Buddleja nivea x
B. forrestii Hybrid

24th April 2024

It's been very wet winter and spring; some of my plants have really suffered from the wet and the waterlogging. There is more than the usual amount of dieback on several B. davidii cultivars and even a couple of losses. On the other hand, the winter weather has also been mild and some species like B. forrestii and B. macrostachya have thrived. These two species in particular do not like summer drought and seem to prefer moister soil.

Like many people, I'm also suffering an infestation of aphids on some Buddlejas kept under cover. I've caught ants spreading the aphids to new plants, so they're being deliberately farmed! Time for a spray made of horticultural soap and garlic: the soap to kill the aphids; the garlic to deter the ants. I'd never use an insecticide on a Buddleja as the residues would find their way into the nectar in the summer.

One plant that is looking particularly interesting at the moment is a B. nivea x B. forrestii (type: limitanea) hybrid I raised a few years back. Most B. nivea hybrids resemble the species and have a tendency to be tall and rangy, with long internodes. They also become rather woody low down with all the foliage towards the top. My hybrids of this type have usually proved too vigorous or too ugly to keep.

This one is more compact at about a metre and a half, and the internodes are short, which means the foliage is dense. The young leaves are quite furry and the stems have retained the snowy-white tomentum of the parent. The plant pictured is now five or six years old and still hasn't required significant pruning. It's yet to reach for the sky, so I'm reasonably confident it is, in fact, genuinely compact.

The appeal is as a foliage plant. The flowers are only a marginal improvement on the rather insignificant flowers of B. nivea, and are a pinky-mauve. Like the parent species, it flowers July to September.

I've not tested the viability of its seeds, although it does produce plenty of seed capsules and the flowers appear to shed pollen. Many of the B. nivea hybrids I've raised have proved to be fully fertile, although none of the seedlings have so far proved to have any merit as an ornamental. I do feel there is potential for further breeding to develop a hybrid with the interesting foliage of B. nivea, a good growth habit and showy flowers, and I'm hoping this plant may be a step in the right direction. Now, what to cross it with this summer?

This hybrid has an excellent growth habit
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And the internodes are short
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