Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum

Plant Identification => Plant Identification Questions and Answers => Topic started by: Diane Clement on July 18, 2013, 09:21:49 AM

Title: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Diane Clement on July 18, 2013, 09:21:49 AM

Can anyone help with the identification of this hairy little plant?  I'm guessing Cerastium sp??

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Oron Peri on July 18, 2013, 09:37:55 AM

Diane,

Cerastium alpinum var. lanatum

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Diane Clement on July 18, 2013, 10:00:38 AM

Quote from: Oron Peri on July 18, 2013, 09:37:55 AM

Diane,
Cerastium alpinum var. lanatum 

Thanks, Oron that was quick - you're not just a bulb man   ;D

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Oron Peri on July 18, 2013, 10:07:56 AM

Well Diane..
when bulbs are dormant i have time to look at 'weeds'.... ;)

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Lesley Cox on July 19, 2013, 01:14:12 AM

It's a "good" cerastium, compared with the other which is a menace and will break up rock walls. C. tomentosum I think it's called.

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Anthony Darby on July 19, 2013, 06:55:27 AM

C. tomentosum is aka snow in summer. A real menace in the garden.

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Tim Ingram on July 19, 2013, 07:29:35 AM

I had this little plant from Rick Lambert at the Summer Show South. I like to pretend that it is a Haastia! Farrer says of Cerastium alpinum (which occurs on British mountains and would a nice little plant to find) that 'it is paradoxically of less easy culture than many of its foreign cousins'. There sound to be some fine plants in the genus, obscured by the rampant 'snow-in-summer', although I have seen even this combining beautifully in a wall with campanula in David Hoare's garden.

Title: Re: unknown hairy plant
Post by: Lesley Cox on July 20, 2013, 12:56:58 AM

It does seed about but is no problem to remove any you don't want. Paradoxically, having seeded nicely into my previous raised beds among the crocuses, I now find myself without it so will keep an eye out on the next seedlists.

"Snow-in-Summer" I have also seen applied to the annual Euphorbia marginata, low, green and heavily variegated with white. I haven't seen the flower head.