VERBASCUM
I am now the proud owner of a Verbascum phoenicium or purple mullein. It’s quite a statuesque individual, with basal clusters of eight inch-long leaves that look like lettuce or spinach. The flower stalk is about three feet tall and completely covered with tiny white flowers whose petals shade to purple at the center. “Phoenicium” alludes to the fact that the plant’s ancestors were Mediterranean natives, found in places like Phoenicia, the ancient seagoing state that held sway in what is now coastal Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Palestine. My daughter, who just got back from Greece, swears that she saw some of the verbascum’s wild relatives during her recent foreign study trip. I am not nearly as well-traveled as my child, but I have also seen some wild verbascum–on the edges of farmers’ fields in central New York.
Verbascums in general are tall, handsome and often biennial–developing a rosette of leaves in the first year of growth; then producing flowers in the second year, before setting seed and dying. Many species reach three or four feet in height. If you have ever been out in the country and noticed a tall plant that looks like a giant yellow candle, it was probably Verbascum thapsus, the common verbascum, sometimes also known as flannel or velvet plant. The flannel part comes from the big, soft gray-green leaves that form a large rosette at the plant’s base. The tightly packed flower stalk, bearing hundreds of small yellow blooms, is bright enough to catch your eye, even if you are driving by in a fast-moving car. Up close, the individual flowers are quite pretty, but I have always thought that naturalized Verbascum thapsus was very rough and common looking. It’s possible that I would love the common mullein more if I studied it more closely, but right now I prefer its more graceful relative, the “moth” mullein, Verbascum blatteria.
All mulleins are foreign to these shores. Both the common and the moth varieties hail from southern Europe and Asia. Arriving in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, they emulated the human settlers and started colonizing the countryside immediately and successfully. Both types grow in sunny spots, often on the edges of farm fields.
Moth mullein also has the characteristic rosette of leaves at its base, but the slender, two to five-foot stems bear loose clusters of white or yellow flowers near the tops. The blossoms, especially on the white-flowered varieties, look a little like small moths in flight, hence the common name. Moth mulleins make a good subject for botanical illustration, but do not last well in a vase. Left to their own devices, they will self-seed and form a lovely colony that draws butterflies and other pollinating insects.
My new Verbascum phoenicium is closely related to a number of verbascums that have grown popular in the last decade. Hybridizers, eager for new plants, especially for informal, cottage-type gardens, have latched onto these tough stalwarts. The breeders’ efforts have resulted in new phoenicium hybrids like ‘Flush of White’, with pure white flowers, and ‘Violette’, with purple blooms. Other popular verbascum hybrids include beautiful plants like ‘Honey Dijon’ and ‘Southern Charm’, both with peachy-golden-lavender flowers that bloom in spring and sometimes again in fall.
One of the advantages of many of the new hybrids is that they don’t self-seed, which means there are fewer unwanted seedlings to grub out. Cottage gardeners, on the other hand, may want to stick with older varieties or species plants because the self-sowing trait makes biennials or short-lived perennials seem almost perennial as new generations of seedlings sprout up every year.
The first time I tried verbascum in my garden, I failed, probably because of less than perfect drainage. Now that I have the new phoenicium, I have mended my ways. The plant is residing in a raised bed, with all the drainage in the world and lots of sunshine to boot. I hope that it will consider this celebrity treatment an invitation to reappear next year.
You can find verbascum at many catalog and online vendors and sometimes in nurseries, especially in the spring. Online and catalog sources include: Bluestone Perennials, 7211 Middle Ridge Road, Madison, OH 44057, (800) 852-5243, www.bluestoneperennials.com (free catalog); or ForestFarm, 990 Tetherow Road, Williams, OR 97544, (541) 846-7269, www.forestfarm.com (catalog $5.00). To find an extremely comprehensive list of available varieties and suppliers, go to the University of Minnesota’s excellent resource, http://plantinfo.umn.edu. Enter the word “verbascum” in the search box, making sure to also click on “botanical name.”