Thursday 21 April 2016

Plant of the Month : Dicentra






Dicentra spectabilis, in white or pink, flowers this month until the end of May. In Germany the plant is called "Tränendes Herz" (the translation would be: "weeping heart" or "dripping heart"), its English name is: "bleeding heart". It is an old cottage garden plant, a bit out of fashion now, which may be due to its renaming to the unpronouncable "Lamprocapnos spectabilis".  When I showed this plant to my young daughter, years ago, when she was about 4 years old, she misunderstood and her face lit up: "Oh - träumende Herzchen - dreaming little hearts!". 
Whether dripping or dreaming - these plants  have a fine delicate beauty, not only in their flowers but in their finely dissected leaves as well. Their season is short-lived: after flowering in April and May, they will withdraw for a long rest of nine months underground, to reappear the following spring. 





This is the pretty blue-grey leaved variety Dicentra eximia "Stuart Boothman": 







A climbing version is Dicentra scandens with tiny unobtrusive yellow flowers, no great decorative garden merit except for the plant collector as an unusual and rare rather sensitive plant. Its fine threads and delicate leaves are easily torn and overlooked when they come out of their winter rest to start climbing. It flowers a little later, in June. 




Here it grows through my rose Ghislaine de Feligonde. 




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