Anemone b. "white Splendor'
totototo@telus.net (Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:37:52 PDT)
On 18 Apr 2009, at 15:06, Diane Whitehead wrote:
Well, Jim, white in and out certainly makes more sense. My clump of
White Splendour has been growing for at least 35 years, so I can't
blame any current bulb sellers for misnaming it.
I checked the description of 'White Splendor' in Patrick Synge's "Collins Guide
to Bulbs", but the text is silent on the question of coloration in the backs of
the petals.
The reason I asked about this was my inability to pin down the correct name of
a clump of white A. blanda that came to me from a source I no longer remember.
My plants agree well with Diane's description of her own, and given the age of
her planting, I suspect that the original 'White Splendor' had a colored
reverse.
That it has been supplanted by a newer form under the same name is no surprise.
The Dutch bulb trade has a long tradition of replacing older cultivars with
newer one under the same name. The true Narcissus 'King Alfred', for example,
hasn't been in commerce for a very long time but something under that name has
been available until quite recently. (These days they've gotten a little more
honest and say "King Alfred type".)
What you get these days as Crocus 'Ladykiller' looks quite different from what
I originally had under that name some 30 years ago, but it's possible that that
early acquisition was really a form of C. biflorus alexandri.
The older 'White Splendor' is a notably vigorous plant, sturdier than the
rather frail Anemone blanda forms you often see.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate
on beautiful Vancouver Island