2016 – CHW
I have bust the camera so you will have to put up with poor pictures for a bit as the old model is rather inferior. On the day I saw the first single pink Camellia sasanqua out by the front door Karol photographed Camellia [Karol to add] full out in the greenhouse. I now need to see how this compares to other years as a date for the first camellia flower?

Hydrangea paniculata ‘Vanille Fraise’ has got much redder in the last 10 days.

Tilia henryana on the drive does have ‘bristle like’ teeth on the leaf edges but is nothing like as bristly as the Penvergate plant. No flowers here unlike Penvergate although there have been in past years. Hillier’s says T. henryana is very slow growing but this plant certainly is not. Is it wrongly named? I think not on past autumn flowering.

Cotoneaster ‘unknown’ above The Hovel has large, oval, orange fruits but not in profusion and only in the centre of the large bush. This proves it is not Cotoneaster microphyllus which has reddish pink fruits. Could it be Cotoneaster perpusillus, a Wilson introduction? Very few cotoneaster species have orange fruits. Perhaps these will turn from orange to red later? Or is it Cotoneaster wardii or Cotoneaster sternianus? Perhaps just the very common Cotoneaster conspicuus (red berries) introduced by Kingdom Ward in 1925. Its size, age and prime location suggest a 100 year old Wilson or Forrest introduction and it does not really fit with the plants we sell as C. conspicuus in the nursery today. Please would someone put this plant out of its misery with a correct identification? There are more, better, pictures if you search the blog.

2015 – CHW
At last Hoheria sextylosa ‘Pendula’ is out after weeks of waiting impatiently. A wonderful drooping canopy of flowers so late in the season. Hillier’s says mid to late summer flowering!

Nearby is Hoheria sextylosa with a much more erect habit. The flowers are larger on the newer growth where a branch got hit by a tree and has then reshot than on the top of the tree.

Hoheria populnea ‘Variegata’ and ‘Alba Variegata’ which grow nearby (yellow and white edging to the leaves) have had no flowers at all this year. Both are very tender and defoliate a bit in the slightest frost despite being very well sheltered and mollycoddled.

Around the corner and, to my amazement, Eucryphia moorei is full out. I normally think of this as the first eucryphia to flower and I have certainly seen it out in May at Burncoose. Here it is positively the last. Beyond it there are just a few flowers left on Eucryphia ‘Nymansay’. Could it be that this species flowers twice a year or are there different forms which flower at different times. The original Eucryphia moorei below Slip Rail blew over in the 1990 hurricane but has reshot from the base while the plant featured here was grown at Burncoose and planted about 1995.