Alstroemerias
A few years ago, I was walking down a Dublin street when I came across a flower stall. Right at the front, sparkling with summer colour, was a bucket labelled “Ulster Mary’s” – complete with double inverted commas and rogue apostrophe. Of course, what Molly Malone, the florist, was offering were alstroemerias, but I bet she sold more as Ulster Mary’s than she would have if she’d labelled them with the Latin name.
Thirty years ago, there were the orange alstroemerias that rampaged up and down your sunny border, smothering everything, and there were the cut-flower alstroemerias with wonderful colours and exceptional vase life.
The latter, developed as greenhouse cut flowers, turned out to be hardy – although very often the new spring growth is cut to the ground by…
