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Pink
Pearls
Running
Tiger
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Featured
Plants
We
have included profiles of our favorite
foamflowers, 'Elizabeth Oliver,' 'Butterfly
Wings,' 'Pink Brushes,' 'Pink Pearls,' and
'Running Tiger.'
Origin
of Garden Tiarella
Tiarella
or foamflowers are native to the woodlands of
North America and eastern Asia. They are
small plants with slightly hairy heart-shaped
leaves that form clumps or spread by runners to
make patches. In spring the plants give rise to
spikes of starry white or pink flowers. In
eastern North America there are several different
looking forms that are currently combined under
the name Tiarella cordifolia in official
taxonomic usage. For horticultural usage, though,
it is convenient to distinguish the forms as T.
cordifolia, T. collina, and T.
wherryi. T. cordifolia, seen in the picture
at right and the two pictures below, is the small
running Allegheny Foamflower, found from New
Brunswick and Ontario south to the mountains of
North Carolina. This is an excellent native
groundcover, which makes a dense patch of foliage
that is often marked with attractive maroon
patches. In spring white or pale pink flowers on
12" spikes give a "foamy"
appearance to the plants.
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T.
collina and T. wherryi make larger
clumps without runners. T. collina, seen
left top, has glossy foliage, often with dark
stems, and substantial spikes of white or pink
flowers to 18". T. wherryi has matte
foliage of a lighter green and white or pink
flowers to about 14 to 16". All of these
varieties have forms in which the foliage is
deeply lobed rather than heart-shaped: in T.
cordifolia the small selection 'Slick Rock,'
in T. collina the form 'Excelsa,' and in T.
wherryi the selection named 'Oakleaf,'
although the leaves are lobed like a fig leaf
rather than an oak. On the Pacific Coast are T.
trifoliata and T. unifoliata, which
are also currently lumped together, but can be
treated separately for horticultural convenience.T.
unifoliata is a relatively large form with
white flowers on 18" stems and rounded
leaves. T. trifoliata, pictured on the
right, is smaller and has white flowers and
leaves that vary from heart shaped to three-lobed
and in the form var. laciniata so deeply
cut as to be fully compound. Both of these types
bloom from late spring into the summer;
unfortunately they are not very hardy in the
eastern United States. There is an additional
species, T. polyphylla, in eastern Asia.
This has rounded leaves and white to dark pink
flowers. This has not proved a hardy plant in the
eastern US and has not been used as a hybrid
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Until
relatively recently the foamflowers have been grown
almost entirely in woodland gardens devoted to native
plants. The richness of variation in the group and the
attractiveness of many forms gives them great potential
for development as mainstream garden perennials for use
in shaded sites, though, and in the late 1980s the hybrid
crosses were made at The Primrose Path that have provided
the basic material for the almost all of the new
cultivars that have come onto the market in the 1990s.The
first of these new cultivars was 'Tiger Stripe,' below
left, an exceptionally vigorous plant with seasonally
variable maroon leaf markings and light pink flowers.
'Tiger Stripe' was then combined with T. trifoliata var.
laciniata to produce a group of hybrids with
variably cut foliage. One selection, 'Filigree Lace,' was
selected from this set hybrids and introduced to the
trade. Selection and additional crosses within this
group produced 'Martha Oliver'and 'Elizabeth
Oliver,' below middle. These were named after the
breeder's wife and daughter, respectively. Other breeders
have continued on from this stock to introduce a large
number of hybrids with foliage of various coloration and
degrees of cutting. The Primrose Path subsequently
introduced 'Arpeggio' and 'Green Sword,' below right.
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