Surprising winter hardiness of Eithea blumenavia

William Hoffmann wahoffma@ncsu.edu
Fri, 22 Mar 2019 05:52:13 PDT
Last spring I planted a clump of Eithea bluminavia in my shade garden.
Since I have several pots of this species I ultimately decided to leave
this clump in the ground to see if it could overwinter here in our 7B
climate in NC. I have never heard of this species being cold hardy, so I
did not have high expectations. But I just got back from a couple of weeks
of travel and was checking out the spring activity in my garden, and to my
surprise, the whole clump of Eithea is alive and sprouting.

This was not a particularly cold winter, with a low of -18F (-8C), but it
was very rainy, so I am optimistic that this species can generally survive
our winters as long as the soil does not freeze. These were in a raised bed
covered with a thin layer of pine needles, but otherwise I did nothing to
protect the clump. The leaves died back from freezing sometime in late fall
or early winter.
Now I look forward to seeing if it will flower.

Has anyone else tested the cold hardiness of this species?

Regards,
Bill
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