Perennials: Green Ball Dianthus, 1 by Kaelkitty

Kaelkitty wrote:
Hi Michael,
To answer your last question first; the Florigene carnations were available here from at least one supplier (Tesselaar Nursery) about 10 years ago - I had 4 colours of them, but they gradually died out on me. I haven't seen them in any catalogues recently. We have had major drought issues here from about 2003 to 2010 and I lost nearly all my carnations during that time. It's my own fault really, I put them in the garden and kept "meaning to" get around to propagate them, but didn't, and I've just started again this spring with some new plants - I now have 6 varieties - Spirit, Black Baccara, Black Heart, Prado Mint, Bonaparte, and of course Green Trick. I will look out for the Florigene ones again in the future though as they were very beautiful - they are actually more lavender to very dark purple rather than straight blue but it is a truly ethereal colour - quite amazing! Unfortunately my garden tends to get away from me at times as I have well over 2000 different kinds of plants and the near decade of drought years refocused my concentration onto Cacti and Succulents at the expense of my cottage garden type plants.

Florigene is an Australian company, although it is now part of the multinational Suntory group. They are based in Melbourne but they do have wholesalers in the USA. If you scroll down the page at this link http://www.florigene.com/products/products.php?product_name=... you will find a box on the left side where you can look up the American wholesalers.

Other than my Sim carnations, the only other Dianthus I grow are the small perennial clumping ones as shown in the photo on this post - I always assumed that they were D. barbatus derived - but notice the umbel is very small and has only about 10 flowers max - nothing like the Green Trick inflorescence ... While I've been typing it has just occurred to me that part or possibly even all of the mutation might be down to chromosomal doubling in Green Trick - after all it has bigger plants, taller stems, etc - just the characteristics which are so often seen in plants with high chromosomal multiples, and this can also contribute to plant sterility.

Hope this helps, KK.