Hello Reader,
There's a color I can't get enough of.
It's not quite purple and not quite black. It's the color that reminds me of a dark wine or vintage velvet. Deep and moody.
The last time I saw this color was in a stunning heirloom poppy. The black peony. It's a color you'd expect to see on a painter's palette.
I first tried growing this poppy in my Michigan garden, but we moved to Kentucky before it bloomed. I've scattered new seed across the soil in my garden, hoping to see it bloom this spring.
I've been reading through Claus Dalby's book, Containers in the Garden and a photograph stopped me. It was a container planted with a Rex begonia. The leaves were similar to that color, paired with a small Japanese maple in the same dark burgundy.
Rex begonias and I have a history that goes back further than Claus Dalby's book.
The first time I saw one was in a government office in Michigan with grey linoleum floors and cold fluorescent lights. I was in Master Gardener training.
The teacher reached into a bag and started handing out leaves.
The leaves were large and waxy, each one a different variation of the same extraordinary foliage. Some had deep and saturated colors and others had a metallic sheen that caught the fluorescent light. She said we could grow a new plant from a single leaf. Not from a cutting with a stem attached. From the leaf itself.
I didn't entirely believe her.
She explained that you score the veins on the underside of the leaf with a sharp knife, place it onto moist soil and wait. And from those small cuts in the leaf, new plants will emerge.
I took a leaf home and did exactly what she said. It worked.
What I didn't know then was that the leaf in my hand was the descendant of a stowaway.
In 1856, a shipment of orchids arrived in London from India. Someone unpacking the crate noticed a plant growing at the base of one of the orchids. A hitchhiker, attached to the roots.
The plant they saw amazed them.
The foliage was unlike anything in cultivation. Large, asymmetrical leaves with a surface that seemed to absorb and reflect light simultaneously, patterned and iridescent.
Victorian England, which received waves of exotic plants arrive from every corner of the world, never saw anything quite like this. The plant was formally named the following year by Belgian botanist Jules Antoine Putzeys. He called it Begonia Rex. The king.
The name is no exaggeration. In certain light the surface of the leaves appear metallic, like the wing of an insect.
That leaf is a direct descendant of the stowaway that arrived in London in 1856. A plant that crossed an ocean without anyone knowing.
I recently bought a Rex begonia from my local Lowe's. And just like I did all those years ago, I'm cutting the leaves to propagate more plants.
And the cycle continues.
The stowaway traveled thousands of miles to get here. The least I can do is take a cutting.
From the Garden Library
The Biodiversity Heritage Library — If the botanical illustration at the top of this issue stopped you, you have hours of pleasure ahead. The Biodiversity Heritage Library at biodiversitylibrary.org holds one of the largest collections of digitized botanical art and scientific illustration in the world, all freely accessible. Search Begonia rex and see what the Victorian obsession looked like at its height.
Claus Dalby: Containers in the Garden — The book that started this whole chain of thought for me. Dalby is a Danish garden photographer and designer whose approach to container gardening is unlike anything else I've encountered — layered, creative, genuinely artistic. If you have ever thought container gardening was a lesser form of the art, this book will correct that impression permanently.
On taking a leaf cutting — The technique the teacher showed me in that Michigan classroom is simpler than it sounds. The Royal Horticultural Society has a clear description to the process (the linked PDF has a section on cultivation and propagation). But honestly — the best way to understand it is to try it once. Score the veins, press the leaf to soil, wait. The plant knows what to do.
Sue
