With miniature inflorescence tassels, dicentres magnificent several decades ago could be admired everywhere. Now the abundance of new exotic species is re-conquering the sympathy of flower growers. But many, having once chosen a gentle classic of pink flowers that look like a heart, remain faithful to her for years - these elegant creations of nature are among the first to decorate the garden after prolonged cold weather.

Description of the magnificent

An herbaceous plant of the genus of the dacenter of the Poppy family was found in Japan in the fields and in deciduous forests, from where it came to Europe in the first decade of the 19th century. Flowers of an unusual shape immediately became widespread, overgrown with legends and romantic names: “heart of Jeanette” (France), “flower of the heart” (Germany), “shoes of the Mother of God” (Poland), “crying heart”, “lady’s medallion”, “Broken heart of Angelica” or “heartflower” (Russia). The dicenter of the literal translation of the Greek name is also called the double-sporter.

Modern scientists systematized this botanical species as Lamprocapnos spectabilis, previously - Dicentra spectabilis, and identified common signs for a perennial:

• height a flower from 0.3 m to 1 m, moreover, in a sunny place it does not exceed 0.5 cm, while in the shade it reaches 1 m;
• root system developed and fragile, almost does not branch, with a fleshy rhizome extending deep into the ground. Roots are formed from kidney substitution at the base of the stem;
• leaves large (12 cm), twice and thrice cirrus dissected, dark green with a gray matte finish on the back of the leaf plate, grow at the base of an upright stem on long stalks in the basal rosette. Turn yellow and die in August;
• shoots covered with brick-olive skin, branched, fleshy. From axillary buds, after flowering of the main stem, lateral ones grow with new inflorescences. Growing, they create a thick spreading or spherical crown and remain a decoration of the garden even after flowering;
• the flowers bilateral and symmetrical, reaching 3 cm in diameter, drooping, deep pink in color, collected 7-15 in long arched brushes up to 20 cm. The structure of the flattened corolla resembles a heart, from the “broken” bottom of which peeps a white drop of an internal curved petal with wide yellow stamens. Bloom from bottom to top;
• fetus in the form of an elongated capsule ripens from a spindle-shaped green ovary and holds from 2 to 8 black round seeds;
• bloom - early, begins in late April and lasts 35 days in waves. It may bloom again in August when the heat subsides;
• rest period expressed by the death of the ground after flowering;
• winter hardiness - high. The insulated plant tolerates frost to -35 ° C in open ground.

Popular varieties

In the natural environment there are about 20 varieties of low-growing herbaceous perennials of this genus, half of which are cultivated. The beginning of the development of decorative varieties was laid by the eastern view of the Spectabilis dicenter (magnificent).

Important! The dicenter grows rapidly, while the old rhizomes bulge out of the ground, crowding each other, and rot. Therefore, it is not recommended to grow it in one place for more than 3-4 years.

Among the most popular gardeners, the following are distinguished:

Separately designated no less popular in floriculture is the dicentra beautiful form (dicentra formosa), a native of North America. Flowering throughout the summer, the bush reaches 40 cm. Green leaves on one side and bluish on the other, palm-divided leaves form rosettes. Purple flowers of a lavender hue, small and elongated up to 2 cm, are collected in arched brushes 10-15 cm long.

Important! A lack of moisture in a dry summer leads to a cessation of magnificent dicentria blooming.

Hybrids that are found in gardens are diverse in color:

Exclusive center (excellent) is famous for its fern-like gray-blue spreading leaves. The bush is stunted (20–25 cm). The classic look is represented by dark purple flowers with a white blob. It blooms in late May, while the heat does not affect the flowers, this process stops only in the middle of autumn. And although flowering is less plentiful compared to other species, this beautiful flower is suitable for winter forcing. Hybrid variants range in color from pink to purple.

Dicentra Hood - A miniature variety, often grown from seeds as a potted plant. Height - 15 cm, inflorescences are pink or white.

Dicentra Canadian grows to 25 cm, blooms in April-May with white tassels.

Dicenter Climbing - An annual liana requiring mandatory support, as the shoots exceed 2 m. Beloved by many varieties, Golden Vine and Golden Tears are distinguished by spectacular bright colors of yellow and a pinkish tint, and bloom in mid-summer.

Wandering center - a tiny variety, grows up to 15 cm. Flowers are mainly white or purple-pink. In floriculture, a popular hybrid is Burning Hearts, combining silver leaves and red flowers.

How to plant in open ground

Choosing a place for planting does not create difficulties: cultivation will be successful both in a sunny place and in the shade.

Important! The dicenter belongs to poisonous plants and contains alkaloids, which, when ingested or on the mucous membrane, can provoke seizures! Use gloves when working with it.

The requirements of a moisture-loving flower in agricultural technology are low:

• a place choose depending on the desired shape of the bush and flowering intensity. Keep in mind that the plant will bloom more abundantly in the sun, but growth will slow down, side shoots with new inflorescences will not develop, flowers will fall off faster. Without regular watering, the perennial will not be able to endure drought; the shoots will turn yellow and die. In the shaded corner of the dicenter grows stronger, but blooms with pale buds later, less, although for a long time. Penumbra is optimal for maintaining a balance between the abundance of flowers and the duration of flowering;
• neighborhood the dicentres are favorable for the rest of the inhabitants of the garden. The bushes look good with large conifers, in a high border with pink and burgundy peonies, decorate rockeries. A harmonious composition will be made up of perennials next to it, such as fern, hosta, aquilegia, astilbe, doronicum or leotard. Early flowering daffodils, tulips, a lunatic, primrose, hyacinths, crocuses, snowdrops and forget-me-nots will create a catchy riot of colors on a flower bed with a heart. The magnificent Dicentre is planted in a group and singly;
• the soil any fertile, most importantly drained, is suitable without excess moisture or near groundwater. The dicenter feels pretty well in rocky and arid areas. Ideally, if the soil is slightly acidic, light and loose;
• watering not required for an adult bush. Due to the deep occurrence of fleshy rhizomes, the plant is able to extract moisture from the ground on its own;
• seedlings suitable only with a powerful and strong root system. If the purchase of green mass is rare, refuse to purchase.

What time to land

An unpretentious perennial bush is planted in April during division or in September - the survival rate is equivalent. In the spring, the sockets are separated before the shoots are formed. Do not violate the timing of spring planting - after the fragile young shoots start to grow, they are easily injured.

It is better to hurry with the autumn planting so that the dicenter settles in a new place and releases its roots before the cold snap. The division of the bush with subsequent planting should be carried out with a frequency of 5-6 years, after which the roots age and die.

Video: Planting and care of the center

How to land

If you have plans for spring planting, then in the fall, take measures to improve the looseness and fertility of the site. To do this, you need to dig the soil and make mineral fertilizers. For this purpose, use nitroammophoska in proportion: 1 tbsp. l for 10 liters water.

To improve the nutritional value of poor sandy soil, you can get by with organic matter by adding 5 kg of humus to 1 m². To light clay, heavy soil, when digging, add river sand or peat.

Did you know? There is a French legend about Jeanette lost in the forest and her miraculous salvation by a handsome young man. When a girl in love found out that he was not alone, she died of grief, and a flower in the shape of a broken heart grew from her heart.

Get started using step-by-step guidelines:

1. Dig the required number of pits, equivalent in diameter and depth, which will be 20-30 cm, leave a distance between the holes of at least 50 cm for the spreading bushes in the future.
2. Lay a drainage layer of crushed stone, broken brick, clay shards, expanded clay or pebbles up to 8 cm high.
3. Mix the dug up earth in equal proportion with compost and fill the pit with a third mixture. A useful additive to the soil mixture will be a handful of wood ash or lime powder.
4. Moisturize the ground with warm water.
5. The purchased planting material should be dropped off immediately - it does not tolerate long-term storage. Carefully place the rhizome in the well. In one pit for splendor, you can plant 2-3 bushes at a time.
6. Fill the seats with the remaining mixture of soil and lightly tamp.

Plant care

Growing dicentres in open ground is not troublesome - constant care consists only in timely watering of young dividers, shading of the bush at noon hours (if necessary) to obtain large peduncles and intensive growth of the rosette, weeding and loosening.

Important! To protect the roots of the dicentres from decay, choose elevated areas for the flowerbed.

Perennial irrigation is not often carried out, only in the dry summer months to moderate soil moisture in order to avoid overheating of the kidneys and over-drying of the rhizome. For the same purpose, after watering around the base of a two-year-old bush, it is recommended to add a dense layer of peat or humus, since the roots are already visible and are at risk of drying out in the absence of natural rainfall.

In the opposite situation, when snow melts and heavy rains leading to flooding of the planted plant, you will have to artificially raise the soil and equip the flower bed with a groove for water drainage. With proper care, one season is enough for the bush to grow, but does not become an aggressor in relation to neighboring plants of the dicenter.

Soil loosening

The roots of magnificent supercenters need oxygen. Therefore, from time to time, shallow loosening is necessary in order to break up a dense earthen crust and get rid of weeds - this will positively affect the condition of the flower.

Watch the appearance of the first leaves at the bush - immediately after that, carry out the first procedure, after which be sure to mulch the space at the stem to retain moisture. Repeatedly, the earth must be loosened after watering for speedy drying.

Shelter

Despite the high frost resistance in cold regions with snowless wintering or a strong drop in temperature above -30 ° C, perennials can freeze. To avoid this, after the autumn pruning, cover the bush with a layer of dry peat 5–8 cm high, but not higher, so that the plant does not sing. For the same purpose, you can use coniferous spruce branches and fallen leaves.

Did you know? The German legend says that if you hide a flower near your heart, you can very soon meet a narrowed one, and beer brewed at the dicenter will provide mutual feelings.

Young shoots are also afraid of return frosts in damp spring weather. Therefore, cover them with cold lutrasil or a dense plastic film. An improvised greenhouse will maintain a microclimate and will not interfere with the growth of outlets. However, when the heat returns, open the plant so as not to destroy it by overheating.

Pruning

Growers with experience without regret remove all dry, withering and fading flower stalks, leaving only a few young leaves. This pruning leads to a second wave of flowering in August and does not affect growth.

Did you know? The acidity of the soil is determined by the presence of some plants - horsetail, fragrant spikelet, heather, creeping buttercup, tricolor violet grow on strongly acidic soils, and quinoa and nettle — on slightly acidic.

After flowering, the leaves gradually turn yellow and fade. Dead wood continues to “pull” juices and nutrition from the roots, so it must be removed. At the end of October, completely cut off the dead aerial part, leaving stems of stems 3–5 cm high at the roots.

Top dressing

To maintain the intensity, duration and brightness of lush flowering, “broken heart of Angelica” needs to be fed with fertilizers at least three times per season. The flower responds to the mullein infusion and mineral fertilizer complexes that are permissible to combine.

Important! When working with superphosphate, do not break the main rule: you can not mix it with chalk, ammonium nitrate, lime and urea.

Power is applied after watering according to the following scheme:

1. In the early spring after removing the shelter, but before the young shoots appear, apply nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizer, for example, the Sotka Nitrofoska fertilizer solution (30 g per 10 liters of water).
2. After immediate loosening, add a layer of humus 2-3 cm high to the base of the bush.
3. During budding and two weeks later during flowering, feed the bush with nitrogen-phosphate fertilizers, for example, superphosphate (20 g per 1 m².). The next top dressing should be in the fall. Use mullein infusion prepared ahead of time. To do this, you need to dilute the manure with water in a proportion of 1:10, and insist a day.
4. After watering, well mulch the periostemal circle with humus. Autumn nutrient supplementation will help form new buds.

Transfer

The plant does not need to be moved annually to fresh soil. Flowering will be plentiful 5-6 years, until the roots begin to dry out. Only after this period, take care of the transplant, which occurs simultaneously with the division and rejuvenation of the bush dicentra, and is vital for the continuation of the flower's life. This can be done in April, when the plant only starts growing, or in August, dividing the rhizome.

Important! The roots of the dicentres require gentle handling due to fragility. Dig them out very carefully. After digging, the plant should be left in the air for 2 hours to dry the roots. This trick will help to easily separate them.

For separation, a well-rooted healthy bush of three years old, guaranteeing a "problem-free" planting material, is suitable. The length of each dividend should be 8-10 cm with the presence of roots and 3-4 shoots. Immediately after dividing, land them in pre-prepared places.

Diseases and Pests

Good immunity allows the center to avoid many diseases. Among the threats can be identified:

• root rot, the main reason for which is often due to excessive moisture in the soil, which becomes noticeable on yellowed and wilted leaves. Adjust the watering, in advanced cases, divide the rhizome into parts and try to plant the surviving dividends again;
• tobacco mosaic or spotting virus, which are manifested with severe thickening of bushes and an abundance of weeds. The signal will be the appearance of brown strokes and spots on young leaves, and old leaves will be covered with ring light and dry stains. Weed the weed around the flower, destroy plant debris and affected specimens. Double spraying with an interval of 14 days will help with fungicides according to the instructions, for example, with the preparations "Maxim", "Oksikhom", "Fundazol";
• mycoplasmal diseasethat strikes flowers, warping them. The color of the petals becomes yellow or green, while the disease stops the development of peduncles. A month before planting, for prophylaxis, treat the wells with a 5% formalin solution and periodically spray the soil and plants with fungicides according to the instructions;
• aphids, which in addition to mechanical damage to the leaves becomes a source of disease infection. Treat your flowers with insecticides in a timely manner. The Biotlin, Actellik, Iskra Bio or Fitoverm preparations diluted in the sprayer according to the instructions will help to cope quickly.

Breeding methods

The magnificent dicenter is easily propagated by division of the rhizome and cuttings. Seeds are tied up infrequently and rarely ripen in temperate latitudes, although they are represented in the assortment of garden centers. When sowing seeds, it should be remembered that the best germination (50–70%) appears immediately after collection and sowing in sandy peat soil under the film at a temperature of + 18 ... + 20 ° C. Maternal symptoms are not always transmitted to the sprouts, which will appear in a month.

As soon as the first pair of true leaves appears, a dive of seedlings into the open ground will be required. Adaptation will have time to go before the first cold weather, but the first winter the seedlings should spend under good shelter from frost - a thick layer of peat and humus will do. Seedlings grown from seeds blooms only for 2-3 season.

Rhizome division

The best way to reproduce is vegetative, especially once every five years there is a need for rejuvenation and transplantation to prevent decay of thickened roots and prevent the death of the bush. This is a great way to get a large amount of planting material.

At the very beginning of growth - in the spring or at the end of flowering - in the early autumn, to propagate the dicentres, follow the steps in this order:

1. Dig a bush in a circle and, well deepening the shovel, carefully remove the plant along with a lump of earth.
2. With care, free fragile rhizomes from the soil and dry for 2 hours, leaving the bush in the open air.
3. Using a sterile blade, divide the rhizome so that 3-4 growth points remain on each divis 10–20 cm long.
4. Sprinkle the incision sites with crushed activated carbon or cinnamon powder to prevent rot.
5. Plant in prepared moist, but without dampness, holes with light soil in one or more divisions to a depth of 10 cm.
6. Water the heartflower immediately after planting in a new place. In a month new sprouts will appear.

Planting with cuttings in spring

In April, the dicenter is ready for propagation by cuttings. This procedure is performed as follows:

1. Carefully remove the soil from the roots of the plant.
2. Cut the root processes with a sharp blade so that there is a “heel”, the length of which will be 12-15 cm.
3. Immerse the cuttings for 1 day in the solution of the Kornevin stimulator (5 g per 5 l of water, the temperature of which is not lower than + 20 ° C).
4. Plant in moist soil, covered tightly with a film or plastic bottle to create a greenhouse environment.
5. After rooting, which will occur in a month, the shelter must be removed.
6. If you rooted the stalk at home, then the plant can be planted in open ground no earlier than next spring.

Indoor distillation

In the home floriculture, the dicenter is magnificent no less popular. It is used for distillation. If you create favorable conditions in closed ground, then the forced peace of the perennial will be interrupted. An artificially created balance of heat, light and moisture allows you to grow a flower without waiting for spring.

Important! 40 continuous light sources can be LEDs, incandescent or daylight 40–200 W / m²placed at a distance of 0.5–0.8 m from the plant. The duration of the daylight for distillation is 10–14 hours.

This process takes place according to the following scheme:

1. Prepare light soil for planting in a pot, for example, a mixture of sheet soil, garden and river sand (2: 2: 1) is suitable.
2. Dig a healthy, large bush in the fall, maintaining the integrity of the roots, and transplant into a pot.
3. Place the flower container in a cool room (+ 5 ... + 7 ° C), where negative temperatures are not afraid, and leave it there until the end of December or the beginning of January.
4. During this period, water 1 time in 2-3 weeks so that the earth does not completely dry out.
5. In January, move closer to the light in a warm room (+ 10 ... + 12 ° C) and pour plenty of water.
6. After watering, feed fertilizer for potted plants. In February, the dicenter will bloom.
7. After flowering, return the bush to cool, and plant it in the open ground in spring.

Lush bushes of magnificent magnificent ones are among the first to decorate flowerbeds, an alpine hill, a winter garden or a windowsill. Flowers remain attractive and cut, i.e. in a bouquet. Growing a heartflower is not difficult, the only thing it will require of you is love and quite a bit of care.