Gunnera Manicata

This bog plant from Africa is a real beast once it establishes itself. If you want to see a full sized one head over to Tatton Park’s gardens in mid Summer. It takes time to get there, but within 5 years you should have something which stands an easy 5 or 6 feet into the air.

Gunnera is related to the Rhubarb. Unlike the rhubarb it has very stiff leaves with a weird nobbly texture to them. This nobbliness extends down the huge stems to its massive corm. These nobbles seem to work together to channel rainfall down to the corm. It’s really wonderful to watch, as this technology even works when you take your hose and spray underneath the leaves!!!!

Gunnera can take strong sunlight, but may burn around the edges if it is dehydrated. It will need good sunlight if you want massive leaves. Keep Gunnera in the shade and you will get smaller, darker leaves which stay near the ground. Each year it will send out massive cone-like flowers which don’t look too pretty, but add to the jungle effect of the plant.

The leaves will melt at -2c, but this is not a problem as corm plants act like bulb plants in that they suck the foliage energy back into their centre, so the leaves would die back anyhow! The corm can take -10c easily unprotected, but if you are paranoid you can fold the mushy old leaves back over the corm to hide it from settling frost.

This is a good choice for the massive jungle look, but you really need loads of room to let it do its stuff. Shop around though as you can get good sized ones for good money. Look at the size of the corm rather than the leaves. Leaf size is dependent on time of year, water and sun.