Alan Galloway

A Cast of Hundreds

Flowering in early December, this is our first time to see blooms on a cast iron plant collected for us in 2018, by the late Alan Galloway in northern Vietnam. It didn’t take but a glance to realize that it represents another new, undescribed cast iron plant species. Our taxonomist, Zac Hill, has already been

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Sinister Arum

We love the foliage of the winter growing arums. Here’s an image we just captured of the beautiful Arum sintensii ‘Sinister’. This selection is from the collection of the late Alan Galloway. Native to damp shade as well as open woodland conditions on Cyprus, Arum sintenisii is named after German botanist Paul Ernst Emil Sintenis.

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Sauromatum…a Different Take

Many hardy aroid lovers have grown the popular Sauromatum venosum–a plant that has been cultivated for hundreds of years. Few people, however, have tried another lesser-known species, that we think is an exceptional garden plant, Sauromatum horsfieldii. We’d grown a couple of clones of this species for years, and found it to be a BIO

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Desperate Aroids – The adventures of Phallicity

The spring garden at JLBG has a number of phallic moments if you’re lucky enough to catch them. Here are a few of our favorites. Below is a color echo we created, using Pig’s Butt Arum (Helicodiceros muscivorus) and Salvia x nemorosa. We’re sure you’ll want to recommend this combination for everyone in your HOA.

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Adding Vulgarity to the Garden

We love “vulgar” plants, which are good for providing unexpected shrieks from garden visitors. One of our favorite plants for evoking such moments is the European native, Dracunculus vulgaris. For those who took Latin in school, you’ll know that the English translation of the Latin name is Vulgar Dragon’s Butt. This fascinating spring ephemeral is

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Canary Treasure

This is our first flowering of Dracunculus canariensis, the rare cousin of the more commonly-grown aroid Dracunculus vulgaris. Dracunculus canariensis hails from Madeira (reportedly extinct) and the nearby Canary Islands, all off the coast of Morocco. We inherited our specimen from the late plantsman, Alan Galloway, who planned to cross it with Dracunculus vulgaris. The

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Alan’s Laosy Giant

The late plantsman Alan Galloway was a prolific plant collector in Southeastern Asia, and one of the plants that has surprised us with its winter hardiness is the giant evergreen Solomon’s Seal, Disporopsis longifolia. In the wild, Alan and I encountered this throughout Thailand and Vietnam, but our tallest clone is one which Alan collected

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Dazzling vulgarities

Flowering in the garden now are the amazing and very rare white-flowered Dracunculus vulgaris. This wild and crazy aroid, which typically has a red/purple inflorescence, hails from the Mediterranean region, centered around Greece and Turkey. The late aroid guru Alan Galloway worked extensively to breed these, and since we now hold his collections, we wanted

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Out of Africa….and possibly Outer Space

This weekend marked our first flowering of the rare aroid, Pseudohydrosme gabunensis. We inherited this weird tropical after the passing of our friend and adjunct researcher Alan Galloway last spring. Alan had grown it from seed acquired in 2008 from the famed aroid researcher affectionately known as Lord P. Our staff describe the floral smell

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