'Pink Haze' Lungwort; or,
Bethlehem Sage
"Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity."
-Emily Dickinson
(1830-1886).
(1830-1886).
Pulmonaria saccharata 'Pink Haze' was bred by John Ernest Solari & Rosemary Ann Solari. The flowers are about twice the size as those on the most familiar lungworts, & much more open, plus ruffly all around the edges.
This is definitely not your usual lungwort. The usual lungworts are sometimes called "Soldiers & Sailors" because they go through a major color change from pink buds & pink flowers when first opened, darkening to the most amazing Prussian blue, & frequently there are both bright pink & darkest blue flowers together on one clump.
But for 'Pink Haze' each wide-open bloom will for some while be truly bicolored, with an almost carnival aspect. Martha at SinLur Stoneworks upon first seeing this bloom laughed that it was a psychedelic paisley groovy & far out with bellbottom pants, a flower out of a flower-child's hallucination.
Blooms begin appearing just before spring, before much foliage is present, & it continues blooming until after foliage is getting bushy. When finished flowering, the foliage remains of sufficient interest that these make worthy specimen plants, being mid-green with grey-green speckles.
They are ideal front-border temporate shade-garden plants, preferring moist well-drained soil, but doing pretty well in somewhat droughty conditions if they must. Old clumps can be divided in autumn or late winter.
P. saccharata x officialis 'Sissinghurst White'
P. saccharata 'Dora Bielefeld'
P. longifolia 'Bertram Anderson'
P. longifolia x angustifolia 'Little Star'