China

Podophyllum or Dysosma – the Asian species are better in Dysosma but when shopping, most people look for Podophyllum when they need to push their shade garden over the top.  This Chinese species was shared with us by our friend and great plantsman Darrell Probst who knows an extraordinary plant when he sees it.  Among our sea of Podophyllum species and cultivars, this stands apart in habit, form and flower.  Upright stems hold green lobed saucers of leaves which cannot be confused with the other green-leafed species.  Beautifully displayed are single white flowers under each leaf which when pollinated, morphs into a glowing orange fruit.  For us, this species stays in a tight crown without the running habit of some other species.  This is good if your space is limited and bad if you want more and of course, we want lots!  Which we don’t have but the scant few we do have in surplus, are here.

Seedlings from our collection in Sichuan in 2006. We were thrilled to find this Epimedium - just 5 plants with a few ripe seed - growing on a shallow layer of moss and humus on a damp rock face along a narrow dirt road. Interestingly, two of the plants had black seed capsules and the other three were green. Yellow flowers from April to mid summer and then again in fall in our fertile and moist shade garden. We had this listed last year as Epimedium davidii which it closely resembles and thought this but a variation in flower until the keen eyes of Ben Stormes noticed that this was indeed the rare Epimedium flavum found only on the Erlang Shan which is exactly where this was found. This area, like many once remote areas in China, showed indications of being poised to be developed for tourism and there is little doubt that the plants we found are no longer.