Update for the B. forrestii and B. macrostachya Page

1^st May 2025

I've made some changes to the page dedicated to B. forrestii and B. macrostachya.

I have been looking at the online herbarium specimens, and also tracking back to the journals where the species (and the synonymous species) were first published - sometimes these are still written in Latin! The taxonomy is rather complex and ambiguous, so I have added some thoughts on the subject.

The flower shown is from a B. macrostachya seedling I raised a while back. The photo was taken in August of last year, as it's a summer flowering type. This one has inherited the brown tomentum on the stems and undersides of the leaves from its seed parent. Although the inflorescence is quite small, it's an unusual colour - a pale bluish-lilac. The plant looks to be very hardy, so I'll probably be keeping it. Hopefully, the flower panicles will get larger once it's planted out.

A B. macrostachya seedling flowering last summer
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A 'Santana' Sport with
Lime-green Foliage

3^rd April 2025

'Santana' is a variegated cultivar; the leaves have green centres with wide yellow margins. It's a sport of 'Royal Red' and has the same deep maroon flowers. My plant is now quite old and behaves erratically: the variegation pattern is quite variable and has a habit of throwing sports. On the plus side, it never reverts to the normal dark green foliage of 'Royal Red'.

I've tried to propagate some of these sports. Several times I've found shoots with all yellow foliage and successfully struck cuttings. But they turned out to be very weak plants and never grew well enough to be worthwhile. They all succumbed to winter, even when kept under cover. This time I found a shoot that was more of a lime-green colour and managed to strike a couple of cuttings. They've survived and are already growing away. When they're bigger I'll plant one outside to test the hardiness.

A similar plant is 'Leela Kapila', which I think must also be a sport of 'Santana' with predominantly yellow leaves. I had this a few years ago but couldn't keep it alive. At the Longstock national collection it remained a very small plant, only a metre tall and much less vigorous than 'Santana', a consequence of the reduced photosynthetic capacity of the yellow leaves.

'Moonshine' is another yellow-leaved cultivar, although that one is perfectly robust and vigorous. It's certainly one worth seeking out if foliage is your thing. I hoping my lime-green sport of 'Santana' will also prove robust as such bright foliage adds year-round interest.