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Edgeworthia papyrifera ‘Red Dragon’
3 March 2010
I’m afraid the photograph is not of my plant, but the first one I saw, at the famous Eisenhut nursery above Lake Maggiore. The generous gardener on Isola Madre very kindly gave a plant to each of the members of an I.D.S. tour there last April. I have been frightened of mine ever since, having read what a difficult plant it is (as its relations the Daphnes tend to be). Now it is flowering in the conservatory, rather more modestly than Mr Eisenhut’s splendid specimen.
It comes from Ichang in western China and takes its name from an amateur botanist of the East India Company, Michael Pakenham Edgeworth. The first of its kind I saw was the white-flowered E. Chrysantha, by a pond in a friend’s garden near Auch in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees. It is one of the barest-looking plants in winter, with a few crisp brown remains of last year’s leaves. The flowers in
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short bunches dangle from the bare wood in early spring, smelling ‘awesome’ (as an American nurseryman puts it) in the sweetest way.
'Red Dragon’ is a sport, it seems, of the closely-related E. papyrifera, which is used for paper-making in the better class of monastery. It seems to like loose damp soil and plenty of sunshine, but perhaps not a summer baking. The leaves are generous, strap-shaped, dull green.
There are no reports that Wales is going to adopt it as its national flower.
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