Description
This unfolds in spring to reveal paired, almost maple-shaped, palmate leaves and large silk-textured flowers in a sumptuous shade of light blue-violet, with a boss of yellow stamens in the centre.
The flowers last fully three weeks in the cool of spring, which is when they first appear. Further flowers are also produced throughout the early summer before the whole of the top growth dies away for the autumn and winter.
The colour is glorious and the plant is rightly sought after. Ours are cultivated rhizomes raised in Japan. They revel in half-shade or light shade in a humus-rich but well drained soil. The sort of ‘woodsey’ site adored by our other woodland-edge plants.
