Gentiana Little Pinkie

Gentiana 'Little Pinkie' is a long-lived hybrid perennial variety, offering a long summer flowering period in an unusual colour for these plants; its upright trumpet-shaped flowers display a lovely magenta pink hue. The plant also has a well-branched and compact habit, and pretty semi-evergreen leaves of a beautiful glossy green. Less demanding than the alpine species, it nevertheless prefers cool conditions, which can easily be provided in the garden in a partially shaded border or rockery, in humus-rich and well-draining soil.

Gentiana Little Pinkie is a New Zealand horticultural hybrid introduced in 2014, descended from G. Makinoi, a floriferous and easy-to-grow Japanese species. Little Pinkie also resembles the stemless gentian, better known as the Alpine Gentian, a very beautiful botanical species of small size native to European mountains. All these plants belong to the Gentianaceae family. A perennial cushion-forming plant with semi-evergreen foliage, this bushy Gentian is adorned with lanceolate leaves, slightly pointed, measuring about 5 cm (2in) long, of a beautiful shiny medium green. Growing rather slowly, it does not exceed 10-15 cm (4-6in) in height, with a spread of 15 to 25 cm (6 to 10in). From June to September large solitary flowers in the shape of long trumpets, turned upright towards the sky, bloom on short, branched and leafy stems, with a deep mauve-pink colour, slightly lighter on the inside.

Easier to grow than stemless gentian, Little Pinkie also adapts well in lowland gardens, with a few precautions. It will ideally be placed in a soil rich in compost, moist and well-draining, on a wall, in a rockery, on a slope, in a border or in a trough. It prefers acidic to alkaline rocky spaces, in full sun but not too hot, or partially shaded, where it can root deeply. This Gentian, with its large pink flowers, can be combined in a border or rockery with Veronica bombycina, Snowdrops, Botanical Tulips, Lewisia, dwarf Conifers, Erinaceous Pinks (Dianthus erinaceus), Corydalis, or even Heucheras.

The term Gentiana refers to Gentius, King of Illyria (present-day Albania) in the 2nd century BC who, according to Pliny the Elder, discovered the medicinal and healing properties of the yellow Gentian root.