In Northern Ireland there are very few nurseries that supply the sort of plants that I like to grow, so I either have to buy them when I'm away on holidays and smuggle them home (not really, there's free movement of plants within Europe) or rely on mail order.
Buying plants online is a great experience, there's a whole world of cool stuff available out there. The only down sides are that you can't see what you're buying before hand so you're relying on the honsty of the seller to provide good health plants.
It's also incredibly easy to get carried away and order more than you wallet or available garden space allows.
Last Autumn I received word that an exotic nursery were selling off many of their plants to concentrate on the seed selling side of the business. They were offloading their Canna tubers so I had to take a look.
It's almost impossible to find Cannas offered for sale that don't come pre-infected with various viruses, which will stunt the plants and quickly spread to your uninfected Canna plants through sap sucking insects such as aphids or propagation. Faced with the prospect of being able to buy plants that I may never see available again I went a bit mad and bought around seventeen or so different forms. Where they're going to go if they resprout in spring will lead to much head scratching.
A few years back I had a stunning Cyathea medullaris growing in a pot, this tree fern hails from the south-west Pacific with its range extending from Fiji to New Zealand, with most of the population there being found on North Island. It's known as Mamaku in the Maori language or the black tree fern in English due to its jet black stipes and trunk.
I love tree ferns, I mean seriously, they're one of my favourite types of plant. When I lost my grove of Dicksonia antartica to the epic winter I was a mess, ok, not really a complete mess but I was incredibly anxious while I waited for months to see if they would unfurl new croziers. So when they didn't I was mightily peeved for quite some time.
Cyathea medullaris is even less hardy and was of course wiped out that same bad winter. I've been hankering to replace it ever since, but they're rare as hen's teeth unless you're willing to pay a fortune for a trunked plant.
I finally managed to track one down from at this nursery in the Netherlands and couldn't resist ordering.
A few weeks ago this large box arrived after me tracking its progress online as it traveled across western Europe.
I'm sure you can imagine my excitement tearing into it!
But, I realised after cutting through the packaging tape that this was going to be a more delicate procedure that I was expecting, unless the kitchen was going to end up looking like the floor of a barn.
Then I extracted Yucca rostrata, looking very much like a small Cordyline australis, but eventually a stunning plant. I'd really like a few trunked plants but will make do with this baby in the mean time.
Finally I uncover the Cyathea medullaris. It's big, with a wide wingspan despite only just beginning to form a small trunk.
I'm impressed.
All three on the kitchen table, I'm a happy man.
A nice fat juicy crozier waiting for a bit of spring warmth before it unfurls.
Hopefully this one does better for me long term than the last, I will torture cosset it in a pot until it's to large to manhandle under cover for winter (an unheated greenhouse) so here's hoping for a nice run of mild winters so it can eventually reach gargantuan proportions.
The straw came in handy too, as you'll see in the next post.......
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