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Dicentra 'King of Hearts'

Dicentra 'King of Hearts' - originally first featured in Issue 21 of PLANTS - is slowly becoming more available and sought after in the UK, Europe and in the place of its birth - the USA.

It is perhaps the most outstanding of all recent Dicentra introductions. It was originally introduced by White Flower Farm Nursery in Litchfield, Connecticut USA six years or so ago and has been licensed by Luc Klinkhamer in Holland for sale by Darwin Plants.

Renee Beaulieu of White Flower Farm kindly replied to my e-mail request for more information.

"Dicentra 'King of Hearts', first appeared in our Spring 1992 catalogue, the year we introduced this Dicentra. It looked quite lovely in the photo, very floriferous, and the flowers held well above the foliage. It had a nice soft reddish-pink colour (although it's a little dangerous to assess colour from a photo), though we no longer list it which I didn't realise (don't know if customers just didn't care for it or if we had problems producing enough plants.

The original catalogue description states: "Marion Ownbey Hybrid Dicentras. These hybrids are the result of extensive hybridization by the late Marion Ownbey of Pullman, Washington (There is a Marion Ownbey Herbarium at Washington State University) . He crossed the rare and extremely choice D. peregrina from Japan with hybrids of two American species, the Western D. formosa subsp. oregana and the Eastern D. eximia.

The Japanese species is not easy to grow even by 'experts', but the progeny, which inherit many of its fine qualities such as blue foliage and compact habit, are good garden plants and easy to grow in full sun or light shade. They also flower their heads off all summer because they try like the dickens to produce seed, but never manage to do so. D. 'King of Hearts' -- the rosy-pink heart-shaped flowers that you expect from Dicentra, here presented above finely cut foliage of soft grayish-green.

This delicious new hybrid forms a dainty mound no more than 8in. high and will nestle neatly into the front of any border, where its sweet and subtle display will continue pretty well all summer."

POSTED 23RD APRIL 2002

DIRK VAN DER WERFF

PHOTO COPYRIGHT © Dirk van der Werff

Posted: 23 April 2002
Last modified: 12 May 2007

TO ORDER THIS PHOTOGRAPH AS A HIGH RESOLUTION DIGITAL FILE SUITABLE FOR REPRODUCTION PLEASE e-mail: dirk@plants-magazine.com

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