DOUBLE BUMROSES

And the top of the world to you and yours!  Saint Pat's is past and spring is almost here.  Calloo callay!!

Now, then. . .where were we?  Oh yes!  

Why do plant breeders try so hard to turn natural beauty into abomination?  

 Primula vulgaris – a naturally occurring, pale form of our wild primrose, but not truly albino.  It seeds true and, though an aberration, is cherished in my micro-woodland garden.  (Click on pix for bigger view)

I have great respect for plant breeders – one or two of them are even good friends – and what they have achieved, over the last couple of centuries is, mighty impressive. We have a staggering excess of garden plant varieties. Too many?  Well, if 90% of all rose and hosta cultivars were eradicated tomorrow, there'd still be a gross surplus of both. But the surfeit of varieties results from competition coupled with a long breeding history. And anyway, it's better, don't you think, to have too many to choose from, rather than too few?

So, breeders have given – sorry, sold – us a huge and valuable legacy of superb garden plants. Frequently, a garden cultivar is more beautiful, more dependable, less variable and better behaved than its wild forebear. We have breeders to thank for that.

But breeders have also perpetrated genetic atrocities: petunias which look like black holes, in clammy sub-fusc foliage; evergreens such as Photinia davidiana 'Palette' whose young leaves resemble haemorrhagic vomit; or antirrhinums whose child-delighting, dragon-snapping flowers have been morphed into gaping, malformed foxgloves.

And primroses.
I believe these to be some of our loveliest wild spring flowers and although I collect interesting forms, there is nothing so beautiful as the original. In Britain, they are pale yellow; travel east and south, in Europe and western Asia, and lilac or pink forms are more frequent.

Perhaps that's why the name 'prima rosa' - first rose - was coined, presumably by the Romans. Whatever the origin, it is the earliness of this plant that helps with its charm, not to mention the pristine quality of the petals, subtle fragrance and the way the blooms sit so beautifully among the rugose foliage.

And then, at the February RHS Show, I was reminded of the abominations wished upon us by plant breeders.  Like the next picture. . .

BUMROSES.  I cannot bring myself to call these things 'primroses.'  There is nothing to commend them.  They are barely hardy, the flowers are grossly outsized, the colours of the pollen guides don't harmonise with the main petal colours, the growth is coarse, the flowers are badly presented and they die badly.  These are market stall horrors, unsuitable for gardens and unpleasant anywhere.

They seem to have gone as far as they can, with ugly paintbox colours, so now breeders appear to be taking a darker path. Polyanthus have turned up with flowers resembling dirty denim jeans. Theres a brutally ugly green-flowered thing called Primula 'Francesca' which, like Dante's Francesca da Rimini, should be blown away to hell in a whirlwind of souls.

And there are now mud coloured objects like the one below. (I couldn't be arsed to note down its varietal name.)

A dirty blue bumrose. If an admiral in full dress uniform had fallen overboard, drowned, and was then fished out of the sea three months later, his uniform would have looked more attractive than this plant.

ON A DIFFERENT TACK  . . .

At that same show, I was wryly amused by a trade stand, set up by a firm called Implementations, offering a range of expensive-looking tools which appeared to be made of copper. I learn that these are actually bronze and Implementations' website lists selling points as follows:

They're rust-free, hard wearing, soil doesn't stick to them.
Much like stainless steel, then – but here's their clincher: copper is known to deter slugs and snails.

That's true. Snails which crawl onto copper are said to be disturbed by an electrochemical reaction between the metal and their mucus.

So if you happen to discover that snails and slugs are eating your tool blades, switch immediately to copper. But remember, that scrap thieves are especially interested in copper and might nick your posh bronze fork and trowel set before you've had time to try it out. And it's a safe bet that the metal thieves will move significantly faster than the molluscs. 

Suitable for that bijou gardenette in Kensington - bronze tools, marketed by Implementations.

I'm not listening to anything.  
On a mad impulse, I decided to subscribe to Apple's iTunes Match and am in the middle of uploading my entire music library onto iCloud. It has taken about 48 hours of constant computer running, to upload nearly 8,000 'songs.'  Only 660 to go!

This day in 1986, 
when we ran a small nursery, I potted up 65 successfully rooted cuttings of Daphne blagayana, prepared our garden for opening and berated my then 12 year-old son for breaking a rake which, my diary wails, 'I've had for years and years!'  What was I, an octogenarian?  Can't remember the rake at all but can vaguely recall the son. (Only joking,)

This week's film was 
We Need to Talk About Kevin, about a nasty kid who does nasty things. It was compelling stuff, but when I viewed the interview extras, on the DVD, I realised that I had entirely the wrong take on the whole thing.

My interpretation was that the kid, if not born nasty, was pretty much a sociopath in the making, possibly because of the sterile lifestyle of wealthy western (must be careful not to say American) society, or maybe because some folk are simply born nasty.

But according to the star – the incomparable Tilda Swinton – and according to what I could hear, of director Lynne Ramsay's almost incoherent babble, Kevin was the way he was because of a bad mother who didn't bond with her baby.  I have to say, too, that the father is an absolute prat of the first order and the locals show up in pretty poor light, too.

I was so disturbed by my hopeless misinterpretation that I determined to break my current rule ( to avoid literature written post mid-Seventies, because most of it is so crappy) and have just started to read Lionel Shriver's original novel.  So far nothing to report, but I can see why she won the Orange.

'That's it from me,' as the weatherman used to say, 'bye bye for now!'