Oconee bells (Shortia galacifolia) are extremely rare in nature and have an exciting history of discovery, loss, and rediscovery. These are but added allurements to the inherent charm of the beautiful plants.
Earliest Hint Of Spring
The frilled white blossom cups open on stout light green stems. A gleaming crown rises 3” or 4” inches above the polished beauty of the evergreen, winter bronze foliage.
If the weather is not too forward, the blooming season will last for almost a month, unabashed by frost snaps and even a dappling of snow.
Delicate as they appear, the flowers have surprising substance. When the united petals finally slip off, taking with them the stamens, they leave behind the pink sepals. These remain for a while by themselves after giving a faint pink flush through the base of the corolla.
A plant so precocious, so prodigal of bloom, and so distinguished all year merits special placement.
Oconee Bells’s Needs
Despite its scarcity and its restricted range in the high mountains where North and South Carolina join, shortia is not a difficult plant if certain simple needs are met. It wants light, acid soil, full of humus, and a position out of the sun.
Oconee bells grow as a groundcover beneath mountain laurel and rhododendron on the sloping banks of deep ravines in company with partridge berry, trailing arbutus, and galax.
This suggests that we give it a similar setting, in the sheltering shade of an ericaceous shrub or a cool pocket of rock or wild garden.
Like all evergreens, it calls for copious watering until well established, but shortia will endure fairly extended dry spells once at home. A location where the sun can reach it for brief periods will encourage abundant blooming.
Increasing Your Oconee Bells Supply
Once you have enjoyed the exquisite display of spring blossoms and have, in the fall, watched the light polished green leaves turn to rich tints of vermilion, wine, and bronze, you will surely want to increase your supply. This may be done in three ways.
A large plant will have several crowns. Each one may be removed with a portion of the fine roots.
A top dressing of sand and leaf mold from the previous summer is advisable to encourage roots on these stoloniferous divisions. These divisions are best handled in pots with a rich sandy soil mixture.
The pots are plunged in a shaded frame and kept well watered until good roots develop. Then, for best results, the plants are kept in their pots until the following spring, wintered in a frame, or sunk in a shady spot.
It is possible, if care in watering is practiced and only two or three large divisions with good roots are made, to plant them right out in a permanent site. Generally, however, we want a large increase in the choice of a subject.
Grow From Seed For a More Abundant Increase
Shortia can be grown from seed—with patience and luck. The first requirement is a fresh seed. Numerous efforts on the part of the author to raise plants from purchased supplies were complete failures.
When full-grown plants began to supply them, germination was even and rapid from sowing as early as the first of June.
Another batch sown in July gave good results, but when kept longer, they lost vitality.
The tiny seeds were sown in a small pot directly on the surface of a half-inch layer of sphagnum moss. Under this was well-drained acid soil. Pots were set in a dish of water and kept constantly moist, with a shaded glass on top until germination started.
This took about two weeks. Growth is extremely slow; transplanting was not necessary for two months. Even then, the minute plants and delicate roots were tricky to handle and water.
One flat of seedlings was kept in a moderately cool greenhouse, another in a pit house where temperatures ranged between 25° and 45° degrees Fahrenheit.
In spring, there seemed no appreciable difference. Both lots were retransplanted in flats and kept in a shaded, well-watered frame for the summer.
The transplanting setback and an attack of thrips delayed new growth until late summer. This prompted the second winter in the pit house, with the plants ready for their permanent site in spring, still small but full of promise.
Leaf Cuttings
Another promising method is leaf cuttings. Single leaves were pulled from the crown in late spring, and the petiole was inserted in ground sphagnum up to the base of the leaf.
Kept constantly moist and out of direct sunshine but with plenty of light, covered with a glass jar to keep down evaporation, the cuttings formed good roots within two and one-half months.
The leaves were potted singly in acid soil, but by late, fall no new leaves had started, so the poles were then kept in the cool greenhouse for the winter.
Leaf cuttings promise success with an increase of any color or size “breaks.” The likelihood of color breaks is mentioned in an account published by A. E. Prince in Rhodora, the Journal of the New England Botanical Club, where he reports a visit in 1944 to the Jocassee area of South Carolina.
“Shortia galacifolia was blooming in all its rare and delicate beauty. . . . They were not all white as described in the manuals, but many were delicate shades of pink and blue, adding in no small way to the spectacle.”
What Exciting Visions That Hold Forth
So far, only white forms have been offered, all vegetative increases from collected material. If the author’s seedlings reach flowering age, perhaps there may even be one or two with bluish blossoms!
Oconee bells have an ironclad constitution and have been happily grown in many northern States and Canada.
This plant which Dr. Asa Gray, the famous botanist, called “perhaps the most interesting plant in North America,” is indeed a rewarding challenge to the enthusiastic gardener.
Pink Shortia
An excellent light pink flower, a close relative of the oconee bells, is Shortia uniflora. This Japanese woodland bloom is closely similar to the American shortia and, despite its name, bears more than one blossom to a crown.
It must be admitted in patriotic humility that the Japanese plant outshines its occidental sister in all but vigor.
One would never, to be sure, accuse the American shortia of grossness, but the oriental plant has the great delicacy of form in leaf and growth habit.
Its larger 1 ½” inch pink-tinged blossoms give the plant exquisite proportion. The range of hardiness of the Japanese shortia has not been well established, but two young plants in northwestern Connecticut have overwintered and flowered.
44659 by Lincoln Foster