Cuphea 'Kirstin's Delight'
What’s flowering at the Fuchsietum?
Delightful Cuphea ‘Kirstin’s Delight’ has an interesting route, if some sadness along the way, to get here into the garden.
The hybrid apparently originated with well-known plant hunter, propagator, and nurseryman, Gary Hammer, of Southern California. Hammer collected widely from Australia to New Zealand and, especially, from Mexico before he died in an unfortunate accident in 2011.
Hammer was visiting his mother in Tempe, Arizona when he was hit and killed by a car on a dark road. He was even on his way to more botanizing in Mexico. Such a tragic loss!
From Hammer, the Cuphea was acquired by San Francisco Bay Area garden designer and past president of the California Horticultural Society, Kristin Yanker-Hansen.
She later passed it to Emerisa Gardens Nursery in Santa Rosa, California where it was named after her for retail distribution and sales.
It was given to me by a fellow board member of the Oregon Fuchsia Society who had equally succumbed to its delight at Jungle Fever in Tacoma, Washington several years ago.
While not recorded, the Cuphea is possibly a cross between C. ignea x C. angustifolia.
It dies back to the ground in my garden but returns vigorously in the spring. By the middle of August, it's about three feet tall and four feet wide again.
I've paired it closely with the New Zealand flax, Phormium 'Amazing Red'. The Phormium's dark coppery foliage picks up the colors of the blossoms beautifully as its strappy leaves poke through the Cuphea's more wispy growth.
