Regular readers of the invaluable resources on the AGS website will be well aware of the value of the Show Reports written to describe the highlights of our superb Shows.  They illustrate the prize winning plants, often describe the origins of the plants displayed, give cultivation advice and congratulate the exhibitors who have grown the beautiful exhibits.

Your reporter of this, the last Show of 2024, intended to follow the same well-trodden path but has decided not to for one good reason.  For many years one of our regular Show Photographers Jon Evans has written an excellent Photographer’s Diary with a wealth of magnificent images of the best entries and a commentary about them.

His Diary concerning this Show is really comprehensive.  He has illustrated all the best plants and provided helpful and sometimes quite detailed information about them.  It should be studied by all, particularly those wishing to grow successfully autumn flowering bulbs and corms.  Follow the link below to enjoy his work.

However, his erudition has left your reporter with a dilemma.  Jon has already written about every plant at the Show that your reporter would have chosen!   How can his work be supplemented without repetition?  The answer may be to look closely at a few of the plants that deserve a more detailed description.

Happily for your reporter exhibitors entering the class for rock plants, new or rare in cultivation, have already undertaken this task.  Botanical notes for such entries must be displayed by the exhibitor.  These notes often make extremely interesting reading but to the best of your reporter’s knowledge are never retained, still less published for the benefit of those who did not attend the show.

Fortuitously there is a pleasing symmetry here.  First place in this class was won by Alan Furness with a Raoulia bryoides and second by Jon Evans himself with Narcissus viridiflorus.  Then the class for a non-bulbous plant grown from seed was won by Jon with a Cyclamen rohlfsianum good enough to be awarded a Certificate of Merit.  In second place was Alan with Raoulia bryoides.  Three of these exhibits had botanical notes and your reporter will take the liberty of quoting them here.

Alan’s R. bryoides (from the Astereacae family) was grown from seed sown on 3rd January 2019.  He wrote ‘Forms tight low domes of tiny congested silvery white rosettes growing among frost shattered rocks on the drier mountains of N. Canterbury & Eastern Nelson-Marlborough of New Zealand South Island.  Tiny flowers form in the tiny rosettes.  Pot grown under cover in a mix of crushed slate, pumice and humusey “soil”.  It might flower if it lives long enough.  Rare in cultivation.’

His R. eximea was sown on the same day.  He wrote ‘The most widespread of New Zealand’s high mountain cushion plants (“vegetable sheep”).  It colonises frost shattered but stable rocks on the drier greywacke mountains of mid Canterbury/N Otago.  Tiny crimson flowers form in the centre of the small rosettes’.  It too is pot grown under cover in a mix similar to that described above and is also rare in cultivation.

Those who have tried to grow these wonderful plants, your reporter included, are well aware that they are rare in cultivation because they are exceedingly difficult to grow in the UK climate.  Alan’s two beauties were further enhanced by the great skill required to display them with a top dressing of vertical black slate chips.  A wonderful sight.

See below a specimen of R. eximea  photographed by Cliff Booker and used with his permission.  The meaning of the expression ‘vegetable sheep’ becomes apparent.

Jon’s Narcissus viridiflorus with its green, scented flowers was described as follows.  ‘This curious species has been long known (it was first described by Danish botanist Peter Schousboe in 1800). But is seldom seen in cultivation.  The petals are narrow and reflexed and often untidy with an almost vestigial corolla and the flowers are strongly scented, particularly at night.

‘It is native to a small area of southern Spain around Cadiz, and to parts of north Morocco between Tangier and Agadir, and is now quite rare in the wild.  In the wild it tends to grow in wet heavy soil, often in gullies, where it is damp throughout autumn and winter but dries out during the summer.

‘Flowering bulbs seldom produce leaves as well as a flower stem.  The erect stem remains green and elongates after flowering.

‘These bulbs are grown amongst a collection of South African amaryllids (Haemanthus and Brunsvigia) and receive a long summer bake.  The hot summer this year, followed by a good drenching in September, seems to have prompted them to flower.’

[Ah, the perils of reusing botanical notes – the comment about the hot summer related to a previous flowering in 2021, not the rather bedraggled summer of 2024 – Jon].

Your reporter does not exactly recall the summer of 2024 as hot but these notes will surely assist those who wish to grow this unusual daffodil.  This photo, not of Jon’s quality, was taken by your reporter in Tangier in late October on an urban site about to be covered with houses.

Finally, in his Diary Jon describes the Certificate of Merit awarded to his Cyclamen rohlfsianum, grown from seed sown in May 2007, as ‘inexplicable’ but the reason is not hard to find.  This species from Libya is not at all hardy in this country and is invariably grown under glass, protected from frost.  As Jon’s plant shows it has stamens protruding from the flower, reminiscent of Dodecatheon species in North America, a fellow member of the Primulaceae family.  Jon’s specimen was special because of its diminutive size, despite its age, and the abundance of beautiful, deeply coloured flowers growing closely together at the centre of its pot.

And so ended another year of AGS Shows.  Who knows what wintry conditions will challenge our plants in the coming months, but we can look forward to travelling once more to Show venues and exhibiting our treasured plants and meeting our friends in only a few short months.

Show Reporter: David Charlton