It's raining. I am sorry for anybody trying to hold any sort of outside entertainment tonight, or tomorrow morning, but from a purely personal point of view I am delighted. When the Met Office started forecasting rain for Friday, a couple of days ago, I didn't entirely believe them. So often rain has been forecast, and then the forecast been revised, or the rain petered out the other side of Colchester or swept away to the north without ever reaching us. There were a few drops as I went to let the hens into their run, and straight after breakfast I headed up to the apiary with a wheelbarrow to pick up a couple of supers that were ready for harvest, before it could start raining properly, but by the time I got back to the house it had stopped again. I asked the Systems Administrator whether we were in fact going to get rain this time, and the SA without a word swivelled the laptop around so that I could see the rain radar up on the screen, where a solid block of blue covered most of the southern half of the country. It was actually coming. We've had 16 millimetres now, and counting. With any luck it will keep going all night. So I'm sorry if you are getting married tomorrow, or it's your village open day, but this gardener is really happy.
Thinking about what South African plants I grow led me on to Latin America. I have just planted Salvia 'Amistad', a gorgeous, not entirely hardy variety with purple flowers and black calyces, bought at some expense (given it was only in a nine centimetre pot) from Crocus. As I checked online to remind myself how tall it grew so that I could judge how far back in the bed to put it, I came on the delightful piece of advice that it was a magnet for hummingbirds. Not in north east Essex, alas. It is a form of Salvia guaranitica, which is found in the wild in Brazil, Paraguay, Uraguay and Argentina. I already grow the form 'Black and Blue', which has blue flowers and black calyces (the clue's in the name), and that seems pretty happy after several years in the ground, the clump getting gradually wider. Like many dubiously hardy plants I originally tried it in a pot, and like many things I had in pots for their own protection it did not flourish there.
Another native of southern Brazil, Uraguay and Argentina is Salvia uliginosa, the bog sage. I've had it for several years at the front of the bog bed, which is by no means boggy, and it seems happy enough. I've seen them growing in what looks like normal border soil in other people's gardens, but I don't think it wants to be too dry, even if it doesn't positively demand a swamp. The flowers, which come usefully late in the autumn, are an electric shade of blue, very eye catching. Bees adore it. The stems are inclined to flop, and each year when they do I tell myself that next year I should stake it, and then by the time next year comes around I've forgotten. It runs at the root, making a spreading patch and not necessarily remaining where it started off, but is not the most vigorous competitor. Mine is being jostled by an iris and a Persicaria, and I might have to take judicial action in favour of the bog sage this winter.
Quite a few Latin American plants have long flowers, because they are adapted to pollination by humming birds. Fuchsia, Phygelius. I grow varieties of both, and again cold UK winters can be problematic. The recent hard winters killed the top growth of all my so-called hardy fuchsias, though they came back from ground level, but you're probably wise to only use them as a hedge if you live in Cornwall. I've had mixed success with Phygelius. Some species are hardier than others, which translates to some hybrids being tougher than others. Over the years some of those I've planted have lived and some have died, and since those that have lived have run at the root most have ended up without labels, and I'm not entirely sure which they are.
Puya are quite another kettle of fish. They are evergreen succulents, members of the Bromeliaceae meaning they are distantly related to pineapples, and hailing from the Andes and southern central America. I have two species, P. venusta and P. berteroniana, both raised from seed supplied by Chiltern Seeds, and I am astonished to see (courtesy of Wikipedia) how many species there are in total. Puya are not the most convenient plants to cultivate. On the plus side, they germinate very easily, transplant easily, are massively tolerant of almost total lack of water, and if they grow large enough will produce a huge and exotic flower spike. On the minus side, after producing the huge flower spike they will die, and they will probably die anyway from cold and/or wet if left outside in the UK in winter. I have seen them growing in the ground at Cambridge Botanic, covered by panes of glass in beds next to a greenhouse, and they did not look happy. Mine are in pots so that they can come inside. The leaf margins are armed with backwards facing spines, designed to capture sheep and hold them until they die and provide a nitrogen rich, nutritious mulch. You can guess that Puya come from infertile and stony places. They need to be handled with caution, as the spines deliver a nasty scratch. Because they germinate so easily, and are so rare and exotic that I couldn't bear to throw any seedlings away, I have more plants than I want or need, but when I ask gardening friends whether they would like a sheep eating plant that they will have to keep in their greenhouse over the winter and will probably scratch them, they tend to decline.
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