Herbs that add not only flavor in the kitchen but beauty in the garden - Oklahoman.com

Heleniums are summer flowering daisies that may qualify as herbs in that dried and ground parts were an alternative to the powdered tobacco snuff that people used to snort. It was a strange habit but not a particularly anti-social one, though it caused people to sneeze. Heleniums, thus, are known as sneezeweed. They are valuable garden plants, blooming merrily during the hottest weeks. They have a couple of weaknesses. The clumps get tall and top-heavy with bare ankles, making them challenging to place with other perennials. And they can get powdery mildew, a disease that, at best, renders them unsightly.

Mt. Cuba, the native plant garden and research center in Hockessin, Delaware, recently released a study of the best and worst helenium varieties. The gardeners spent three years evaluating such traits as disease resistance, flower performance and stem sturdiness, and identified 10 top performers out of a field of 44 types.

The highest-scoring variety was Kanaria, a solid yellow helenium liked for its length of bloom, flower show and other attributes. It grows to 5 feet and blooms from early August into September. Other top plants included two species: the especially long-flowering and compact Helenium flexuosum, as well as the late-season H. autumnale and its variant Can Can. Zimbelstern and the orange-red Flammenspiel also excelled.

More than 20 varieties flunked the trial, an unusually high number for a plant of native origin, but that was put down to purposeful neglect and their genetic link to a Western species ill-suited to the Mid-Atlantic. The top performers "are fabulous, though," said Sam Hoadley, who conducted the trial. "The ones that did survive I really like and wouldn't hesitate to put them in my own garden."

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February 15, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Herbs that add not only flavor in the kitchen but beauty in the garden - Oklahoman.com
"herbs" - Google News
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