Abelia grandiflora keeps the bees going

 


Abelia grandiflora grows into a large evergreen shrub with attractive arching branches bearing small shiny dark green leaves, and from summer till early winter it's covered with flowers.
It's a bit big for my narrow garden, and I had it severely trimmed in July.  It looked dead for a while but recovered.  The sprays of small pink flowers and bracts started to appear in late summer and are still going strong in mid November.  It's a useful feeding station for bees when most other flowers have finished.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some useful self-seeders.

Image
Cerinthe purpurascens.   A marvellous self-seeder with flowers beloved of bees.  It's common name is Honeywort.  It's an annual which will germinate at all times of year except the depths of winter.  It is one of the earliest plants to flower in spring.  The seeds are fairly large and black, like small pieces of gravel.  They just drop from the unusual dark purple flowers when the flowers go over. Erodium pelargonifolium.   A low growing plant with leaves like pelargoniums (commonly known as geraniums) hence it's name.  The Erodium family are commonly known as storksbills.  This name comes from the pointed shape of the seed heads.  When the seeds are ripe they are pinged from the base of the pod as it dries out - hence it spreads so well. Geranium Bill Wallis - the purple flowers in the photo. It was slow to establish in my garden but this year it's everywhere.  Botanically, Geraniums are quite close to Erodiums and ping their seeds out in the same way.  Bill Wallis is
Read more

Autumn Cyclamen

Image
  When the lovely pink flowers of Cyclamen hederafolium appear it's near the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.  As the flowers fade the leaves appear.  They are ivy-shaped, from which the Latin word 'hederafolium' comes:  Hedera = ivy and folium = leaf.  They have beautiful silvery markings on them which vary from plant to plant.  They provide interesting ground cover throughout autumn and winter.  In spring the leaves die back and the corm beneath the soil lies dormant until the following autumn.   I was given a few corms by my father who was fond of cyclamen.  Now they are all over my garden.  The seeds, found in round cases at the end of a coiled stem, are spread by ants who are attracted by their sweet sticky covering and carry them away.   Watch out for Cyclamen coum , the late winter/early spring flowering variety!
Read more

Daphnes

Image
 It's a pity that scent can't be captured online because it's a stunning feature of most Daphnes.  The first one I encountered was at what is now the Sir Harold Hillier Garden near Romsey on an EHS trip!  Our guide told  that the scent of Daphne bholua  'Jacqueline Postill' would blow our socks off and so it did.  Here's my mine,  in full flower after first coming into flower in December. A lower growing, bushy variety in my front garden, is Daphne odora aureomarginata.    It has spread a lot, and though the books say they shouldn't be pruned, it'll have to be as it's overgrowing other plants.  When it was new and small it was tramped on by builders who stuck together with blue plastic tape, so hopefully it'll survive another chop. Not all Daphnes have a strong scent.  Daphne laureola forms a low growing rounded bush with green lightly scented flowers.  It is a woodland plant, growing wild in Southern England and flowering through the winter.  I
Read more