Castle Drive

Roger Turrell raised Castle Drive in the UK and registered it in 1991, but the modern story is about scarcity and mistaken identity. Coseytown tells of a Floret tuber sale built around anonymously donated tubers saved from oblivion, and that origin story gave the variety a mystique it has never lost. The complication is Coralie, a T. Mantle introduction from 1982 that sits in the same BB formal decorative light blend class and circulates widely under the wrong name. The two are routinely mislabeled, and Coseytown wrote a whole field guide to telling them apart; Castle Drive is the later, less floriferous, less yellow one with the floppy leaf. If a cheap and abundant Castle Drive shows up, be suspicious. Idlewild has listed it sold out, and true stock moves fast when it surfaces.

Castle Drive grows to about 48 inches with light green stems and a large, floppy leaf that growers use as a field identification mark. Both Coseytown and Idlewild report it is less floriferous than Coralie, the variety it is endlessly confused with, and it blooms later in the season too. That makes it a patience plant. Blooms are formal decoratives at 4 to 6 inches on a BB sized plant, clean enough for show work and gentle enough for wedding palettes. Stake it, pinch at 8 to 12 inches, and give it a long season; short season growers may find the late start frustrating. No vase life numbers are on record in our sources. It suits collectors and color obsessed designers more than production farms, which can get more stems per square foot from earlier, heavier producers.