Native Americans - Garden Plants – Lisianthus

Name - This plant is also called Eustoma, Prairie Gentian or Texan bluebell its name literally means 'a good mouth' or less literally 'a pretty face'.

Description - Single forms look like over-blown tulips or poppies while the double forms are more like roses or peonies. The flowers come in shades of purple, cream, pink, also pale green – all spanning up to two inches across.

Origins – This plant is native to the prairies of Texas and Mexico. Whether you are container gardening Lisianthus or growing in your garden, make sure you pinch back the young plants for well-branched displays of big, elegant blooms Choose a site that has full sun to partial shade, the plant also likes moist, well-drained soil so plant to fork a spadeful or two of compost into the soil at planting time and make sure you don’t set out the plants until after the last possible frost date. It’s a complex plant to grow from seed for several reasons, first it’s a bloomer so you end up harvesting seed very late in the year, second, that seed is ground pepper size and may take up to three weeks to germinate – and then if and when it does, you may have to wait for another four and a half months to see a bloom. For all these reasons, and because it is susceptible to many plant diseases, the Lisianthus is an excellent candidate for container gardening where you can control the elements!

Emily Dickinson one of her less wonderful poems about it:

God made a little gentian
It tried to be a rose
And failed, and all the Summer laughed
But just before the snows
There rose a purple creature
That ravished all the Hill
And Summer hid her forehead
And Mockery was still.

For Decoration – If all the foregoing has put you off, try this counter-information - as a cut flower it lasts up to three weeks - a remarkable feat!

America Lisianthus photograph by ktylerconk, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

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