{"id":165,"date":"2009-08-28T10:36:33","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T18:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=165"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"verbascum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/verbascum\/","title":{"rendered":"Verbascum"},"content":{"rendered":"

VERBASCUM
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>I am now the proud owner of a Verbascum phoenicium or purple mullein.\u00a0 It’s quite a statuesque individual, with basal clusters of eight inch-long leaves that look like lettuce or spinach.\u00a0 The flower stalk is about three feet tall and completely covered with tiny white flowers whose petals shade to purple at the center. \u00a0“Phoenicium”\u009d 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Many species reach three or four feet in height.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The flannel part comes from the big, soft gray-green leaves that form a large rosette at the plant’s base.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Up close, the individual flowers are quite pretty, but I have always thought that naturalized Verbascum thapsus was very rough and common looking.\u00a0 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”\u009d mullein, Verbascum blatteria.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All mulleins are foreign to these shores.\u00a0 Both the common and the moth varieties hail from southern Europe and Asia.\u00a0 Arriving in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, they emulated the human settlers and started colonizing the countryside immediately and successfully.\u00a0 Both types grow in sunny spots, often on the edges of farm fields.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The blossoms, especially on the white-flowered varieties, look a little like small moths in flight, hence the common name.\u00a0 Moth mulleins make a good subject for botanical illustration, but do not last well in a vase.\u00a0 Left to their own devices, they will self-seed and form a lovely colony that draws butterflies and other pollinating insects.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My new Verbascum phoenicium is closely related to a number of verbascums that have grown popular in the last decade.\u00a0 Hybridizers, eager for new plants, especially for informal, cottage-type gardens, have latched onto these tough stalwarts.\u00a0 The breeders’ efforts have resulted in new phoenicium hybrids like ‘Flush of White’, with pure white flowers, and ‘Violette’, with purple blooms.\u00a0 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.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The first time I tried verbascum in my garden, I failed, probably because of less than perfect drainage.\u00a0 Now that I have the new phoenicium, I have mended my ways.\u00a0 The plant is residing in a raised bed, with all the drainage in the world and lots of sunshine to boot.\u00a0 I hope that it will consider this celebrity treatment an invitation to reappear next year.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can find verbascum at many catalog and online vendors and sometimes in nurseries, especially in the spring.\u00a0 Online and catalog sources include: Bluestone Perennials, 7211 Middle Ridge Road, Madison, OH 44057, (800) 852-5243, <\/font><\/font>www.bluestoneperennials.com<\/font><\/a> (free catalog); or ForestFarm, 990 Tetherow Road, Williams, OR 97544, (541) 846-7269, <\/font>www.forestfarm.com<\/font><\/a> (catalog $5.00).\u00a0 To find an extremely comprehensive list of available varieties and suppliers, go to the University of Minnesota’s excellent resource, <\/font>http:\/\/plantinfo.umn.edu<\/font><\/a>.\u00a0 Enter the word “verbascum”\u009d in the search box, making sure to also click on “botanical name.”\u009d\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VERBASCUM \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am now the proud owner of a Verbascum phoenicium or purple mullein.\u00a0 It’s quite a statuesque individual, with basal clusters of eight inch-long leaves that look like lettuce or spinach.\u00a0 The flower stalk is about three feet tall and completely covered with tiny white flowers whose petals shade to purple at the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1620,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}