Description
(formerly offered by us as ‘Mizar‘)
This is a lovely, clonal form, distinct from both multiplex and the ordinary single garden forms. We have a small stock only, so it is only every few years (at most) that we can offer a few.
It is notably early-flowering, appearing here at least 3 weeks earlier than multiplex. It bears starry flowers which are semi-double, with some 15-18 petals when established (22 are recorded). This is more than the single but not a full pom-pom like multiplex. The first flowers, while it is establishing and the smaller flowers in a clump will have 6-8 petals, this is normal, the doubling only appears with vigour and establishment. Even in an established clump, the small rhizomes made at the edge of the clump, if they flower, may have fewer petals in their flowers until they are larger. Please dont message to tell us we have sent the wrong thing, we haven’t, the plant just needs time and patience.
I have seen this called “early form” but that epithet hardly does it justice. In most of the UK, you can expect to see flowers around the end of February. In view of the fact that it was early flowering and semi-double, yet starry flower we christened it ‘Mizar‘, as this was an early double star.
Its origins are hazy. It came to us via a chain of reliable people with a note that it was ‘collected in Alaska’. Sanguinaria does not grow west of the Rockies and thus Alaska is clearly an error. We suspect it may have started as “from Alaska” as our original plants are traceable as far back Jim Fox who was born and raised in Alaska. I was not able to verify all of this with Jim originally and thus we introduced this to our lists in 2013 under the name ‘Mizar‘ (surely this has already become one of the most frequently mis-spelled, short words, in the plant world)! This clone had in fact already been named and we were delighted to be contacted by Jim Fox who has been very helpful and informative in elucidating the history of the plant and the prior name, which we are now able to share below.
Jim got the plant from Jerry “John” Flintoff himself. The plant was originally named for John in the early 1990s by Kelly Dodson of Reflective Gardens Nursery of Poulsbo, in Washington State, USA. It was first published with a description in RGN’s 1999 catalogue, pg. 23. Kelly in turn got the plant from a wildflower nursery, in Oregon, in the 1980s. At that time Kelly wrote: “Out of the several typical Sanguinaria in the batch was this one which was smaller flowered and tighter growing and with flowers having over 20 petals. Eventually it penetrated the dim recesses that this was different and worthy of a name. I would guess that there is a native population of this in TN which gets pillaged by the wildflower Visigoths and why similar semi-double clones show up – one as “Tennessee Form” which Darrell Probst offered a few years ago.”
So there we have it, from start to finish.
