Douglas Justice's July in the Garden 2023 - UBC Botanical Garden blog is an update of the one he wrote for June in 2016, with lots more photos, more description and details of locations. I posted photos from 2016 at https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/2016-june-8-june-in-the-garden-rodgersia.88784/. As was the case seven years ago, I found almost no labels, but yesterday I managed to keep track of where I was photographing and I think I have confirmed the plants on Garden Explorer. By now, the flowers are almost finished and the plants are producing fruits. Really, some of these are not confusing at all. Rodgersia podophylla, duck-foot rodgersia, is very distinct. Rodgersia aesculifolia have the same leaf plamate arrangement, but no lobes at the tips of the leaflets. Easy. Rodgersia pinnata have some leaves in a palmate arrangement, but most leaves more or less pinnate.
I would not be able to distinguish these R. pinnata cultivars from the species plants, but I found a label for Rodgersia pinnata 'Superba'. This should be Rodgersia pinnata 'Elegans', on the left next to a R. aesculifolia, photos from two weeks ago. Rodgersia podophylla is not one mentioned that has an overlapping range with the others and is one that would be expected to hybridize readily, but I thought the pinnate leaves with the lobed leaf tips would indicate a hybrid.
Since Astilboides tabularis was mentioned in the blog, it having once been classified as rodgersia, and since I found a whole small circular path with lots of them right up at the path, I got a little over-excited. Huge peltate leaves (the stem connects inside the margin of the leaf, a feature that makes any such plant a favourite for me) - how could I never have noticed these before Douglas featured them a few months ago?! If you want to see photos of several plants with peltate leaves, I have curated a gallery on Flickr (Flickr galleries are other people's photos) at Peltate Leaves | Flickr.
