Description
(syn Sanguinaria canadensis Plena, Sanguinaria canadense Plena)
Finger-fat, bright red rhizomes (which bleed if cut) make fat waxy shoots from March. These unfold, in the earliest days of spring to blue-green leaves around double, white pom-poms. These are rounded and comprise perhaps 60 petals, as all of the fertile parts of the flowers have been transformed to petals also. They are perfect in balance and structure and are long lasting, compared to the single form that soon drops its few petals. In time makes a clump which is a highlight of the spring garden.
A winner of every plant award that there is. This should be in every garden that has a humus-rich spot, with a little dappled shade.
Some very detailed research by H. Lincoln Foster (Connecticut Plantsman, 3;(5), (1975)) indicates that Multiplex was originally discovered by Mr. Guido von Webern as a solitary plant growing in a clump on single-flowered specimens on his newly purchased property in Dayton, Ohio (a seven acre tract of land at the corner of North Main Street and Turner Road in Dayton, some 4 miles N of the city centre), which he bought in 1916, though the plant was discovered in the spring of 1917. It was formally described in 1923 as Multiplex and in the meantime it was also shared with the Arnold Arboretum and at least two of his friends. By one of these routes it entered more widespread cultivation. The original clump (for this is what it became in time) is said to have died out in 1966. Today it appears that the land has been developed.
