What’s the point of having an opinion if you can’t later circle ’round and contradict yourself? Exactly. So while I did write about the importance of using botanical names (here) I now want to give a shout out to the excellence of some common names, in this case Bladder Senna.
Pretty fabulous right?
I discovered this plant on a visit to Dancing Oaks Nursery last April. While the botanical name does have a certain ring to it (Colutea x media just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?) the common name had me wondering “what the heck?” (that’s the PG version at least).
Promised orange and yellow flowers, and that happy foliage, was enough for me though, sold!
The foliage got better and better…
But the flowers lacked any orange. Yellow is all I see…hmm…
But then those pods showed up and 1) the common name suddenly made sense, and 2) they are so COOL! I can’t stop looking at them, all it takes is the slightest amount of light and they appear to glow (in other words the flowers were forgotten)…
Another benefit? In a garden that’s already crammed full, the open and airy form of this plant could easily be squeezed into a tight spot. Although if you take a look at this post over at Rhone Street Gardens Scott shares a photo (taken at Dancing Oaks) that shows a much more compact and bushy shrub. Maybe mine’s just a wild one.
Now here’s where the name thing takes a turn. Researching for this post I discovered there’s another plant that goes by the name Bladder Senna, and that’s Colutea arborescens…who’s flowers just happen to look exactly like the ones on my plant…
So perhaps I don’t have Colutea x media (which is a hybrid cross between C. arborescens and C. orientalis) after all? This is another reality of the plant world, things are sometimes mis-identified, it happens. At least in this case it’s not a horrible difference between the two and I like the plant I got.
Yep, I like it a lot.
