Description
(wrongly also called Tropaeolum tricolorum)
Tubers, like small potatoes, produce masses of slender, climbing and scrambling shoots which make a lovely soft foil of small, five fingered leaves. The leaf growth is not invasive or unpleasant, it is rather delicate-looking and lacy. When you least expect it, in the earliest days of the year, the flower buds appear and open.
The blooms are small, but produced in masses. The ground colour is brilliant flame-red, the mouth is infused with deep violet but it folds open to reveal a collar of rich primrose yellow, hence the name ‘three coloured’. The combination is very good and the abundance of the flowers lights up the whole plant – although by May this has vanished below ground until Autumn.
Growth is traditionally in a pot of well-drained, loam-based compost and they are best under cool glass or in a conservatory, since frost can remove the foliage.
There has never been a suggestion of hardiness in this species from any written source that I have seen, so we were surprised to discover it in flower here one March, thriving and having overwintered outside in the shelter of some conifers through which it was growing. Subsequently we have grown it outside with success and seedlings have also appeared, so this is far from being the tender, delicate plant that it was once thought to be. It came through the severe winter of 2017-2018 here, without damage.
