Androsace x marpensis

Although this natural hybrid is fairly well known it is interesting because of queries concerning its cultivation and its naming. It is a very beautiful plant and has been illustrated elsewhere but not in the Notebooks.

George Smith collected material in July 1988 on a south-facing shoulder of the Kali Gandaki Gorge in central Nepal. It forms a dark green silvery-hairy cushion which is attractive all the year round and carries its flowers just clear of the foliage, usually singly but sometimes with two or three flowers to a stem. The flowers are very obviously intermediate between the two parents among which it was found growing. Two such hybrids were found among a very large number of its parents

Not all growers have found this plant to flower satisfactorily and those who insist on not being able to see any foliage on a flowering cushion will be disappointed. As our illustration shows however it is a very lovely plant if allowance is made in cultivation for its great vigour.

I grow the plant in full sun (in the north of England) completely in the open air during the whole of its growing period. For good flowering it does seem that the plant must not receive the slightest setback from being a cutting until. senescence sets in around its fourth year. So I pot on very frequently - when-ever the roots can be seen when the plant is gently knocked out of its pot for root inspection. This implies that slight overpotting is preferable to underpotting provided the compost drainage is excellent. Flowering and the beauty of the cushion fall off during the third year so it seems wise to take cuttings every second year.

At the time of the hybrid description in the SRGC Journal of January 1995 the parents were named as A. globifera and A. muscoidea f. longiscapa. The boundary between A. muscoidea and A. robusta is being re-examined and we await the new Androsace book by George Smith and Duncan Lowe to carry us forward on the naming of these plants. In the meantime we can grow A. x marpensis knowing that its name is formally accepted.

David Mowle