{"id":2199,"date":"2017-09-04T05:01:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T13:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2199"},"modified":"2017-09-04T05:01:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-04T13:01:47","slug":"bluebeard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/bluebeard\/","title":{"rendered":"Bluebeard"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Large<\/a>
Large amounts of blue “mist” swirl around bluebeard shrubs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An old French fairy tale recounts the heinous exploits of Blue Beard, a nobleman with an imposing castle and a penchant for murdering his wives.\u00a0 Outwitted by his final wife and dispatched by members of her family, Blue Beard lived and died by the sword.\u00a0 Clearly, they don\u2019t make fairy tales like they used to.<\/p>\n

Blue Beard\u2019s namesake plant, known in Latin as Caryopteris, has no violent tendencies.\u00a0 It is a small, graceful, deciduous shrub with \u201cbeards\u201d that are actually terminal clusters of tiny, intensely blue or blue-purple flowers.\u00a0 As befits such a beautiful plant, it has other, more benign nicknames, including \u201cblue mist shrub\u201d and \u201cblue spirea\u201d.\u00a0 It offers up those blue flowers at the end of summer, right alongside roses-of-Sharon and butterfly bushes in their second or third flush of bloom.\u00a0 No matter what you call it, bluebeard is an extremely useful addition to small or large gardens or container planting schemes.\u00a0 It is well mannered enough for a mixed annual\/perennial\/shrub border, but attractive enough to stand on its own during the growing season.<\/p>\n

The ancestors of today\u2019s commercial, mostly hybrid caryopteris were native to Asia.\u00a0 The first species to find its way to the West was one of those ancestors, Caryopteris incana, which was introduced to England from China by a famous plant hunter, Robert Fortune, in 1844.\u00a0 It was judged to be so tender that it was propagated and cosseted in greenhouses.\u00a0 About forty years later, another celebrated plant hunter, Charles Maries, found a hardier Caryopteris incana in Japan and shipped plants back to England.\u00a0 The plants entered the gardens of enthusiasts, which led to another leap towards commercial viability.\u00a0 In about 1930, a third Englishman, Arthur Simmonds, found a chance seedling amid the caryopteris species in his garden.\u00a0 Further propagation led to the appearance of a very strong hybrid offspring, which was eventually christened Caryopteris x clandonensis, after Clandon, the town nearest Simmond\u2019s home.\u00a0 It took another fifty years or so, but eventually, in the last decades of the twentieth century, breeders and merchandisers realized the potential of bluebeard and the number of clandonensis hybrids on the market increased dramatically.<\/p>\n

\"Bluebeard-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bluebeard shrubs grow between two and four feet tall and wide, depending on the variety.\u00a0 Though the plants are officially classified as shrubs, the stems are slender and flexible.\u00a0 Clandonensis leaves, which can be green, gray-green, golden-green or variegated with cream margins, are oval-shaped, with \u201ctoothed\u201d or serrated leaf edges.\u00a0 If you rub those leaves and sniff, you will notice another of the plant\u2019s assets, a pleasant, eucalyptus-like fragrance that also exudes from the stems.\u00a0 This aromatic quality links bluebeard to its many relatives in the mint or Lamiaceae family.<\/p>\n

Strongly scented leaves repel deer and other marauders, but it is the flowers that attract butterflies and other pollinating insects, not to mention humans.\u00a0 Borne in rounded flowerheads at the tops or ends of each branch, the individual flowers are notable for their prominent, projecting stamens.\u00a0 The \u201cblue mist\u201d of those flowers may be the very dark blue of \u2018Dark Knight\u2019, the medium blue of the old standard, \u2018Longwood Blue\u2019, or the lighter shade of \u2018Summer Sorbet\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For a shot of medium blue in smaller gardens and containers, try \u2018Petit Bleu\u2019 or \u2018Heavenly Baby\u2019, both of which top out at about 24 inches tall and wide.\u00a0 Ten years ago, the Royal Horticultural Society noted that there were over 20 cultivated varieties of Caryopteris listed in their Plant Finder.<\/em>\u00a0 The number is almost certainly much larger now, though many are only available through specialist nurseries.<\/p>\n

Still, I bought my variegated bluebeard at a big box store several years ago and it has flourished in my front \u201chell strip\u201d ever since.\u00a0\u00a0 This demonstrates how completely unfussy bluebeard really is.\u00a0 Provide the shrubs with a sunny spot and water only when they have been without rain for a few days.\u00a0 Depending on your climate and the harshness of the winter, bluebeard may die back completely or partially during the cold months.\u00a0 If the plant seems dead in spring, wait a bit.\u00a0 It will most likely resprout from the roots.\u00a0 If the stems survive the winter, tidy them up and promote abundant flowering by cutting the branches back by one third in the early spring.\u00a0 Since bluebeard blooms on new wood, this will not affect the flowers at all.<\/p>\n

If you want bluebeard in your garden twelve months from now, plant one or more of them within the next few weeks.\u00a0 You may be able to find one or two varieties at local garden centers.\u00a0 For a more comprehensive selection, try Forest Farm, 14643 Watergap Rd, Williams, OR 97544; (541)-846-7269; www.forestfarm.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Free print catalog, with the most complete listings available online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An old French fairy tale recounts the heinous exploits of Blue Beard, a nobleman with an imposing castle and a penchant for murdering his wives.\u00a0 Outwitted by his final wife and dispatched by members of her family, Blue Beard lived and died by the sword.\u00a0 Clearly, they don\u2019t make fairy tales like they used to. … 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":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[334,1707,1705,333,1706,1710,1709,257,263,1162,750,1708],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-blue-mist-shrub","tag-blue-spirea","tag-bluebeard","tag-caryopteris","tag-clandonensis","tag-container-gardens","tag-deciduous-shrubs","tag-deer-resistant-plants","tag-mint-family","tag-small-gardens","tag-small-shrubs","tag-variegated-foliage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","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=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2202,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions\/2202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}