Daphnes 2008-2009

[Lvandelft]

Nice plants, Geir 
Here's Pimelea prostrata (and some cat hair!)

Giles, seeing the picture I realized that my brains are getting a bit old     .
The Pimelea I had in the garden was Pimelea coarctica..
Next time I will nock on my head first before I comment, that is, if I don't forget..

[Lesley Cox]

Luit, you may get seedlings 10 or 20 years down the track! Like for Daphne, the seeds need to have the fleshy coating cleaned away for the seeds to germinate well. From collected seed I get good germination from (fresh) cleaned seed but none at all from seeds with their coats in tact.

[Paul T]

Geir,

What a lovely selection of species.  Beautiful.  Thanks for posting.

Giles,

Nice addition of the cat hair, for effect. 

[Ragged Robin]

Some Daphnes flowering in the garden to day

1 My Daphne habitat in the garden (D. x whiteorum 'Kilmeston' in front)
2 Daphne cneorum
3 Daphne sericea
4 Daphne juliae
5 Daphne thauma x stricta
6 Daphne circassica (nice undulate petals)

Geir, your Daphnes open up such a great range of flowering in your rockery with scent, I assume.  It would be good if you could show us more of the habitat so one can see how they relate to your other gems     Also how hardy are these Daphnes you show are they all grown outside?

[arisaema]

What might this one be? Bougth unlabelled last year from a local nursery, probably Dutch grown.

[Giles]

It looks like my D. x burkwoodii 'Astrid', but there are quite a few other variegated burkwoodii's around.

[arisaema]

Thank you, Giles, that could very well be it! Is there any way to make it look slightly less rediculous, do they shoot well from older wood? At the moment it's just a lot of 40cm long bare stems with tufts of foliage at the ends.

[Lesley Cox]

Or you could use the height of it and plant somthing lower around the base.

[Giles]

I cut a D. x burkwoodii back, and it didn't grow back.
Next time I'll make sure the cuttings are rooted, before doing any pruning 

[Mike Ireland]

Daphne oleoides, with me seems to be the most reliable to flower well.

[Lesley Cox]

That's a very fine plant Mike and should be a real beauty when it fruits, though for me, the fruit seems to ripen spasmodically over a few weeks rather than in one glorious flush.

Is there much VISIBLE difference between D. oleoides and D. kosaninii? Mine seem virtually identical, though of course one could be wrongly named. Pretty sure oleoides is right and the other came from what should be a reliable source (as seed).

[Ragged Robin]

Daphne oleoides, with me seems to be the most reliable to flower well.

What a fabulous plant, congratulations Mike, how old is it to be flowering so profusely? 

[Mike Ireland]

Lesley & Robin
The D. oleoides sets profuse amounts of seed which I have to gather quickly as the local blackbirds seem to think should all be left for them, they can clean out the seed within a few days.
My D. kosaninii, which is about 10 years old is only 6" high and is certainly much slower growing, the D. oleoides is 15 years old and 18" high by 30" wide.
Hope fully seed will be available from both these plants.

[johanneshoeller]

One question: Do you use mature (red) or unmature seeds (green) for propagation?

[David Nicholson]

Here is my Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' I posted on 6 January last when I thought it wasn't looking very healthy, and the second pic is of the same plant today.

Michael Campbell advised me that it was quite normal for a small plant at that time of the year and it would start to grow away in the spring and I should give it a feed about April time. I followed his advice and you can see the result. My question now is whether I should pinch out some of the taller growth to try to get a better shape to it, and if I did could I use the pinched out bits as cuttings? How should I grow the cuttings on?