Tresco part 2: The plants

Or some of them anyway.  It would be impossible to include photos of more than a fraction of the plants,  I must have a couple of hundred photos from my one day, so these are the edited highlights. I know many people have broader interests than me, so here are some of the more fluffy plants.

Starting with the proteas, there were a surprising number still in flower.

I particularly liked this one called "Red Embers"

Just a couple of one of the best ferns. The trunk was over 2 meters tall.

There are some amazing trees in the gardens,  I overheard a tour guide saying that with the storms they often loose trees as they are such shallow soil. When this happens it wipes out whole sections of the gardens. I'm pleased to say that like all good gardeners, he went on to say that while sad this means they have more space to play with and can design something new.

Getting into palms and cordylines
 

There were quite a few cordyline indivisa planted around the gardens.  They are stunning, but SO fussy.  One day I will cave and try one, despite knowing full well I will kill it, as everyone else does.

The most common succulent in the gardens are aeoniums, in fact you will find them everywhere in the Scillys.

My favourite of the aeoniums, a. nobile.

 There were a fair few aloes as well, the most common being a. arborescens

 

I particularly like the fact that some have great variegated heads.

 There were a few a. plicatilis dotted around

Strangely their aloe polyphylla were not spiralling as well as many do.  I thought this may be just one plant, but it was the same with almost all of them in the gardens.  It doesn't stop them being great plants though.

 

Aloe barberae on the left was getting to a decent size, as was the A. speciosa on the right

Then the agaves, I wont bother naming them all, just enjoy the pure sceptical these plants create.
 

I liked this variegated americana.

I am guessing this a. filifera is about to flower, the central leaves are getting smaller and the core is starting to swell.

A nice a. Nigra, they do look good when they get to this size.

A few a. parryi poking out from between the other plants.

This a. salmiana has to be one of the show stopper plants in the gardens. 

Some of the larger agaves were on the edge of paths, and had been carefully trimmed to remove any spines which may cause injury.  Even without the terminal spines the marginal teeth are something special.

So a small selection of the plants.  Nothing too unusual, but then these are planted out all year and it is the UK after all.

It had to happen in the end

It was May last year that I posted my last entry on the cristate aeonium (here), not sure if anyone remembers how big it had got for that very narrow stem. That stem has always looked a bit fragile.

As usual it wasn't given great winter protection and I forgot the golden rule of keeping plants on their edge of their hardiness. That is know how they react to frosts. Some wilt then firm up, some show no initial damage and then rot, other turn to mush overnight.  With aeoniums the stem wilts. If the wilt was not been too bad, the plant recovers when it warms up.

You can guess where this is going.

Checking the plants after the last cold period I was greeted by this:

You can see how the stems have rotted where they wilted due to the frosts. I had to cut the main head off to get this photo.  Out came the scissors and exploring; some stems were firm others were rotted all the way up to the leaves.  I probably caught it just in time and had to apply a liberal dose of anti mould treatment to try and stem the rot.  The majority of the plant had to be binned, but a couple of the heads were hopefully saved.

I should be able to re-root this and start from a wider base. Who knows what this one will turn out to look like. Maybe next year I'll remember to give it proper protection. I am beginning to see how much extra warmth my old shed provided to these very marginal plants. 

Still going strong

It was over a year ago now that I last did a post on my cristate aeonium sunburst (here). At the time I was wondering how long that skinny trunk would last, it looks even more ridiculous today.

 

As the cristate heads have grown, they have branched forming some interesting shapes

It will be even more spectacular if it makes it to this time next year!

When deformed growth is good.

Normally it is very upsetting when plants start to grow abnormally. You put all that effort into growing a pristine plant and then something damages it, totally spoiling all your hard work. Often we manage to turn these bad events into something positive; loosing the growing point may force off-sets, even loosing the plant frees up a space for something else.

Sometimes it is this unusual growth that gets the plant onto our wish-list. I have posted a picture of this cristate aeonium before and it has grown a lot since then.  Instead of one wide stem there are now multiple snaking stems giving it a Medusa like appearance. Cristate plants are quite common and most collectors have either bought or had a plant go cristate on them.

But perhaps the holy grail of unusual growth is where the the plant grows as a single plant but is so different that it warrants a name of its own.  These plants are few and far between and so not something I ever expected to manage myself.  A month or so back I found this agave at a local garden center.  It was obviously not growing normally and I spent a long time looking at it wondering how it would grow,  the last couple of leaves seemed to be split into three sections, but this could easily be one off damage.

Anyway I took the plunge and a month on it is really developing nicely, or should that be badly? 

The latest leaf is something very different, it is split into three sections with spines running down between them.

If it carries on growing like this then it's going to be really amazing, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that it continues to be deformed. I would LOVE to see an entire plant with leaves like this, that would open up a whole other set of decisions!

A prince amoung aeoniums

Of all the succulents I have collected, aeoniums have been the most up and down.  Their peak was in 2009, at which time I owned 10 - 15 different varieties.  Sadly loses over winter showed how difficult they were to keep in the UK, needing above -3 to survive. So I have not been replacing them and anyone who shows interests in one of my plants often leaves with it. Going into last winter I had 4 left, two of which have since been given away, leaving me with my cristate a.suburst (which I posted about here) and a. nobile.

It was actually a.nobile that got me interested in aeoniums in the first place.  They are a little different to most of the varieties not really growing a stem but having huge very thick leaves. These leaves form much slower than other forms and get really big.  In time they develop huge heads, one of the biggest of the group.  They also change colour depending on water and light levels. Finally if you are lucky enough they will flower with the usual huge flowers that's one of the selling points for aeoniums.  Sadly they don't really offset or branch although if you are feeling very brave you can force offsets by cutting the top off.  But this is not for the faint hearted as unlike most form they are not easy and when a friend tried he got only two plants from the cut and said it wasn't worth the worry. To make up for it though they are easy from seed and so you need never be without as many plants as you have space for.

Personally I think they are one if not the best aeonium, well worth the pampering you have to give them over winter. This is one aeonium that is going to start in my collection, so hands off.

An oddity amoung oddities

When it comes to cristate plants there is no sitting on the fence. I have a few now and have my eye on a few more, so no prizes for guessing which side I sit on. One of my favourites is aeonium sunburst,  here is the plant when I first got it in 2008.

As you can see it was growing normally when I bought it. Here is is earlier in the year,  it has formed a really wide trunk that is getting better every day.

The only question is how long can it go before the narrow part to the trunk snaps?

What makes this one of my favourites is that it has a really strange habit that I will never truly understand. Normally if a cristate plant grows a normal head and you remove it at some point it will revert to being cristate (there is something in the genes) but with aeonium sunburst if you take a normal head off that is how it stays and it does not revert.  As if that is not strange enough, you may be wondering where all the cristate versions come from, well plants like mine that are seed grown will almost always turn cristate!

So to get a cristate plant you start with a normal one, and to get a normal plant you start with a cristate one. Isn't nature great!

Back to where it started

There seems to be a theme at the moment that plants I don't want to flower do and plants that I want to keep small grow.  I got this aeonium bronze medal when it was a single headed cutting.  This was it in 2008.

In 2009 it branched to produce a lovely little bushy plant. I was very pleased with the way it had grown and how it had stayed compact. One of the problems with aeomiums is that many can get leggy and constantly need to be cut up to keep them under control.  This is it at the end end of 2009

I'm not sure if it was winter growth or the wet summer but it lost the nice compact look and is becoming a bit leggy. Here is is a couple of weeks back as I was packing things away.

I am now thinking of cutting it up to start again to get that nice compact look back.  My OH is always torn when I cut things up; at first she thinks one less large plant.  But then it dawns on her that I may not get rid of all the spares and she may be stuck with several plants instead of just one. As if I would use it as an opportunity to get a few spares!

Strawberries and cream

We have a little thin raised bed which is full of strawberry plants.  Although we only get fruit at the start of the summer, when we have about 3  - 4 weeks of strawberries. Unfortunately my OH is much more of a morning person than me and so I often come down to find evidence of strawberries for breakfast and head outside to find all the ripe ones gone. It seems that nice as strawberries are they are not a big enough incentive for me to get up early!

At this time of year the plants are looking their best with lots of new lush growth and they have now totally taken over.  The walls are of course covered in pots full of succulents which normally is an ideal little location to show off some of my favourites.  Looking at it now though, the strawberries have hidden most of the plants with only the tall ones poking their heads above the sea of green.  The most striking being this aeonium sunburst which has a lovely colour even when on its own but has been particularly well highlighted by the strawberry leaves.

It is also at this time of year that the strawberries make their break for freedom. It can be fun following the tentacles of new plants as they sneak out into the flowerbeds and pots, removing them before they get too comfy. If only the succulents spread as quickly.

They're big up north

I have just returned from visiting another succulent fan (mentioned, or blamed here as a fellow addict).  It is always a pleasure to see his garden and I am always amazed at how much growth he gets from his plants in one summer, given that he is not exactly in the warmest part of the UK.

This trip was no exception and it was great to visit at the end of summer for a change as I usually visit in Spring before things get going. The beds are full of large clumps of echeverias and he has not put away all the pots yet so there are rows of aeoniums which are getting to be some size!  Aeoniums are something we both struggle with, not because they are hard to grow quite the contrary in fact, but because they almost without fail can not cope below -4 and so have to be overwintered either in a heated greenhouse or inside.  This is fine when small, but when they get to this size of these they take up a lot of space.  I have cut my selection down to 3 or 4 which are small enough to be brought in and interesting enough to warrant the space. I am hoping he doesn't cut his down too much as I want to see how big these get!

The other good/bad thing about going up to visit him is seeing the different plants in person instead of on a websites. It is very easy to avoid buying plants when you don't know they exist, but wondering around his greenhouse I always find a few new plants that I didn't know I needed until then and have to be added to my list of plants to find. Often he has offered me an offset in the past which I have turned down because the pictures on the web didn't look that special.

Then there are the offsets that I have been eagerly waiting to be big enough for him to remove. This trip two were ready and so I can a couple more off my list.  I have had my eye on this little haworthia attenuata variegate for a couple of years, but the pups have been painfully slow to develop.  So it is very exciting to finally get one to the size where it was allowed to be taken off and come home with me.  The second one, agave titonata variegate was a bit of a surprise.  I will admit that I have been coveting his main plant since he got it,  so letting me have the offset is probably as much self preservation as anything else. Both plants are now happily in their new homes and will be pampered over this winter.

Unfortunately he keeps far too close an eye on me while I am there, and so I have yet to be able to smuggle any plants out without him knowing. But there is always next time!