THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 17, 1995 TAG: 9503150108
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: COASTAL JOURNAL
SOURCE: MARY REID BARROW
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
If you are one of thousands of people here in Hampton Roads who purchased a shamrock to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, chances are your traditional Irish holiday plant was really Chesapeake born and bred.
This year, White's Nursery & Greenhouses Inc. in Chesapeake grew about 20,000 of the flowers for St. Patrick's Day, said Lee Heyl, operations manager. Although some were shipped to garden centers in Richmond and Washington, most of them stayed right here to add a touch o' green on Friday to area homes and businesses.
Actually some added a touch o' pink too. White's shamrocks this year were equally divided between green-leaf plants with white flowers (regnelli) and maroon-leaf plants with lavender-pink flowers (triangularis).
Regnelli and triangularis are two of many species of oxalis, the genus for plants with three-lobed, clover-like leaves. In fact, these delightful little shamrocks are not the true shamrock, or four-leaf clover, said Heyl. Their leaves don't have the four lobes which are said to be a sign of good luck.
But the leaves of regnelli and triangularis more than make up for that missing good-luck lobe. Full of personality, the light-sensitive little plant goes to bed at night by gradually closing up its leaves. It also reacts to very bright light or other harsh conditions by appearing to wince and close its leaves quickly.
``It doesn't tolerate direct sun,'' Heyl said.
White's will not ship shamrocks any farther than they can ride comfortably on a shelf in a truck, he added. If the little plants have to be boxed, they will react to the dark and close their leaves and a long sleep would not be good for them.
``Their heads also turn toward the light,'' Heyl said. ``You can tell when they are getting enough light because the plant stays compact.''
Each day I turn my plant and each day it turns back to look toward the sun. It seems to do best in an east window, where it gets a lot of light but not much direct sun.
In nature, the shamrock is an understory plant, growing in the dappled shade under tall trees. Its large three-lobed leaves help it to absorb the light it needs to grow in the shade, Heyl said.
White's Nursery begins planting the shamrock corms, or roots, before Christmas and stops planting them in the middle of January. That way, they have shamrocks coming into bloom continuously throughout late winter.
It's said that a shamrock planted on New Year's Day will bloom on St. Patrick's Day, but White's with its perfect growing conditions plant their last batch of corms the second week in January. Those are the plants that are coming into the garden centers this week.
The little tuber, or rhizome, called a ``corm'' is planted just under the surface of the dirt. White's usually plants four or five corms to a pot.
``The corms look something like a shrimp,'' Heyl said. ``They have an orangy-pink color.''
Easy to grow, shamrocks fit my style of benign-neglect gardening. ``They're not heavy feeders,'' Heyl said. ``Just give them houseplant food about once a month.
``And if they get leggy,'' he added, ``just give them a haircut.''
Shamrocks will need to be divided every so often, just like other plants that come from rhizomes, tubers and bulbs. Every time the plant flowers, which is off and on year round and not just on St. Patrick's day, the bloom triggers more rhizome reproduction. That is how bulb growers in Holland and other areas produce the corms that White's uses.
``You plant the mother bulb, so to speak, and allow the plant to mature,'' he explained, ``and then you lift out a portion and keep the big ones and replant the smaller ones.''
I divided mine last year after I noticed the little corms had reproduced to the point they seemed to be climbing out of the pot. I made three pots and ended up with some corms also taking root in the garden.
Heyl says it is possible for them to grow outside around here but they don't like the extreme Hampton Roads heat. But I wouldn't recommend trying. If they found a good spot, they would also probably reproduce too fast and become a nuisance.
And I would hate to see the shamrock fall out of favor because it takes over the yard. Inside, it's nice to have a shamrock around the house every day of the year, not just St. Patrick's day.
P.S. CELEBRATE ST. PATRICK'S DAY in an untraditional way - with fried chicken. Tabernacle United Methodist Church is holding its annual fried chicken dinner and bake sale from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Friday at the church, 1265 Sandbridge Road.
Tickets are $5 for adults and $2.50 for children under 10. Takeouts will be available.
Call 426-6991.
HELP WITH SPRING CLEANING at Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.Saturday. Call 721-2412 to register. by CNB