Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Cultivation => Cultivation Problems => Topic started by: mark smyth on March 07, 2011, 12:24:56 PM
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Yesterday I rescues some ?Cardamine quinquefolia from an old garden near my house. Can I grow them in full sun?
Most have purple leaves and flowers but some will be white flowered
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Mark,
I grow it in semi-shade, under deciduous trees/shrubs though I don't see why it wouldn't do well in a more open position.
Paddy
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I do have a semi-shade position beside the fence. No direct sun there until after 2pm but some sun through the gaps in the fence.
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I need new plants for my peat bed. Could they grow there? No sun until after 3pm
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Mark,
I don't think you need worry about cardamines not growing, the opposite is generally the case, they do too well and spread about with great ease. They certainly would not be the best thing to put over small spring bulbs as they would smother them.
Paddy
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Mark, Cardamine quinquefolia has green leaves and lilac flowers. Do you mean Cardamine pratensis, the native cuckoo flower or lady's smock, which grows mostly in damp grassy areas?
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here are two photos
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Okay, well that looks like quinquefolia. Haven't seen a white flowered form before, and haven't heard of a purple-leaved form either. Be interesting to see how the leaves develop, and what they both look like in flower. As Paddy says, quinquefolia will grow anywhere. I'd be wary of putting it in anything but a pot or a very enclosed bed where it can't escape to smother small plants and bulbs.
I planted it in my garden about 10 years ago from one potful from Robin White, and it's taking over the whole bloody garden, Can't get rid of it. Small bulbs certainly struggle to get their leaves up above its foliage, and it grows at the same time as the spring bulbs then dies down with them. It can be a real pain!!! I'll have to completely remake large areas to eradicate it.
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Unless it's a different species, maybe the less invasive pentaphyllos, which has never become a problem here.
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Mark, my quinquefolia are in full flower with fully developed foliage. Just checked on my pentaphyllos and it's at the same stage as yours and looks more like yours than quinquefolia. I doubt you'd be further behind than me, so I think it's not quinquesfolia but pentphyllos or maybe heptaphylla. How far has it spread in the old garden? If it covers square yards or more then it's quinquefolia, if in smaller clumps then it's not.
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Thanks for all the info. Once they open I'll take more photos.
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Probably best not planted in the garden, a real menace. I find it even thrives on glyphosate!
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:( I was hoping to have something nice for post snowdrop season. I need to get Corydalis and Erythroniums ... and ... and ...
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The white one is now open and the leaves are green. Which Cardamine is it?
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The white one looks like Cardamine heptaphylla. The lilac one could be a dark-flowered form of heptaphylla or it could be pentaphyllos. Both can spread quite widely in the garden but nowhere near as invasive as quinquefolia.
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Thanks Martin. When the purple one unfurls its leaves I'll post another photo
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Here are some of my Cardamines to compare. These are from last year. The spring isn't so advanced here yet.
-pentaphyllos:
[attachthumb=1]
-enneaphylla
[attachthumb=2]
-heptaphylla
[attachthumb=3] [attachthumb=4]
-waldsteinii
[attachthumb=5]
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These would seem to be quite closely related to this whose name escapes me for the moment. It seeds about but is lovely under trees
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Would it be a pachyphragma Lesley?
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Yes, that's Pachyphragma macrophylla, a good plant I think, a little coarse but with very good clean evergreen foliage, suitable for dry shade. Unaccountably quite rare in gardens. Mine makes a slowly spreading low carpet and very very occasionally seeds itself about.
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Pachyphragma macrophyllum, I think... isn't this one of those plants with "odd" endings ?
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Yes, that's it all right, thanks. and yes, macrophyllum, because of the male or neutral Greek ending ma, as in Arisaema (candidissimum), Onosma (nanum) et al.
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Oh dear, I really must remember to check my plant names before posting. I've been corrected on other forums (fora?? gulp) before and I agree completely that it is very important to get these things right. It's a result of doing Latin at school - I tend to make wrong assumptions when languages start getting mixed up.
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Don't stress about it Tony, we all do it from time to time.
As a lousy typist I find I go into a daft auto-pilot mode on the pc and all sorts of rubbish appears...... it's not the end of the world! ;)
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A favourite here too, very early in to flower (only 2-3 weeks to go, difficult to believe as the blizzard rages) and quite tasty too (as are some of the Cardamines)... ;)
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A favourite here too, very early in to flower (only 2-3 weeks to go, difficult to believe as the blizzard rages) and quite tasty too (as are some of the Cardamines)... ;)
I can EAT my Cardamine quinquefolia?! Yes!!!! Revenge is mine, you invasive - if rather pretty - bloody weed!!
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:) Beware (if it's not too late) that this one is
deadly, from memory, one of the stronger tasting ones, so your revenge may well backfire. Let us know whether we can add this one to the "if you can't beat it, eat it" family....
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Cardamine quinquefolia has quite a bland taste, unlike C. pentaphyllos which is unpleasantly bitter. Some people apparently eat the lady's smock (C. pratensis) but that has a medicinal taste, somewhat like germolene to my mind. The one I prefer to eat is the pesky weed C. hirsuta (hairy bittercress) which despite the unappealing common name has a pleasant flavour like culinary cress.