Perennials: Now that we have it...., 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
Donna, my Patty's Plum does get some shade, and I have acidic soil, a mulch of leaf compost possibly helps make it a little more alkaline and the plants love it.

I think yours is suffering from the heat, some colours do fade out when too hot, but it is still pretty. The colour you see on mine is very true to colour. There are some which are seed grown, as my seed from that turned out much differently due to crossing with others, seed saved from a plant would have to be isolated (even then I think it may not be true to colour), and as they make little seed anyway I think most would be vegetatively propogated. I know mine was vegetatively propogated, I got it by mail order from a small nurery which has good contacts and the owner is an offficial registered speaker of Royal Horticultural Society. The original Patty's Plum was named after the mother (Patricia) of the grower who found it growing on their compost heap.

These poppies can be propogated by taking a piece of the root when dormant, that may entail digging up the plant which is not something most of us want to do. If you could scratch around and find a root to take off you could try it, I haven't done it myself but you can cut a good size root into approx. 2-3" lengths, a slant at the bottom with a straight cut on top so you know which way up it should go. These can then be pushed into 3" pots with the top just under the surface and with any luck you will get a new plant.

My plant made a runner which came up a short distance away, I took it off in the growing season but it died, perhaps if I had done it when dormant it would have grown. It has spread more now and I have left it, it has also self set about 3 plants around it which flowered this year with pale lavender flowers, but they were not as good as the other one. If they don't look any better next year I will dig them up, they will smother other plants I have there anyway.

This is another I really like from my seed, it has the very ruffled form of Patty's Plum but is essentially white but has a faint tinge of plum, it may have come from Royal Wedding and taken on Patty's Plum characteristics or vice versa, I had about 6 of each and planted them without marking which they were from. I have given it a name, with the very strong black marks, I called it Black Warrior.