Euphorbia dulcis 'Chameleon'

On Saturday I spent the morning at a Hardy Plant Society Spring Sale.  As I was with a friend and there also to help a fellow member load and unload plants, I had plenty of time to visit all the stalls, and spend ALL my pocket money on  plants....more of those in another post.

One of the advantages of spending time looking at stalls is that suddenly one sees a plant that one has enjoyed for years....but there is a name!   It is Euphorbia dulcis 'Chameleon'.  Also the stall holders know a lot about their plants and are mostly very helpful.

Here it is, in the new garden.  It has sprouted from seed which had been lying dormant in my old garden soil, tipped in this area from tubs. It had the habit of popping up around my old garden.  I first acquired a small seedling of Euphorbia dulcis Chameleon,  a little gift from  the lady running a B & B near Rosemoor back in the late 1990's.   In the sun the leaves are much more purple and darker and later in the year it is sometimes prone to mildew when the ground gets really dry,  but within a few days of taking the shears to it, new clean growth emerges.



Its soft textured bronzy burgundy leaves emerge on fast growing stems from the winter dormant crown,.  The stems are fine and wiry and the whole plant is about 30cm high and wide when fully mature.  This plant is only in its second season of growth.

I'm delighted to have the plant and also now know the name!  Had it not grown 'voluntarily' in my new garden, I would have been delighted to have bought the plant at the HPS sale.  I am on the look out now for new seedlings, and transplant them to other areas of the garden.

I have since read Beth Chatto's opinion of this plant:

"E dulcis 'Chameleon' is remarkable from the minute it pushes through the soil low mounds of bronzy, beetroot-red leaves.  Seedlings come true.  Their intense dark colour, scattered haphazardly, creates a patch-quitl effect among bright, open feathery stands of love-in-a-mist, succulent pewter leaves of Sedum telephium subs ruprechtii and low cushions of Saponaria ocymoides already embroidered with tiny pink campion flowers. "