Caryopteris clandonensis Sterling silver - Bluebeard

Caryopteris x clandonensis Sterling Silver is a small hybrid shrub or subshrub of great class. This recent horticultural creation, awarded in 2008, is distinguished by particularly bright, silver-grey foliage, which forms a beautiful setting for its late flowering in vaporous bouquets of intense blue-mauve. It forms a rounded and ramified bush, covered with deciduous foliage exhaling the scent of turpentine when crushed. It is a plant for sunny and well-drained, even dry, soil, and proves to be quite hardy under these conditions. It can be planted in a sunny flower bed, a large rock garden, or even in a small hedge.

Caryopteris x clandonensis Sterling Silver is one of the hybrids obtained by cross-breeding Caryopteris incana, an Asian shrub called 'Bluebeard', and Caryopteris mongolica, more hardy, native to the colder regions of Mongolia and northern China. They all belong to the Verbenaceae family.

The Sterling Silver variety forms a dense bush measuring 1 to 1.20 metres (3 feet 4 inches to 3 feet 11 inches) in height and 90cm (35.4in) wide. It blooms in August-September, producing on the tips of its branches fluffy, wide and dense inflorescences composed of countless small flowers of intense blue, with prominent stamens. This flowering is particularly melliferous and nectariferous, and the shrub is often visited by many colourful butterflies. The deciduous foliage consists of small, thin, ovate leaves with irregularly dentate edges, arranged opposite each other on straight stems. They display a superb grey-blue colour with silver reflections, rarely observed in Caryopteris. The underside of the leaves is fuzzy and almost white. When crushed, they release a powerful aroma with resinous notes.

The Sterling Silver Caryopteris is used as a low hedge, in the company of summer-flowering shrubs that are as frugal as it is: yellow or orange shrubby Potentillas, chamomiles, dwarf blue conifers, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, lavenders, dwarf buddleias, shrubby salvias... A colourful scene can be created in late summer by combining Caryopteris with sunflowers, evening primroses, Epilobium canum, Aster turbinellus or other more active asters. A group of 3 shrubs surrounding a brightly coloured repeat-flowering rose is a splendour in September, as their very different style and colour of flowering are perfectly complementary.