Mukgenia Nova Flame

The Mukgenia 'Nova Flame' is a new perennial plant created in the United States. This amazing hybrid is the result of cross-breeding between a Mukdenia, which has passed on its beautiful autumn colors and a preference for cool shade, and a Bergenia, from which it inherits its pretty spring flowering with bright pink florets and its semi-evergreen and fleshy foliage. Its foliage is deeply cut and toothed, changing from bright green to pink and red before turning orange and bright yellow in autumn. This small hardy plant forms an original and colourful ground cover in partial shade, in fertile and moist soil, such as in a rockery or a shaded border, or under the cover of deciduous bushes. It also thrives in pots.

The Mukgenia 'Nova Flame' is a plant from the saxifragaceae family, just like its two parents. Obtained in 2014 in the USA by Terra Nova Nurseries, this intergeneric hybrid has the Bergenia cordifolia as its mother and the Mukdenia 'Crimson Fans' as its father.

The plant quickly forms a spreading, compact, low clump, 35 cm (14in) tall and 60 cm (24in) wide at the age of 10 years, expanding over time through its fleshy roots. It is composed of late deciduous leaves that disappear in late autumn. These leaves, fleshy and glossy like those of Bergenia, are ample and strongly, irregularly toothed along the edges, like those of the father. Their color is initially an acidic green bordered with red when they emerge, then they turn into a bright medium green, becoming red-orange to yellow before disappearing. The flowering emerges in March-April, above the foliage, in the form of thick reddish stems bearing compound panicles of small fleshy flowers with toothed edges, in a fairly deep pink color.

The Mukgenia Nova Flame is an easy-going plant in cool woodland, under shrub borders, in mixed borders, or even in moist and somewhat shaded rockeries. It can be paired with hostas, ferns, Japanese anemones, and bleeding hearts, as well as the beautiful Persicaria virginiana Painters Palette, plants that appreciate the same environments. The combination with the 'Hakonechloa macra Alboaurea', a small golden grass, will be very striking. Shrubs such as hydrangeas and fuchsias will welcome this lovely plant at their base, as long as the soil does not dry out.