The Return of She
Monday, July 24, 2017
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| Hydrangea macrophylla 'Ayesha' July 14 2017 |
In our Buenos Aires garden my mother had a few hydrangeas in
our Coghlan garden. But I never knew them by that name. For me they were hortensias. These plants have always
occupied a warm place in my heart.
In our old Athlone Street garden in Kerrisdale here in
Vancouver I amassed 32 of them. There were many mopheads and the lacecaps (the
macrophyllas) but we had species, a climbing one and that special one the oak
leaf hydrangea or Hydrangea querciofolia.
When I realized we had to move to our little duplex
garden I was only able to choose two. One of them is a double flowered Hydrangea
quercifolia ‘Anabelle’ and the other you would think is a lowly mophead to be
seen in any garden. That is not the case.
Look closely and you will see that each individual floret
looks like a teacup. Notice two in this first scan how the flower opens small
in light green and progresses to blue via pink.
The name of this glorious hydrangea is Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Ayesha’. You might think that this is a
misspelling of Mohamed’s wife Aisha. But that is probably not the case. It is
the name of “She who must be obeyed” protagonist of H. Rider Haggard’s She and Ayesha, the Return of She.
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| Hydrangea macrophylla 'Ayesha' & Rosa 'Ferdinand Pichard' Sept 1 2008 |
