Every five or ten years the horticultural world goes through a vogue for patterned leaves.\u00a0 Everything old is new again as gardeners snap up some of the flashier hostas, variegated weigelas, Japanese painted ferns and all manner of plants with splotched, splashed and marbled leaves.\u00a0 Breeders pump out even more of them to meet the new demand.\u00a0 Our gardens are often the better for these excursions into foliar excitement\u2014as long as gardeners remember that a little bit of pattern goes a long way in the landscape.<\/p>\n
Early spring flowering pulmonaria or lungwort had a moment in the fashion spotlight a few years ago and seems to be on the verge of a comeback.\u00a0 That encore will be the latest in a long series of such repeat performances, because the eastern European native plants have been used for both medicinal and decorative purposes for centuries.<\/p>\n
The plants are small and low growing, with the majority topping out at less than 12 inches tall and just a bit wider.\u00a0 Soft, somewhat hairy leaves are often\u2014but not always–variegated in shades of pale green or silvery white.\u00a0 Markings can range from discrete freckles to larger blotches to almost total coverage of each leaf.\u00a0 Because pulmonaria thrive in shady situations, the variegation adds light to the green planting scheme.<\/p>\n
Pulmonaria has at least 12 common names, including lungwort, Joseph and Mary, oak lungs, and Bethlehem sage.\u00a0 Many of them hearken back to the Latin name, which is derived from the same root that gives us the word \u201cpulmonary\u201d.\u00a0 The sands of time have long since obliterated the identity of the person who first noted a resemblance between the spotted, vaguely heart-shaped leaves and human lungs.\u00a0 That resemblance was a bit of a stretch, but it worked nicely with the \u201cdoctrine of signatures\u201d, an ancient idea that dictated the medicinal application of a particular plant based on its resemblance to a specific part or parts of the body.<\/p>\n
Therefore, pulmonaria was used in concoctions to treat chest congestion, coughs and other pulmonary ailments.\u00a0 Externally, it was sometimes also made into in poultices to sooth irritating conditions like eczema.<\/p>\n
In the garden, pulmonaria soothes the longings of those anxious for color in shaded corners.\u00a0 As a member of the borage or Boraginaceae family, pulmonaria is hard-wired to bear blue flowers, but in many varieties those blue blooms come with something extra.\u00a0 The five-petaled trumpets appear darker or lighter pink when they open, eventually aging to blue or blue purple.\u00a0 A mature plant might have flowers of both colors at the same time, adding to the showy effect.\u00a0 A few varieties, like the time-honored \u2018Sissinghurst White\u2019 skip the color-changing routine and stick to an array of pristine white trumpets.<\/p>\n
Pulmonaria has been extensively hybridized.\u00a0 The American breeder, Terra Nova Nurseries, lists 37 varieties among its archived and current offerings.\u00a0 British horticultural writer John Hoyland, expounding on pulmonaria virtues in The Telegraph, <\/em>said, \u201c…there are far too many named cultivars, often with little to tell them apart.\u201d\u00a0 Fortunately for the average American garden, only a few hybrids and varieties are widely available in nurseries.<\/p>\n Leaf shape and appearance are dependent on the parent species.\u00a0 Popular parents include Pulmonaria longifolia, which boasts longer, narrower leaves than other lungworts.\u00a0 The longtime favorite, \u2018Bertram Anderson\u2019, with long, lightly spotted leaves and vivid blue blooms, is a cultivated variety of the longifolia species.\u00a0 Another garden stalwart, \u2018Mrs. Moon\u2019 is a cultivar of the often-used Pulmonaria saacharata, featuring plumper heart-shaped leaves, also adorned with pale green spots.\u00a0 A third popular parent pulmonaria is Pulmonaria angustifolia, which boasts unadorned green foliage that is fatter than that of longifolia and slimmer than saacharata.\u00a0 All three species bear similar flowers, some a brighter blue or a pinker pink, but all trumpet-shaped.<\/p>\n The flowers are beautiful, but the best thing about pulmonaria is that the leaves last, sometimes through winter.\u00a0 Happy plants reproduce readily and after a few years you will have established clumps that can be divided, plus baby pulmonaria to scatter around at will.\u00a0 All you have to provide is a shady spot with consistently moist soil.\u00a0 The sturdy little plants work nicely under trees, in shaded borders or containers, or in shaded corners of herb gardens.<\/p>\n Better nurseries and garden centers will stock pulmonaria during the growing season, but for a good selection, try Digging Dog Nursery, 31101 Middle Ridge Road, Albion, CA 95410; (707) 937-1130; https:\/\/diggingdog.com<\/a>. Free print catalog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every five or ten years the horticultural world goes through a vogue for patterned leaves.\u00a0 Everything old is new again as gardeners snap up some of the flashier hostas, variegated weigelas, Japanese painted ferns and all manner of plants with splotched, splashed and marbled leaves.\u00a0 Breeders pump out even more of them to meet 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":[6,2,3,5],"tags":[1609,1117,1361,222,1608,737,1607,126,1610,966],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-bethlehem-sage","tag-early-spring-flowers","tag-foliage-plants","tag-herbs","tag-lungwort","tag-perennials","tag-pulmonaria","tag-shade-plants","tag-spottled-leaves","tag-variegated-leaves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","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=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2088,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions\/2088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}