Kazakhstan Revisited (7) - Plants with the WOW Factor

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This is the last of the blogs on my recent trip back to Kazakhstan. Being a plantsman, I am always on the lookout for exciting new plants to add to my garden. These are the ones I will be looking out for after this trip.

We saw aquilegia atrovinosa on the first day – dark flowers against a blue sky, what could be better?

Not far from the snow line, viola altacia was flowering in both its colour forms

What colour is a trollius? Yellow? Orange? What about blue? Trollius lilacinus was my star plant from the trip

If there was a prize for the smelliest plant on the trip, this would be it. It’s cynomorium songaricum, and is pollinated by flies. You do not want to be anywhere near this when it’s flowering!

Dictamnus albus is a common garden plant, but I think dictamnus angustifolia is a much better plant

Growing in grassland was the gentian, gentian olivieri

Among the deep blue flowers, were a few pale blue ones, and a couple of plants with white flowers

Rhaphidophyton regelii is a very ancient plant, known from fossil records. It has tiny white flowers. Yes, the foliage really is this colour!

We saw a couple of specie delphiniums. Delphinium barbatum has pale yellow flowers

While delphinium confusum has purple ones

Imagine growing the two with the red-flowered delphinium nudicaule.

I mentioned linums, or flax, in a previous blog. This is the choice linum olgae

Morina kokanica was spectacular and easily recognisable

Growing right beside streams in the mountains was trollius altaicus. The photo doesn’t really do justice to the colour of the flowers which were a searing orange

My final plant to show you was growing close to the snow line. It is pulsatilla campanella, a relation of our native pasque flower

Let’s finish with a sunset. This was taken in the mountains above Dzhabagly, seen from a mountain house with no electricity or running water, where I spent my birthday

• 22 Jul, 2013
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