Elephant Ears
"Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might,
No lonely place where thou hast never trod,
No desert thou hast left uncarpeted
With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet."
-Sara Teasdale
(1884-1933)
(1884-1933)
Bergenia crassifolia is in full bloom much earlier than B. cordifolia. We have both species, besides a hybrid of the two, called 'Silberlicht,' & most of our varieties are growing together in a no-maintenance hillside garden down the alley, where they thrive & where one or the other is in bloom winter & spring.
The earlier-blooming B. crassifolia starts flowering gorgeously in December. The photo at top was taken in January 2002, & that particular bloom lasted until the beginning of April when it was finally so ratty-looking I clipped it off. The following winter it bloomed again in December through January, but the blooms didn't last nearly so long, perhaps because it was an unsually mild but wet winter. It did, however, rebloom in April.
Another B. crassifolia in a shadier garden also blooms early, but not as well in winter, possibly for having less sunlight; in April & May it blooms more fully. It's shown in the second photo, snapped April 2003. Its flowers are closer to lilac rather than the more common pink or purple. On both the crassifolias shown here, the rare random spike of blossoms will occur unpredictably out of season all the way up to autumn. For either species, the huge blooms are long-lasting in bouquets.
It makes a nice foot-tall & occasionally taller ground cover of enormous leaves. The short spikes of purple bells on B. crassifolia are stubbier than the very tall upright candelabra on B. cordifolia.Though the wild natural forms of both species have purple flowers, there are now many other colors as well, though mostly varying shades of pale pink to bright magenta. There are additionally hybrids such as our B. cordifolia x crassifolia 'Silberlicht' with blooms that start out silvery white & age to pale pink.
The ones I had as a kid were the plain wild variety as originally found in the Himalayas & China (the ot her commonly offered species B. cordifolia is from Siberia). The one shown in the first photo above is probably that same wild Chinese form; it was obtained at a street fair from an Asian woman who had them all over her yard, & it was not a named cultivar to my knowledge. But there are today many cultivars & hybrids. These include white-flowered varieties such as B. crassifolia 'Bressingham White'; or deep red ones with names like 'Bressingham Ruby' & 'Ballawley'; salmon-colored varieties such as 'Bressingham Salmon,' & 'Rosi Close' (aka 'Rose Klose'), this last with a very compact growth. Amagenta double-blossom variety B. cordifolia 'Abendglut' (or 'Evening Glow') is a double-blossom variety with leaves that turn richly plum-colored for autumn & winter (when they turn back to green in the springtime they remain reddish on the underside). Many other B. cordifolia cultivars though not having B. crassifolia's winter blooms do lend color to the winter garden by right of their leaves having a range of colors from chocolate to burgandy to red. We have two of these, 'Winterglut' or 'Winter Glow,' & 'Abendglocken' or Evening Bells. There is also a scaled-down hybrid cutie named 'Baby Doll' with red blooms. Plus scores of others.
Most are not that different one to the next, especially in summer when the big leaves are green & there are no flowers. But every garden should have at least one B. cordifolia variety that turns red-leafed in winter then blooms with its leaves restored to green in spring; at least one one winter-blooming B. crassifolia in order to have bergenia blossoms from the start of the year. That would be minimal before selecting variant blooms.
They are strongly evergreen every day of the year & call for no maintenance at all. They spread overground by thick stolons. If new specimens are desired, a mature clutch of leaves can be separated along the stolons to plant elsewhere.