Daphne cneorum L.

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'Alba'

Flowers white. It received an Award of Merit when shown by Messrs Tucker in 1920. The plant now in commerce resembles the var. pygmaea in habit.

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D julia Kozo-Polianski

Although recognised as a species in the Flora of the Soviet Union, this daphne is very near to D. cneorum and indeed less distinct from the normal form of that species than is var. verlotii. Of the characters by which Kozo-Polianski distinguished his species from D. cneorum the most marked would seem to be the narrower leaves and the more congested inflorescences, with up to twenty-five flowers in each. This daphne is, however, of great interest to plant geographers, being a local endemic found in a restricted area from north-west to south-west of Voronezh (commonest near Barkalovka) and forming part of the remarkable flora referred to under D. sophia. Its habitat is on open slopes at a few hundred feet above sea-level, where it grows in limestone rubble or lime-rich black-earth (chernozem) in a steppe-like vegetation which contains, however, many species which, like the daphne, are alien to the steppe.D. julia was introduced to this country by Eliot Hodgkin, who received four plants from Moscow in 1960. One of these grew to be 3 ft across in the garden of the late E. B. Anderson.

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'Eximia'

Flowers larger than in the type, deep pink; it is also some­what larger in leaf. The parent of this clone was one of a number of collected plants supplied to the late A. T. Johnson by Stormonth’s nursery, Carlisle. It was given an Award of Merit in 1938 and a First Class Certificate in 1967. What was apparently a similar form (at least in size of flower and leaf) was described by Dippel in the last century as var. major.

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f. arbusculoides Tuzson

Habit rather erect and leaf-margins revolute. This variant has been recorded from W. Hungary, S.E. Austria and N. Yugo­slavia and is said to be confined to acid soils. For this information we are indebted to the revision of Daphne in Flora Europaea, Vol. 2 (1968), p. 258, where it is suggested that this variant may perhaps deserve recognition as a subspecies.

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var. pygmaea Stoker

Smaller in all its parts than the type; perianth tube irregularly wrinkled on the outside. Described by the late Fred Stoker from plants found and collected by him in the Venetian Alps at 8,000 ft (The New Flora and Sylva, Vol. 7, p. 275). Dwarf forms of D. cneorum found in the calcareous pre-Alps of S.E. France are discussed by Ruffier-Lanche in the article referred to below under var. verlotii (for an important correction to the text of this article see op. cit., Vol. 27, p. 156). A dwarf form of diffuse habit, with deep pink flowers, was introduced from the Pyrenees.

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var. verlotii (Gren. & Godr.) Meissn.

A distinct variety. Leaves up to 1 in. long but rarely more than {1/8} in. wide. Lobes of perianth lanceolate-linear, three times longer than wide, rose-coloured inside and out; tube to {5/8} in. long. Found by Verlot at St-Eynard near Grenoble and described in 1856. The distribution of this variety is uncertain, but plants found in Bavaria, Switzerland, etc., are referred to it by Hegi (Fl. Mitteleuropa, Vol. 5, p. 717) and by Keissler (op. cit., p. 80). For a further discussion see Eliot Hodgkin in Bull. A.G.S., Vol. 25, p. 319. Also R. Ruffier-Lanche, ibid., Vol. 26, p. 65, in which other variants of D. cneorum found wild in France are discussed.