I bought this Hydrangea (I think it is anyway) at a local nursery. They have closed for the season, or I'd ask them what it is. The flower clusters are about the size of a finger, and it always has bees on it. Anybody know what it is? I can only find a few hydrangea pictures on plant files. Maybe there's another site with more pictures.
Thanks
Here's another picture
Doesn't look like a hydrangea to me. Maybe Agastache foeniculum? http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/43099/
As a side note, how were you searching in Plant Files? There are bazillions of pics of hydrangeas in there so I'm wondering why they didn't turn up when you searched? I went to the specific search page and typed "hydrangea" in the genus field, then limited the search to only entries with images, and it came up with 104 entries:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/adv_search.php?searcher%5Bcommon%5D=&searcher%5Bfamily%5D=&searcher%5Bgenus%5D=hydrangea&searcher%5Bspecies%5D=&searcher%5Bcultivar%5D=&searcher%5Bhybridizer%5D=&search_prefs%5Bsort_by%5D=rating&images_prefs=with&Search=Search
Oops../Well, for some reason, there's a lot of pictures in plant files now. Maybe I just looked at one species or something... I'll keep looking
Don't the leaves look Hydrangea - like, though? By the way, Hi, ecrane! Our paths cross again. Sorry for pointing out the obvious in the thread about drooping/messenger
I thought this might be peegee of some kind
I have some agastache, it resembles this, but this thing has wooden trunks, is 4' high, and is growing... I'm going to look at buddleias (sp?)
The leaves do look similar to hydrangea, but the flowers don't. Here's a pic of a PG...I think you can see that the flower clusters look very different. http://davesgarden.com/pf/showimage/28294/
I could be off on Agastache, that was just my first thought based on the leaves, flowers, and the fact that bees love it. Try crushing the leaves--if it's Agastache it should smell like licorice. There are many different species of them, so could be that your others are a different species, or it could be this was an older plant which is why it's woodier than the others. I don't think it's a buddleia--I collect those and this doesn't look like any of the ones I've seen, the leaves and flowers are both wrong.
This message was edited Aug 8, 2006 6:58 PM
There's a Japanese peegee I've seen that had these spike kind of flowers, but you're right about the buddleia; the leaves are way off. Whatever it is, I'm pretty happy with it. I'll keep looking.
Any agastache become wood that you know of?
I think some can get woody, but mine got eaten by my gopher before they were old enough for me to find out! The surest way to tell is crush a leaf and see if there's a smell or not (I think the flowers are fragrant as well).
I agree that there are some H. paniculata's that have narrower flower spikes than the picture I linked to, but they would still start off wider at the bottom and then taper narrower at the top, and these flower spikes look pretty much the same width most of the way up the spike, plus these flowers look like they're purplish (at least in the second pic--the first one is too blurry to really see them well) and PG's aren't purple. Nurseries mislabel stuff all the time, so it wouldn't surprise me that you got something other than what you thought you were buying.
You're not kidding about the nurseries mislabeling- I'm happy if they make an honest effort at accuracy, then I still take it with a grain of salt.
There was no tag on this, and the guy might have been guessing when he said hydrangea. When the flowers came out like they did, I was surprised to say the least.
The comments in plant files all talk about bees, and this thing ALWAYS has bees, it's amazing... I've had a woodchuck in the yard for a couple years, so far it hasn't destroyed anything.
I think you're right about the agastache.
Anyway, thanks for your help, we'll probably meet again as we simultaneously bombard someone with advice in HomeTalk. Nice talking to you
Unless it was some super nursery where the people actually know their plants, I bet you he was just taking a wild guess! But as long as you're happy with it I guess it doesn't matter what it is!
See you around! I think you've got me beat on knowledge of home improvement things, I definitely know more about plants than I do about the home improvement stuff, but I'm learning more all the time! :)
I was just on the Perennial forum and saw the thread "Plants you hate in your garden". Many people list Agastache as one of those. I happen to love it but it does reseed FREELY so be prepared for lots of little plants next year, and the year after that, etc......
