May 31, 2016
Love my new hybrid from San Francisco Botanical Nursery – Such is the case with digiplexis ‘Illumination Flame’, a new intergeneric foxglove.
Bred by Charles Valin at the UK breeding company Thompson & Morgan, ‘Illumination Flame’ resulted from a cross between the common foxglove and isoplexis, a Mediterranean shrub with unusual orange flowers. The resulting hybrid is truly intermediate in habit, with bushy basal branching, eventually forming a woody trunk and spikes of elegant, rosy-orange flowers. The real breakthrough, however, is the fact that this variety will not just flower for a few weeks, as most foxgloves would; ‘Illumination Flame’ flowers non-stop from late spring through hard frost in the autumn.