WOW!! That's a beauty!!

Beautiful contrast! Procrastination does pay.

Molie

Serendipity or promiscuity.

Pulmonaria hybridizes very readily.

The picture shows a very pretty (uniform?) flower colour which I would not have associated with the species P. longifolia itself or any one of it's few recognized cultivars.

I love pulmonaria as a reliable early spring perennial where we live. Nevertheless, it's a frustrating plant for those of us who have numbers of pulmonaria cultivars, but don't want No Names in the garden.

SunnyBorders I hear you, being a bit of a collector myself No Names or wrong names especially in Fuchsias really bothered me at one time. I've mellowed in my old age, if it's pretty it can stay :). I still get ticked when I buy fuchsias tho, grow them on and find they aren't what they are supposed to be, they usually end up in the compost bin.
The only Pulmonaria I had in this bed was one I bought as longifolia, no specific cultivar just longifolia. I'm no expert so can't swear that is what it is, here's a picture of it, what do you think?

I meant to add, yes the color is uniform, doesn't change. I have 'Redstart' in another bed perhaps the daddy? Here's another picture from last year, a couple of the leaves were almost solid white.

That's a very pretty plant.

A.M., you're obviously wiser (and less compulsive!) than I am.

A lot of the latitude in the names used for lungworts must reflect uncertainty in parentage, or origin.

For example, Pulmonaria 'Raspberry Ice', according to the patent description, is a sport (from a spontaneous mutation) of P. 'Raspberry Splash'. This type of knowledge presumably requires rare rigourly controlled breeding. In turn, P. 'Raspberry Splash' (patent description) is a hybrid between P. longifolia 'Bertram Anderson' (= 'E.B. Anderson') and P. 'Leopard'. Reading elsewhere, P. 'Leopard' is a hybrid, it seems of P. saccharata.

Generally speaking, it appears that much of parentage of the named lungwort cultivars is vague and unknown. Al least, as has been said, most available lungwort cultivars are derived, in large part, from P. saccharata, P. officials and P. longifolia.

You say A.M., you purchased the plant as P. longifolia. It looks like it is, but sorry I can't add anything to that.

Interestingly, like you, despite the leaves, I thought of (early blooming) P. rubra and P. rubra 'Redstart', which I also have.

All of the P. rubra cultivars I've read of are selections of the species, not hybrids with other lungwort species, such as P. longifolia. I guess though that doesn't exclude the possibility of (minor) P. rubra parentage in the hybrid lungwort.

This post was edited by SunnyBorders on Fri, Apr 4, 14 at 0:48

Just a little followup, here's a picture of the foliage, I cut the spent flower stems off a couple of days ago. Is the name "Raspberry Sundae" out in the trade? If not that's the name I'm going to give my seedling. Annette