In praise of ‘see-through’ flowers

FLOWERS vary in their value, in their form and colour certainly, but also in their consistency.

Some, like phlox, lobelia tupa, and virginicastrum are monuments of solidity; others such as baby’s breath (Gypsophila), Verbena bonariensis, and the grass Stipa gigantea are clouds of lightness and transparency. I call these “see-through flowers”, plants that foam with thin delicate blooms and spidery heads of inflorescence, light and graceful in movement as they consume the late summer borders.

The queen of all these is the perennial Thalictrum (meadow-rue) especially the form sold as “Hewitt’s Double”. This boasts magnificent maidenhair-fern-like foliage, modest and genteel in stature, and in season, blooms held aloft at four feet; feathery spires holding clouds of innumerable small mauve flowers with contrasting white centres.