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For those sick freaks who want to be cold year round, this is one blizzard that sticks around during the summer and makes way for the real thing in Winter. Darrell Probst selection of this delightful Eastern woodland native dusted with variegation from light green to white like a miniature chlorophyll snow storm. Slowly spreading and with small yellow flowers in Spring. 

There are many bigger and more impressive Uvularias and even more similar enough to pass the same tests. BUT. If I was a fairy, or a gnome, there are none that would match this one for planting priority. The perfect diminutive but not tiny size, drowsily nodding habit, and large cream yellow bells, all capped off with a painted margin of white just make this so incredibly charming in a children's book sort of way. Wood make for a truly idyllic groundcover in a woodland garden where all your local fae-folk friends live their merry or naughty lives outside the gaze of the plodding 'Big People', oh to live in such a world. 

Thank gods for Steve Hootman of the Rhododendron Species Botanic Garden who is a champion of the lesser Ericads otherwise we would be blissfully unaware that so many necessary plants such as this existed and this rare epiphytic Vaccinium is just such a plant. Fortunately Steve did not assess a leech surcharge appended to each sale of this plant otherwise we would be in serious trouble as they were legion in the Salween and his stories of his boots squishing as if filled with water from the monsoon rains only to find that upon removal of the boots that the sloshing was not so much water as it was blood which poured red from the weeping leech bites. Eighteen bucks starts to sound pretty reasonable don't you think? Very cute little epiphyte with small rounded cupped leaves and wee white flowers. This is going to be a source of no small pleasure in zone 8 where it will be happy growing in a container creeping in a rotting log or mossy rock in part shade. We grow ours in a cool greenhouse kept just at or above freezing and has been easy as pie. Not the showiest in the genus but isn't high maintenance or prone to drama. This has an unassuming beauty that only generations of attention to understated detail can achieve and there is not a thing we would change about this except perhaps that occasional nightmare concerning leeches.

Received as seeds from the self-proclaimed (and rightly so) "Veratrum Guru" Christoph Ruby, these plants originate from a now long devastated patch of habitat in the Balkans. Luckily careful stewardship by the esteemed gardeners of Hof Botanic has ensured the preservation and indeed proliferation of their genetics. The var. flavum has been the victim of taxonomic erasure but is kept here to denote the vibrant yellow-green flowers in this strain. The usual lush pleated foliage, deer resistance, and imposing size combined with provenance you can't help but feel good about make these a winner in a moist spot with a bit of shade.