My Acca sellowiana has got one flower on it. That's the first time it has flowered at all, so represents progress of a sort, but I feel we have a way to go. It used to be called Feijoa, until the botanists changed their minds, and its common name is pineapple guava. It is an evergreen shrub hailing from Brazil and Uruguay, with greyish green leaves and very showy flowers with four white petals surrounding a prominent tuft of red stamens. Or, in the case of my plant, one flower, lurking in among the leaves.
I first tried to grow Feijoa, as it was then, nearly twenty years ago, succumbing to the charms of one trained as a standard and smothered in blooms, almost certainly fresh in from the nurseries of northern Italy. I kept it in a pot so that I could overwinter it under glass, believing it to be somewhat tender, but made a mess of the watering regime one hot week and it died. After a while I tried again with a normal untrained plant in the border, tucking it in next to a Grevillea for protection from the wind, and thinking that their flowers would co-ordinate rather well, both being red and whiskery. The Grevillea grew much more than I was expecting, and the Acca, as it had become by then, was swamped. However, it did cling on to life through the recent series of hard winters, which I was really not expecting. I now see that the database Plants for a Future rates it as being hardy down to minus fifteen degrees C, when it is dormant.
I decided to try again with a fresh plant in the turning circle, near the paving by the formal pond, where it would have more space, and we would see it more often than the one struggling inside the Grevillea. This specimen is larger now than when it was planted, but tends to hold its leaves very upright, giving a pinched look. If it is a reaction to drought it seems rather an odd one, since it exposes the undersides of the leaves to the sun and wind, and they are less waxy than the tops. It is supposed to be drought tolerant, but I have watered it occasionally when I'm watering the pots on the paving. And now I have my reward, one flower. I wish it could speak, or that I spoke Acca, since I feel it wants something, and I don't know what. But maybe they don't generally flower as young plants, and things will improve from here.
Meanwhile, a Penstemon in the greenhouse produced a flower. It is one of a trio I bought last year to act as parent plants for cuttings. I got a good strike rate (Penstemon cuttings are normally fairly easy) but lost some of the young plants after potting them individually in the autumn. They were doing so well in their original pot, I thought they would appreciate the space, but they did not appreciate having their roots fiddled around with going into winter, and some died. I will know next time. Christopher Lloyd warned against the hazards of disturbing some cuttings before the following spring. I think off the top of my head that he had problems with hydrangeas.
The parent plants were looking pretty tatty by spring. I don't think Penstemon are great long term in pots. Certainly at the plant centre we didn't aim to have any left at summer's end. However, they rallied round, and I took some more cuttings off them, and will do another batch fairly soon. So they haven't had much of chance to flower. I did harvest one odd spray the other week for the posy to go on the breakfast table, without thinking too much of it. It was an agreeable dark pink with more than a hint of magenta in it, the tube modestly flared with a white throat. The difference between that flower and today's is that this morning I made the connection between the bloom and the label. 'Garnet', the label said, though more correctly that should be 'Andenken an Friedrich Hahn'. The German name does not exactly trip off the tongue, and you can see why the UK nursery trade likes to stick with the more descriptive English one, but the name 'Andenken an Friedrich Hahn' was given first, and has priority.
'Garnet' is as the name suggests, a rich port wine red, not magenta. The trumpet should be narrow. Meaning that the parent plant I have been fossicking around with and taking cuttings from for the past nine months or so is not 'Garnet' at all. I have my former place of work to blame for that mix up.
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