Lovely dove

It seems to be fashionable to run down the poor old hydrangeas, but I like them, especially the lacecap varieties, which is the form of the wild hydrangea. The central fertile flowers are surrounded by the colourful bracts which attract the pollinators. Mopheads, of course, have few or no fertile flowers and are more flamboyant for that reason, and more dumpy too!

This cultivar is Hydrangea macrophylla 'Taube', a lovely long-flowering blue lacecap, one of the 'Teller' group raised in Switzerland in the early 1950s for the pot plant trade, though now mostly grown as garden shrubs. 'Taube' translates as 'dove'.