There are some plants, like roses and pansies, that I cannot resist.\u00a0 Then there are the plants that I have resisted for years, usually for no good reason.\u00a0 Last week, however, I saw a plant that passed instantly from the “resistible”\u009d to the “irresistible”\u009d category.\u00a0 The plant was a scabiosa, sometimes known as “pincushion flower,”\u009d the species was S. atropurpurea and the variety was ‘Ace of Spades’.\u00a0 It was tall and gangly, at least thirty-six-inches high, and its sparse, slender, somewhat scalloped leaves were nothing to write home about.\u00a0 The two-inch flowers, though, were lovely, with rounded central “cushions”\u009d surrounded by dark maroon petals that looked black from only a few feet away.\u00a0 Here and there the “cushions”\u009d were flecked with white, and I could almost imagine that they were full of tiny silver-topped pins.\u00a0 I have resisted scabiosa from California to Connecticut and all the mail order catalogs in between, but I just had to have ‘Ace of Spades’.<\/p>\n
Scabiosa has been in cultivation for centuries, never managing to lose its unfortunate genus name, which comes from the Latin word for “itch”\u009d.\u00a0 Apparently before the invention of modern-day itch creams, people made decoctions from the leaves or flowers of scabiosa to treat scabies and other itchy rashes.\u00a0 You would think that the great Linnaeus could have come up with a better Latin name, but perhaps he had a rash at the time.\u00a0 Fortunately butterflies cannot read.\u00a0 They flock to scabiosa, making it a wonderful addition to butterfly gardens.<\/p>\n
Of all the scabiosa that I have passed up, none is more famous that S. columbaria ‘Butterfly Blue’.\u00a0 Discovered in an Irish garden over forty years ago by plant breeder David Tristam, the plant has frilly, pale purplish-blue flowers and a basal rosette of gray-green foliage, ‘Butterfly Blue’, at twelve inches tall, is shorter than my ‘Ace of Spades’, but it shares a love of sunshine and tendency to bloom over a long season.\u00a0 This scabiosa’s winning qualities earned it the Perennial Plant Association’s “Perennial Plant of the Year”\u009d designation for 2000.\u00a0 In addition to charming gardeners all over the world, ‘Butterfly Blue’ produced a sport, or spontaneous genetic mutation, with a pink flower.\u00a0 Christened ‘Pink Mist,’ the new variety shares all of its parent’s winning qualities and has become popular in its own right.\u00a0 The species name, “columbaria”\u009d comes from the Latin word for “dove”\u009d, perhaps in reference to the graceful qualities of the flower petals.<\/p>\n
‘Pink Lemonade’ is another sport of ‘Butterfly Blue.’\u00a0 Like ‘Pink Mist’ it has rosy-colored flowers, but it adds variegated foliage to its list of attractions.\u00a0 The green leaves have irregular pale yellow margins, which add a little interest when the plant is not flowering.<\/p>\n
If space is a problem, try S. columbaria ‘Pincushion Pink’ or S. japonica ‘Blue Diamonds’.\u00a0 The latter, with its bright blue flowers and six inch stature, would also make a wonderful rock garden specimen.<\/p>\n
Scabiosa caucasica is worth trying even though some garden authorities think that the S. columbaria varieties are better garden plants.\u00a0 Among the notable S. caucasica varieties are the white ‘Alba’, and the blue-purple ‘Fama’, which is distinguished by especially large, four-inch diameter flowers.<\/p>\n
Now that I have S. atropurpurea ‘Ace of Spades’, I am tempted to try and get my hands on some of its relatives from the ‘Chili’ series of English scabiosa cultivars.\u00a0 ‘Chili Sauce’ and ‘Chili Black’ are dark and darkest maroon-black.\u00a0\u00a0 It would be interesting to compare ‘Chili Black’ with “Ace of Spades’.\u00a0 ‘Chili Pepper’ is dark red.\u00a0 On the lighter side, there is also S. atropurpurea ‘Fata Morgana’, which one vendor describes as “soft-yellow-blushed-pink.”\u009d\u00a0 For lovers of the truly fluffy, there is the many-petaled S. atropurpurea ‘Florists’ Blue’ and the white ‘Snow Maiden’.\u00a0 Because of their long, nearly naked stems, all the atropurpureas make excellent cut flowers.<\/p>\n
Like the vast majority of garden-worthy plants, scabiosa prefer well-drained soil.\u00a0 They can survive in acid soil, but do better in a more alkaline environment.\u00a0 Practical English sources sometimes recommend dealing with this issue by adding a stick of white school chalk when planting scabiosa in areas with acid soil.\u00a0 One caveat–make sure that the chalk you add is actually real chalk and not some modern artificial construct.<\/p>\n
Now that scabiosa has become irresistible to me, I mean to get more of it.\u00a0 The quest may become so intense that I’ll even walk by an alluring rosebush or two.\u00a0 Begin your own quest at local nurseries, which will probably carry at least ‘Butterfly Blue’, and possibly ‘Pink Mist’.\u00a0 Seek out other species and cultivars at Annie’s Annuals,<\/p>\n
P.O. Box 5053 , Richmond , CA 94805 , Phone (510) 215-1671, www.anniesannuals.com<\/a>; or Bluestone Perennials, <\/address>\n7211 Middle Ridge Rd. , Madison <\/address>\n, OH . Phone (800) 852-5243, www.bluestoneperennials.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Free catalog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are some plants, like roses and pansies, that I cannot resist.\u00a0 Then there are the plants that I have resisted for years, usually for no good reason.\u00a0 Last week, however, I saw a plant that passed instantly from the “resistible”\u009d to the “irresistible”\u009d category.\u00a0 The plant was a scabiosa, sometimes known as “pincushion flower,”\u009d … 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-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","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=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1768,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/1768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}