Description
‘White Slave’
3W-WYY
[Leedsii 4b]
(Williams, J.C., pre-1907)
We formerly used the workaday term “Queen of the Lady Seagulls” for this imposing Leedsii, because it has traits of ‘Queen of the North’, ‘White Lady’ and ‘Seagull’, not to mention the luminous ‘Evangeline’ (but the inclusion of a fourth cultivar would have rendered this portmanteau name impossibly cumbersome!). There is a faint glistening crystalline quality to the pure white perianth which is tinged pale bright green and sulphury primrose-yellow at the very base. The outer perianth segments are usually so wide as to be almost round or very broadly ovate, but sometimes one is more spreading and oblong. The inner perianth segments tend to be less broad, more ovate, tapering to an acute apex, and shouldered owing to abrupt tapering to a narrower base, but occasionally one resembles a smaller, almost round outer segment. The corona is a strongly pleated, small, widely expanded, sulphury Empire yellow bowl, with a few obscure and unevenly scalloped lobes at the lightly but deeply ruffled rim. As in ‘Queen of the North’, side margins of the lobes occasionally overlap conspicuously. Tall and late-flowering.
