For the last three weeks Echium candicans (a.k.a. “Pride of Madeira”) has been blooming around town. Here’s a planting up at UCSD.
For eleven months it’s a somewhat open, woody shrub with rosettes of long, narrow leaves, of a soft grayed green color. Then in spring it puts up these outrageous cones of blue, lavender or magenta. The shape of the cones can be a little rounded towards the tip or fairly pointed. The plant can grow three to five or more feet tall, and twice as wide.
Many other species in the genus Echium are biennials. They put out a rosette of leaves one year, and bloom themselves to death the following year, often in a wild display of flowers. But candicans tends to be much more long-lived. So far it hasn’t made itself a big presence in residential gardens, maybe because of its largish size. But people are starting to plant it more in their gardens. It looks nice much of the year, puts on an insane display for a month, is well adapted to Mediterranean climates down to zone 9 and doesn’t require much water. What’s not to like? Okay, okay, it’s not the smallest spectacular plant out there.
I keep looking at plants and the one or two blank spots in the yard. Maybe one of these days I’ll make room for it.
That’s a beautiful plant, that is. Love the cone flowers. Always a sucker for something blue.
was given a cutting by a cypriot friend,just stuck it in the ground in october by march i had grown a tryfid.nobody new what it was so thank you.i now know what it is just need an extension to the garden
Terry,
I didn’t know that they were so successful from cuttings. Yes, they can get fairly large. I regularly pass by a planting where the individuals are six feet tall and eight or more wide–AND they produce lots of seedlings!
It’s not the same plant exactly but why googling images this came up! Looks beautiful! Anyway I’m growing Echium pininana crossed with Echium wildpretii and the flowering spike is flying up as I type, its already coming up to 6 foot, little scared but really looking forward to the flower display! Hope you find a space in your yard and decided to give one of the bigger varieties a go.
It’ll be interesting to see how tall it gets! I have a couple E. wildpretii stalks per year and it’s always a little primal feeling when the little low-growing rosette throws up a flowering structure that is taller than I am. Terrific plants–as long as they don’t escape gardens into the wildlands around us.
Hi James! Well it’s all over now. The Display was amazing! Stunning and the flowers went on and on for weeks, great for the bees too. They were there every day! To counter the praise though… I’m left with a huge hunking dead plant haha. Its massive and not going to fit in the compost bin very easily… time to get the hacksaw out!