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Agapanthus 'Ponto's Queen of the Nile' PP21,522 (Variegated Queen Ann Agapanthus) - An evergreen perennial that grows in a clump to about 18 inches tall by 30 inches wide with yellow and green variegated leaves. The narrow tapering leaves, held in clusters of 10 to 14, are about 1 foot long by up to 1 inch wide at the base and upwardly inclined then cascade over gracefully towards the tips. This foliage remains neat and clean throughout the seasons and in early summer produce a 30-inch-tall flower stalk bearing an umbel of fifty to seventy five lavender blue flowers that have a dark mid stripe to each petal. The flowers are showy for up to 3 weeks with the flower stalk and floral bracts also attractively variegated.
Flowers best in full sun but will grow in sun or shade with moderate to occasional watering and it hardy and undamaged down to at least 25 degrees F with foliage damage but rebounding to temperatures around 20F.
The name Agapanthus is derived from the Greek words 'agapé', meaning "love" or "friendship" and 'anthos', meaning "flower" and it is for this reason that "Love Flower" is sometimes given as its common name, though there does not seem to be any colloquial usage of this name and the reason for naming as such remains unclear. Some have suggested that the translation could be interpreted as "lovely flower", "flower of love" or if the name originated from the word 'Agapeo' which means "to be contented with" it could just refer to a flower Charles Louis L'Héritier, who first used the name Agapanthus. A good accounting of this is presented by Wim Snoeijer in his Agapanthus: A Revision of the Genus Timber Press 2004 but essentially Carl Linnaeus (the father of modern taxonomy) in 1753 published the name Crinum africanum for a plant likely brought back to Holland from the Cape of Good Hope by the year 1679. In 1789 Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle, the Director of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, changed the name of this plant to Agapanthus but used the invalid specific epithet umbellatus instead of preserving Linnaeus species name africanus. This mistake has perpetuated naming problems within the genus ever since. In addition, the common "Lily of the Nile" is often used for this plant even though this plant originated in South Africa and not along the Nile River.
Agapanthus 'Ponto's Queen of the Nile' is a selected seedling from a block of Agapanthus africanus 'Queen Ann' that was found at Ponto Nursery in Vista, California in 1998 and differs from the all green foliaged parent plant by having a dark green central stripe in the middle of the leaf with broad yellow margins. It was introduced by Ponto Nursery and received US Plant Patent PP21,522 on November 23, 2010. We grew this nice variegated Agapanthus from 2014 to 2016 but decided we preferred our own white variegated Agapanthus praecox ssp. orientalis 'Silver Streak' that we introduced in 1999 and decided to focus on it.
Information displayed on this page about Agapanthus 'Ponto's Queen of the Nile' PP21,522 is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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