Friday, May 28, 2010

New growth on Trachelospermum asiaticum 'Hatsuyuki' (first snow)

Killer variegation on the newly emerging leaves eventually mostly disappears but since it grows constantly, there's always good color in the growing season. We got this Japanes cultivar from Asiatica. I don't have experience with this species, but the literature suggests it's fairly similar to the much more common Trachelospermum jasminoides. The flowers are creamy/off-white and fragrant, the leaves are small then Confederate Jasmine. From what I understand it's hardiness is right in our range, 7b. We'll find out.

There are a dozen or so species of Trachelospermum. I just planted one (jasminoides) in the Florida garden with some trepidation. While it is wonderfully fragrant, it's also....extremely vigorous. I'll just do what I need to do to control it. I put it on the large wire "sunburst" trellis replacing a Bougainvillea that just couldn't stand up to the prolonged periods of drought. If the Jasmine works it will fail. I designed to trellis so that each "ray" would carry one shoot of the Bougainvillea; the Jasmine will no doubt just swallow the whole trellis in an amorphous mass. Anyway it'll smell good.

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