Collectors
A delightful discovery in our own nursery.
A few years ago we had a seedling come up in amongst our Giant Egyptian Papyrus. We thought that something was wrong. The Papyrus is our second most popular water garden plant after waterlilies.
This one plant just didn’t look like it was growing right. It looked healthy and green, but just wasn’t growing any taller. The others were growing up to 2 metres tall around it and this one plant seemed to stop at 60cm.
We pulled it aside and thought that maybe someone had forgotten to fertilise it. No, the fertiliser could still be seen. Then we thought that we may have accidently sprayed it, but this wasn’t the case either. We couldn’t find any pest or disease damage, so we decided to re-pot it and bring it into our heated greenhouse. The plant grew beautifully, grew wider and wider but no taller. Each time the plant filled the pot, we divided it and this continued to happen.
A little research on the internet told us that there have been some other cases of the Papyrus producing a dwarf form.
At Oz Watergardens we seek collector plants, trial and grow them before release into the market place. Also, we listen to the feedback we get from our customers. One complaint that we sometimes got from the garden centres was that the Papyrus were a bit too tall and blew over in the nursery.
Problem solved. Now we can also offer a true dwarf form of the Giant Egyptian Papyrus. The great thing about this plant is that it is fantastic in smaller pond water features and even waterbowls. The other useful feature of this plant is that it is a great water filtering plant for fish ponds.
After a few weeks of brain storming with the team, plus a few movie tickets to the team member who came up with the best name. We have decided to call it the “Little Pharoah.
New release this Spring – Little Pharoah
Looking for something else that's a little more unusual?
Collector plants can come in all shapes and sizes.
Some of the more popular ones are:-
The Zebra rush, with its foliage banded cream and green. It grows about 1m tall and makes a striking feature plant.
- Corkscrew rush, has tightly coiled foliage, grows to 50cm and makes an interesting contrast to plants with more bold foliage.
- Miniature Corkscrew rush, with tightly curled miniature stems, ideal for smaller ponds and tabletop waterbowl displays.
- Water Hibiscus, a real show stopper. This perennial Hibiscus grows new shoots from the ground each year, reaching upwards over 2m tall, producing scarlet red flowers.
- Taro or Elephant ears ‘Black Magic’. With velvet purple-black leaves, a wonderful container plant or as a back drop for other water plants,
- Bowl Lotus, treasured in many eastern gardens and now throughout the world. There are 100’s of cultivars and these smaller varieties are the most suited to planting in larger water bowls.
