Rare cultivars rediscovered
7 October 2009
The National Trust is discovering it has dozens of rare and historically important plants which until now have been growing unidentified in its gardens across the country, in some cases for decades.
Among the discoveries made during a three-year survey of cultivated plants in 80 of the Trust's 200 gardens are a previously-undocumented purple oak (Quercus robur 'Purpurascens') at the 17th-century Belton House in Lincolnshire, and the largest and oldest recorded specimen of Weinmannia trichosperma in the UK, growing unremarked for almost 100 years at Mount Stewart in Co. Down, Northern Ireland.
Locally-bred cultivars have emerged, such as rhododendrons in gardens in Devon and Cornwall which are grown nowhere else, as well as the original specimens of rare selections and hybrids. Rhododendron 'Creeks Cross' (pictured above), for example, was produced by the head gardener at Trengwainton, Alfred Creek (1930s) who was skilled as a propagator and hybridiser of rhododendrons. At the Winkworth Arboretum in Surrey, meanwhile, the first example of fastigiate snakebark maple Acer davidii 'Madeleine Spitta', bred at the Arboretum in 1950 by founder Wilfred Fox and now rare in cultivation, was found to be alive and well.
The survey, funded by the Yorkshire and Clydesdale Bank, began in response to growing concerns over the threats posed by climate change and rampant new diseases like Phytophthora ramorum and P. kernoviae which have had a devastating effect on many of the Trust's gardens in Cornwall.
“We got several wake-up calls,” says Mike Buffin, who is overseeing the project for the Trust. “Then we came up with a base estimate that we knew about 5-10 per cent of everything in our gardens – we're not a botanical institution, and historically we were more interested in whether a landscape had an interesting feel and historical presence rather than what was in it.”
The National Trust hopes through the survey to develop a database covering 75 per cent of its plants by 2011. It is now working with the RHS and other organisations to use seed banking and propagation to conserve those new discoveries most at risk.
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