants are not blooming well, I sprinkle dry MG Bloom Booster around outer edges of plants, around leaf line so as not to burn. They are happily putting out bi-colored blooms right now. If I ignore them, the blooming will slow down and only show red or white blooms. They like a bit of attention here with such poor conditions. The bees like Hot Lips but the BF's and hummers don't bother with them.

Here is the scoop on S. guaranitica Costa Rican Blue, from the Huntington Botanical Garden records: Salvia guaranitica? (D. S. Verity in cultivation in Costa Rica; UCLA 78-015) 12/80-1 Huntington Botanical Garden 40649; 1978 Salvia guaranitica? (U.S. Plant Introduction Station, Glenn Dale, MD 20769. Received from Claude Hope, Cartago, Costa Rica on 8 Dec 1973) 12/80-1 in bed 6. Huntington Botanical Garden 42631 Leaves broadly ovate; inflorescence a terminal spike; calyx blackish, flowers bright purple;, 5 cm. long. Planted out in Subtropical Garden (E-central) 4/23/80 11/81-Plt. In bed 6 It is not a native of Costa Rica, and probably got there from Paraguay or Argentina, where tetraploid forms are found, then was sold in local nurseries in the capital, San Jose. Costa Rica has been an unusually stable Latin American country, because of a treaty amongst all these countries to foster an independent state free of attachments to all others, with all pledged to protect it from any aggressor, including one of their own members. Part of this protection was to make sure it had a sturdy democracy and economy, which accounts for its favored status with large foreign capitalists and vacationers. At least, that is how it was explained to me once. I can imagine that this guaranitica came up as a diplomatic gift to the local university or government garden.