From the mixed up fuchsia files....
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
What’s flowering at the Fuchsietum? Fuchsia ‘Göttingen’, another character in the book, From the Mixed-Up Fuchsia Files of Gartenmeister Carl Bonstedt. I only noticed that it was actually incorrectly labelled “Gartenmeister” when I got it home. But the velveteen leaves gave it away.
One of the other early names of this cultivar is ‘Gartenstadt Göttingen’ (Garden City Göttingen), the city where the Gartenmeister Bonstedt) oversaw the Botanische Garten Göttingen and made most of his famous fuchsia crosses in 1904-1905.
Bonstedt's fuchsia crosses were almost all between Fuchsia triphylla and F. fulgens. Fuchsia 'Mary", his first release, was between F. tryphylla x F. boliviana (synonym F. corymbiflora), though. Subsequent attempts to use F. boliviana were failures and he switched to an easier pollen parent with F. fulgens.
A number of hybrids introduced by the Gartenmeister of Göttingen are still widely grown today. Not surprised, they're great plants. A number of his other crosses have unfortunately been lost with time and the upheavals of world wars. Fuchsia ‘Jelängerjelieber” from 1905 is one such fascinating plant that's long vanished. The name amusingly translates as 'The Longer the Dearer’ and it did indeed have trusses of extra-long flowers with exceptionally thin and elegant tubes, as evidenced in a contemporary photograph.
