Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden including some unknowns for ID

My over-ambitious project to photograph the rhododendrons in the Parks Board Brochure and document them in the Appreciation: - Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden - the Parks Board 50 is proving a little more ambitious than I was even expecting. I will collect in this thread plants that I think are not in the Parks Board 50.

There is another brochure that includes some rhododendrons not in the the one linked to above, organized by blooming month: Ted and Mary Greig Garden walking tour brochure (vancouver.ca).

 

Red flowers, blooming mid-March

This is along the Azalea walk, right where the red-flowering 'Royston Red' is shown in the Parks Board brochure, and that is supposed to be blooming now. There is not another red rhododendron in bloom in the area. But I don't think the long leaves here look right for that cultivar, and it's supposed to have a compact, rounded habit, to around 3 feet, while this is around 2 meters high.

 

I just came across R. strigillosum in Douglas Justice's March 2017 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden. That blooms in March, has "beautiful, long, narrow, down-curved, deep green leaves with an impressed mid-rib and leaf stalks bristling with long, stiff hairs". I wasn't paying attention to that last bit. Are "long, stiff hairs" what I'm seeing in this zoomed-in photo?

 

Pinky-mauve flowers, dark maroon splotch, blooming in March

I'm getting a little more encouraged here, thought this was an unknown, but I have come across Rhododendron praevernum that blooms in March, think this looks pretty likely.

 

Definitely not that. I see that I posted that species at Rhododendrons in January - New Year's letter from UBCBG, " with all the barbs of R. barbatum but not the interesting bark". That has a lot of leaf hairs too.

 

Pink flowers, blooming mid-March

Pink Unknown 2 - R. 'Robin Hood'?
Pink flowers with hardly any markings. Leaves have a teeny bit of a heart-shape at the stem end. I see that I posted on Flickr some photos from the Rhododendron Garden at the end of March in 2011 with the comment: "In the running, according to the park board handout on the rhody path bloomers by month, are Rhododendron 'Beacon' (supposed to fade by mid-March, but this is a late year) and Rhododendron 'Robin Hood' ". Today I found in a Rhododendron Database that photo attributed to me with the name 'Robin Hood'. The plants I'm posting here are a different location in the park, but they seem to have the same colour, leaf shape and long petioles.

I'd have thought that the flower shapes were different here, but they are on the same plant.

 

Pink flowers, blooming mid-March

Pink Unknown 1
Well, I was very sure at the time that this tree was the same as what I posted just above, but the petioles are short, and the midrib colour more yellow. Maybe this one is the R. 'Beacon'? Edited: R. 'Beacon' is supposed to bloom in February, should be fading now, so this plant still with buds should not be that cultivar. This year does not seem to be that late. There are no old flowers on this.

 

Pink flowers, blooming mid-March

Pink Unknown 3
This group by the tennis courts are different from the previous ones in the leaf shape (some rugose, more tapered at the stem end, fatter at the tip end, with pointed tips), and the petals form a dark star around the group of stamens. There are two here, one a little darker than the other, but I think they are the same.

 

Could the Vancouver Rhododendron Society be of any help? Vancouver Rhododendron Society

 

Pink flowers, blooming mid-March

Pink Unknown 4

This is in Ceperley Meadow, next to a Rhododendron 'Cilpenense'. I thought it looked a lot like unknown 1 in posting #7, but the flowers look a little broader at the base, and is the colour of the anthers and the stigma significant? That seems different from unknown 1 as well. So now I have two names and three plants that I think are different.

 

Yellow flowers, blooming mid-March

Rhododendron lutescens

Well, I might be wrong about this, but Douglas Justice's description of Rhododendron lutescens in the March 2017 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden blog as having "wide open creamy- to cadmium-yellow flowers with their spidery stamens [which] are the perfect complement to the elegant leaves and willowy stems" seems apt, and the lance-shaped leaves match ones I posted at March 2017 in the garden. I'm posting it here because it's not in either of the Parks Board documents for this garden.

 

Red flowers, blooming mid-March, continued

Well, I'm just getting myself all confused about the only plant that could possibly be the 'Royston Red' in the Park Board Rhododendron brochure, but that's if the blurb on the Art's Nursery page is correct: "Blood Red tubular shaped flowers in March - April". Here are some more photos.


Maybe the last photo doesn't look all that different from this flickr photo of R. 'Brittenhill' (also called 'Britton Hill') from Royston House on Vancouver Island:
rhododendron 'britton hill'.
This photo was taken on May 12, 2010, which was the Olympics year when everything bloomed early and even the cherries that should be open in mid-May were open on April 24.
This Plantlust page notes that 'Brittenhill' is a cross between 'Jean Marie de Montague' x 'Red Loderi'.
So I was thinking maybe Royston Red wasn't really a cultivar name, just meant red rhody from Royston Nursery.

Then I came across The Vancouver Rhododendron Society: a History, with a section about how the rhododendron hybrids came to be be moved to the Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden from the Greig's Royston Nursery on Vancouver Island. 'Royston Red' is mentioned among a group of late-blooming rhododendrons.

Based on that, I should be ignoring this plant and should be looking for 'Royston Red' at the end of the season.
[Edited May 28, 2021]: Head gardener Dave told me this week that there used to be two, but they are no longer in the garden.

 

Here is a description of 'Royston Red' from The Cowichan Valley Rhododendron Society NEWSLETTER, Vol. 17, (2006, page 4), the article on The Royston Nursery Hybrids by Alan Campbell.

The same article mentions the Royston grex, which does not seem to include 'Royston Red'. So I wonder if the comments about these being late blooming do not apply to 'Royston Red'. It's lumped in with the other Royston-prefixed hybrids in the previous post, but the parentage is entirely different according to the previous quote.

 

White flowers, blooming end-March

Rhododendron leucaspis

I don't need the ID for this, because Douglas Justice included it in his April 2021 in the Garden - UBC Botanical Garden blog, and I saw it at UBCBG two days ago, and recognized it when I saw it in the rhododendron garden in Stanley Park yesterday. I dubbed it "best all over hairs" at UBCBG, and that's still the case here. I mentioned in my first posting yesterday (April 2021 in the Garden - Rhododendrons) an issue about not being able to capture yellow accurately. So I went back to see this plant again, that looks so white in my photos. My photos from UBCBG are a little better in that regard. In real life, the centres almost glow yellow, were clearly visible when I took the habit photo, and the petals are definitely off-white. I took the last photo today to show the contrast between the white fabric and the petal. It was very obvious to me taking the photo, but there it's not there in the picture at all.

 

Beautiful! I was thinking that it looks a lot like R. 'Snow Lady' so I looked it up on the ARS website and - what do you know? R. leucaspis is one parent. Here is a picture of my 'Snow Lady' showing that its leaves are not quite so hairy and the flower, plain white. It is a lovely rhodo but I think not terribly hardy on the Lower Mainland. If I had a choice between the two, I think I'd pick R. leucaspis.

Rhododendron 'Snow Lady' - Seed Parent x Pollen Parent: leucaspis x ciliatum?

 

Thank you, Margot. If I had known about that, I probably would not have been comfortable posting my photos, as your photo and ones I'm seeing look very similar and just as hairy. But I'm seeing descriptions like "gleaming white" and "pure white" for 'Snow Lady', and I was trying to show that these that I posted are not snow white.

 

Pink flowers, blooming end-March

Rhododendron floribundum

I think I don't need this ID'd, as it looks to me exactly like one I photographed at UBCBG two days ago, and posted at April 2021 in the Garden - Rhododendrons.

 

Rhododendron 'Taurus', not 'The Honorable Jean Marie de Montague' - cherry red frilly-edged flowers - Blooms on Mother's day (end April, early May)

I'm not convinced that "this particular specimen" is where the brochure says it is, but maybe I just haven't seen it yet, maybe because it's going to flower at the proper time, and not early like the one pictured here, which might mean that I do not have the right plant for this name. Except that it was only starting to open on April 16 this year. I don't really do colour names - how can "cherry red", Ron B's description elsewhere, be one particular colour? To me, this is "very red", which might be distinguished from "cherry red"; it has frilly petal edges, which is the characteristic that I'm matching to a plant for which I was given this ID. Photos are from last year around the same time and this.
[Edited: see Ron B's ID in the next posting. I have updated all but the first two photos to the revised name.]

 

You're showing 'Taurus'

 

Thank you very much. I made another attempt over in the 50 Rhodos thread. The thing is, I was going to ask if I'd come across 'Taurus', but I haven't got to where I can distinguish these red ones from each other. For instance, there's the unnamed one at Identification: - Tall fiery red rhodo, blooms in April; leaves have no indumentum | UBC Botanical Garden Forums, which to me looks intermediate to this 'Taurus' and what I just posted as 'Jean Marie de Montague'. I'm hoping only 'Cornubia' has those shiny long red leaf bud scales. Identification: - Rhododendron with striking red leaf budscales | UBC Botanical Garden Forums.

 

'Taurus' produces shoot bud scales that redden when elongating also - it's not a particularly rare feature within Rhododendron.

 

Red flowers, white stamens and pistil, blooming early May
If I were looking for plastic rhododendron flowers, I would not buy these because they look too fake, stems a little too thick, improbably white stamens and pistil a little too prominent, leaves a little too shiny, petals a little too perfect.
Finally, though, a red-flowered rhododendron that looks distinctive. Not on the list of 50 of interest.

 

Look into 'Mars', see if that might work.

 

What I'm seeing on that are white anthers on red stamens. Here the stamens are white as well, which is what creates that impression of being created in a factory.

 

Maybe I answered too quickly. Rododendron wielkokwiatowy Mars Rhododendron Mars (goldplants.eu) shows at the top red stamens, but in the description it says "pronounced white stamens" and shows a photo with white stamens, then one with red stamens, then one with white stamens.
I don't think the 'Mars' at Back to catalogue / Paluu hakemistoon/rhododendrons 2015/IMG_7424_Mars_2015_06_18 (rhodogarden.com) looks right.
The photo at Bellevue Botanical Garden (bellevuewa.gov) shows red stamens.
Here's a guy (My Selected Hybrid Rhododendron Seedlings – Murcott Garden (richardmurcottgarden.com)) showing his hybrid TT76 = Mars x Gill’s Crimson, says not worth propagating, discontinued.

What do you think of R. 'War Dance'? Parentage (Seed Parent x Pollen Parent): Mars x Pygmalion, at Hybrid Rhododendron Plant Description. But War Dance Rhododendron (Rhododendron 'War Dance') in Vancouver Victoria Burnaby Penticton Coquitlam British Columbia BC at GardenWorks describes this as having white throats, not shown at all in the ARS photo.

I found another individual that I recognized as the same, this one at Ceperley Meadow next to the Taxodium that has the knees.


Here are two more photos from today.


Edited July 28, 2021: Head gardener Dave says there is a R. 'Mars' at this Ceperley Meadow location.