Paint it black

I’m trying. Really, I am. But I just can’t get a fix on the appeal of black plants. True, I’m a traditionalist and always reticent to embrace emerging trends. Plants with varying depths of black foliage and flowers have certainly ‘emerged,’ and appear in every plant family and corner garden mart, including some that don’t particularly benefit from the shadow effect. But there I go being negative again.

Of course, those petals and leaves aren’t really black, but deepest shades of brown and purple gathered along the plant hybridist’s path. Coleus seems to have the right genetic platform for developing these deep hues, and cultivars like ‘Black Dragon,’ ‘Chocolate Mint,’ and ‘Dark Chocolate’ show nuanced blackness, if not the real thing. Viola ‘Bowles’s Black,’ deepest maroon-black with a tiny golden eye, has been around for many years and I really do like them. The old hollyhock, Alcea rosea ‘Nigra’, is a good example of how maroon turns to black, with a vibrant maroon throat, beautifully suffusing to almost black petals.

But others disappoint me.  I’ve had the Black Lace elder (Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’) growing in shade, where the dark coloration was entirely dimmed out (obviously required some sun).  I’ve grown several clumps of Actaea simplex ‘James Compton’ for the past five years, and have just about lost patience with its insipid shadowed leaves, although the stems are almost black. Why can’t it please me? (Oh dear! Would you want to be a plant in my garden?). Acknowledging that my sensibilities are still in training for this sophisticated palette of darkness, what seems most attractive are the deeper tones approaching black. But I find the merely shadowed tones (in which the dark effect is laid over green underneath) to be very bland, and that is what makes me cross with ‘James Compton.’ (To be fair, ‘James Compton’ was an early atropurpurea introduction, and newer cultivars such as ‘Hillside Black Beauty’ and ‘Black Negligee’ have been bred with better and darker black coloring).

I keep trying. This spring I bought two new dark plants: Heuchera ‘Blackout,’ with exceptionally shiny, deepest burgundy leaves (and not black at all), has held its purple colour all season in bright shade, and perhaps is remarkable for that alone. I can’t imagine why it would have been named ‘Blackout,’ because it never approaches that depth of darkness. Nevertheless, it was good to discover this plant and I’ll look for another next season.

But then, there was Geranium pratense ‘Okey Dokey’, and this is just not an attractive plant. The foliage emerges shiny deep burgundy, and grown in half-day sun, fades to dusky purple overlaying green. The lavender-blue flowers do little to improve the smudgy impression.  My friend and colleague, Stephen Westcott-Gratton, has also grown ‘Okey Dokey’, and remarks that, “…When grown in full sun, it has quite respectable black leaves that stay black (though I agree the flowers look awful).”  Well, he’s got a better take on it, or perhaps he’s just more free with his love. 

Black Velvet petunia -- can I love you?

Based on admittedly limited experimentation, I haven’t seen an actual black plant pigment, but there is certainly a lot of near-black coloration around, mostly, it seems, derived from deepest purple, and one shouldn’t be surprised to notice purple at the throat or edges of black petals. This summer I came across the new Black Velvet petunia introduced by Ball Horticultural Company, and it’s about the darkest hue I’ve seen to date. Ball makes the point that Black Velvet comes by its darkness honestly, meaning that it’s bred by pollen transfer, in the usual manner of sexual plant propagation, and hasn’t been fabricated by splicing in genes from eggplant skins or molecules from a chunk of coal. So finally, black petunias—something true and good in plant breeding! But will I love them?