Agapanthus hybrid 'MP003'

Agapanthus hybrid 'MP003' on low water in May 2021 at South Coast REC.

Summary

South Coast Research & Extension Center (South Coast REC/SCREC) is located in Irvine California, this site has a sandy loam soil and plants are irrigated with reclaimed water. UC Davis is located in Davis, California, this site has a silty clay loam soil and plants are irrigated with potable water. More information about the field sites is located in the Nuts & Bolts section.

Ever Amethyst is a newer agapanthus cultivar hybridized in South Africa and reputedly selected for its flower color and re-blooming potential. After observing Ever Amethyst over two years we can attest that the deep, rich purple flower color is unique relative to other cultivars in the marketplace which tend towards blue or indigo. While we typically assess floral display on a 1-5 scale based on percentage of plant in bloom, for this cultivar we opted to record the number of individual flowering stalks that had at least one floret open. Once flowers had finished blooming, we manually brushed off the dried florets, leaving the green stems on the plant until they had dried, at which time the dried stems were removed. An interesting side note is that we observed multiple instances of fasciation of the flowering stalks in the UC Davis field though it was at random and not related to anything we could pinpoint. Because the shade field at UC Davis was not immediately needed after the trial ended in October 2021, plants were left in the ground and all treatments were observed to have multiple stems in bud or bloom when the plants were removed in January 2022. While the flowers were beautiful and bountiful (one plant had 39 stalks of blooming flowers), the foliage quality heavily weighed down the overall appearance scores. At the outset of the growing season any dried or yellowing leaves were removed by hand but leaves routinely turned yellow throughout the entire season. Based on our observations this is less due to any sort of pest or disease issue and more likely just due to high turnover for individual leaves in this cultivar under our conditions. Unfortunately new growth did not occur quickly enough to cover older foliage. For a home gardener with a few plants in a small area, removing yellowing leaves throughout the growing season may not be an issue, but this regular maintenance is likely not feasible at a larger scale.

The relative plant growth for most individuals was less than 1 at the end of the season (meaning they got smaller), a trend observed across treatments at both South Coast REC and UC Davis. There were no differences between treatments in either growth or quality ratings. While in general it is not a good sign for a plant to have declined over the growing season, Ever Amethyst is marketed as a semi-dwarf and plants on average exceeded or maintained the 12-18” in width listed for this cultivar. Based on our results we recommend irrigating Ever Amethyst on low water in WUCOLS Regions 2 and 3.

Basic Info

Agapanthus Ever Amethyst flowers at UC Davis in June 2021.