Red and Green Cordyline
Often my new coloured Cordylines start life in pots, then go into the garden when their trunks start to lengthen. This is a striped variety which I ordered from a mail order catalogue - sorry, name forgotten, label lost.
Hybrid Cordyline
Cordylines Come and Go
I have a rather cavalier attitude to hybrid Cordylines - probably because they are easy to buy and easy to grow in New Zealand. After a few seasons looking cute and small in a pot my Cordylines are probably glad to escape into the real garden. The trouble is that then I totally forget about them.
My new red striped Cordyline is supposed to retain the red stripe on its leaves when mature. It should make a change from the hybrid wine-red coloured plants (which are now ex-pots, and scattered all over the garden).
In my latest English gardening magazine (called Gardening Which?) I read that one should tie the top leaves of Cordylines together in winter to stop the crown rotting. Eek! Is England really so rainy and drizzly? Are English gardeners really tall, or do their Cordylines stay short and stubby? I know that English Leyland Cypresses grow into giant tree-sky-scrapers...