Ordering Plants From Hippies (Or Hipsters) and Decisions

I am at present planning to order plants for this spring.  Most of the companies I plan to order from are on the West Coast.  The reason for that is the fact that we Midwesterners tend not to experiment with different plants as often as people on the West Coast, because we're boring people who live in a giant cornfield.  A second, more logical reason is the rainfall on the West Coast, as well as the longer growing season, makes it easier to grow plants there.  Of course, the ex-hippies are common in this area, as are hipsters.  I do not know which ideology wrote this sentence as a plant description on Far Reaches Farm:    (Plant in question is pictured below, in a picture taken from Far Reaches Farm)

"Yet another example of our compulsive need to acquire and assimilate broad representations of obscure genera that we find fascinating yet carry little or no hope of broad-based market appeal while fostering an ongoing pathology of justification endowing our long-term approach of Reineckea espousal which favors attraction rather than promotion in expectation that surely this will be the year that the noble gardening populace will have achieved the fourth stage of enlightenment and can embrace a neglected genus with complete intention, grace and humility."  

  I'm from Illinois.  Could I have that in English, you New Age nurserymen?  (Sorry, nurserypeople.  I have to be politically correct).   In English:

Yet another example of the strange plants we find interesting, but which do not sell well to the general public.  We try to justify this by hoping that this will be the year that Reineckea plants suddenly become popular with the public.

So these are the sort of  inflated descriptions inflicted on me as I browse the web, looking for plants no one's ever heard of to buy and show off to people who generally don't care.  

Here are some of the choices:

Corydalis elata - This belongs to one of my favorite plants genera, Corydalis.  Corys are small, often bulbous plants with flowers that are really like the spur of  an Aquilegia (columbine) crossed with a Penstemon (beardtongue).  This is a blue Corydalis from China.   (Image of Corydalis elata borrowed from plantsforshade.co.uk)

 The very first blue Corydalis species from China, Corydalis flexuosa, has one of my favorite backstories.  It is a similar, but more delicate species, which prefers cooler summers than Corydalis elata.  The first nurseryman to discover C. flexuosa in the 1980s, the legend goes, was being escorted by members of the Chinese government and was not allowed to touch any plants.  He excused himself to go to the bathroom behind a tree, and dug up the tubers of three dissimilar C. flexuosa.  He stuffed these in his underwear and smuggled them out of the woods thusly.  Eventually the nurseryman and the three tubers made their way to England, and he introduced them as three varieties: "Blue Panda",  "China Blue", and "Purple Leaf".  While it is a good story, I cannot say if it is true.    C. elata, a more recent introduction, is considerably more heat-tolerant than C. flexuosa, thus making it better for my Midwestern garden.  I once had the opportunity to buy Corydalis flexuosa in a local nursery when I was younger, and I chose not to do so because it was about twenty dollars and at the time I didn't have a job.  Considering that is the biggest botanical regret I have ever had, I've led a pretty happy life!

Impatiens omeiana (photo credit desirableplants.com) -  Impatiens is a curious genus.  The one plant in the genus with flat, as opposed to tubular, flowers  (Impatiens walleriana) is the most popular species, while almost all of the hundreds of other species have tubular flowers in all sorts of colors.  Two species, annuals of wet, shady spots, are native to Illinois.  Several more species grow throughout the U.S.  However, it is in the tropics of the Old World that Impatiens reaches its zenith, especially India.  Many more cold-tolerant species grow in China, including this species, which shares its territory with Corydalis elata.   While it has great flowers, the foliage is perhaps the main attraction of Impatiens omeiana, with the red veins and stems contrasting with the dark green of the leaves.   This plant also is a shade plant that blooms in September, a time when few other plants are blooming in the shade garden.

I know that  I want these two species.  After this, however, here are two contenders for third place.  I only have the funds for three plants, so I am only going to buy three plants. 

Bletilla striata (Chinese Ground Orchid)  (Photo credit Sten Porse on Wikimedia) -  It's an orchid.  Enough said. Okay, maybe that's not true.  It's a hardy terrestrial orchid tolerant of inexperienced gardeners.  Native to Japan (not China), this orchid has been grown in gardens for hundreds of years. It is one I've had my eyes on for a long time, and is a plant that I will definitely grow at some point.  Bletilla striata grows well in St. Louis, Missouri, and I suspect it will do fine here.  It truly looks like an orchid as well, and that appeals to me strongly.  However, it's actually kind of common compared to the other choice:

Polygonatum kingianum (Royal Solomon's Seal)   (Both pictures Far Reaches Farm)- This Chinse species of Solomon's Seal has no common name of its own, but with the last name of kingianum Royal Solomon's Seal sounds good to me.  It also grows twelve feet tall.  I just want it because it can do that.  Of course, it also ends up covered in hundreds of flowers come May.  These flowers resemble Dichelostemma ida-maia (Firecracker Flower), and I am certain everyone who reads this blog has little idea what that is.  I'll just give you a picture of Royal Solomon's Seal flowers and let you google Dichelostemma.  Based on the growing conditions, I should be able to grow it, and it would be awesome to have this giant flowering bamboo-like plant in the back of my garden...While I like this plant for its rarity, that also means I don't know how it will do in this area.  Both plants suffer from that problem, however, and the only way to find out is to quote Shia Labeouf and "Just Do It!"

Leave a comment below rooting for which plant you think should be #3.  First comment decides which one I get.  If there are no comments, I will... make an independent decision  ( The horror! The horror!)