Bleeding Heart – Dicentra spectabilis

Common Name: Bleeding Heart

Botanical Name: Dicentra spectabilis, di-SEN-tra spek-TAB-i-lis

Decorative Life: 4-8 days.

Flower Color: Pink, Purple, Red, White

Availability: Year Round

When grown as potted plants, supplemental lighting during production can increase the postharvest performance of flowers. It is unknown if this result would also be obtained when used as cut flowers.

• This member of the Fumariaceae family has no common relatives, as there are only 18 genera in the world.
• Native to Japan.

• Heart-shaped, pendulous flowers, one inch long, occur along one side of arching branches.
• Stems are leafy, 2-3 feet long.

No specific storage data yet located.

• From the Greek “dis” for two and “kntron” for spurred, referring to the 2-spurred flowers.
• The ‘Alba’ variety has white flowers.

Regarding bare-root stock storage of this species at 29F for 4-6 months, best survival and regrowth results were obtained by those stocks that lost the least amount of water during this period. Hancheck and Cameron (1995) showed that late harvested and then stored (32F) plants performed better the following year than earlier harvested ones.