Verbascum
Mullein
This genus has a host of common names, including “Beggar’s Blanket” and “Old Man’s Flannel.” In England, the very poor used to put the thick leaves into their shoes for warmth. Although most of the more than 300 species are biennials, our offerings are predominately perennials. Though some are dwarfs and some are giants, nearly all have fuzzy stamens and prefer very well-drained sandy or rocky soil. We like to use them in the border or rock garden as specimens or en masse for a meadow-style planting.
When British plant breeders, Vic Johnstone and Claire Wilson, developed more than a thousand hybrids utilizing various wild Verbascum species, they chose only the best dozen seedlings and dubbed them ‘The Riverside Hybrids’; this splendid toasty hued prodigy was one of them. Sprouting from handsome rippled green basal leaves, numerous, well-branched straight stems bolster burgundy flushed button-like buds on tall floral spikes.
Large and luscious, wide-open coppery orange flowers, festooned with a central cluster of woolly light violet filaments, lend warm vertical accents to Allium ‘Gladiator’.
Blooms July – August.
Size: 4' 0" – 5' 0" high x 2' 0" wide.
Hardy to zone 5.
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Other selections in this genus:
- Verbascum chaixii ‘Sixteen Candles’
- Verbascum chaixii ‘Wedding Candles’
- Verbascum ‘Cotswold Queen’
- Verbascum ‘Gainsborough’
- Verbascum hybridum ‘Wega’
- Verbascum nigrum ‘Album’
- Verbascum olympicum
- Verbascum phoeniceum ‘Flush of White’
- Verbascum phoeniceum ‘Rosetta’
- Verbascum phoeniceum ‘Violetta’
- Verbascum ‘Pink Domino’
- Verbascum ‘White Domino’
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