Plant craziness has attacked me again. As always, it came on suddenly, as I sat down after a long day’s work and paged through one of my favorite English gardening magazines. These publications are full of what my husband called “plant pornography”—gorgeous photos of alluring specimens, dripping with dew and ready to jump right off the page. The tight close-ups grab your eyes and don’t let go. By the time you finally get the strength to turn the page, you are crazed with desire for the rose or delphinium or clematis. Distance and price are immaterial. The only thing that matters is getting to the computer to find the closest vendor.
This time my plant crush is Geranium asphodeloides, or the asphodel geranium, a hardy geranium with five elongated pinkish petals veined in purple. Those petals were spread over a full page of the magazine and served as introduction to an article on an English geranium breeder. The breeder is interesting, but Geranium asphodeloides is stunning.
The geranium isn’t even listed in my ancient edition of the gardener’s bible, Hortus Third. I turned to the internet and found it at geraniaceae.com, a plant vendor specializing in the genus. The site also specializes in good plant descriptions and I found that my latest love hails from “southern Europe and Sicily”. It is a low grower, rising 12 to 18 inches high, and 15 to 24 inches wide. The site does not show its “clumps of mid-green, shallowly rounded leaves”, but I can imagine them. Best of all, the plant is relatively cheap and reputedly seeds easily, meaning that if I buy one or two, I will have many more within a few years.
Geranium asphodeloides probably got its name from the flowers’ resemblance to those of plants of the Asphodelus genus. The elongated petals are asphodel-like
I have a well-documented soft spot for hardy geraniums, those ground-covering relatives of the common window box geranium, which is known to the horticulturally-inclined as Pelargonium x hortorum. Hardy geraniums come in shades ranging from purest white to darkest maroon, with lots of pinks, roses and purples in between. Some of them have attractive veination, like the asphodel geranium.
Most hardy geranium flowers bear five petals apiece, except for the double varieties that sport a larger petal count and a fluffier appearance. Depending on species and variety, they grow in sun or light shade in all kinds of soil. The leaves are generally rounded or palmate and often deeply dissected. Sometimes, as with varieties of Geranium phaeum, the leaves are variegated with dark maroon splotches.
Vanessa Cook, the English breeder and vendor profiled in the article, stocks about 90 different varieties of hardy geraniums, but that is only a fraction of the total number of species and varieties growing wild and in gardens around the world. Most grow fairly low and make excellent ground covers, rock garden specimens and border fillers. Some bloom profusely in the spring, but others, like the celebrated blue-flowered ‘Rozanne’, will rebloom later in the season. The leaves are generally attractive throughout the season. You can grow hardy geraniums in pots and sometimes under trees. Once established, most take care of themselves.
Geranium asphodeloides is my latest plant crush, but I have gone geranium crazy before. The last time, the object of my desire was Geranium renardii or Renard’s geranium. It has beautiful crimped leaves and white petals veined in purple. My husband and I went on a plant adventure trip to Connecticut to buy two specimens. He got a rum raisin ice cream cone for his trouble and I got two great geraniums for my garden. Not only did no one else in town have them, but probably only a few gardeners in my state could boast of growing Geranium renardii.
This time I don’t have to go to Connecticut. All I have to do is summon geraniaceae.com on my computer, order a few and wait impatiently for the plant shipping season to commence.
I will appreciate Geranium asphodeloides as long as I grow it, but my initial ardor will eventually soften to abiding admiration. It may not even take that long. After all, the third page of the article on geraniums features a glorious white Geranium phaeum ‘Stillingfleet Ghost’. I may have to have that one too.