Hidden Valley Hibiscus Forum

Berried Treasure  7-9 inch flowers

Older Australian Variety, deserves a garden space due to large flowers of unique color

How would you rate this cv charlie ?

When dealing with purple/lavender/blue flowered hibiscus there are often drawbacks to consider. Berried Treasure has a minimum of those which makes me rate it quite highly. Many "blues" are on the small side but Berried Treasure flowers can be a full 8" and it passes this size to at least some of its offspring. Many "blues" have weak or downright bad bushes but Berried Treasures is upright and has moderate stem strength. It's not a great bush, but it's not bad either. A mature bush of it can open multiple flowers on the same day and it's not stingy about blooming.

Blues can also be terrible faders. So many of the photos one sees of "blue" hibiscus flowers were taken of blooms just as they opened and often these have not been exposed to the sun at all since the blooms are picked early and placed in a location for maximum color to show. All hibiscus show flowers are picked as closed buds about to open, transported to the show early in the morning, and opened and photographed indoors. This type of display and photography is pretty but can be misleading. What you get if you grow the same variety is often not what you see in the photo. 'Berried Treasure' also fades some, but it is not one of the worse ones. The lighter color of a 'Berried Treasure' bloom exposed to sun is still pretty to my eyes.

To illustrate this point, attached are photos of a winter bloom taken in Australia and picked early (very dark), a photo of a medium color bloom that was taken in our house last September (plant grown in a sunny window) and a lighter color bloom grown and opened in full sun. I don't have a photo of a bloom exposed to sun all day long before taking the photo, but the color is not much lighter than the lightest of these.

To sum up, 'Berried Treasure' is an excellent variety in the blue color range, having a few minor flaws but much better overall than many of the 'blues' we have grown.

Charlie

Thanks Charlie for more detail about it. Will you be offering some this year?

Kerry, though it can be grown on its own roots I decided to graft it this year. Those plants are growing now but won't be ready until summer. Lots of varieties in the same situation - grafted and ready in summer sometime. Today I made some T. Princess, Giganormous, Maid of Honor, Joy, and Vin Extraordinaire grafts. Making new plants is sort of addicting.....

Charlie

Uh oh, Charlie.  I want three of those varieties you listed :-/