Alan’s Laosy Giant

The late plantsman Alan Galloway was a prolific plant collector in Southeastern Asia, and one of the plants that has surprised us with its winter hardiness is the giant evergreen Solomon’s Seal, Disporopsis longifolia. In the wild, Alan and I encountered this throughout Thailand and Vietnam, but our tallest clone is one which Alan collected in Laos, and we christened Disporopsis longifolia ‘Alan’s Laosy Giant’. Our clump, which has been in the garden since 2007 has topped 5′ in height and is in full flower this week. Sadly, it has yet to produce a single offset.

New baby tucked away in plain view

Even though we’re in the garden virtually everyday, there’s so much to see that we often miss things that are right in front of us.  Case in point…a few weeks ago, our taxonomist, Zac Hill was walking though the woodland garden and noticed that our evergreen Solomon’s Seal had been sexually frisky with another disporopsis species in a nearby clump. In the photo on the right is the daddy, Disporopsis pernyi, and on the left, the momma, Disporopsis undulata.  In the center is the baby…a hybrid between the two.

The hybrid clump was actually fairly large, so we’d missed the blessed event by several years. According to disporopsis guru, Dr. Aaron Floden of the Missouri Botanical Garden, this seems to be the first time that anyone has documented a hybrid between these two species, so we named our new baby Disporopsis ‘Opsis Attract’ and look forward to being able to share in a few years.