The following gives an overview of the sources of Hablitzia I know of (if I’ve missed any, please let me know!)
My oldest plant is 17 years old and came from Sweden (unknown background)
Jonathan Bates received his plants from a German Botanical Garden. I contacted the German garden, but no reply. I think Jon and Eric Toensmeier lost theirs….
Justin West collected seed in the wild in Armenia. He struggled with them in New York and lost them before moving west.
Tycho Holcomb and Karoline Nolsø Aaen in Denmark collected one accession in Georgia (found at the entrance to a cave)
I received wild collected seed from botanist Sergey Banketov in the Russian Caucasus (near Pyatigorsk)
I have one plant from the only relic Norwegian plant at Hadsel in Northern Norway
I received seed of plants from two relic Swedish locations
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I received seed from about 5 relic plants in Finland and Estonia
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I was given seed from a plant at the Uppsala Botanical Garden in Sweden in 2009.
I also received seed from a Swedish herb nursery (pre-1970, unknown source).
I’ve seen plants of unknown origin in the following botanical gardens: Gothenburg
Oslo
Copenhagen
Chelsea Physic Garden (London)
I have one accession from Arche Noah (Austria) – unknown source
Seed of many of these have been deposited with Nordgen (Nordic Genebank) who funded some of the collection work that I did. However, they have struggled with regenerating new seed of the different varieties as it seems you need more than one type to produce seed.
I’ve sent cuttings from several of my plants to Ronny Staquet of Wallogreen in Belgium. I have about 10 accessions in my garden, but they self-sow readily and have become mixed up in one place where I had several plants growing close together.
Last summer I discovered a climber in a hedge in the garden. It turned out to probably be Smilax lasioneura, the Blue Ridge carrionflower, a species closely related to Smilax herbacea, which has edible shoots used like asparagus. I have no record or recollection of planting it here, but I have a record of being offered 3 seeds of Smilax herbacea by Samuel Thayer 10 years ago, so I can only assume it was one of these that germinated.
Yesterday, I was scything an area of the garden and, forgetting the Smilax, I managed to cut right through the stem at the base and it was just coming into flower too, although, being dioecious, there wouldn’t have been any berries. Hopefully, this won’t kill it….and I’ve taken the opportunity to try to propagate it from cuttings!
Habeetsia burgers or Bloody Habbyburgers?
Cooked and ground beetroots mixed with 100% wholegrain barley and rye flour, eggs and cooked Hablitzia leaves and Johannes’ shallots (Allium x cornutum), marjoram, salt, pepper and ground chili.
A year ago, I reported on variegation on a Hablitzia in my son’s garden on Nesodden near Oslo (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=18162). I gave him this plant a few years ago and I really didn’t believe it would thrive here as the spot appeared very dry with poorish looking soil, but this year it’s clearly thriving and is sprawling in different directions (they plan to paint the house, so it’s not been trained up the wall). I discovered for the second year running that one of the shoots is variegated, similar to Mandy Barber‘s plant a couple of years ago reported on the Friends of Hablitzia forum on FB!
Has anyone had success (or not) with layering Hablitzia to propagate?
Previous posts on variegated Habbies here (on Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/groups/hablitzia/search/?query=variegation
I transplanted a 3 year old pot grown Hablitzia plant yesterday and this video shows the many replacement shoots ready to grow quickly if the main shoots are harvested or grazed, presumably an anti-grazing strategy which we can use to our advantage!
A tour of my garden on 2nd April 2019 talking about one of my favourite perennial vegetables, Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach). It’s extremely early yielding, productive, tasty, can be grown in complete shade, is very hardy and is nutritionally great too. I have currently about 11 different plants, 6 from old gardens in Scandinavia where people have been using Hablitzia as a spinach and salad crop for over 130 years and three wild accessions from the Caucasus. My oldest plant that you will see in this video was planted in 2002 and I’ve been harvesting since January this year, the reason the shoots are not very long! Nutritionally, Hablitzia is also definitely worth eating and contains particularly plenty of carotenoids, folates, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and zinc. Also many other nutritional components were larger in Hablitzia than in spinach and New Zealand spinach (from a Finnish study). See http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=8606
I visited my son today on Nesodden (Oslo) and was impressed by how much growth his Hablitzia had put on and then I noticed that one of the stems had variegated leaves…I’m not sure if this is the same plant as the stems with normal leaves…will try to check on my next visit!
You can possibly pick out the single vareigated stem!
I once before saw variegation on Hablitzia but it disappeared the next year!
Last night’s dinner was a 100% wholegrain sourdough pizza with Hablitzia, four cheese and poppy seed topping…
The dough was made from a selection of whole grain organic flours including: coarse rye, emmer, barley, coarse spelt, svedjerug and a few barley and svedjerug grains added.
It was accompanied by a blanched salad – sea kale, dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore” and Allium tuberosum!
Sooooo tasty….
The Hablitzia once again impresses with its incredible productivity and early growth in one of the driest, shadiest places in the garden!
Hablitzia tamnoides and blanched dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore”
Hablitzia tamnoides and blanched dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore”
Blanched salad ingredients – sea kale, dandelion “Vert de Montmagny Ameliore” and Allium tuberosum!
