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Spiraea 'Arguta'

Modern name

Spiraea 'Arguta'

Synonyms

Spiraea × arguta Zab.

A shrub of rounded, bushy habit, 6 to 8 ft high, and as much wide; branches graceful, slender, twiggy, and covered with down. Leaves oblanceolate, 34 to 112 in. long, 14 to 12 in. wide, entire, or with a few teeth towards the apex; of a lively green and glabrous above, slightly downy and rather prominently nerved beneath. Flowers 13 in. across, pure white, produced during April and May in fascicles of four to eight, each flower on a slender glabrous stalk 12 in. or so long.

A seedling of S. × multiflora (S. hypericifolia × S. crenata), raised some years before 1884; the other parent is thought to be S. thunbergii. It is the most beautiful of the spring-flowering spiraeas, being quite hardy and never failing to produce a wealth of blossom. The flower-clusters are crowded on the upper side of shoots made the previous year, forming snowy white wreaths from 6 in. to 12 in. long. It is most conveniently increased by means of layers, its slender lissom branches adapting themselves admirably to this method.

S. ‘Grefsheim’. – A shrub in the style of ‘Arguta’ but dwarfer, to about 4 or 5 ft and flowering somewhat earlier. Leaves on the season’s growths narrowly elliptic or lanceolate, narrowed at both ends, mostly quite entire, 112 to 134 in. long, about 38 in. wide, soft sea-green and at first downy above, permanently clad beneath with short appressed silky hairs. Upper flower-clusters sessile, the lower on definite leafy branchlets; pedicels downy. This spiraea arose in the Grefsheim nursery at Nes, Norway, as a self-sown seedling and was put into commerce in 1954. It is probably a hybrid between S. hypericifolia and S. cana (S. × cinerea Zab.). The spiraea grown as S. arguta nana or compacta is probably of the same parentage.


Genus

Spiraea

Other species in the genus