'Lady in Red'

'Lady in Red' is an apt name for the hydrangea I acquired this summer. It's a most unusual plant - its flowers open pink and slowly mature to a lush burgundy. It has been a wonderful patio plant, blooming profusely for the past month and resisting the rain damage that bedevils many summer blooms such as petunias and geraniums.

The flowerheads grow at the ends of single stems. Small fertile flowers grow in the middle, and large, sterile bract-like flowers grow in a ring around them. In this blip you can see that three of the small central flowers have burst open and their tiny stamens have appeared. The plant has about half a dozen of these large flowerheads so you can imagine how bright and cheerful this hydrangea tub looks even when it has just been soaked by a heavy shower of rain, as you can see clearly in the larger view.