Fans of both houseplants and Downton Abbey will remember the evening a fulsome streptocarpus in magnificent flower made a cameo appearance on the show. There, behind Penelope Wilton’s Isobel Crawley, sat an enormous Streptocarpus ‘Falling Stars’, its arching sprays of soft blue flowers stealing the scene for streptocarpus aficionados – not least because, as its breeder Dibleys pointed out at the time, ‘Falling Stars’ was bred about 70 years later than the 1917 scene being played out on screen.
That it looked so at home in an episode of perhaps points to why streptocarpus, despite always selling consistently well, haven’t been swept up in the houseplant explosion of the last few years. There’s something quaintly old-fashioned about a streptocarpus;
