Tag Archives: Prunus ‘Felix Jury’

Of matters related to fertility and sterility

Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ by our driveway. It is a handy, small tree with good colour but beware its seeding ways.

I received a phone call on Friday from a garden centre in another area. The caller wanted me to confirm that Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ was sterile. Their regional council had asked them to remove their plants from sale because they seed everywhere but their supplier had assured them it was sterile.

Reader, Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ is NOT sterile. The woman on the other end of the phone was perfectly pleasant and thorough and said she would immediately remove the remaining plants from sale. All credit to her.

I feel like I am shouting into the abyss when I say that Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ is not and never has been sterile. I have even written to a nursery and garden centre to advise them of this fact when I saw them advertising it as sterile. I was ignored. They are still advertising it as sterile. The original plant was raised here by Felix himself and it was Duncan and Davies Nursery who named it for him and put it into production. So it is a Jury plant but not one that we have any control over at all in the market place and Felix was never paid for it.

Our native tui, feeding from ‘Felix’

Times were different 50 years ago. We didn’t realise that campanulata cherries would become invasive weeds which are extremely difficult to eradicate because if you just cut them down, they grow again. The seed is spread far and wide by our native birds who eat the small cherries that form after flowering and excrete the inner pit or seed as they fly. Back then, they were just a pretty, flowering tree providing valuable food to tui, who adore them, in late winter. Now they are on the banned list – as in banned from sale, not banned entirely from gardens – in a number of areas and for good reason.

Once and for all: PRUNUS ‘FELIX JURY’ IS NOT STERILE.

If it was sterile, there wouldn’t be a problem because none of the seed is fertile so it can’t spread. The only Jury-bred campanulata hybrids that are sterile are ‘Pink Clouds’ and ‘Mimosa’ and they are sugar pink, not the carmine red of the campanulatas.

Prunus ‘Mimosa’, named by Felix for his wife. I took this photo to try and capture the korimako, our native bellbird, in the very centre.
I only add this photo because in the top left quadrant, you may spot the orange wings of a monarch butterfly feeding on ‘Mimosa’

We haven’t cut out our campanulatas and seeding cherries… yet. We derive a great deal of pleasure from watching scores of tui making the trees dance with movement as they feed and then fly on to the next tree. Mark is making mutterings about them. I think it likely we will keep the trees in the areas we actively garden; we are vigilant weeders and constantly pull out seedlings at a very early stage. We can manage them. But the ones on the margins and in wilder areas where we don’t spot the seedlings until they are too large to pull out by hand may get the chop in the next few years. It will be a big job because not only do they get the chop but the stumps have to be poisoned to prevent regrowth.  

I would be thinking twice before planting one and, were we still in the nursery trade, you can be sure we would no longer be selling them. Times change, knowledge grows and we need to recognise that and respond.

‘Felix Jury’ again

Farewell poor Felix. We knew thee well.

The Prunus campanulata, that is. We farewelled the person – Mark’s Dad – back in 1997. The magnolia named by Mark for him continues to thrive here and we have several specimens planted around the property, including the original plant. The prunus – we have just the one and it may not pull through.

A definite lean. In fact it has fallen over, though the root system is still in the ground.

I noticed two days ago that the tree had a major lean. On closer inspection, it became clear that only the brick wall was holding it up and I was a bit worried about whether it could bring down the wall. Mark set about removing the weight that was pulling it to one side. He will cut the tree back hard and we will look at putting a prop in place but we doubt it will survive.

Prunus ‘Felix Jury’ is the reddest campanulata that we know of

Prunus campanulata ‘Felix Jury’ was named by the nursery Duncan and Davies for Felix, because he was the originator of this selection. It is simply not done to name a plant after oneself. It is still the deepest carmine red bloom on the NZ market and is much beloved by our native tui. Being a smaller growing, upright form, it has been popular as a garden plant. Unfortunately, it is not sterile so it sets seed which makes it problematic in areas where campanulata has become a noxious weed. We do a lot of weeding out of seedling cherries here because the birds spread the seed far and wide.

We will try and keep a plant going as part of the Jury collection. Hopefully this tree will stay alive until late spring so Mark can take some cuttings off it. The optimum time for taking cuttings from deciduous plants in our conditions is December.

Native tui feeding from a campanulata cherry but it looks too pink to be ‘Felix Jury”

I do not think I have ever told the story of the naming of Camellia ‘Julie Felix’. It would have been very poor form for Felix to name it for himself but he really liked it. Enter Julie Felix, the American-born folk singer who made her name in Britain in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was touring NZ and doing a concert in New Plymouth. Felix thought that naming the camellia Julie Felix was a subtle play on names that would suit his purposes. Besides, though he took no interest in music, he liked her songs.

“You can’t do that without her permission,” protested his wife, Mimosa. She was a great woman for the telephone was Mimosa, so she tracked down that Julie Felix was staying at the Devon Hotel in New Plymouth and tried to call her. Whoever took the call – almost certainly the Devon receptionist – wouldn’t put her through to the singer’s phone so Mimosa explained (no doubt at great length) that she was trying to contact her for permission to name a camellia after her. “I am sure that will be fine,” said the person at the other end, very kindly.

So there we are. Permission was sought for this name and consent was give – by the receptionist at the Devon Hotel. I doubt that the singer ever knew there was a camellia bearing her name although it never was named for her. In a typically convoluted fashion, Felix was naming it for himself.

Ironically, I can’t even find a photograph of it, even though we have a big plant close to the house. I must set that right this winter when it comes into bloom again. It never achieved the status of his better known camellia cultivars like ‘Water Lily’ and ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Mimosa Jury’. But Felix clearly rated it highly.