{"id":89,"date":"2008-04-21T05:38:56","date_gmt":"2008-04-21T13:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=89"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:24","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:24","slug":"lungwort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/lungwort\/","title":{"rendered":"Lungwort"},"content":{"rendered":"

LUNGWORT
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<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Pulmonaria always takes me by surprise.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure, the soft, silver-splashed leaves cling to the ground on the edges of my shady beds, and I see them every time I pass by.\u00a0 In fact, I see them so often that I take them for granted.\u00a0 Then, every year in the early spring, a day arrives when I catch sight of a few cobalt-blue flowers.\u00a0 Those flowers, which are pink when they open, morph to a more dramatic shade as they age, and that blue–true blue, not blue-purple–is so bright and clear that it grabs the eye and holds it.\u00a0 By the time all the pulmonaria plants have burst into bloom, the newly opened pink flowers and the mature bright blue blossoms combine to create a magical color mix.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Every year when the pulmonaria bloom, I vow to order more of them and start a collection of species and varieties.\u00a0 Some year I may actually accomplish this.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What I have done in the meantime is divide my existing plants and spread them around so that the annual surprise repeats itself throughout the garden.\u00a0 The plants reproduce like guppies when they are given the partially-shaded, reasonably moist situations they prefer.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pulmonaria is one of those plants that has acquired a host of common names over the years.\u00a0 Some, like “Bethlehem sage”\u009d, “Jerusalem cowslip”\u009d and “Joseph and Mary”\u009d are Biblical; others, like “lungwort”\u009d, “soldiers and sailors”\u009d and “spotted dog”\u009d are more picturesque.\u00a0 The relatively uncommon true blue flowers are typical of members of the borage family.\u00a0 Pulmonaria is related to other blue-flowered garden stalwarts like common forget-me-not and Virginia bluebells.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Equally at home in the herb garden or in ornamental design schemes, the genus has long had medicinal uses.\u00a0 The nickname “lungwort”\u009d is related to the botanical name, which was bestowed by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century and derived from the Latin word for “lung”\u009d.\u00a0 Under the “doctrine of signatures”\u009d, sometimes known as “sympathetic medicine”\u009d, healers from ancient to medieval times looked for plants whose parts resembled organs or limbs of the human body.\u00a0 Those plants were thought to be beneficial for the body parts they resembled and were used to accordingly to treat specific ailments.\u00a0 Practitioners of sympathetic medicine used pulmonaria to treat respiratory complaints.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These days, people do not treat their coughs and wheezes with lungwort decoctions, but plant breeders have used the genus to fatten up their pocketbooks.\u00a0 There are scores of species and cultivated varieties on the market, with more arriving every year.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Most of the pulmonaria in my garden are a wonderful older variety called ‘Mrs. Moon’.\u00a0 The spring leaves are apple green with silvery spots and the young pink flowers age quickly to true blue.\u00a0 ‘Mrs. Moon’ is a selection of Pulmonaria saccharata.\u00a0 Other popular saacharatas include the white-flowered, ‘White Wings’, which is sometimes sold under the name ‘Ice Ballet’; and ‘Janet Fisk’, which is similar to ‘Mrs. Moon’ but with more silver on the leaves.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ‘Sissinghurst White’ is a variety of Pulmonaria officinalis and is named after English writer Vida Sackville West’s famous garden as Sissinghurst Castle.\u00a0 Both the flowers and leaf markings are white, which makes ‘Sissinghurst White’ a good choice to lighten up any particularly dreary corner of the shade garden. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pulmonaria longifolia, which means “long-leafed lungwort,”\u009d have the same flowers as other members of the genus, but the leaves are longer and narrower.\u00a0 Among the more popular P. longifolia varieties is ‘E.B. Anderson’, whose flowers also resemble those of ‘Mrs. Moon’.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One lungwort that has made a big splash in the marketplace is ‘Raspberry Splash’, which has a clumping habit; long, silver-splotched leaves and bright raspberry-pink flowers.\u00a0 Since silver-leafed plants are enjoying a wave of popularity, you might want to try any of the varieties with “silver”\u009d in their names.\u00a0 These include ‘Silver Lance’, ‘Silver Shimmers’ and ‘Silver Streamers’.\u00a0 For landscape plantings where leaf coloration is more important than flowers, try ‘Dark Vader’, with silver-splashed, dark green leaves and the usual blue spring flowers. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 People always complain that they are cursed by too much shade in their gardens, but it’s much more constructive to think of shade as a creative opportunity.\u00a0 Like hosta, brunnera, tuberous begonias and heuchera, lungwort can do great things for dark places.\u00a0 And it will sweep you off your feet every spring.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Terra Nova Nurseries, the American wholesale nursery and plant breeding company, carries an extensive inventory of interesting lungworts.\u00a0 To find retailers in your area, go to <\/font><\/font>www.terranovanurseries.com<\/font><\/a> and click on the “retail sources”\u009d tab on the left hand side of the page.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LUNGWORT \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pulmonaria always takes me by surprise.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure, the soft, silver-splashed leaves cling to the ground on the edges of my shady beds, and I see them every time I pass by.\u00a0 In fact, I see them so often that I take them for granted.\u00a0 Then, every year in the early spring, a … 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":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","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=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}