A thank you to shotaku@Flickr for today's photograph (original | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). Do visit shotaku's Flickr pages for more photographs of plants and landscapes. Thank you!

Paghat goes straight to the matter of common names for epimediums, and I'll agree with her – occasionally, I hear or use the common name barrenwort, but I don't think I've ever heard fairy wings or bishop's hat, so perhaps those common names are in use in other regions.

The × symbol signifies that this is a hybridized entity. In this instance, the parents are known: the east Asian Epimedium grandiflorum and, native to the Black Sea region, Epimedium pinnatum subsp. colchicum. The two taxa were crossed prior to 1850 at the Ghent University Botanical Garden.

This is a stellar garden plant, having received a Plant of Merit award from the Kemper Center for Home Gardening, an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society and a Great Plant Pick designation for the Pacific Northwest. The GPP factsheet provides an explanation surrounding the confusion between the cultivars 'Sulphureum' and 'Neosulphureum' (with the former often being sold under the name of the latter), but also recognizes that both are worthy of the Great Plant Pick designation. To the gardeners, note that this cultivar can grow admirably in one of those most vexing places in the garden, dry shade.

When writing about epimediums, it is always necessary to provide a link to Darrell Probst's The Epimedium Page.