four flowers blue

There are blue flowers among the pink, in some cases lots of them, since several have proved generous self seeders.  Camassia leichtlinii is one, producing tall spikes of slightly greyish blue, starry flowers with yellow anthers nodding on long filaments.  I started off by planting bulbs, but they spread themselves freely, at least in heavy clay.  Some people seem intimidated by the idea of growing bulbs from seed, as if it were a quantum slower and more difficult than growing any other sort of plant, but it isn't really.  I don't have to do anything to the Camassia to get them to spread, other than hold back from early dead heading and avoid weeding up the seedlings.

A shade darker, more vibrant and more purple is Centaurea montana.  I love this plant.  It grew like a weed in the garden of my childhood, seeding itself joyously about from the original plants left by the previous owner, a keen gardener.  Books of the 1950s and 1960s talk about it being a common flower of vicarage gardens, which are themselves not so common nowadays, but by the time I got my own garden in the early 1980s it was difficult even to buy seed of C. montana, let alone plants, it was so far out of fashion.  Now the pendulum has swung again, and fancy purple varieties are seen at Chelsea, but I like the blue.  The flower is like a large and lux thistle, with wide-spaced, fringed petals held around a conspicuous purple central boss.  The outside of the calyx is typical thistle, sawtoothed, black edged overlapping scales creating a diamond pattern.

Also with a distinct purplish tint is my blue North American species lupin, grown from seed, the one I had lost the name to, until a kind person at Chiltern Seeds identified it for me as Lupinus chamissonis, which they used to stock and no longer did.  I intended to save seeds from my one plant last year, before it was devastated by aphids and failed to set any, so I am glad to see it flowering again.  The whole plant looked so sickly after the aphid attack that I thought it was a goner.  I have got some young seedlings of a hybrid derived from it growing on the greenhouse, a variety called 'Silver Fleece' which I bought because I could not find seeds of straight L. chamissonis, and the seed catalogue claimed that the hybrid had a better constitution.  Our species plant so far seems quite resilient, but perhaps the light sandy soil and the arid climate of the Clacton coastal strip resemble its native Californian sand dunes more convincingly than growing conditions in other parts of the UK.

In a large pot is Gentiana verna, the spring gentian.  It has been in the pot for a few years now, standing outdoors all year round, winter and summer, and is gently spreading.  The small flowers are true blue.  Laid out on the kitchen table the gentian makes you see (now I have lifted Our Ginger off them) how purple the Camassia, the Centaurea and the lupin really are.  The gentian flowers are very graceful, the bases of the petals fused together into a long tube which emerges from an equally long calyx.  I rather wish I hadn't looked up its entry on Wikipedia, as I gather that I am likely to be struck by lightning for having brought it into the house, and that death will follow now that it's picked.  Ah well, it's too late now.