LILIES - RHS Lily Group
LILIES - RHS Lily Group
LILIES - RHS Lily Group
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
80<br />
Erythronium<br />
In April 2007 the <strong>Lily</strong> <strong>Group</strong> had an erythronium week-end, visiting<br />
both Greencombe in Somerset and Knightshayes Court in Devon. Here,<br />
Brian Mathew records some random notes on a fascinating genus.<br />
HE <strong>RHS</strong> ACCOLADE OF AGM (Award of Garden Merit) is a useful contribution<br />
Ttowards<br />
the assessment of a plant’s value as a ‘good garden plant’. Of<br />
course there are drawbacks as with any such scheme, the main one being the<br />
variability of local conditions. While an AGM plant should be known to thrive<br />
in most regions of the country there may well be places where it will languish<br />
due to adverse climatic or soil conditions. A few years ago there was a trial of<br />
Erythronium at Wisley, a worthy attempt to assess which were the outstanding<br />
ones from a garden point of view. Taking only aesthetics into account one would<br />
probably state that all species are beautiful, although one might hold back in the<br />
case of the very rare but minute E. propullans or the prolifically increasing but<br />
shy-flowering E. americanum (nice leaves, though!). Others, notably the higher<br />
altitude western North American species, are tricky to cultivate in many parts of