Released last year, this is said to be the first true cultivar of Lobelia cardinalis with maroon/r...Read Moreed foliage. The deep maroon foliage color holds its color well through the whole season. The flowers are a brilliant hot red like the species.
Unlike the notoriously tender 'Queen Victoria' and the other red-foliaged cultivars of L x speciosa, which are hybrids with a tender Mexican species and not hardy below Z8/7, 'Black Truffle' is likely to be hardy in Z2-9.
A relatively short-lived perennial. Like the species, this requires consistently moist soil---this is a wet-soil plant in the wild.
Forms an evergreen rosette in winter which does not do well covered with mulch for winter protection.
"Lobelias are not true perennials, because the flowering stem and its associated roots die after setting seed. They are perennial in effect only because new offsets grow from the axils of the lowermost leaves and quickly put down their own abundant white roots. It is especially important, then, that these new offsets be coddled a little in the fall." --- William Cullina, Growing and Propagating Wildflowers
AKA 'Chocolate Truffle'
Released last year, this is said to be the first true cultivar of Lobelia cardinalis with maroon/r...Read More