Yellow fruitfulness: These evergreens with 有望な lemon clusters 元気づける up dull winter days

  • Nigel Colborn visited a hotel overlooking a big cluster of butter-yellow flowers
  • UK-based gardening 専門家 says?Mahonias have 広大な／多数の／重要な garden value?
  • The evergreen 工場／植物s are 霜-proof, 持続する and remarkably long-継続している

By Nigel Colborn for the Daily Mail

Published: | Updated:

Serendipity?is always 予期しない, 特に in a 予算 airport hotel. My 荒涼とした little bedroom overlooked a dense bank of glossy, evergreen foliage. Every upright 茎・取り除く carried a big cluster of butter-yellow flowers at its tip.

If I'd opened the window, the 甘い fragrance of Mahonia japonica would have wafted into the charmless room. But the damn thing was stuck and wouldn't budge.

That's when serendipity banished my 激怒（する）. A flock of beautiful little birds moved の中で the flowers.

They were blackcaps small warblers with dark 長，率いるs. With insects in short 供給（する）, they were feeding on nutritious nectar and pollen from the yellow flowers.

Long-lasting: The yellow blooms of M. aquifolium are followed by blue-black berries

Long-継続している: The yellow blooms of M. aquifolium are followed by blue-黒人／ボイコット berries

Mahonias aren't everyone's cup of tea. Some have gawky growth and most are prickly. But 存在 evergreen and with many winter-flowering, they have 広大な／多数の／重要な garden value.

Their flowers, arranged in 厚い clusters or along slender stalks, can be 極端に pretty.

They are also 霜-proof, 持続する and remarkably long-継続している.

Mahonias are 野性生物-friendly, too hence the blackcaps outside my hotel. In years gone by, those and other warblers would leave Britain to overwinter 近づく the Mediterranean.

But since 気候 change, blackcaps and othe r warblers have become ありふれた here, even in winter. Some even 飛行機で行く north from 大陸の Europe, where winters are colder.

TOUGH SHRUBS?

Of all mahonias, Oregon grape or M. aquifolium is the most ありふれた and easiest to grow. Developing as a scruffy, evergreen shrub, it grows 概略で a metre high, spreading to about 1.5 metres. The 構内／化合物 leaves carry ちらしs which 似ている holly. But the prickles are softer, so いっそう少なく painful to touch.

From spring into summer, the shrubs are （人が）群がるd with tight clusters of 激しい yellow, nectar-rich flowers. Blue-黒人／ボイコット berries follow. Native to the Rockies and western North America, Mahonia repens grows larger, with いっそう少なく prickly leaves. The form Rotundifolia has 一連の会議、交渉／完成するd to oval, sparsely prickled leaves.

にもかかわらず their scruffy 形態／調整s, M. repens and M. aquifolium can look charming in 十分な flower and again in autumn when the smoky blue-黒人／ボイコット berries appear. Their leaves often develop subtle autumn hues, too.

Taller, with a shapely 輪郭（を描く）, M. japonica is probably the finest of all 種類. Flowering from November to 中央の spring, with delicious lily-of-the-valley fragrance it belongs in every garden. There are 優れた japonica hybrids, too. One of the best, M. マスコミ results from crossing M. japonica with M.lomariifolia.

The flowers are a stronger yellow and more upright, 似ているing shuttlecocks.

The popular M. Charity has elegant flower spikes. But its fragrance is いっそう少なく 激しい than with M. japonica.

Most watched News ビデオs

Comments 0

株 what you think

No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or 審議 this 問題／発行する live on our message boards.

We are no longer 受託するing comments on this article.