Shade Gardening: Your Woodland Shade Favorites 4, 2 by Weerobin

Weerobin wrote:
It took several years for the sinocalycanthus to start blooming.
And when they finally bloomed, it was just one or two blossoms.
But now they bloom pretty densely, despite being in fairly dense shade.
They're in fairly open woodland with pretty dense tree canopy above.
The Hartlage Wine plant pictured above already has canes 8+ ft tall.
The brightness of the bloom is misleading since the photo is backlit.
The lower down blooms are dark maroon and so don't stand out too brightly (pic #1).
My complaint about all the calycanthus flowers is they look fresh and nice just for a couple days,
then get some sort of black wilt (?fungus) around the edges which make them look like they've splashed with dirt.
Pic #2 shows the density of flowers, but also some of the black showing up on some blooms.
I suspect they wouldn't do that so much in a sunnier location.
These shrubs get pretty big and have very big leaves also, so they need some room.

Happy, my purpurescens mock orange is also in pretty dense shade.
Open woodland with dense high canopy of trees. Rarely if any direct sun.
It flowers pretty densely despite the shaded conditions (pic #3).
But, being a mock orange, it's a bit of a sprawling thing,
so doesn't have the greatest appearance when not in bloom.

Edited to add: No, aspen, I haven't noticed any fragrance, but I'm not much of a fragrance guy,
so I may just not have noticed.

This message was edited May 17, 2012 5:44 AM