Blue Flowers
Ξ February 8th, 2008 | → 7 Comments | ∇ Annuals, Roses |
Blue is the colour of my ….
Well, maybe I shouldn’t be singing old ballads but if I were, I’d be singing about blue flowers this week.
But don’t get excited.
Blue Rose
It seems the Japanese plant company Suntory (biotech, whiskey distilling, seeds) have inserted the blue genes of a pansy into a rose to give us a true blue rose.
But.
You can’t get it.
It’s being released in Japan to cut flower growers and “maybe” to some cut flower growers in the U.S. Maybe.
So maybe you can get it as a *very* expensive cut flower next yeasr (no idea but the rarity of this is going to send the price well into the premium cut flower standards) but you can’t get it for your garden.
And just when you thought I was teasing you about blue roses.
Blue Impatiens
I read that there’s a blue impatiens (pictured above). Thompson and Morgan have introduced a blue impatiens from China. The original seed was collected but the flowers are sparse and the plant leggy. They have been working to make it more compact and floriferous and are about to release a new variety.
In the U.K.
Not in North America.
Yet.
You can apparently obtain the species seed in the U.S. so you can have ugly blue flowering impatiens plants but not the good ones.
But have patience. You have to believe that this is only the first wave of breeding and the really good ones either are or will be in the pipeline for distribution.
Every gardener I know wants to sing the blues in their garden.