2015 Trials report

In June of 2014 plants of nineteen taxa were planted at Denver Botanic Gardens’ Chatfield Farms (Littleton, CO )and Colorado State University’s Plant Environmental Research Center (Fort Collins, CO) for evaluation for attributes desirable of plants in the Plant Select® program. These taxa represented nineteen species, seventeen genera, and nine botanical families.

Within months of plantng, staff at DBG dictated that all plants of Dieteria bigelovii ssp. bigelovii (Machaeranthera pattersonii) be removed from the evaluation areas and destroyed. The remaining eighteen taxa were left in the ground and evaluated the following spring for overwinter survival. One taxa, Salvia WINDWALKER® Coral Pink salvia, and introduction from Le;;y Grummons, had no plants surviving after the winter of 2014‐2015. Another taxa, Stipa gigantea UNDAUNTED® ‘Lauren’s Hardy’, had no plants surviving at CSU‐PERC after the winter of 2014‐2015, however a few plants did survive at DBG‐ChatfieldFarms.

The remaining seventeen taxa where evaluated and periodically measured throughout the 2015 growing season. Of those seventeen taxa, three displayed attributes desirable of plants in the Plant Select®
program: Limonium minutum, Lavandula angustifolia ‘Wee One’ and Sorghastrum nutans ‘Thin Man’.

Of the remaining fourteen taxa, specific plants of three of those taxa were selected and additional plants from these plants will be propagated during the fall and winter of 2015‐2016, and plants of these selections will be planted in 2016 for evaluation during 2016 and 2017. The species for which selections were made are Scutellaria scordiifolia, Teucrium hircanicum, and Trachelium jacquinii ssp. rumelianum.

Read the complete report here. Plant Select 2015 Trials Report