Heirloom Cold-hardy Hibiscus Availability.

RE: Heirloom Cold-hardy Hibiscus Availability, Societies and Botanical Gardens or Arboretum.

In reviewing the following paper by Dr. Harold F. Winters, the breeder of “Blue River II”, I found references to cold-hardy Hibiscus which are no longer available or difficult to locate:

Our hardy Hibiscus species as ornamentals
By Harold F. Winters
Economic Botany, Volume 24, Number 2; April, 1970, pp 155-164
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7hu6j117p447468/?p=a3633154bcab4762bb0923b9324ed19f&pi=0

Some of the Hibiscus cultivars which are difficult to locate or many only be available as seeds include the following:

“Meehan Mallow Marvels”
“Hibiscus (Mallow) New Giant Flowering”
“Marshall’s Rainbow Grandiflorus Hybrids”
“Fresno”
“Peppermint Stick”
“Radiation”
“Raspberry Rose”
“Ruffled Cerise”
“Satan”
“Super Clown”
“Super Red”
“Super White”
“Avalon Red”
“Brilliant Cerise”
“Old Glory”
“George Riegel”
“Lester Riegel”
“Red Glory”
“Annie J. Hemming”

The questions I have are the following:

1. Is there a Hibiscus Society specializing is cold-hardy Hibiscus cultivates?
2. Is there a Botanical Garden or Arboretum with a collection of Heirloom Cold-hardy Hibiscus?
3. Are there any sources for Heirloom Cold-hardy Hibiscus including the ones listed above?

Of particular interest is the hybrid clone “Annie J. Hemming” which frequently produces six or seven petals rather than the five typical of the genus Hibiscus according to Dr. Winters. The Tashkent Botanical Gardens in Uzbekistan (http://wikimapia.org/1010198/Botanical-Gardens) started a collection of cold-hardy Hibiscus in the 1950’s and 1960’s but the current state of the collection is unknown.

Any information would be appreciated.

I recently edited the Wikipedia entry on cold-hardy Hibiscus which may be of interest to the members:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_moscheutos

Michael Ronayne

interesting link Michael. Though I'd never describe any of the swamp rose mallows as "lowly", but I love most of the natives, even the ones called "weeds"! ;-) Thanks for the link.

To Davis1676,

Unfortunately the native North American swamp rose mallows don’t receive much respect on their native continent; the fact that the only Botanical Gardens which may host cold-hardy Hibiscus is in Uzbekistan says it all. Just look at the activity levels of tropical’s vs. cold-hardy on this forum. I would really like to see a more organized focus on the cold-hardies. This is really not a lot of information on the breeding and genetics of the cold-hardies. The only thing at the native Hibiscus have going for them is a few dedicated breeders and the fact that you would have to work really hard to kill them in the average garden.

Mike

agreed. But I've noticed a bit more interest on the hardies recently. I would love to see more varieties (especially heirlooms) made available too.

But the tropicals are so awesome with their stunning blooms coming off & on all year! I love them both. I'm focusing more on the hardies now, so let me know what you find out. thanks for the info Mike.

deb

Since I can't grow the tropical Hibiscus in my zone, I have to settle for the hardy types. Since they are expensive to buy, I bought seeds of H. mocheutos 'Disco Bell' from Parks Seed Co.

This variety grows 2 ft tall and bushy. The seeds were mixed color and only one seed germinated. The flowers measure 7" across. A beauty.

Photo taken September 17, 09

Here is the whole plant. It is now 3 years old. Will sow more come March

That is as beautiful as any tropical! I don't get the beautiful bush on the tropicals in my zone as we do with the hardies. My tropicals look scraggly compared to your photo. But that's me, others get better looking forms I'm sure?

Recently I visited Plant Delights nursery in NC and almost swooned at the variety of hardies they sell. Mostly I was swooning at their prices but the flowers were pretty amazing too. I splurged and bought 'Robert Flemming' for the flowers and 'Royal Gems' for the burgundy leaves.

www.plantdelights.com

Mike: The Hibiscus 'Peppermint Stick' I believe I saw in Plant Delight online catalog along with other hardy ones. Here is the link to the Hibiscus page.

http://www.plantdelights.com/Catalog/Current/page42.html

Blomma,

I keep coming back to Plant Delights because they have so many interesting Hibiscus species and cultivates, which can be found no where else. There is a minimum order quantity at Plant Delights but my wish list is already beyond the minimum. I am growing a number of Hibiscus species from seed and thanks to your germination protocol I am now enjoying significantly greater success, which I will post on this weekend. Once I know how many species I have from seed, I can decide on what to order from Plant Delight. A very high priority for me is my Hibiscus aculeatus seedlings which are reported to product a light yellow flower. There are very few hardy Hibiscus which have a yellow color.

I would like more information on the size of the Hibiscus which will be delivered from Plant Delight. Has anyone ordered Hibiscus from Plant Delights and what are the sizes of the plants.

I would very much like to encourage Plant Delights to expand their offerings of historic and species Hibiscus.

Mike

Mike, I went nuts and ordered 10. I know. Merry Christmas to me. The catalog said they did not ship Hardies to Nevada. I did not notice that and ordered anyway. Received an e-mail stating such. I wrote back and requested an explanation. Why can Burpee ship Hardies to Nevada and not you. I never received an answer. But five days later, I did receive the plants. They were packed very well and had great plants. Looked to be over year old plants. I also purchased two from Burpee which were half the price. You get what you pay for. Burbee's plants were much smaller. I will take pictures in the spring.

I went to a meeting at Plant Delights in late September and picked up a couple of hardy hibs. the ones I got ranged from 12" to 18" but all were very healthy plants with excellent root systems.

Skwinter,

How tall were the Hibiscus and if you have pictures of them in the shipping containers could you post them? I am interested in the methods used to ship Hibiscus. I will submit an order to Plant Delights in the spring as I am running out of space in the house, the greenhouse is still a work in process and I don’t intend to press my luck with New Jersey weather at this time of year.

Mike

Mike, I have them planted in the ground. I planted them in September. We were still in triple digits then. Mid October they had added new leaves but now there are no leaves because of the lower temperatures. I do believe I have the containers they were shipped in because I save all containers. I will check tomorrow. They were in the containers, which were square and just a little more than a quart. I will measure and give you the details tomorrow. . Each plant was wrapped in very large, up to 3 sheets, of tan paper. They were sent in very long rectangle boxes. There were approximately 3 plants per box.

I just stumbled across this thread and I am glad to see someone else interested in the hardy hibiscus. Even though I live in what most people would assume is a good climate for the tropicals the area of town that I live in averages the 20s in the winter and the tropicals do not like it.

I have this one that I got from a nursery about 2 hours away from here. It dies back every winter and has been moved about 3 times and still does wonderful !!

Do you know the name? Do you have seeds?

I do not know the name. It did not have one when I bought it. I can check and see if there are any seeds on it tomorrow.

I think Lady Biltmore or something like that. Someone here will know.

It is a deep burgandy color. My camera does not catch the color correctly

looks like lord baltimore to me
jen

As many of you know from my past posts, I have been looking for the “Annie J. Hemming” Hibiscus for a year now and have been unable to find it. I just reread Dr. Winters’ 1970 paper again and realized the significance of this comment:

Late in life Ernest Hemming returned to Hibiscus hybridizing with his son E. Sam Hemming (11, 12) of Eastern Shore Nursery Inc. at Easton, Maryland. Together they developed and patented in 1949 the clone 'Annie J. Hemming.'

I went back and searched Google Patents by date and just the word Hibiscus and Plant Patent PP835 popped up. The Hibiscus was never named in the patent, being identified only as “Hybrid Mallow Plant”, and Google did not identify Ernest Hemming as the inventor in a searchable field because the original paper copy did not contain specific key words which Google uses to index plant patents. There are also OCR errors in the scanned text The only surviving document which connects “Annie J. Hemming” with PP835 is Dr. Winters 1970 paper. PP835 is the very fist Hibiscus patent which was ever issued by the US Patent Office. I strongly suspect that the “Hemming Red” referenced by Dr. Winters is also PP835 based on the dates where it is used as a parent plant in cross breeding; remember there was no real name in the patent. Here is the link to Plant Patent PP835.
http://www.google.com/patents?as_pnum=PP835

Like Dr. Winters I am interested in “Annie J. Hemming” because many of it flowers have seven petals. The only other cold hardy Hibiscus with sometimes produces seven petals, which I am aware of, is Cranberry Punch (PP15091, 2004).

Once I located Plant Patent PP835 I learned that the Assignee was Eastern Shore Nurseries of Easton Maryland, a company founded by Ernest Hemming, and that the company is still in business.

Eastern Shore Nurseries Inc
30104 Dover Road
Easton, MD 21601-8728
(410) 822-1320
http://www.easternshorenurseries.com (Website is down as of this post)

The nursery is being run by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Ernest Hemming and they are still propagating the “Annie J. Hemming” Hibiscus in limited numbers in memory of their great-grandparents. The “Annie J. Hemming” is for sale at the nursery but they will ship in the fall once the Hibiscus have gone dormant for the winter.

In 1903 Ernest Hemming was one of the first Hibiscus hybridizers, when employed by the Thomas Meehan Nursery at Philadelphia, he first crossed Hibiscus coccineus with H. militaris and obtained one seedling with red flowers that withstood Philadelphia's winters. Flowers of this hybrid were pollinated by H. moscheutos and after several generations the resulting progeny exhibited considerable variation in flower and foliage characters. Seedlings of these selections were first sold in 1907 as Meehan Mallow Marvels by the Thomas Meehan Nursery. With the issuing on the first Hibiscus Plant Patent PP835 in 1949 for the “Annie J. Hemming” Hibiscus, Ernest Hemming ushered in the modern era of hardy Hibiscus breeding.

For any DG members living on the Delmarva Peninsula I would be very interested in any reports on the Eastern Shore Nurseries. From the aerial views it looks like a well run nursery. I am attempting to coordinate with my family members living in Maryland, to have the “Annie J. Hemming” Hibiscus sent to New Jersey this summer; if not, I will have dormant plants shipped this fall.

We need to get this heirloom Hibiscus back into the hobby and some serious work done to determine if hardy Hibiscus with more than five pedals can be breed.

Mike


This message was edited Jun 8, 2010 6:36 AM

Mike, wonderful job. I will take a photo of my Plants Delights hibiscus I planted last fall. They are doing finr and about 3 feet tall. I have them close together, just to get them started then I will develop a new bed just for them. I also have the greenbelt under my supervision. The Landscape Company requested some from the major plant nursery her in Las Vegas. I have 40 coming fo the greenbelt area but it is my understand they are just three colors. Do not even know what names they purchased. The two I purchased from Burpee are just sitting in the ground and doing nothing. One is still green but the other one looks dead.

Thanks for all your extensive work.

Since I started this thread last year I have been look for additional information on The Botanical Gardens of Uzbekistan in the city of Tashkent. Here is the full quote from Dr. Winters 1970 paper.

Our hardy Hibiscus species as ornamentals
By Harold F. Winters
Economic Botany, Volume 24, Number 2 / April, 1970
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p7hu6j117p447468/?p=a3633154bcab4762bb0923b9324ed19f&pi=0

The most notable foreign program to hybridize the various species of Rose Mallows as ornamentals was started in 1953 by Rusanov (36, 37, 38) at the Tashkent Botanical Garden. This program resulted in the naming and release of many hybrid varieties by 1965. Most of these hybrids exhibit plant characters of Hibiscus coccineus and H. militaris. Perhaps the lobed or divided leaves inherited from these species enable them to adapt more readily to the hot dry summer climate of the Uzbekistan Republic, USSR. As with Hemming (29), Rusanov found H. coccineus not to be winter hardy in his area but utilized the pollen in crosses with the more hardy species, H. moscheutos and H. militaris. Rusanov found selections from the F3 generation of his hybrids to breed quite true from seed. These Hibiscus hybrids are very popular ornamentals in Uzbekistan and Middle Asia. The Botanical Garden at Tashkent distributes 10,000-20,000 roots annually in addition to seed.

36. Rusanov, F. N. 1953. Hybrid hibiscus their investigation and culture. Uzbekian SSR Botanical Garden, Tashkent. 67 pp. illus.
37. Rusanov, F. N. 1961. Hybridization and breeding of Hibiscus and Yucca species. Moscow. Clav. Bot. Sad. B. 36-40.
38. Rusanov, F. N. 1965. Hybrid Hibiscus. Academy of Sciences, Uzbekian SSR, Tashkent. 83 pp. illus.

When I search for the Botanical Gardens of Uzbekistan last year I didn’t find anything other than a map. This time my search may have been better constructed and I found information about the Gardens, which is as follows.

Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences (In Russian)
http://academy.uz/

Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, Contact Information (English translation)
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://academy.uz/index.php%3Fmod%3Dcontact_us&rurl=translate.google.com

Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, Email Address.
Email: academy@academy.uzsci.net

The Botanical Garden of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences (In English but may be outdated)
http://www.academy.uz/old/eng/objekts/botan.html

The Botanical Garden of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences (In Russian)
http://academy.uz/index.php?mod=sub_sad

The Botanical Garden of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences (English Translation)
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Facademy.uz%2Findex.php%3Fmod%3Dsub_sad+&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8

I have sent an Email to the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences inquiring about their Hibiscus collection and am awaiting a reply.

Mike


This message was edited Jun 21, 2010 7:19 AM

Dr. Sam E McFadden is plant biologist who has been hybridizing Hibiscus for 60 years now and by all reports is still very much active. Attached are some reports of his efforts over the years. His 1955 paper is quite interesting as it provides information on specific Hibiscus species hybrids. If I find additional papers on or by Dr. McFadden, I will add them to this post. Several of the heirloom Hibiscus I am looking for or their breeders are referenced in these reports which are well worth reading. Note that some of the species names are misspelled.

New hybrids of American Hibiscus spp
SE MCFADDEN - Proc. Fla. State Hort. Soc, 1955
http://www.fshs.org/Proceedings/Password%20Protected/1955%20Vol.%2068/366-369%20%28McFADDEN%29.pdf

Dr. Sam McFadden
http://www.plantanswers.com/heroes/mcfadden/mcfadden.html

Hibiscus... Without a Net!
http://www.plantanswers.com/heroes/mcfadden/hibiscus_withoutnet.html

Flare Hibiscus is Both Beautiful, Cold Hardy
http://www.plantanswers.com/heroes/mcfadden/flare_winter.html

The Gigantean Flower Only From Texas
http://www.plantanswers.com/hibiscus.htm

Mike