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Common Name: masterwort
Type: Herbaceous perennial
Family: Apiaceae
Zone: 4 to 7
Garden Location: Enterprise Rent-A-Car Flower Borders
Height: 1.5 to 2 feet
Spread: 1 to 1.5 feet
Bloom Time: May to July
Bloom Color: Red
Bloom Description: Rose red with silver-pink bracts
Sun: Part shade
Water: Medium to wet
Maintenance: Medium
Flowers: Showy Flowers
Tolerates: Wet Soil
Uses: Cut Flower, Dried Flower, Will Naturalize
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. Best performance occurs 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. 'Roma' is a patented plant that does not produce seed.
Noteworthy Characteristics
'Roma' is an upright, umbelliferous, stoloniferous, clump-forming masterwort that typically grows to 20-25” tall. Flowers are arranged in compound umbels. Each pincushion-like umbel of rose-red florets is subtended by a showy ruff of papery, horizontal, petal-like, light silver-pink involucral bracts. Bracts usually remain attractive well after bloom. Flowers bloom from late spring to mid-summer on stems rising well above the basal clump of foliage. Leaves are medium green, with each leaf being palmately cut into five doubly serrate lobes. 'Roma' is the product of a planned breeding program in the Netherlands in 1992 between Astrantia major 'Ruby Wedding' (pollen parent) and an unnamed selection of Astrantia major var. involucrata (seed parent). U. S. Plant Patent PP11,470 was issued on August 1, 2000.