In season

Neil Ross looks beyond the obvious for the hidden gems. The headline routines are familiar, but how much do you know of the hidden talents some plants are keeping under wraps?

Don’t miss the subtle charms of often overlooked plants, says Neil Ross

we didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed when our shy youngest returned from his talent night at the youth group this week. Having lugged his electric drumkit down our stairs, into the car and up the stairs of the town hall in the hope of nurturing his modest talent, we asked how it had gone to which he replied offhand, “The drumming went OK but what they really liked was the stand-up comedy.”

Apparently, egged on by his pals, he had treated them to a medley of accents – a talent we had barely registered and surely worth now nurturing just for the lack of equipment and expense required.

I wonder, do you harbour an unsung gift? Perhaps you are a teacher who juggles dinner plates or are you a gran who can gargle theme tunes or free dive to 200m? My personal skill is eating leftovers without it looking like anything has been consumed. At midnight almost any night of the week you can come watch me performing at the door of a fridge near you – just don’t tell my wife.

Plants are much the same really. Their headline routines are well-known – pretty flowers, interesting foliage, autumnal berries or a combination of all three if you are lucky – but how much do you know or appreciate the hidden talents that some are keeping under wraps?

For a start, there might just be unsung artistry to be found in the papery calyx found behind a flower. The calyx is a ring of sepals; those often dull but important petal-like structures which protect the outside of the flower as it opens. Some plants such as the monocots and those like clematis which have petals and sepals combined into one showy ring of tepals lack a calyx completely. In many others, this paper wrapping just folds away as the flower opens, but breeders and gardeners have been quick to celebrate and emphasise these unsung flower parts where they can.

Abutilons dangle from prominent calyxes inflated like sky lanterns and in the species

Abutilon megapotamicum and

cultivars derived from it, this papery sheath is stained red – the perfect complement to the tangerine flowers.

In the salvia family, it’s worth hunting out cultivars where the calyx is brushed inky black and acts like mascara, highlighting those bright, lipped blooms. Salvia ‘Black and Blue’ is named after the perfect combo of petals and contrasting sepals, and in a similar vein comes dazzling Salvia ‘Amistad’ (a rich purple lolling out of its black sheath like a molten cupcake escaping its paper case). Salvia ‘Love and Wishes’ is a newer, more compact version to look out for. It’s smothered in black and burgundy.

Stained stems which support the flowers again pimp up the effect nicely. As chocolate cosmos ( Cosmos atrosanguineus) fade, their wire-like legs can turn a lovely warm tone. My favourite ornamental onion, Allium cristophii, has among the biggest heads and doesn’t get too tall. And as each individual flower fades in midsummer, its starburst of stalks turn a lovely rosy red before the whole spheres turn to parchment and can be picked for drying. A colour change also occurs with the more substantial stalks carrying the inflorescence of later summer sedums or the otherworldly berries of the rare Actaea pachypoda which look like little trees of eyeballs following your every step along a woodland walk at this time of year.

The best plant culprits offering attractive bark are over-familiar – the dogwoods and birches and paperbark whatnots – but flower stems can be just as entertaining on a smaller scale and often more crazily patterned. The sea holly family ( Eryngium sp.) come straight out of some Elizabethan costume drama, their heads sitting on intricately embroidered ruffs and their legs stockinged in metallic blue or silver. As if the aroid flowers of arisaemas weren’t menacing enough, their somewhat stockier stems are marbled with lizard-skin speckles and streaks. This is exactly the same decoration as that used by Eucomis bicolor which is perhaps my favourite bulb as it has it all: understated creamy flowers, rippled lacquered leaves, a trendy top knot and funky 1970s legwarmers to boot.

The ligularias are another plant family with some knockout talent waiting in the wings. The daisy flowers could be a bit pedestrian standing amongst such magnificent leaves but in cultivars like ‘Desdemona’ and ‘The Rocket’, the inflorescence spikes are charred, which make the flowers burn all the more brightly.

Look out for other plant details with star quality, be it spines, stipules or midribs. You may have chosen a fern for its architectural talent and instead it entertains with furry ankle socks. You might have planted Swiss chard for its leafy goodness but then find its psychedelic varicose veins steal your heart and cause a halt to the harvest. A plant with a surprise is surely more worthwhile than those which go with the flow.