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Pelargonium x ‘Ardens’
4 June 2010
Its flowers are less than an inch across, five-petalled, fanning out in groups of ten from a ruff of little leaves at the end of a long lanky stalk. But their colour, scarlet blotched with crimson, is something you see only in the embers of a well-established fire. ‘Burning’ is the only adjective for it.
I first met it at Woottens nursery in Suffolk with its exceptional pelargonium collection (where Michael Loftus was not exactly forthcoming about its propagation). My attempts by the usual sort of stem cuttings came to nothing. My first success was by layering; pinning down one of its absurdly lanky stems (its destiny is to scramble about in
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bushes to gain height) in another pot next door. Perhaps if I dared to dig up its sort of buried tuber and cut it up the pieces would re-root. It is certainly one of the most popular pot-presents we take to friends.
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