Rob's plants home garden plants wildlife seed photos plant sale journal topics plantlinks fun guestbook Daphne retusa

 

Family thymelaeaceae Life cycle shrub (Z6-9) Flowers white (April-May) Size 2-3' Light sun-part shade Cultural notes well-drained soil, not too dry From seed warm and cold stratification probably required for germination detailed seed-starting info below Seed ripens mid-November Species whose evergreen leaves are glossy, smallish and elongated-rounded. We raised ours from seed; the plants took four or five years to reach blooming size, but it has been well worth the wait. The buds start off purple-pink, but the flowers open white. Three specimens live in three different parts of our garden, and they all appear to survive our winters.

Late February, after an ice storm, the leaves are looking a bit tattered, but gleam nonetheless with a reddish-brown and green medley.

We left this plant behind in our Pennsylvania garden (and wish it well); we don't grow it in Houston.

Seed for this plant is included on my seed trade list

One or more images of this plant are included in my stock photo catalog

About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Daphne retusa

Visitors to this page have left the following comments

Seed-starting details for this plant

2003. Seed from '02 trade. Pot 70F, moved to outside early winter. 30%G in early summer
2007. Seed from '06 garden. Scraped window in seedcoats with knife; baggy 70F (4w) - 35F (14w) - 70F (25%G, 18d)
2009. Seed from '08 garden. Baggy 35F (12w) - 70F (87%G, 4-7d)

A long cold stage seems to do the trick. The seeds may collect some mold along the way, which can simply be washed off - it doesn't appear to affect germination.

I welcome comments about my web pages; feel free to use the form below to leave feedback about this particular page. For the benefit of other visitors to these pages, I will list any relevant comments you leave, and if appropriate, I will update my page to correct mis-information. Faced with an ever-increasing onslaught of spam, I'm forced to discard any comments including html markups. Please submit your comment as plain text. If you have a comment about the website as a whole, please leave it in my guestbook. If you have a question that needs a personal response, please e-mail me.