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rosaprimula

Zizia aurea - golden alexanders

Campanula UK Z8
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago

I have been helplessly besotted with the umbel family for years but have rarely come across this in UK nurseries (although I have a nursery friend who grows it...and one other source in the UK). It was also an added plus to see this is a food plant for the eastern swallowtail - so an experimental gamble, given the desperate state of our last remaining swallowtails and their evolutionary cul-de-sac of a single, tricky umbellifer. Anyway, UK plants tend to resonate with political,cultural and social themes as well as purely geographical or climate controlled...and reflect our imperial colonial past...so I am more familiar with the Asiatic and European species and have a bit of a blank where US natives are concerned. Obviously, I am as familiar as anyone with phlox, rudbeckias, penstemons...but even the widely grown asclepias rarely get much traction in the UK nursery trade.

In short, I am casting a plea for info. Not those over-bred, overhyped nursery hybrids...but the common (and true from seed) UK species that this Z8 fan of the wild, the graceful and always the useful, day to day plants.

As well as zizia aurea, sisyrinchiums (bellum, californicum, angustifolium)are fairly new to me this year...and boykinia, patrinia, most thrillingly, various muhlenbergias. What else? And what do I need to know, pls?

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