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Home » Gardening Information » Great Plants

Glads for Glad Haters—Elegant, Small-Flowered Gladiolus Species and Heirlooms for the Discriminating Gardener

Plants & Gardens News  Volume 21, Number 1 | Spring 2006

by Scott Kunst

A lot of gardeners hate glads. You may be one of them. Or at least you've heard the complaints: Glads are big, stiff, gaudy, funereal, and just plain common.

But what if I told you there are glads out there so different that many people don't even recognize them as glads? Small, "wildflowery" glads, perennial glads hardy to USDA Zone 6 or beyond, glads that never need staking, even fragrant glads? Savvy gardeners here and abroad are starting to rediscover these anything-but-mainstream flowers. Let me introduce you to a few of my favorites.

Species Glads

The first glads in gardens weren't the lush, super-sized blooms of modern times but simple wildflowers. Some of these are still available to gardeners today. One is my all-time favorite glad and the plant that shattered my gladiolus stereotypes: the Byzantine glad (Gladiolus communis var. byzantinus). Its deep, vibrant cerise flowers are small—about the size of a half dollar—and look more like orchids than glads. The plant has survived nine of the past ten winters here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at the border of Zones 5 and 6, and it increases year after year into ever-larger clumps, like a good perennial should. It blooms early, at the same time as irises. In her modern classic Time-Tested Plants, Pamela Harper recommends combining it with blue baptisia, Siberian iris, and Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant'. Renowned plantsman Christopher Lloyd calls it simply his "endearing" favorite.

But beware! Although the Byzantine glad is widely offered in nursery catalogs, even reputable sources are known to deliver less-desirable impostors. Price is one guide to the real thing: The impostors are enticingly cheap. Another way to avoid disappointment is to ask your source if the corms are American grown. If they're not, there's little chance you'll get the tough, brilliant heirloom form you actually want.

Another odd but wonderful species is the fragrant—yes, fragrant—Abyssinian glad. This species is so different, even botanists have had trouble deciding whether it's really a glad. Formerly known as Acidanthera bicolor, it's now classified as Gladiolus murielae. The plant's fragrance eludes some noses (including my own), but other sniffers rave about it. Its elegant, triangular flowers are small (about 2.5 inches across) and white with purple centers, and they seem to last forever in the garden or bouquets. But what I like best about this glad are the wiry stems, which never need staking and arch so gracefully that even in bud the plant is beautiful. Originally collected from the mountains of Ethiopia in 1844, this glad was blooming in Boston by 1888. Isn't it about time you tried a few corms?

Africa is the motherland for glads, and they grow there in dizzying variety. The first to reach America, in 1830, was the red, yellow, and green parrot glad that became popular in old southern gardens. Soon, other African species were introduced here and abroad, and a frenzy of hybridizing began. Before long, glads were all the rage in gardens from Peoria to Paris. Monet, among others, grew and loved them. In fact, his famous 1867 painting Garden at Sainte-Adresse shows a sunny, waterside garden with tall, narrow-flowered, red and yellow glads, which I'm convinced are parrots.

Originally known as G. psittacinus and then G. natalensis, the parrot glad has now been lumped into the enormously varied G. dalenii, though its forms and coloring are distinct. Unfortunately, this historic subset of G. dalenii is hard to find today in commerce, though here at Old House Gardens we're multiplying corms collected from old southern gardens and hope to offer it in our catalog again soon.

Other unusual species glads are offered by a handful of U.S. mail-order nurseries. Though I have no firsthand experience with these glads, once I started researching them for this article I had to order some for myself. Among others, I'm trying night-fragrant Gladiolus tristis (a pot of which will "fill a home with its wonderful scent," says Telos Rare Bulbs); weird orange and green G. alatus (which Annie's Annuals claims is "a little piece of gardening nirvana"); salmon-pink G. oppositiflorus subsp. salmoneus (whose flowers line up "with military precision: one facing left, the next, right," according to Seneca Hill Perennials); and zippy red and white G. cardinalis (if Heronwood's Dan Hinkley says he's "thrilled" to know this species, I'd like an introduction too). Some of these require bone-dry summers, but most are adaptable to a wide range of gardens (as are Byzantine, Abyssinian, and parrot glads), and all can be grown in pots.

Heirloom Cultivars

As fascinating as species glads are, if you limit yourself to only these, you'll be missing out on a lot of other unusual, jewellike, small-flowered glads. In fact, the most charming glads we grow here today may be two wee cousins found thriving as "garden escapees" at abandoned home sites in North Carolina. Both have wiry stems that never need support and dainty, pastel flowers about 1.5 inches wide. 'Carolina Primrose' is a soft, primrose yellow, and 'Boone' is a luscious apricot and amber. Maybe best of all, these glads seem to be hardy through Zone 6, if not colder. Seneca Hill Perennials in Oswego, New York, reports that both glads have been perennial in their Zone 5 garden for years, and 'Carolina Primrose' survived a winter here in Ann Arbor when the mercury dipped to -22°F. Both cultivars propagate readily from seed, so within a couple of years you can indulge fellow gardeners who will be begging you to share.

Though they're sometimes sold mistakenly as Gladiolus ×gandavensis, 'Boone' and 'Carolina Primrose' are actually forms or very early hybrids of what was originally known as G. primulinus (now also lumped into G. dalenii). Discovered in southern Africa in 1890 on the banks of the Victoria Falls, this graceful species was popularized as the "Maid of the Mist" gladiolus and became the foundation of a whole new type of elfin "primulinus" glad. Today, many old "prims" survive, often in unexpected places, waiting for new gardeners to rediscover them—just as Dick Weaver of We-Du Nursery did with 'Carolina Primrose' and Allen Bush of Holbrook Farm and Nursery did with 'Boone'. You could be next! E-mail photos of your old glads to me at scott@oldhousegardens.com, and the garden world may soon be singing your praises, too.

A stunning, more recent primulinus hybrid that's still widely available is tiny, powerful 'Atom', dating back to 1946. Standing a little over three feet tall with florets half the size of conventional glads, it melds easily into perennial borders. It won't get lost, though, because its flowers are a radiant scarlet cooled by an elegant picotee edging of silver—perfect for, say, the Red Borders at England's Hidcote Manor Garden. Or try it combined with bronze fennel. Year after year, 'Atom' is our best-selling glad, and hummingbirds love it too.

And then there's little 'Bibi', a flower child from 1961. The flowers, slightly smaller than those of 'Atom', are vibrant pink spattered and flecked with deep rose. Whether it reminds you of a batik sarong, Jackson Pollock, or something psychedelic, it's unique, intriguing, and like all the old prims, just the right size for gardens. I could rave on about many other heirloom prims—dusky 'Violet Queen', ruffled 'Melodie', quirky, cymbidium-like 'Firedance'—but I've run out of space.

I can't quit, though, without telling you about my latest crush: petite and luminous 'Starface'. Richly patterned, this little prim has upper petals of warm peach, marbled with deeper orange tones, and lower petals of soft yellow, spiked with ruby. That may sound a bit over the top, but trust me: This flower is rapturously beautiful. Patterned glads that look a lot like 'Starface' appear in catalog illustrations from the 1890s, when Victorian ornamentalism was at its height. But you don't need to live in an elaborate Queen Anne house to appreciate this little glad. Its beauty is timeless.

I hope I've tempted you to give at least one of these maverick, small-flowered glads a try. All are easy to grow in full sun and well-drained soil. They multiply readily, and if you want to dig and store those that aren't hardy for you, it's easy. The flowers are wonderfully long-lasting in bouquets (they're still glads, after all), and they're so exquisitely different that one stem in a bud vase can illuminate a room.

So what's to hate?

Nursery Sources:

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