General Culture:

Best grown in organically rich, medium to wet, well-drained soils in part shade. Soils must be kept uniformly moist and not allowed to dry out. Plants may be cut back close to the ground after flowering to promote new foliage growth and a later bloom. This perennial performs best in cool summer climates where night temperatures consistently dip below 70F degrees, which unfortunately is a cultural preference that does not fit the profile of a typical St. Louis summer where this plant often labors. In optimum growing conditions, plants may spread by stolons and self-seeding. This plant may not reliably come true from seed, however.

Noteworthy Characteristics:

‘Claret’ is a great masterwort cultivar that is noted for its dark red flowers and nearly black stems. This is an umbelliferous, stoloniferous, clump-forming perennial that typically grows to 24” tall. Each flower is a domed umbel of red florets subtended by a ruff of papery, petal-like, dark wine red involucral bracts. Flowers bloom from late spring to early summer. Bracts usually remain attractive after bloom. Medium green leaves, with each leaf being palmately cut into 3-7 (usually 5) toothed lobes. Leaves appear primarily in basal clumps, with smaller versions on the stems.