Shady lady

A dull and drizzly day today, so I haven't been out beyond the garden. Played around with house plants - repotting, relabelling and generally checking up. Brought one or two plants in from the unheated glasshouse now colder weather is on the horizon. I miss the luxury of the heated glass I became used to over nearly forty years of working!

One of the plants I potted up and brought indoors is Marian's impatiens, Impatiens marianae, my Blip today. This beautiful and rarely seen Busy Lizzie is a native of extreme north-eastern India, in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Although it has the appearance of a variegated cultivar, this colouring is quite normal for the species. It's been suggested that this helps to attract pollinating insects as it grows in fairly shady area in forests. It's a low-growing ground cover, and not winter-hardy here - I think it should do well enough outside during the spring and summer.

My plants were grown from cuttings from Glasgow Botanic Gardens. The BPS (Fern Club!) had a meeting there earlier on and this plant was seen growing in the filmy fern house, a damp and shady place which obviously suits it. It attracted a lot of attention and several of us came away with cuttings.