Swapping Huckleberries
Himalayan Honeysuckle ( Vaccinium glauco album) Himalayan Honeysuckle ( Vaccinium glauco album) has been an attractive feature along our north-facing foundation since I planted it in 2016. You will have to take my word for it since I cannot locate a photo although I know one exists somewhere in the realm of the Internet or floating on a cloud somewhere. I did locate a photo of how it looked when it was first planted - It took a few years to fill out but it did so nicely to an attractive mound about 2 feet high by 3 feet wide. Last year, it started to look bad. I cut it back but it had not improved and this is how it looked a few weeks ago - I decided to rip it out and plant another huckleberry - this time Vaccinium ovatum , more commonly known as the "Evergreen Huckleberry". This is a plant that I've wanted for ages and kept putting off getting one because I could not find a good place for it. By most accounts, this is an amazing plant, a native one and excellent for
That is a doozy. It makes me wonder how old it is.??? I wonder if it was planted when t he house was built??
ReplyDeleteThat is huge. There are some freakishly large camellias in a garden I started working in last fall. Totally unexpected in WNC. I am pretty certain they are from the first release of the cold hardy camellia breeding program from the National Arboretum. Not only are they huge, they make fruit, set viable seed and have been self sowing in the garden.
ReplyDeleteIt's a beautiful monster!
ReplyDeleteIncredible! (And a double-wow for Christoper C's comment. I'd like to see that. I have a couple of small camellias that were (of course) planted way too close to the house by the original builder (I presume). The proximity to the porch does help to protect them from Tennessee cold snaps and may have kept them alive, but your photo is a reminder of the folly of planting a tree-size plant just a few inches from a foundation!!
ReplyDeleteI just bought a house in Crescent City, Ca, and have a 35-40 foot Camillia tree in the back yard. It was such a shock when the previously unidentified tree set thousands of buds. Last week I noticed a few 2 1/2 inch pink flowers and figured out what it was. Trunk is big enough that two people needed to reach around it. I read about another huge one in Washington state on a blog site called City data. Your tree and the one from Wa. all have pink flowers. I wonder if this wasn't some cultivar that came out in the 50's and fell by the wayside either because of it's size, which is not really what most buyers would expect, or just that it's flowers were outdone by a newer variety. Great cultivars disappear all the time due to churning created by trying to keep up with bigger flowers, increased cold or disease tolerance, and better varieties. I suspect this was left behind due to it's size, and most of them have been long since cut down when they outgrew their position near the front door. I intend to grow cuttings once I am finally retired in a few months, and have heat and flooring so I can finally move in. If anyone is passionate about this and wants a cutting, it should be about 2 years, and you can file my email away and contact me in a year and a half. cecilyann2@yahoo.com.
ReplyDelete