re: Centaurea montana ‘Amethyst in Snow’

Martin Blow — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:19:11 GMT

Nice to see "new" Centaurea montanas coming on the market but there are a lot of "similar" (if not "identical") plants under different names. I'd be interested to see how Amethyst in Snow differs from Purple Heart (photo looks identical). Also there are also already good royal purples - "purpurea", "Purple Prose" and "violetta". Deep, almost black maroons exist - "Jordy" (called "Jody by one nursery but identical). Some other good (and not new) colours are "Joyce" (rose pink) "Parham" (deeper pink/purple) "Carnea" (very pale pink), and two similar whites "Alba" and "Lady Flora Hastings (more delicate petals than Alba). "Ochraleuca" has ivory white flowers but is quite slow growing. There are other really good plants in the Centaurea stable - C.triumfettii x montana has large sky blue flowers and C.cheiranthifolia has very large white flowers from early April - a star in our garden this year. We have about 50 - 60 tyoes of Centaurea growing in our garden which is open for the NGS this year (Yew Tree House, Cheshire).