Canary Islands wallflower
Almost every gardener must be familiar with, and love Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’, and many enthusiastic adjectives have been used to describe this wallflower over the years: but subtle is not one of them, neither for its colour nor its habit, whereas I have been watching and waiting for my beautiful E scoparium since the depths of winter and my floral reward has finally arrived and will last for weeks and weeks to come.
Unscathed by frost in mid-winter, the narrow dark green foliage becomes flushed with shades of steely aubergine in early March which is when the flower buds first appear. The delicate colours of the flowers run through pink, lilac, purple to creamy yellow – hard to describe but the effect against the foliage is undisputedly harmonious.
Erysimum scoparium comes from the Canary Islands: I don’t wish to play down Bowles’ showpiece but there can be no doubt that species found growing in the wild tend to have a more natural look than those bred for our gardens. Very hardy, this is a lowish growing (60cm) woody shrub, wider than it is tall, and once established, like any wallflower it thrives happily in very dry conditions.
The bad news is that very few places sell it but you can easily grow it from seed as I did, and trust me, it’s well worth the effort.
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One reply on “Erysimum scoparium”
My bright red Jetfire is flowering at the moment and I must remember to take cuttings as they tend to get woody. I can’t find my Bowles Mauve which was given to me as a cutting from a friend who is no longer with us.