Description
The production of yellow flowered Hepatica has long been a holy grail of Japanese Hepatica breeders. It is amazing that they have even evolved as the colour is not found in the genus, which is normally white, pink, purple or blue. The first breaks towards the yellow colour appeared some years ago and since then, by selection, chance wild finds and continued breeding, yellow and yellow-inclined strains have been evolved. There are some good, bright-yellow clones available at astronomically high prices but by and large, the yellows are best treated as plants still in development and evolution. There are some very good seedlings and seedling strains about at attainable prices.
It is vital when cultivating the yellows that you understand a couple of points.
Firstly the various forms of Hepatica japonica Yellow are not an intense yellow. They are nice but even the darkest are rarely more than lemon yellow. The deep, buttercup-yellow flowers that you may see illustrated on the internet are, 99% of the time, a fiction. They are the product of photo-manipulation, not of breeding. There are some very good yellows about, but you will probably not see them on sale unless you are prepared to part with over £1,500 and know the right person to get even one.
Secondly, the yellow in yellow Hepatica is unstable in light and warmth. If the buds develop in the cold and open in near darkness then they can be a true yellow. The deepest coloured plant in our pictures was treated just this way, the other pictures are all of the same plants at different ages and some were warmed up and you can see the resultant cream colour. Regardless of their intensity on opening, as the flowers get older and light affects the pigments, so they will fade. But bring into bloom very cool (and slowly) and in the dark, and once they are up, they will be yellow. This is the standard technique used by Japanese growers, not some trick or anything that we have discovered.
Even the very best (and very expensive) selected yellow forms will flower cream or white, if handled inappropriately. It is just the way of the plants, but please don’t grow them if you cannot understand these points. The resulting creamy colour is still very distinct from the pure whites found in other forms and there are red anthers surrounding a green central button in most, which gives a very distinctive flower again unlike anything found in the other colour strains.
We offer selected , flowered plants culled from seedlings of one of the very best yellow forms. The plants are selected in flower in their second year of flowering and all have been seen in flower and all are yellow. The breeder discards the poor ones, retains the very very best for his own breeding (see above and see the note about prices), the rest are offered as selected seedlings of very high quality. I repeat, they have all been seen in flower, none are poor, all are yellow and will show a their correct colour if handled properly by the grower. However, try to force them in any way, heat them up too soon or too quickly, grow them in the light or deviate from the suggestions made above about temperature and darkness and they will just not give their best. This is down to the grower and not to the plants.
First introduced to our lists November 2016.
