From Garden Flora: The Natural and Cultural History of the Plants In Your Garden by Noel Kingsbury:
“Hydrangea includes some 35 species of small trees, shrubs, or shrubby climbers, found in eastern and southeastern Asia and the Americas. The name comes from the Greek for a water vessel, after the shape of the fruit. Hydrangeas are plants of regions with warm and humid summer climates, the shrubby kinds growing typically in woodland edge habitats, and in Japan, along the coast.
“For gardeners, the distinction between lacecap and mophead is crucial. Plants are naturally lacecaps… with a large number of small fertile florets being surrounded by a corona of larger sterile ones, the latter attracting pollinators. Mutation may result in nearly all the fertile florets being replaced by sterile ones — a turn of events that renders the flowers totally dysfunctional as far as wild plants are concerned but which led to great interest from humanity….“
Let’s wrap up August 2021 with the last of my bluebird hydrangea photos — to be followed in a few days with a selection of my very own beautiful and bulbous mophead hydrangeas; or, as I like to call them: hydrangibles.
The previous bluebird hydrangea posts are:
Baby Bluebird … Hydrangeas (1 of 2)
Baby Bluebird … Hydrangeas (2 of 2)
More Bluebird Hydrangeas! (1 of 2)
Thanks for taking a look! See you in September!
WOW, that’s an amazing blue. Our hydrangeas are only light blue although we water them with brown water from a rusty can.
Thanks for sharing
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thank you! This is the first year they’ve come in with such an intense blue, though I’m not sure why. It may be a bit of an illusion; the plant produced larger clusters of flowers so there were a lot more tiny blue buds for the camera to capture.
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