Description
(formerly offered by us as “album“, until 2018)
Deep green, glossy leaves, marked with lighter veins around a pale central area. The leaves are held aloft from the elongated blooms.
The flowers are made up of very thick tissue and are turned back at the mouth to reveal a cream interior. The whole thing looks not unlike a radio telescope dish, although smaller.
An outstanding species, very distinctive and remarkably decorative in flower within a genus normally grown more for its foliage.
The colour of this species seems to be very variable. It ranges from a rarely-seen but remarkably bright pink-red (found in China) through pinks to red-rimmed white, pale green and an almost pure white form, which is found mainly in Japan. Our stock is from Japanese horticulture and is thought to have originated, many years ago, in either Kantou or Touhoku, in the northern part of the Honshu region. The normally red flowers have lost much of their pigment and are, instead, ivory white infused with the subtlest hint of blush-pink and with thin pink veins inside the flower and a deep red “eye” hidden inside, so that perhaps they are best not called album, which is what this originally came to us as. (Other much purer white clones do exist).
