'Blue Jacket'
Hyacinth
"And the songs pass
From the green land
Which lies upon the waves as a leaf
On the flowers of hyacinth."
-Richard Aldington
1892-1962
1892-1962
To me the many Hyacinthus orientalis cultivars as prepared for market all too often resemble some sort of dense vegetable in a bizarre array of color, & not actually all that pleasant. I know many people love that look, but others who shares my feeling of being put-off by the gaudiness of these short spring flowers may be encouraged to know that they change for the better as they age in the garden.
If left to naturalize undisturbed, they become decreasingly tight, but loosen up with an airier flower still extremely colorful, but looking much more natural. "Show" quality bulbs have to be babied & tricked into the artificiality of their famously dense flower spikes, whereas left to their own devices they can be extremely pretty without looking like spray-painted footballs.
Some of the bright colors may still seem a bit "much" for any naturalistic setting. But all things being relative, 'Blue Jacket' is somewhat subtle, in that its bright blues are moderated with a silvery cast at the petal edges & tips. Right through the center of the blue is a purple stripe. When young the bloom is an eight-inch stalk of dense flowers, but it ages in consecutive years into a foot-tall looser flower that I find becomes increasingly comely & pleasant. They may occasionally with age reach 18 inches or so.
The ones in this little drift, shown in a March photo, are middle-aged. They're not too tightly dense, but not as loose as they will appear after a couple more years in the ground. With the looser bloom one can see that each little flower in the floret is tubular with reflexed petals. These are just so much more delightfulness when the individual flowers can be seen into, amidst, & around.
The dwarf rhododendron flowering in the background is an early-blooming Karin Seleger. The crocus grass immediately behind the hyacinths is C. korolkowii 'Kiss of Spring,' which is already finished blooming by mid-March when its lingering grass becomes taller.
'Blue Jacket' was introduced in 1953 by C. J. Zonneveld of the Dutch botanical family. This makes it one of the "New" Hyacinths, since some cultivars date to the 1860s. The usual cut-off date for "New" is 1950. It blooms for us beginning in mid-March & lasts through April.
Other species of short bulbous flowers, even when sweet-smelling, really cannot be smelled while standing up; but a drift of hyacinths can be smelled from some distance, & pleasing they are!