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Salvia involucrata ‘Bethellii’
This is an opportunistic choice, of a salvia that has already been flowering for two months but has suddenly started a twosome with a Koelreuteria paniculata in its flaming autumn guise.
‘Bethellii’ is an attractive plant from the start, pink-blooded, as it were, but also grey-downy. In recent years it has proved hardy as a perennial, dying back to below ground, but we take cuttings in autumn to be safe. By August it has reached four feet high with spreading branches, each ending with a long spike of cerise-crimson flowers. They are short-lived except for those near the tip and the terminal bud, which contains an extension with many more flowers. This bud fails to open at all and remains as an oddly emphatic blob waving in the wind.
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