Bleeding Heart

During my first spring in the garden center I became acquainted for the first time with Dicentra spectabilis or Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart.

This beauty blooms early in the spring featuring large, pink hearts on graceful arching stems.

The garden center where I found employment was in Omaha, Nebraska and our grower delivered Bleeding Hearts to us in full bloom that he produced at his growing facilities in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

My Grandfather was a cold frame-greenhouse grower of considerable ability and I feel certain that he was familiar with D. spectabilis and perhaps even featured it in his product mix.

By the time school was over for the summer months and I ventured one hundred ten miles north to his business he had sold out of Old Fashioned Bleeding Hearts or perhaps they had slipped into deep dormancy with the arrival of hot temperatures.

It’s hard to say how I missed out on them during my youth but once becoming familiar with them when I was in my early twenties they have remained a favorite of mine during the past four decades.

A white form of Old fashioned Bleeding Heart is available and is also quite attractive.

Both pink and white forms reach a height of about two feet tall by two feet wide.

Several other cultivars are available with some claiming everblooming capabilities but in the heat of Oklahoma I have not found this to be true.

In other parts of the country where days and nights are cooler the everblooming claim is certainly accurate.

These selections normally reach a height of twelve to eighteen inches with blossoms in shades of cherry-red, rosy-pink and pink.

Of additional interest is a vine (Dicentra scandens) with typical Bleeding Heart flowers in yellow and hardy into zone 6.