Beautiful Plants For Your Interior
‘ ‘Catskill’ and Hardy Rhododendrons
In the 1950s and 70s, Paul Vossburg was very interested in hybridizing with the goal of creating very hardy rhododendrons. This interest was the result of his witnessing the work that Clem Bowers was doing at Hick’s Nursery on Long Island. (For more on this attend the 2019 Annual Convention in Philadelphia.)
Paul made the following cross:
(‘Charles Dickens’ x ‘Atrosanguinium’) x (‘James Bateman’ x ‘Abraham Lincoln’).
All of these are catawbiense hybrids of unknown background created in the 1850s in England except ‘Abraham Lincoln’ which was an unknown catawbiense hybrid from the Parson’s Nursery in Flushing, NY (part of New York City).
Paul had 350 seedlings of this cross and planted them at a friend’s farm somewhere in the Catskill Mountains north of New York City where the winter temperature easily would go to -300F. Only one of them proved hardy and Paul named it ‘Catskill’. When Paul went to get cuttings from the plant, the property owner would not let him do it saying the plant was on his property and thus he owned it and he wanted the only plant. Paul would never tell anyone where the plant was, so it is gone.
I bring this up as I see so many people interested in super hardy rhododendrons but I never see anything in the seed exchange where any of the old catawbiense hybrids (Ironclades) are used. Are we missing something? Dick Murcott 8/18/17
PS. Did you know the ‘Mrs. C. S. Sargent’ was the seed parent of ‘Meadowbrook?
and it was also the seed parent of ‘Pierce’s American Beauty’, a triploid?