Saturday 6 July 2019

fackellilien

A new and hopefully long-term resident of our garden is this bright orange torch lily (Kniphofia, named after the Erfurt botany professor Johann Hieronymus Kniphof) is a healthy exemplar of a species native to South Africa first imported and described by Konrad Mönch in 1794.
The contemporary of Carl Linnaeus (see also here, here and here) who also formally classified Echinacea (though its reputation as a folk medicine long preceded its classification), Moench (Conrad, using the Latin spelling of his name professionally as was the style at the time) thought that the decorative plant would thrive, despite the obvious differences in climate, in German parks and gardens and they have proven themselves to be pretty wide-ranging indeed.