The Scottish Rock Garden ClubSHOW REPORTSEdinburgh 2011

2 Forrest Medals!Forrest Medal

Best Plant in the ShowNarcissus obesus ‘Lee Martin form’

shown by Bill Robinson

Professional Forrest MedalBest Plant on a Trade or Profes-

sional displayIris willmottiana

shown by the Royal BotanicGarden Edinburgh

Bill Robinson

John Mitchell

It is unusual for two Forrest med-als to be awarded at a show becausethere can only be one Best plant.However the powers that be fore-saw that sometimes there might bea plant in the non-competitive class-es which deserved special recogni-tion. So at Edinburgh, BillRobinson’s Narcissus obesus ‘LeeMartin Form’ was judged to be thebest plant in the competitive classeswhile the Iris willmottiana on theRBGE display was also outstandingso it was awarded a Professional

Forrest Medal. The RBGE has supported the SRGC with excellent displays at most shows. Many thanks tothe Regius Keeper and to John and Elspeth who stage the displays for the RBGE

Views of the show hall.

Multihued bulbsCyril Lafong staged a wonderful entry of 3 pans of Tecophiea. [T. Cyanocrocus, T.c leich-tlinii and T.c. Violaceae]. Many gardeners have difficulty in staging a small pan of Tecs.and recent hard winters have decimated some members stocks of the bulbs. To get pansthis big you need to keep your bulbs growing and increasing for about a decade. Quiteremarkable. I can’t imagine whatit must be like to see it growing inthe wild in Chile, where its isnow very rare.

NEW FAMILIESThis year we judges had toadapt to the fact that the Clubhas adopted a new revision ofplant families, which meansthat certain well known generahave ‘moved’.Gone is Amaryllidaceae evenfor Amaryllis! Its members likeNarcissus, Galanthus andTecophilea are now in Alliace-ae where they join Allium,which was formerly in the Liliaceae.

Some Liliaceae like, Erythronium, Lilium, Fritil-laria and Tulipa remain with others in the Lilyfamily but a huge number are now in Asparagace-ae. which family now includes Narcissus, Chion-odoxa, Hosta, Muscari and Scilla amongst others.I was just getting used to Trillium moving fromLiliaceae to Trilliaceae when I now find they are inMelanthiaceae along with Veratrum, Ypsilalndraand Scoloipus

Perhaps we are getting much too botanically correct for a flower show! Still if itwas only that we had to learn something new, that would be OK but it is muchmore difficult to relearn somethingyou thought you already knew.Maybe sometime in the future theclasses will be based on genera ratherthan on families. I realise Classifica-tion is vitally important but it can beconfusing.Lets hope it doesn’t become like theDriving Test and we don’t get a writtentest before we are allowed to showplants

Muscari and Scilla are nowthe class for 2 Pans Asparagaceae

3 entries - 18 good plants

Primula scotica

1,2,3, it’s as easy as A,B,C....... Went the song.........but not when you are judging six panclasses. These pictures show you just how good were the first second and third entries inthe 6 pan class. The winning entry from Cyril featured plants of 6 different genera. Trilliumrivale, Pulsatilla ‘Budapest’ seedling, Shortia uniflora kantuense, Androsace muscoidea,Draba dedeana and Primula yuparensis alba.

Draba dedeanaLast year Jeffersonia dubia alba won the

Forrest medal for Cyril. While still in excellentcondition I think it had fewer flowers than lastyear. Since the flowers are so fleeting it is verydifficult to get it perfect for a show. I remem-ber it being at Stirling one year. There are two

members of the genus, J. di-phylla from Eastern USA andthis one J. dubia from Manchu-ria. Unlikely at is may seem Jef-fersonia is a member of theBerberidaceae. It was named Ihonour of US President ThomasJefferson. Traditional Chinesemedicine uses Jeffersonia dubiafor strengthening the stomachand bringing down fevers.

Bulbs around the World

Fritillaria fromDuschambe inTajikistan, F.Michailowski-from Turkey,Erythronium‘Ardovie Bliss’from Dundee, E,Sibiricum fromRusia and Gagea fibrosa from the eastern end of the Medi-terranean to the Cauacasus, F. tortifolia barlekensis fromChina. Here are plants from all over the world and all grownhere in Scotland. Some need more protection than others . Iwrote that Erythronium came from Dundee; really it is ahybrid of E. hendersonii which occurred in the garden ofBetty Husker in the Dundee suburb of Monifieth.

Experienced show goers make a bee-line for the‘new, rare or difficult in cultivation’ classes.Sometimes the plants are new to cultivation, otherswere in cultivation very many years ago and havebeen reintroduced recently, others are rare becausethey are difficult to find, inferring a difficulty inpropagation or cultivation and still another groupare all three of new, rare and difficult. Some plantsdeserve to be rare because they appear to be unin-teresting or have of little aesthetic merit. The AGSschedules split the category up into ‘new or newlyreintroduced’, in flower and out of flower’ and athird ‘rare in cultivation’. Part of the reason wasthat at some of their shows the classes had lots ofentries and it was a good way to spread the entriesout in a sensible way. They disregard ‘difficulty’ asa category! At our shows the combined categorystill works mainly because the entries in the classare smaller in number.One thing about ‘rare’ is that someone somewheremanages to source and the thing about ‘difficulty’is that someone somewhere manages to grow theplant. Well done them!To help us lesser mortals we ask that these entriesbe accompanied by notes about their cultivation.

So here are some beauties from Edinburgh grownby resourceful, enterprising and superb garden-ers!

NEW, RARE or DIFFICULT

Geoff Hill’s

Stella & DavidRankin’s

Alan Newton’sCorydalis remota

Unusual CHIRITATwo species of genus I had not heard of intriguedme . They were part of a 3 pan entry from AlanNewton [along with Oresitrophe rurifraga, whichdid not strike many chords in my mind either!]Chirita brassicoides and Chirita fimbriata aremembers of the Gesneriaceae from China. Thepale lilac tubular flowers are beautiful. I like themarroon caps formed by the sepals which sit atthe end of the tubes. The plants are quite similar,though I amsure there are many differences whenviewed with a expert eye. I tried to find out moreabout the Genus and discovered there are about150 species ranging from Sri Lanka and Indiathrough the Himalayas into China and SoutheastAsia down the Malay Peninsula, with a very fewspecies reaching the islands of Sumatra, Java,and Borneo. While some are deffiniely tenderthese shown by Alan Newton survive tempera-tures down to -11o C.Bill Price from Vancouver writes in the magazineof the gesneriad society, ‘Chirita brassicoides is isnative to SW Guangxi province (Longzhou Xian)in southwestern China and that it grows amongrocks on limestone hills. The climate of the wholeprovince was stated to be"dry mild winters andlong hot humid summers".

Oresitropherurirfraga a

member ofthe saxifragefamily whichgrows in ra-vines, cliffs,rock crevic-es; from 600-2100 m in

Hebei,W Liaoning,

E Shanxi.Provinces of

China

Edinburgh show always has a good numberof Primulas, perhaps not as many as Hex-ham but there are always interesting ones.The first two pics here show the 3 pan class..First prize at the far left went to Sam Suther-land, withP.allionii Ken’sSeedling and apink seedlingfrom Aire Mist.2nd to Stellaand DavidRankin with P.Harry Jans atback and below,and P. pubes-cens ‘LilacFairy’ in front.

On the left is a picture of Harry Jans

Primula limbataP. x Johanna

Primula denticulata

Primula irregularis Primula x Linda Pope

Dionysia ‘Tess’ shown by John Lee, D. ‘Andreas’ from Bill Robinson and D. zagrica from Alan Newton.These jewels from hot dry, countries like Afghanistan and such places are beautiful to look at. Just howdifficult must it be to keep them alive and fungus free when growing them in the west of Scotland.

Anemone nemerosa ‘Vestal’ a double form of Anemone nemerosa

Helleborus ‘Ivory Princess’

Helleborus ‘Mary Johnston’

The sun shines on the righteous!

SRGCFolk

Best plant from a new exhibitor was IanPryde’s Narcissus rupicola. LeftThe Kilbryde Cup for the best arrangementof Flowers went to Moira Peter RightBest Plant in Section II was Pulsatilla vul-garis from Ewan and Jeanne Mason Below

And finally once again I am sorry if your plant is not here. I probably messed up the picture!

Mike Hicks won theSRGC Bronze Medal formost Pints in Section II.Here are his Primula darialica and Tulipa humilis which were part of a very good 6 pan entry

Tom Green’s wonderfulTownsendia rothrockii

Their own HybridNar. ‘Ballet Girl’ wasa big hit for Mgt &

Henry Taylor

Peter Semple’sRh. Lucy Lou

Bob Meaden with hisfabulous

Pleione Shantung

Sandy Leven

Section II