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Agapanthus 'Periwinkle Days' (Blue-violet Lily of the Nile) - A medium-large evergreen Agapanthus with foliage to 2 feet tall with narrow and clean 1-inch-wide leaves that are mostly erect with outer leaves bending over slightly. In late spring and early summer, the tall and slender 3 to 4 foot stalks rise well above the foliage bearing full 8-9 inch wide clusters of many blue-violet colored flowers that have a darker stripe down the middle of each petal.
Plant in full sun to light shade and irrigate regularly to occasionally. Is cold hardy and evergreen to 20-25 degrees F and should be root hardy with mulching to considerably lower. A very attractive dark blue colored selection that is in flower around our summer solstice in Santa Barbara.
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 'Periwinkle Days' was a San Marcos Growers 2020 introduction. It was discovered in 2015 as a spontaneous seedling hybrid within the stock corral which holds our extensive Agapanthus collection. We decided to grow it because of its nice flower color, its narrow clean foliage and because the height of the flowers, which display well above the foliage.
The information displayed on this page about Agapanthus 'Periwinkle Days' is based on the research we have conducted about it in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about this plant as it grows in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant have performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also incorporate comments that we have received from others and welcome hearing from anyone with information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information that will aid others to better grow it.
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