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Week 2 - Plant of the Week
Here we are in the second week of term. Our houseplant of the week this week is the hyacinth.
Here's the handout:
GARDENING FOR PLEASURE
Houseplant of the Week
Hyacinths
As Jane Austen famously remarked in her novel Northanger Abbey, it is not easy to love a hyacinth. For many years they have been deeply unfashionable – short, busty cylindrical flowers in shades of pink, white and pastel blue – very Fifties, very Barbara Windsor, very municipal bedding. Yet in the early 18th century, when hyacinths changed hands for as much as £200 for a single bulb, they were the aristocrats of the bulb world: the focus of a collecting mania almost as fevered as Tulipomania, which gripped Holland a generation earlier.
Now hyacinths are once again cutting edge, with passions riding high about who has the blackest hyacinth or the choicest double, and collectors scouring Eastern Europe for long-lost varieties. Much of the current fizz in the hyacinth world is due to Alan Shipp, a Cambridgeshire farmer with a passion for the flowers. His collection was awarded National Collection status ten years ago by the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens. When Shipp started collecting, the range of hyacinths available had dwindled to no more than a dozen or so. There are now 170 heritage varieties growing on his farm at Waterbeach, near Cambridge, and many treasured old varieties are back on the market.
In Greek mythology, Hyakinthos was a young man admired by Apollo and Zephyr, but killed by a discus in a jealous fight between the two gods. The flower was allegedly named after him when it sprang from his blood.
Hyacinths, it is believed, were first cultivated in Europe by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Both Homer and Virgil described the Hyacinth's fragrance. This hyacinth would have been Hyacinthus orientalis, a native of Turkey and the Middle East and the genetic ancestor of our modern cultivars. It’s a rather wan looking specimen. With only about 15 pale blue flowers in a loose raceme, on ten-inch stems, these Hyacinth plants were valued mainly for their scent. Whether due to their anaemic appearance or other factors, the cultivation of hyacinths faded from Europe about the same time as the Romans did.
The hyacinth re-entered European gardens in the 1560's, reintroduced from Turkey and Iran, eventually reaching the flower bulb-loving low countries of Holland. It was there that the tiny Hyacinthus orientalis experienced a make-over, as Dutch bulb hybridisers transformed it.
In the mid-18th century, Madame de Pompadour – mistress of France's King Louis XV – ordered the gardens of Versailles filled with Dutch Hyacinths and had hundreds forced "on glasses" inside the palace in winter. The predominant fashion trendsetter of her age, her passion for these sweetly-scented bulbs sparked a national rage among the French elite.
Botanists at one time included about thirty species under the genus Hyacinthus. Botanical reorganisations over the years have moved most of these plants into other genera, leaving only three in the original family, of which only Hyacinthus orientalis has garden-worthy offspring. All hyacinths found in the modern garden are cultivars, or man-made hybrids. Though the original hyacinth can still be found in nature along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, it is no longer in cultivation or trade.
Mature Dutch Hyacinths, in their first year, have narrow basal leaves and flowers spaced thickly along a stiff cylindrical raceme. After a few years, when naturalised, even the most hefty hyacinth hybrids shed much of their thick coat of flowers, resembling more and more their humble ancestor Hyacinthus orientalis,
The hyacinth naturally blooms in March/April. Garden centres or specialist suppliers will stock a massive range of specially treated bulbs in many colours that will flower ten weeks after being planted. Colours include red, white, pink, orange, salmon, yellow, purple and blue.
To get bulbs to flower, you need to use a technique called forcing. To do this, heat-treated hyacinth bulbs, which are more expensive than normal bulbs, need to be placed in a dark place for several weeks to allow flower buds to develop. Some people may be allergic to hyacinth bulbs, so wear gloves when handling.
Bowls with or without drainage holes can be used. If using a bowl without drainage, fill it with bulb fibre as the growing medium, otherwise use John Innes Potting Compost No. 2. Partly fill the bowl with compost, and then space the bulbs evenly apart in the bowl. Plant the bulbs so that only the tops are exposed. Ensure that the fibre or compost is moist when planting the bulbs and it is kept in moist condition throughout the growing period.
Move the bowl to a cool dark place for 8 to 12 weeks to enable the bulbs to form a good root system. Aim for a temperature of less than 9 degrees C. The bottom shelf, in a garage or shed is an ideal place. Other suitable positions are under the greenhouse shelving or in a very cool cupboard. Drained containers can be buried out of doors under a 8 cm (3 in.) layer of moist peat, sand or weathered ashes. If the bowl can be reached easily, it can be checked occasionally to ensure that the compost remains moist.
The bowl will be ready to come out into the light when the flower spikes have emerged 5-8 cms (2-3 in.) above the bulbs. By this time the bulbs will have made good root growth which will anchor the flower stem and bulb, and enable the flowers to receive water.
When you bring the bowl into the light, put it in a cool, well-lit position. A cold frame, unheated greenhouse, porch or the windowsill of an unheated room would be suitable. If the bulbs are kept on the windowsill, turn them daily so that they grow evenly.
If you wish to enjoy the hyacinth flowers in a warm room, keep the bowl in a cool position until the flowers are just about to open, then take it into the warm room. The cooler and lighter the position, the longer the flowers will last.
When the flowers are over, cut off the flowering spike and plant the bulbs outside in the garden to die down. Bulbs left outside in this way will flower again each year, but for indoor use, it is best to buy fresh bulbs each year.
In their natural habitat, hyacinths grow in ground that dries out in summer, so choose a sunny site with well-drained soil. In clay soil, plant each bulb on a handful of grit, adding a handful of silver sand as you back-fill. To ensure bulbs achieve their maximum flowering size and to prevent division into smaller daughter bulbs, plant them deeply (with the base 6-8in below the surface of the soil). Some varieties may need staking in warmer weather. Use a thin stick pushed down beside the stem inside the flowerhead (avoid damaging the bulb itself), where it will be concealed from view.
Grow Narcissus 'Paperwhite' the same way, but bring out of the dark and put on a sunny windowsill as soon as the buds appear or the stems will become long and lanky.
New varieties are also taking the horticultural world by storm. Hyacinthus ‘Midnight Mystique’, billed as the first black hyacinth, created a sensation when it was showcased at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2005. Bred by Dutch bulb merchant Hans Kapiteyn, ‘Midnight Mystique’ has been decades in the making. Its parentage is a closely guarded secret, but in 1990 the British seed company Thompson & Morgan paid Kapiteyn £50,000 apiece for three small bulbs of ‘Midnight Mystique’.
Although ‘Midnight Mystique’ may be the darkest hyacinth yet, it is by no means the first or the only “black” hyacinth. Pride of Shipp’s collection is the old variety ‘Menelik’, named after the first Emperor of Ethiopia, Menelik I, believed to be the son of King Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba. Running it a close second is the very dark blue-black ‘Marie’, dating from 1860, and ‘Blue Magic’, a dark purple-black with a white eye. According to Shipp, “black” hyacinths have been known since the 18th century.
The renewed interest in these very dark hyacinths is part of the current craze for ever darker flowers such as “black” violas and pansies, “black” irises and “black” hebes. Like all these very dark flowers, the hyacinths need careful placing against a contrasting background to show them off. For a traditional effect, team them with a mixture of vibrant blues such as ‘Delft Blue’ and gleaming whites such as ‘Carnegie’. For a modern “black and white” effect, team them with one of the double white hyacinths such as ‘Ben Nevis’ or ‘Madame Sophie’, or the new ‘Snow Crystal’.
Double hyacinths are now back in favour, too. These are varieties where each floret has a double, triple or even quadruple row of petals. All the rage in the 18th and 19th centuries, most have been commercially unavailable for years. Now Jacques Amand is stocking a range of doubles, including the pale pink ‘Chestnut Flower’ and the sea lavender ‘General Köhler’.
The holy grail of hyacinth breeding, however, remains the rediscovery of bicoloured doubles – luscious white flowers with differently coloured “eyes”, which drove 18th-century gardeners to a frenzy. They were still being listed as the “best sorts” in publications of 1935. Most famous of these was the ‘King of Great Britain’, a fully double white hyacinth with inner petals of red. It sold in huge numbers, and may well have been exported to Eastern Europe, where gardeners remained passionate about hyacinths long after they had dwindled into obscurity in this country.
One of the most exciting trends of recent years has been Shipp’s discovery that many old varieties still exist in the countries of the former USSR. Since 1998, he has added 31 varieties to the National Collection from contacts in Lithuania alone, including double yellow hyacinths, long thought extinct. Could the ‘King of Great Britain’ be out there too, waiting to be rediscovered?
Sources: http://www.gardenhive.com/flowers/hyaci
http://www.gee-tee.co.uk/hyacinth-b
National Collections :
Ripley Castle, N. Yorks, www.ripleycastle.co.uk
Mr A K Shipp, 9 Rosemary Road, Waterbeach , Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, CB25 9NB, Telephone: 01223 571064 E-mail: alan.shipp@virgin.net
Open Day: Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th March - Alan Shipp's National Hyacinth Collection Open Days. Group Plant Sale at Waterbeach.
Jo Hanslip
January 2010
And they're in the supermarkets now, if you want to get them ready-forced.
Jo