Saint Ola's White
Evergreen Geranium
"To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane's-bill."
-Dogen Zenji
(1200-1253)
(1200-1253)
Geranium x cantabrigiense 'St. Ola' is named for a burgh of Orkney, Scotland.
There was no actual saint by this name, but it is a corruption of the name of King Olaf of Norway, for whom a Scottish medieval church was dedicated when Olaf was killed 1033, the area having become a major residence of Norse Earls.
But the St. Ola megalith in Tingwall, Shetland, predates the arrival of Vikings, & one must wonder if the masculine name Olaf got truncated to the feminine Ola out of some fading memory of a mortal queen or tutelary goddess displaced by the coming of christianity.
This is a hybrid crane's-bill, crossing Geranium dalmaticum 'Album' with G. macrorrhizum 'Album.' It is widely touted as an improved version of G. x. cantabrigiense 'Biokovo,' purportedly more vigorous.
However, 'St Ola' is not actually a registered cultivar name, & the distinction between it & 'Biokovo' is slight. If I were to hazard a difference, 'Biokovo's' white flowers age more quickly to salmon pink, while 'St Ola' remains longer a pure white, & even the stamins are colorless, unlike 'Biokovo' with pink stamens.
Alan Bremner is the nominal hybridizer for 'St. Ola' & has produced many refined new geranium hybrids, despite that 'St Ola' itself was found to be insufficiently individual to pass muster in the registration process. Bremner has, without placing too great an emphasis on it, defined his improvement on 'Biokovo' not as "more vigorous" as the advertisers say, but merely as having whiter, flatter petals.It is not likely that many who already have the earlier 'Biokovo' will find any real justification for adding 'St Ola' to one's collection of hardy geraniums, or visa-versa. But justified or not, we have both in our garden.
I sometimes regard 'Biokovo' the prettier of the two, other days 'St Ola' seems to be in finer form, but they are far too similar to ascribe superiority to either one. That they have an evergreen or semi-evergreen presence throughout winter is a bonus, as the greater majority of our crane's-bills die back in winter.
It starts blooming before mid-May, white slowly aging to light pink. It can be aggressive at spreading, a small clump after a few years colonizing as much as four feet of space. It remains quite short, a good groundcover only six to twelve inches high, with dense lush little leaves. Its root if disrupted or the leaves if bruised may release an odor which some find pleasantly weedy, but others find it unpleasant; it exudes no odor if unmolested.
Said to tolerate dry shade, it in reality does poorly in such conditions, although it would not be bothered by merely occasional hardship. Overall it vastly prefers only a little protection in bright sun with moist well-draining soil.