Roses and camellias
Roses and camellias make up the majority of shrubby plants with boldly and exclusively irregularly striped flowers – neither, though, have a consistent or neat stripe and in some cases the word ‘blotch’ is probably more appropriate than ‘stripe’.
Both have some very old varieties with striped flowers, Rosa gallica ‘Versicolor’, historically referred to as Rosa mundi, for example, dates back to the 1400s and features in a number of Botticelli paintings from this period. More recently, Hybrid Tea and Floribunda varieties, particularly those raised in France through the famous Rose nurseries of Delbard and Meilland and American nursery Jackson & Perkins, have introduced several striped varieties, typically in shades of red, orange and cream. I think the red (often quite dark maroon) and yellow coloured variety ‘Abracadabra’ may be a favourite of the more recent introductions from the German nursery of Kordes, famous for its roses. In terms of camellia,
C. japonica ‘Kick-off’ is an attractive and fairly evenly striped variety with a peony-shaped flower in two tones of pink-red. The older variety of C. japonica ‘Tricolor’ dates back to at least the 1800s and has a white background flecked with pink and red, as does the more recent ‘Candy Stripe’ (a running theme in terms of naming). The famous American camellia nursery Nuccio’s has also featured a rare, striped form of a hybrid that includes the autumn-flowering C. sasanqua in its parentage called ‘Stars ‘N Stripes’. It seems likely we’ll start to see more variegated Camellia sasanqua types in the coming years, especially from breeding in Japan.