Great Wall or Garden Wall? Chinese Garden Plants – Deutzia

Name – the Deutzia was named for the Dutch botanist, Johann van der Deutz, who trained as a lawyer and became a town councillor in Amsterdam – he was a wealthy man and an amateur botanist and he funded Thunberg on his plant hunting trip to China. In return, and as a nice compliment, Thunberg (for whom the Thunbergia is named) gave this pretty plant his patron’s name.

Description – The flowers have pink buds opening to white or tinged pale pink, in early summer and have round petals. Older shoots will shed their bark, often in spring or autumn, to reveal cinnamon coloured inner stems. The shrubs have a rounded appearance and grow to about six feet tall. In most species the foliage is deciduous but a few Japanese natives are evergreen. The flowers of Eglantissium are rose-scented and the hybrid Nicco’s leaves turn burgundy red before falling. Rosea Variegata has variegated leaves (obviously). Many plants will need some shelter from frost or to padded with straw or fleece in the worst month’s of the year.

Origins – Having talked about Thunberg’s compliment, it’s worth noting that the plant was first collected by a gentleman called Farrer but it seems this introduction wasn’t successful in producing new plants, so he never got to name the genus – for a plant collector to have the chance to name a new plant, the collected plant has to produce true offspring from seed or cuttings that are identifiably from the parent plant and identifiably NOT from any plant already described and named – poor old Farrer couldn’t get his Deutzia to produce any babies, so he missed out! This is odd, because Deutzias will grow on any fertile and well drained garden soil in a sunny position. Pruning out the oldest shoots will encourage growth from the base which will then flower in two years time.

China Deutzia photograph by normanack, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

 

© blueworldgardener.co.uk