Common Or Scottish Heather In Your Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Common heather is an extraordinary plant

Common heather, a synonym - Scottish - the only representative of the genus heather in the heather family. But as if compensating for the fact that it is only one species, this plant has quite a few intraspecific forms.

Common heather (Calluna vulgaris (L.) Hull.) Is a very ancient shrub with a height of 20 to 100 cm, on average, its height is usually about 50. It is also a living relict still flourishing.

It has been known in the fossil state since the Oligocene, i.e. has been around for over 30 million years. Its distribution area is very extensive. In nature, it grows throughout Europe, in Siberia, in northern Africa, in the northwest of America. In the latter case, it is likely that he was brought there by man when Europeans settled America.

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Common heather grows in dry pine forests, on upland and transitional bogs, burned-out areas, clearings; on poor and acidic soils. Often forms extensive thickets. It is a perennial plant that can live up to 45 years. Heather is beautiful and unpretentious. He is an evergreen plant. This feature is very important and very desirable for flower growers, since there are very few such plants in our zone.

The stem of heather is thin, branched. The lower shoots often lie down and take root, the upper ones are erect. Its bark is reddish-brown. The rhizome is powerful, the roots are densely covered with mycorrhiza. Only in this symbiosis with mushrooms can heather exist, receiving nutrients and water from them, and giving in return the products of photosynthesis, primarily carbohydrates.

Leaves of common heather are alternate, closely spaced, sessile, small, 1-4 mm long, short-needle or scaly, rolled into a tube. They sit on twigs tiled, in four rows. In summer, the leaves are dark green, in winter - greenish-reddish-purple. In some species, leaves can be of a wide variety of colors and shades at any time of the year, including variegated ones.

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Generous honey plant

Heather is beautiful, abundant and blooms for quite a long time - from mid-July to mid-September. Flowers are collected at the ends of the stems in a multi-flowered one-sided raceme up to 15 cm long. They are bell-shaped, sometimes they can be double, small, about 4 mm in size, drooping, on short pedicels, very numerous. And it is no coincidence that flowering heather plants create a solid pink and lilac background.

Heather flowers are mauve, lilac, light purple, purple, occasionally white. Pollinated by insects, and at the end of flowering, even partially by the wind. They are very melliferous. One hectare of heather plantations can yield up to 200 kg of honey. Heather is the very last plant in the main honey harvest, an abundant autumn source of nectar for bees. No wonder there is such a honey-tart aroma over its thickets. The honey from it is so thick that it is not pumped out of the combs, which is why it is usually sold directly into them.

It has a very pleasant taste, sweet with a slightly bitter-tart aftertaste and a strong specific aroma. While it is liquid, it has a reddish-brown color, after crystallization it becomes brown. Although officially, according to the classification adopted in our country, it is rated lower than linden and some other varieties of honey, it is highly appreciated by amateur experts for its original taste and healing properties. Due to its thick consistency, this honey is unsuitable for wintering bees, but it is very good for feeding and healing people.

The heather fruit is a pubescent leathery four-celled spherical capsule. The seeds ripen in September - October, they are small and light, carried by the wind.

Heather in the garden landscape. Heather varieties

The use of heather can be very versatile. It is now often used in landscape design, although not yet to the extent that it deserves. In Western Europe, mainly in Great Britain, quite a few of its decorative forms and varieties with various colors of flowers and leaves have been bred or selected in nature. The most famous of them are the following: Alba Erecta, Alba Plena, Alportii praecox, Beoley Gold, Blazeaway, Camala, Gold Haze, Darkness, HE Beale, JH Hamilton, Kinlochruel, Peter Sparkes, Pumile, Silver Queen, Sir John Chorrington, Spring Cream, Sunset, Wicckwar Flame, Red Carpet and others.

There are no domestic Russian varieties of heather yet, although in nature, if you search, there are many very decorative forms of this plant, even unknown in Europe. You just need to show interest, select and vegetatively propagate them. And we will have our own varieties, no worse than European ones.

Heather is well suited for decorating rockeries, alpine slides, creating biogroups, borders. It can also be used as a tapeworm (singly). It often grows rather quickly into a solid carpet, creating an elegant decorative backdrop. It is also very suitable for drawing up both summer live, and especially for winter dry bouquets.

Heather agrotechnology

When grown in culture, common heather prefers well-drained acidic soils, it does not tolerate calcareous soils. Does not need feeding. Requires almost no maintenance. When planting it, it is advisable to add peat to the prepared holes. Heather is responsive to mulching with bark, sawdust, leaf humus.

It suffers greatly from drying out of the soil, therefore, it needs watering during the dry period. But he also does not like stagnant water, although it can withstand. Formative pruning of heather is required during cultivation. However, a geometrically symmetrical formation is not suitable for him, so the plant does not look like this. Its branches should be shortened at different levels, i.e. in a natural style. You can cut off only the leafy part of the plant, and then only partially.

With excessive pruning - to the base of the branches bare from the foliage - the heather dies. Pruning is usually carried out in the fall, in September, it helps to maintain the splendor of the bushes and stimulates future flowering. Lost decorative (bare) stems and crooked shoots are completely removed. In the spring, in April, you can only cut off last year's dried inflorescences. Common heather loves a sunny location, in extreme cases, it can withstand partial shade. It is not damaged by pests, it is not eaten by livestock. Sometimes he suffers from late blight. In this case, the leaves "turn gray", the stem droops, and the plant dies.

Heather propagation

In culture, heather mainly reproduces vegetatively: by dividing bushes, layering, green cuttings. It is difficult to breed it with seeds. When propagating by layering, the lower branches are bent to the ground and rooted. After a few months, they can already be separated from the bush and planted. As green cuttings in the summer, this year's growth is cut up to 5 cm long and rooted in a greenhouse.

Read the next part. Medicinal properties of common heather →

Vladimir Starostin,

dendrologist, candidate of agricultural sciences

Photo by Olga Rubtsova