Description
This is the plant usually encountered as E. hendersonii in horticulture and it seems to be the dominant form. It was originally raised from wild collected seed, many years ago. The blooms in this stock are typical for E. hendersonii. with purple and white reflexed flowers, borne several to a stem and each bearing a striking blackcurrant purple blotch in the throat. The flowers are borne over nicely silver-marked, dark green foliage.
Close examination has shown that it has a trace of yellow in the throat around the purple centre and also some very faint rust-red marks under the purple marks. These markings are not at all obvious and are certainly not dominant in the flower. I suspect that most growers would not even notice their presence or be aware of their significance, as I wasn’t. The purple throat zone, usually thought of as a solid ring is also a little more broken up into a series of connected and overlaid zig-zags. In fact these subtle markings could betray some hybrid blood in the makeup of this plant. It becomes more obvious when second generation plants are raised from seed of this “E. hendersonii of horticulture”, since among the mix of mostly typical forms, a few revert back to pale flowers but with stronger throat markings. We think the original plant has some previously unsuspected traces of another species, probably E. oregonum, in its make-up.
It may not make any difference to you, this is still the E. hendersonii of horticulture which you might see elsewhere (also without the word “hort.” or the long explanation) and it has been doing the rounds for at least 3 decades, undetected! In its favour it presents as a lovely, vigorous form of hendersonii which makes lovely strong growth and which clumps nicely in time. So it’s an exciting new plant, but also an old one too but one very well-suited to garden use where it flowers and increases nicely.
