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Escallonia × exoniensis Veitch

Modern name

Escallonia × exoniensis H.J.Veitch

An evergreen shrub or small tree up to 15 or 20 ft high, of quick growth and open, graceful habit; branches ribbed, downy, and slightly glandular. Leaves variable in size, from 12 to 112 in. long, half or less than half as wide; doubly toothed, glossy green above, paler beneath, glabrous on both sides except for a line of down along the midrib above. Flowers white or rose-tinted, produced from June to October in terminal panicles 112 to 3 in. long, petals nearly 12 in. long, the bases forming a tube, the ends expanded. Calyx and flower-stalks downy and glandular.

A hybrid between E. rosea and E. rubra raised in the nurseries of Messrs Veitch of Exeter. It is a most attractive evergreen, flowering more or less continuously from June until the frosts come, and quite as hardy as E. rubra.

Dr Sleumer suggests that the second parent of E. × exoniensis may have been E. rubra var. macrantha. Hybrids between E. rosea and E. rubra also occur in the wild and it may be that the escallonia distributed by Veitch of Exeter under the name E. montana Phil, was a hybrid of this parentage. It was raised from seeds collected by Pearce in Valdivia province.

cv. ‘Balfourii’. – Raised by Sir Isaac Bailey Balfour at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden by crossing ‘a particularly fine form of E. rubra’ with E. rosea. It is a graceful evergreen 10 ft or more high, with drooping twigs, the flowers blush-tinted white, resembling those of E. rosea in their columnar shape and the short limb of each petal.


Genus

Escallonia

Other species in the genus