This pink gaura was found growing among the regular species of Gaura lindheimeri–a natural mutation–in Baldassare Mineo’s nursery back in the mid 90s.
Guara has always been sort of a mystery plant to me. Is it drought tolerant? Is it hardy? No one agrees on those two points, but almost everyone loves it for its graceful long-blooming presence in the garden. It used to be listed as hardy to Zone 6, but with zone inflation, it’s now listed as Zone 5 in most national catalogs.
I’ve grown thousands of them through the years, some from seed some from cuttings. This year I wanted to try Siskiyou Pink again, so I bought a tray of small plants from another Colorado nursery. Because Siskiyou Pink is a cultivar, it can only be propagated from cuttings–saving seeds will not result in the same plant. Yet when I transplanted the tiny plants in March, I noticed a lot of variation in each plant. And by the time they started blooming in late May, the variations were even more apparent. Some were dark pink, some white, some picotee! The picotee blooms had a pink center with a white edge. Some bloomed at only 12″ tall, some had dark red foliage, some looked almost like the common species. It made me wonder what had happened–were all of these plants mutations? And if so are the mutations stable? In the picture below you can see some of the differences: all pink; picotee; blush–no two really look alike.
I’ve often read that only the common species is winter hardy in Colorado. Does that make sense to you? If the pink ones are natural mutations of the species, why would they also mutate to be less winter hardy? After Siskiyou Pink there have been numerous other cultivars released to the market: Crimson Butterflies, Blushing Butterflies, and so on. One catalog lists Siskiyou Pink hardy to Zone 6, while Crimson Butterflies is supposedly hardy to Zone 5. More confusion! I think these kind of hardiness rumors are frustrating to our customers and certainly to me. I planted three in a new area in one of the gardens here and I’ll be watching closely to see if any (or all) survive.
Gaura lindheimeri has a long taproot, a characteristic that supposedly gives it good drought tolerance, and that also means it takes a while for it to get established. It needs time to get its taproot down deep in the soil. Does that have anything to do with whether or not it’s winter hardy? These are all questions that rumble around in my brain this fine fall day, as I plan to save seeds from all of these strangely different gauras and see what happens with next year’s crop.
