A not so simple garden

Walleria gracilis, winter growing beauty

2012-01-14T19:33:00.000-08:00

This is a hard plant to photograph, as it is quite delicate and this one was blooming under lights, where it weaves in and out among the pelargoniums and other South African geophytes that share the same winter home. I grew it from seeds from Silverhill that took quite a long time to germinate. I remember thinking it was summer growing, since it looks kind of like a mini gloriosa lily in growth, but it is in fact a winter grower, as would be expected when one realizes it comes from the Vanrhynsdorp area of the Cape. Sprouts appear in fall and the wiry stems rise,with soft prickles on the leaf midrib undersides, and the bright white flowers marked with an inner blue ring appear sometime afterwards. I have not been able to set seed on the plant that bloomed this year, its first, but there appear to be others in the pot that I can try crossing it with next year. I am guessing that it is not self fertile. Sometime in spring the plants will die down in the manner of other winter growing Cape geophytes. Then it will be allowed to dry out and set aside along with many others that follow the same cycle until September rolls around. At that time, my indoor garden, which keeps me sane during NY winters, will rise again from these summer sleeping pots.

Cleome hirta, an African cleome

2012-01-08T08:41:00.000-08:00

I got seed of this a few years ago from JL Hudson, and it is one of my favorite annuals. It is hard to photograph because it is an airy plant, not dense and showy in the typical sense of many garden flowers. It grows fast in warm weather, and sets copious amounts of seed in long thin pods. Unlike the common garden cleome, it is not annoyingly prickly stemmed. I like the unusual yellow markings which contrast nicely with the light purple base flower color. The flowers are great favorites of bumblebees, and C. hirta will flower for a long period of time from mid/late summer till frost. For earlier flowering in northern parts of the US, it is best to start it early indoors, as is the case with Ceratotheca triloba, another African annual worth growing.
There are several other species of Cleome in southern Africa, but I have yet to have success in germinating the yellow flowered ones. I assume they have some kind of inhibitor present in the seed, or they may require special treatment such as scarification. I will keep trying to get them to germinate, as the yellow flowered African species can be quite spectacular in flower.

Pycnostachys dawei, a tale of storage and survival

2012-01-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

I grew this east African species many years ago at the New York Botanical Garden from a plant I got from Logees. I noted that even then the plant seemed to be afflicted by virus, but I was able to get seed set with effort, and eventually I refrigerated that small sample of seed. Years later, Susannah Strazzera of Wave Hill, a wonderful little garden tucked away in the Riverdale area of the Bronx, told me about how hard it was getting to get this species to bloom in recent years. I looked at the plants, which came from the same source and had been cutting propagated over many years, and it was apparent that they were afflicted even worse with virus symptoms--leaves were narrow, twisted, color uneven, growth abnormal--no wonder the poor things were but a shadow of their former glory. So I went and resurrected my seed stash, now over 15 years old, and got a few seeds to germinate, maybe 20% if that--not surprising since I did not refrigerate the seed immediately upon harvest, in fact I am not sure how long it was stored at room temp before I got it into the fridge, but it was probably not more than a couple of years--plus it was in the fridge for well over a decade. I brought some healthy young plants (many viruses are not seed borne and these can be cleared from infected stock by growing a new generation from seed) back to Susannah, and she propagated them and grew out the magnificent flowering specimens shown above, which were just beginning their wonderful winter show when I visited the Wave Hill conservatory around Christmas. She will try and save seed for me to replenish my seed bank later on.
I don't think Logees carries this species any more, and I have not come across it in cultivation in the US in many years, though I suppose it could exist in some California or Florida garden/nursery. It is evidently still in cultivation in glasshouses in the UK, and perhaps other European nations. It would be difficult, if not impossible with current nightmarish bureaucratic craziness to get more stock from Africa. This is due in large part to the Convention on Biodiversity, a well meant but seriously flawed attempt to conserve the world's biodiversity. This treaty will basically doom many plants to extinction by making their export to other nations legally very difficult or impossible, so they will die when global climate change and habitat destruction take them out in their native ranges. Add to this the increasing difficulty and ever more restrictive regulations coming down the pike for importing plants into the USA, and it becomes easy to see why serious horticulturalists need to make better use of their refrigerators as seed banks. In my experience, seeds of many sorts can be stored in simple paper envelopes (I use either coin or stamp envelopes) in the refrigerator for over a decade, perhaps much longer (haven't had many more than 15 years). I understand that seeds can also be frozen, but I worry about the kind of damage (freezer burn) that appears on frozen food that has been stored too long, though I imagine that storing them in sealed containers with desiccant might help. Plus I don't have to worry about potential damage from thawing every time I open the door or a power outage occurs, and I am not concerned with storing them centuries beyond my lifetime, after all I won't be worrying about it then! I do wish I had realized the benefits of cold storage of seeds before, as there are a few pelargonium species I had during my research days at Cornell that I set seed on, but that I lost when the seed got too old to regenerate after a few years at room temperature.
Another nice aspect of storing seeds is that one can grow several kinds of unusual/commercially scarce or unavailable annuals in a limited area by skipping years, simply save the seed one year, stash it in the fridge, and grow something else in its place for a few years, then start some stored seeds of that annual again a few years later. It also is a means of conservation on a very basic level, which is something worthwhile in my view, despite all the imperfections. True, a botanical garden or government administered seed bank with wild collected samples is best, but that won't happen to the necessary degree it needs to happen. Academic criticisms such as the use of garden seed that is not documented wild source, possible hybridization, and inadvertent selection for garden conditions have a degree of validity, but IMHO conservation scientists obsess over these details too much while the forests and savannas of the world burn faster and climate change accelerates more quickly they are capable of responding to in any meaningful fashion. So lets do our part, however small, to conserve at least a few species and unusual selections of the wonderful flora our planet bequeathed us with, so that future gardeners might have a chance to enjoy some of the flowers that thrilled us in our lifetimes and that might not otherwise have continued their existence without our help.

Etched in Gold

2012-01-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

Luezea conifera is a pretty odd and amazing plant for those of us who went so long without knowing of its existance. These specimens were in Bob Nold's garden in Lakewood (near Denver), a writer of some excellent books and articles, including two that I have on Penstemons and Aquilegias. I marvelled at how the seed bearing "cones" (techically it is called an involucre) appeared to be spray painted in gold. Bob allowed me to take a few for seed, and I have to admit to being somewhat conflicted later on as I ripped them apart to harvest the seeds later on, it felt almost sacrilegeous to disassemble such beautiful works of natural art. To add to the effect, their is a mass of ever so soft fluffy fibers in the middle of the cone, which is also attractive when moisture allows the cones to open, rendering the interior fibers visible. Leutzea conifera comes from Spain and Portugal and the Balearic Islands, so its somewhat of a surprise that is does so well despite Denver's significantly colder winters. In fact is does well in dry situations, which is more expected for a Mediterranean plant. From what I can find in references the flower isn't quite as spectacular as the seed heads, it basically looks like a small pale purple or lavender batchelor's button atop the ridiculously large "cone". I will start some seeds this spring and see how they do outside in NY, it is at least a short lived perennial when happy. I imagine that our wet winters and humid summers would be the biggest problems for it, but plants often surprise even experienced gardeners, you really don't know if something will work in your garden until you try it yourself (at least a couple of times).

Pelargonium endlicherianum, more Colorado dreaming!

2012-01-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

Pelargonium endlicherianum is one of two oddball outliers in the genus that are found in Turkey or nearby, far from the center of the genus distribution in South Africa. It is quite cold hardy, as evidenced by these exceptionally splendid specimens which I photographed in August in the display rock garden at LaPorte Avenue Nursery in Ft. Collins, Colorado. There were many other treasures in that fine nursery too, but this was the grandest display I have ever seen of Pelargonium endlicherianum, though I did see it doing well in a few other gardens in Colorado.
This species is more difficult to grow in the eastern states, not because it can't handle the winter cold, but rather because it rots easily during hot humid weather. Success would be best in a well drained elevated spot, which is how it seems to be planted even in Colorado gardens. I will try it in the future in the space near the wall at school, parts of that favored area get quite dry during summer, which is more like what happens to it in its native habitat. Otherwise it can be grown as an alpine house plant, with careful attention to watering during summer. Its bigger brother, P. quercetorum, from the Iraq/Turkish border (Kurdistan) is even more scarce in cultivation, but I hear it does well in New Mexico, and it does grow in Denver too.

Candy Lilies 2011

2012-01-01T20:04:00.000-08:00

Iris x norissi 2011-a pure yellow one

Iris x norissi 2011

Iris x norissi 2011--I like this pattern

Iris x norissi 2011

Iris x norissi- a late blooming self sown seedling

Iris x norissi-2011 another nice one

Iris x norissi 2011

As time goes on in my school garden, the candy lilies (Iris x norissi, formerly Pardancanda) continue growing and and adding to their numbers by self sown seed. This year some new color combinations appeared. Now that I have one of the ancestors of this group reaching flowering size, Iris dichotoma, I am looking forward to even more variation in both color and flower form in the future. I tried crossing I. dichotoma onto a late flowering orange and red candy lily (third pic up from above) and seed set, but it could be selfed. I actually did not discover the Iris dichotoma flowers until they were nearly over, it blooms very late in the day and fades early the next day. In 2012 I will be more alert, and also bank some pollen from the candy lilies if I find that they bloom before the Iris dichotoma, as most of them did this year. The I dichotoma plants were young and flowering for the first time, hence they might not be blooming as early as older plants might. I like plants that show variety, and endless color combinations are possible with candy lilies, and if backcrossed to I dichotoma I should also be able to get a more iris like flower as well. These plants are very easy to grow, and set plenty of seed, and have no pests that I have seen thus far. The biggest issue I have is controlling their numbers, removing less interesting variations, and moving plants that get too robust for more delicate neighbors.

Diascia rigescens

2012-01-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

Diascia rigescens in fall

D. rigescens flowers up close

This species of diascia is the best one I have grown thus far, although there aren't any ugly diascias, to be sure. I grew it from seed from Silverhill, and it flowered nonstop from July to October. It did not mind our rainy summer, wild temperature swings, crazy October snowstorm, and the several frosts of recent weeks (though the weather has been oddly mild overall). While flowers are long gone, the leaves remain green (as do some other diascias), though that will be tested when lows drop one night this comin week into the teens (F) for the first time this winter. My plants did set some seed, and diligent searching by yours truly recovered enough to assure another generation in case it does not turn out to be winter hardy. I do think it lacks its natural pollinator here, though, because seed set is rather low in spite of my plants being genetically different (seed grown, not cutting grown) and flowering profusely. If started early, it can be grown as an annual, though I do hope it proves to be perennial in my garden. I am also growing D. integerrima, which does very well in Denver, but it bloomed sparsely in my garden this summer, although it did survive the previous winter. I think it would flower better in a more typical drier and sunnier summer than what we experienced this year. I started seeds of Diascia fetcaniensis "African Queen" from Chilterns as well, these plants make much flatter mats than D. rigescens or integerrima, and flowered later. They did not set seed and did not make as grand a display as D. rigescens. Perhaps if they make it through the winter I will get more substantial flowering next year.

Pavonia missonianum

2011-12-30T19:25:00.000-08:00

This is a very bright red little hibiscus that has been self seeding for a few years in my school garden. It flowers in late summer and early fall from self sown seedlings, but a longer blooming season can be had by starting seeds indoors in spring to give it a head start. It grows best when it is warm, and prefers a sunny spot. Pavonia missonianum is native to Argentina, and my plants were started from seed I had stashed in the fridge from some long forgotten Index Seminum. My original plant set copious seed, and although I have stored plenty of it, apparently quite a few remain in the soil to give rise to seedlings every year as soon as the warm weather hits.
It is a trouble free plant save one problem--it is a preferred favorite of budworms that destroy the flowers and seed pods. This caterpillar pest seems to appear sometime after the weather begins to cool, and is also fond of petunias and nicotiana. Ruthless hand picking helps, but spraying insecticide or BT powder (a bacterial disease of caterpillars) would be necessary if one had more than a few plants. The stems, seed pods, and foliage are somewhat sticky, and this deters most insects, perhaps the problem is that it deters ants that might otherwise prey upon the budworms. Still it is a very worthwhile flower to grow, the flower color alone is worth it. Thus far plants do not survive NY winters, but plenty of seed is set (if the budworms don't get the pods) for another generation.

Mystery Arctotis--What are you?

2011-12-29T19:43:00.000-08:00

Flower of mystery Arctotis

Foliage of mystery Arctotis

Helichrysum splendidum (front), Mystery Arctotis and some Berkheya radula flowers in back

I do have a bad habit of losing labels and although I have a near encylopedic mind when it comes to plants, I am not sure what this plant is. It probably came from Silverhill and is a rapid growing plant with very divided leaves, I want to say its Arctotis revoluta, but the flower color is wrong. I like the interesting foliage, and it spreads out over a fairly large area, but alas it is not a profuse bloomer. I counted something like two flowers all season long. Perhaps it had something to do with the lack of sun this past summer, or maybe it is naturally a winter growing plant that wouldn't flower well if it doesn't get a prolonged chill. The flower is very much like the flower of Senecio macrocepalus, and about the same size too, which would be more impressive on a smaller plant. This Arctotis is not hardy at all, frosts quickly did it in, but not before I took cuttings and rooted them in water in my classroom. With some luck, I will overwinter them under lights and set them out again next year to see what they do.

Two Special Gaillardia Species

2011-12-29T19:40:00.000-08:00

A pinker form of Gaillardia aestivalis var winkleri

Gaillardia aestivalis var winkleri

Gaillardia aestivalis var flavovirens with male Monarch butterfly

Gaillardia aestivalis var flavovirens

        Gaillardias are pretty common in gardens, and I do have some of the more commercially available versions in my school garden, where they are valuable for their profuse and long season of flowering, pest resistance, and the lack of interest they engender from the resident voles (who have been a problem this year) and occasional deer. I also like the fact that they attract butterflies and other pollinating insects, so they help the garden become alive as the pollinators flutter and buzz around on sunny days.
        But there are some rarer gaillardias, which are nonetheless great plants for the garden. G. aestivalis is pretty much a Texan species, with three recongized varieties. G. aestivalis var winkleri is an endangered species native to a limited area in 3 counties in Texas, and it is unusual among gaillardias in having cream, pink, or in at least one selection (Grape Sensation--have to get a hold of that one someday), purple flowers. In nature it grows in sandy soils in areas with clearings in oak pine woodlands. My original plant came from Plant Delights and seed of it (I purchased it in flower, so it may have crossed with neighbors) gave rise to the plants I now have. The original plant perished after one winter, but I germinated some of the seed indoors and set it out in 2010, about 3 plantsg grew and flowered, but little seed was set due to the few and late flowers I had that year. Surprisingly they all survived the winter of 2010-11, (which did feature unusually excellent snow cover) and reemerged more vigorous, and flowered like mad this past growing season. One of the plants had deeper pink flowers than the others, and all of them set copious seed, so now my seed stocks are replenished so I need not fear losing it if this winter turns out to be particularly harsh (so far, not the case). I am also curious to see if it self sows next year.
     G. aestivalis var flavovirens came from Bustani Farms, a great nursery in Oklahoma (sadly they stopped doing mail order shortly after I got my first order from them, I do hope they reconsider, its getting harder to find cool nurseries with interesting and different plants these days--and what they sent was second in quality to none). I got two plants so as to get seed in case they are self sterile, and both plants started blooming a bit later in summer than did var winkleri. They produce more flowers than var winkleri, and also set plenty of seed. I wonder if the two "varieties" crossed, when I raise the seeds or evaluate whatever self sows in the future, I will find out the answer. If I don't see any evidence of hybridization, I would assume that they are in fact two very different species and not varieties of the same species. In nature var flavovirens grows not only in Texas but also in several other states to the north and east. Its flowers are yellow, with contrasting purplish centers that are attractive in their own right.
      While neither one of these gaillardias has as full petalled flowers as the standard ones in gardens, they are valuable for their more delicate, whimsical look and profuse flowering. Despite excessive record rainfall from midsummer through early fall, these gaillardias still performed very well, though I did have them planted in a special raised area with well drained soil. When they die back for winter, nothing is alive above ground, so don't assume they are dead and rip them out.  Sprouts reemerge from beneath the soil near the old dead stems in spring. I think both gaillardias are excellent candidates for rock gardens, cottage gardens, and prairie/sunny wildflower gardens.

Rocky Mountain High-Boreas Pass

2011-11-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

Helianthella quinquenervis and Zigadenus elegans

Calochortus gunisonii with blue butterfy

Helianthella quinquenervis backed by Veratrum tenuipetalum

Delphinium barbeyi

Geranium richardsonii

Cirsium scariosum ssp coloradoense

Linium perenne and Potentilla sp

Pyrrocoma crocea

Calochortus gunisonii

Boreas Pass must be one of those exquisite places where heaven and earth meet. I rarely have been in such a stunning field of flowers, at least in this country. Marcia and Randy brought me here, and it was another major highlight of my trip--so many flowers filled this subalpine meadow. The vegetation was very different from the alpine vegetation on Horseshoe, this was basically a vast field of flowers with forest elements not far away. Calochortus gunisonii was in spendid abundance, protected from the native rodents by growing in thick grass thatch. which makes it harder for them to get at the bulbs. It was the major reason for our visit, but there were so many other floral treasures to see too. Helianthella quinquenervis is a nodding sunflower cousin that also is abundant in this area, the nodding flowers probably shelter its pollen from rainstorms, or else must be some strange adaptation to enhance pollination in some way. Pyrrocoma crocea was another (of many) yellow daisy species, but it bore masses of upfacing flowers from a rosettes of straplike foliage. The toxic Zigadenus elegans is abundant here too, with white spikes of small flowers poking up between more showy flowered plants. Delphinium barbeyi is a fairly robust plant that forms noticible clumps here and there. Its blue flowers can be mistaken for Aconitum columbianum from a distance, the latter occurs here too. Geranium richardsonii has finely veined white flowers and is frequently found as single plants interspersed among the mosaic of other flowers and grasses. Cirsium scopularium ssp coloradoense appears here and there with white flowers on a plant that probably is a biennial or short lived perennial. Bright blue flax flowers(Linium perenne) stud wispy branches that reach not far above the numerous anthills among the grasses--ants must be a major ecological factor in this area, there were so many of them. A particularly majestic stand of Veratrum tenuipetalum grew in a low damp area, when massed together they were quite striking.

Rocky Mountain High-Loveland Pass

2011-11-24T17:50:00.001-08:00

Loveland Pass View

Randy and Marcia Tatroe

Me at the sign

Penstemon whippleanus, purple and white forms

P. whippleanus and Castilleja minata

Sedum lanceolatum

Castilleja miniata and Juncus sp

Viola adunca

I had the pleasure of travelling for a day with Randy and Marcia Tatroe, very good friends of Panayoti who are likewise well known in horticultural circles in the Denver area. They often go hiking in the mountains, and definitely knew the coolest places to go. Marcia's book, Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West, is a great read. I highly recommend it for anyone planning to garden in the region, especially for transplants used to gardening in gentler climates (Colorado IS different......).

One of our stops that day was Loveland Pass, where a well built road leads one right to the top of the pass. While the flowers were generally not as in their prime as they were at Horseshoe, there were still many nice thing to see. In this locality one can find different color forms of Penstemon whippleanus, perhaps best known in its darkish purple form, but here alba forms grow along with intermediate purples as well. Castillejas were abundant, I am tentatively calling what I saw C. miniata, but the different species are hard to tell apart, and some hybridize. At Loveland they came in various shades of pink and red, and were still looking quite nice. Perhaps the best specimens of Sedum lanceolatum, a species found wherever I went in the local mountains, were to be seen here. Its brillant yellow flowers make it quite noticible among other low growing vegetation. Unlike Sedum acre, which it reminded me of, it clumps but does not run, so I imagine that it would be a far better behaved plant in suitable gardens. A sedge of some sort, perhaps a species of Juncus, is noticibly attractive with dark brown flower heads--it also is seen in various permutations throughout the Colorado mountains. Finally we came across a colony of Viola adunca, which I have grown before in containers back east, though I no longer have it, I do recall it being easy to grow.

Denver-A visit to Kendrick Lake Park and Jim Borland's Garden

2011-10-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

Panayoti was keen on showing me the gardens at Kendrick Lake Park, which had been adding more interesting plants in recent years due to a knowledgable horticulturalist working there. They suffered a serious hailstorm earlier that year, so some plants had damaged leaves (only tallish ones with broad leaves for the most part) and several had been cut back to remove affected portions. Still there were a number of interesting plants in good shape to see, some of which resisted the hail and others which were recovering fairly quickly. Clematis fruticosa "Mongolian Gold" is a shrubby clematis with golden yellow flowers and the typical fluffy clematis seedheads. It made a small shrub which arched outwards and had many flowers on it. You really have to click on the photo to see the enlarged version to get a better idea of just how floriferous it is. A mat of gold in front of a bush of gold describes the combination of the flat growing Zinnia grandiflora and Chrysothamnus nauseosus (rabbit bush). The zinnia is very different from what easterners think of as zinnia, it is perennial, everblooming, and very weather resistant, though I suspect it would not like our peristant high humidity and precipitation. Chrysothamnus is a native shrub in the Denver area, and comes in several variants (if not species, there is debate about whether there is one variable species or a group of several species). Its a good bloomer, and the various variants can basically be any combination of tall/short and green/grey leaved. I believe this is a dwarf form and it is obviously one of the better ones. Vygies, or mesembs, from South Africa love Denver's sunny and low humidity climate. While most cannot take the winter cold, many do just fine, and grow to form enormous mats in favored situations. This one, and the closeup, are Delosperma ashtonii "Blut". I was too late to see vygies at peak, but this one was still blooming strong. It is anything but subtle. The tall red flowered plant is the rare Scrophularia macrantha, endemic to New Mexico but doing fine indeed in this location. A beautiful but frightening cholla (I think this one is the silver cholla, Cylindropuntia echinocarpa) had an odd out of season yellow bloom. While theft seems not to be much of a problem in this garden, if it were I doubt this plant would have an issue. The mere thought of having to weed anywhere near it frightens me!

Later we visited the garden of Jim Borland, who is an expert on growing native western plants. He has quite a diverse collection of natives and some non natives on his suburban property. It was cool to see a Buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) wandering around the front sidewalk. This one splays itself over a saltbush (Atriplex canescens) in its quest, like many cucurbits, to conquer the world. The fruit is attactive but not edible, though apparently the seeds are okay to eat. It is a perennial vine that produces absolutely massive roots, from which the vines radiate outwards during the growing season, only to die back completely when colder weather sets in. Jim had two species of dwarf goldenrod, this one is Solidago nana. It makes a showy edging/groundcover looking its best in the difficult garden month of August. The next two photos are of Cleome lutea, a southwestern native species not often tried in gardens. It makes a nice contrast to the larger flowered but unpleasantly prickly stemmed garden cleome (C. hasslerana), and a good companion for the native lavender Cleome serrulata, which seems to be more commonly grown in Denver area gardens. I was thrilled when Jim gave me a good supply of seeds to try it next year in my gardens. There are a few non natives in his garden too, and this quince, Cydonia oblonga "Pineapple", was one of them. This cultivar was bred by Luther Burbank. Quince is an odd fruit originating in caucasus area of western Asia. The large fruits require frost action (bletting) to soften them so as to render them edible, hence they are not the kind of thing one sees in grocery stores. I was way too early to taste one, but it was a cool fruit to see anyway!

Rocky Mountain High Part 3--A visit to Mountain View Experimental Gardens

2011-10-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

One fine day I went around the mountains with Randy and Marcia Tatroe, first to Boreas Pass (more on that in a later post), then to Breckenridge, and then to visit Jane Hendrix on the outskirts of Breckenridge. Remarkably, according to what I was told there are two gardeners named Jane Hendrix with a Breckenridge address--I met the one whose website is www.picturetrail.com/hendrix . Believe me when I say her garden was a special treat--it was amazing what could survive and, in fact, flourish, in such a high alpine garden. The short but sunny and cool growing season suits some flowers perfectly, and I saw in August things that would be blooming in spring back home. Jane is an expert on the native flora, and behind the house was an open conifer woodland with masses of lupines and castillejas in bloom. I found it funny that she almost apologized that they were a bit past peak, I sure couldn't tell, as you can see in the third photo it looked like something out of a Monet painting. In the first photo a stunning mass of Primula florindae shows off flaring flowers in shades of red and yellow. Castillejas are everywhere, even in the front gardens where their bright red flowers combine nicely with mainly european flowers in a slightly bizzare, but beautiful, scene. The incredible yellow nodding daisy is Senecio (or Ligularia) amplectens. Why haven't I ever heard of this one before I saw it, its a truly gorgeous perennial. Luckily I was able to purchase seed of it in the small shop that Jane has in the house. There she sells seeds of both natives and garden flowers (from her garden) for what I must admit are very kind prices. I hope to have some plants of the senecio growing by next spring to set out in my school garden. I also got three of her booklets to help me with wildflower identification, they are inexpensive and have lists and color photos of plants from locations that tourists are likely to hike in/visit in the area. I was impressed with just how bright colors were, even though it was lightly overcast (great for picture taking) while we were there. In the fifth photo a red Penstemon barbatus combines nicely with blue and yellow neighbors. A graceful spire of soft pink Ipomopsis aggregata rises above lavender Aster alpinus and a white silene. I finally get to see Meconopsis baileyi in bloom in a garden, for the first time in my life. What an interesting combination with the firey red flowered, purple leaved, L. x arkwrightii 'Vesuvius'! Felicia bergiana is a small blue annual daisy from the drier areas of the Western Cape. The ray flowers open flat in sunshine, and curl backwards in shadow. Jane told me that she needed to collect and save seed, it refuses to self sow for her. I imagine that is because it is naturally a winter growing species, primed to germinate in fall, so perhaps the seeds germinate too early and the seedlings freeze during the long harsh winter. In the cool bright mountain air, it grows far better than it does during our hot humid summers in NY--I have sucessfully grown it, but it expires before the end of summer here (indeed, that is what it does in its native haunts too). Oh my, so many wonderful pansies--in early August! They never look that good in NY, and although pansies are not exactly rare, they are a really wonderful flower, so many colors and patterns, and they are fragrant too. Instead of expiring or limping along like they do when it gets hot here, they look perfect all summer long in Breckenridge, and nowhere more so than in Jane's garden. Finally I am posting a photo of a mystery pink Penstemon that grows in her garden. She was wondering about its identity, so if any readers care to hazard a guess, let me know and I will pass it along to her.

Ok, its Horseshoe again, for the last time (promise :)

2011-10-05T17:15:00.001-07:00

Not since I last was in South Africa in 1993 have I seen so many different flowers in one small area. The snowlover, Chionophila jamesii, looks like a small white penstemon, and indeed is rarely found far from some snow lying around on the ground. I used a hat I borrowed from Panayoti to deal with the bright sun, but failed to use sunblock and got a really bad sunburn. Its easy to forget in the cool mountain air just how intense the UV light is--at that altitude (we climbed to over 1300 feet) the air is thin and sunlight very intense. I found out what "Rocky Mountain High" really means when I got a touch of altitude sickness, first comes stomach discomfort, then one actually gets a bit loopy (probably from low oxygen levels, you can feel yourself thinking slower), and a light headache sometimes. I was proud that I got to the top of our trail, while not the mountain peak it was damn close, and one could look over the continental divide to the watersheds that flow west. I took the photo of Panayoti Kelaidis and Jan Fahls at the summit of our hike, and they took one of me as well. Just before those photos, one can see a pink mound of Silene acaulis, which is yet another circumboreal tundra/alpine species. It is quite common on the mountain, and some variation in shade of pink and floriferousness can be seen among the large populations of it. White daisies and pinnate foliage characterize Erigeron compositus. Erigerons are generally easy to germinate and grow in rock gardens, and they are quite abundant and diverse in the montane West. One of a few alpine Trifolium species in the area, T. parryi is everywhere in the mountains west of Denver. With its large trusses of purple flowers, its a serious improvement on our lawn clovers. A yellow draba, which I dare not attempt to identify (the genus is a taxonomic nightmare with many similar species) thrusts its bright yellow flowers skyward, though at its size it doesn't get very far. Androsace is a genus of often lovely plants, mainly Asian, but a tiny and rather insignificant one which might be A. septentrionalis (identifications are welcome) hides among the rocks in Colorado. Rather more attractive in the horticultural sense is Eriogonum, possibly E. umbellatum, another diverse and confusing western American genus. Both the silvery leaves and bright yellow flower umbels are easy on the eyes. In favored locations with some moisture Arnica cordifolia forms large patches of yellow daisies. The famous Colorado columbine, Aquilegia caerulea was only present near part of a nearby trail some of us took on the way down. One can see why it has been brought into cultivation, the large blue and white flowers are quite nice. Finally a small Heuchera parvifolia hugs the light colored rocks it grows among. The foliage is quite attractive, though the greenish yellow flowers are more modest than some of its more showy cousins.
Hiking up Horseshoe Mountain with an enthusiastic and informed crew from the Denver Botanic Garden during what apparently was an optimal time during an exceptionally good flower year was an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.

And even more from Horseshoe

2011-10-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

The white flowers of Dryas octopetala are a familiar sight in northern tundra and alpine areas and plenty of mats, some quite large, of it, were to be seen on Horseshoe. An interesting fact about this plant is that it apparently is one of the plants that survived on often isolated mountaintops when the glaciers spread during the ice ages in the valleys below, despite what must have been fierce winter cold. Two primula species exist in the area, the smaller P. angustifolia and the larger P. parryi. Yet another northern genus that left a few representitives behind in North America when it was separated by tectonic activity and rising seas from Eurasia. I was suprised to see Claytonia megarhiza in often wet areas, it looked best where there was plenty of water near it. Some of these huge plants must be many decades old. Lychnis apetala (or Silene uralensis) is a circumpolar species which we found near the top of the mountain. Its calyx is conspicously striped and inflated, the petals barely noticable. Papaver kluanense was rather scarce and only found near the top of the trail. The striking blue Mertensia is M. lanceolata. It is one of the larger plants in the upper part of the trail, with piercing blue flowers. What looks like a refined sweet alyssum is Thlapsi montanum, sometimes called mountain candytuft with good reason. Rhodiola (formerly Sedum) integrifolia does best in moist areas, and is widespread in the Colorado mountains. Particularly nice red ones were seen on Horseshoe, though I saw some paler pink ones on Mt Evans later on. The prize of the hike, the focus of our search efforts, was the tiny blue Eritrichum nanum, a very diminuitive forget me not. It has tiny fuzzy leaves and sky blue flowers. I was especially proud to be the first in our very talented group to find it, even though I had only seen it in photographs before. There may have been more of them in bloom earlier, we found several that were past flowering, not an easy task as they are even more inconspicuous without flowers. This species only grows in the most desolate coldest upper reaches of the mountains in dry rocky areas. There are many white flowered mat forming plants in these alpine reaches, and Arenaria is well represented. This one might be A. obtusiloba. The last pic shows Ranunculus eschscholtzii, another pretty alpine buttercup with rather large flowers.

Horseshoe Mountain continued....

2011-10-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

More beauties from Horseshoe as we climb higherm the first photo shows a particularly nice form of Erigeron leiomerus with an extra row of rays. The odd plant in the third photo is some kind of endemic to Horseshoe and perhaps another place or two, is Saussurea weberi. This plant was in bud, bud later should open purplish flowers. Aster (or Machaeranthera) coloradoensis is a rare species in general, and we didn't see many on Horseshoe, one of the handful of areas where this sprawling pink daisy is found. Fortunately it is well established in cultivation as a rock garden plant. Growing in shallow running water is Ranunculus adoensis. I can imagine how difficult it would likely be to grow such a snowmelt plant of such a specialized habitat in cultivation. Another rarity in nature, but not so hard to grow in rock gardens, is Townsendia montana. It forms little bouquets of daisies which cover the foliage against the stark rocky substrate it grows in. Senecio (or Ligularia) holmii forms attractive little clumps of leathery foliage and nodding yellow daisies. Panayoti remarked how these resemble Cremanthodium from Asia, and I have to concur, they look very much like them and may even belong in the same genus. Its not too hard to visualize the genus stretched across the North American Eurasian landmass before the Bering strait formed ,isolating the ancestral stock to two distinct alpine locations, the Himalayas and the Rockies. The bold yellow daisy known as Old Man of the Mountain, Hymenoxis (Tetraneuris) grandiflora is quite common in the Colorado mountains, and it was abundant on Horseshoe as well. Phlox condensata is also common in the area, and on Horseshoe I found many flat rounded mats of it, most in full flower with five petalled white flowers. Senecio (Packera) werneriaefolius var alpina is yet another one of the attractive yellow daisies of the high mountains, forming a low mat of tightly packed dark green foliage covered with numerous bright flowers. In the last photo, a Frasera speciosa has finally reached maturity, shooting a meter high inflorescence packed with odd but pretty flowers, the culmination of several years of gathering and storing food for its final dramatic act of reproduction.

Rocky Mountain High Part 2-Horseshoe Mountain

2011-10-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

A couple of days after arriving in Denver, I and several staff from the Denver Botanic Gardens were walking a long winding trail up Horseshoe Mountain. To reach the mountain we drove west into the Rockymountains (which are visible from Denver), then cut southwest, I think, across a large flat plateau area with cows and much grassland before reaching the mountain base. The base had lots of conifers and some forest wildflowers, but we parked at the transition zone where the conifers end and the only woody plants are some Salix bushes and potentilla species. We soon passed that zone and entered the true alpine zone, where a veritable feast of flowers awaited. Thanks to good rains and a late season, the flowers were at peak. I was astonished at the diversity, we just don't have this kind of floral diversity out east. In the pics above, we see first the mountain itself, with its distinctive horseshoe marking. Next is a shot of two hemiparasitic plants, a pinkish purple Pedicularis, possibly P. sudetica var. scopulorum. Alongside grows one of the numerous Castillejas, C.occidentalis flaunts its large creamy bracts. Third is the agave like rosette, though far less menacing, of Frasera speciosa, a strange member of the Gentianaceae that must grow for many years before erupting into a final fountain of greenish white flowers, setting masses of seed, then expiring. In the fourth photo the diminuitive Gentiana prostrata opens its tiny flowers only when the sun is shining. It surprised me just how tiny and fragile in appearance this gentian was. Also rather small is Lewisia pygmaea, with its succulent quill like leaves and pink to whitish flowers. An odd Apiaceae, the yellow Alpine Parsley, Oreoxis alpina, shows its delicate divided foliage and petite bright yellow flower umbels. A grey leaved Senecio, possibly S. canus, was one of many species of this genus that I saw. I was struck by how many of them looked just like Senecio species in the mountains and grasslands of South Africa, this one reminds me a bit of Senecio coronatus, a grassland species from eastern South Africa. Truth is the senecios of the Rockies are hard to differentiate, because there are so many of them and they apparently hybridize. Lovely things, though! Microseris aurantiaca is the closest thing to an orange dandelion that I have seen, and even its seeds look an awful lot like Taraxacum to me. Some true native yellow Taraxacum grow there also, in addition to the ubiquitous T. officinale. The purple spires of Phacelia sericea were quite common scattered here and there across the low vegetation. Finally a dwarf wallflower, Erysimum capitatum (or asperum, the true name of this alpine variant apparently is controversial) looked like a bouquet of yellow flowers just the right size for a fairie or perhaps a Leprauchan. So incredible is the wealth of wildflowers on this mountain I feel compelled to follow up shortly with another post showing yet more wildflowers from this beautiful and botanically rich location.

Rocky Mountain High, Part 1

2011-09-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

Any true plantsman or woman will find a chance to learn more about gardening and plants in places other than where they live an exciting adventure. I got just such an opportunity to go to Denver in early August and stay for a little over a week as a guest of Panayoti Kelaidis, world reknowned horticulturalist and plant explorer. I gave two talks, one on Pelargoniums and another on South African Plants for American Gardens, to the local chapters of the North American Rock Garden Society and the Cactus and Succulent Society of America, and toured several outstanding gardens, hiked up flower filled mountains, and got to hang out at the Denver Botanic Garden and meet many of the enthusiastic and knowledgable horticulturalists that make it a must visit place for anyone going to Denver. I found it so thrilling to interact with like minded plant lovers, to "shop talk" about our respective gardening experiences and to see and experience gardens and plants in a climate that can be downright bizarre at times from my eastern American perspective. I learned enough and took enough photos to provide material for the several blog posts I intend to produce as a result of my amazing experiences in Denver.

For starters, the photos above show some real horticultural treats from the incredible home gardens of Mike Kintgen, who is in charge of the justly famous rock garden at the DBG. We arrived one morning to view his gardens, and despite the daytime heat and the fact that Denver gardens are generally not at their prime in August (like many other places, may/June tends to be a more floriferous time), there was no lack of really nice things to see. A vigorous Monardella macrantha with screaming red flowers by itself would have sufficed to make the visit worth it, as this rare southern California native creates a spectacular mat of brilliant flowers which beckon hummingbirds to come closer to the ground that they probably would prefer. It is one of many plants that no one suspected should be able to handle Denver's cold and very volatile winter weather, but evidently it does so just fine. It also grows in the DBG rock garden and even in one of the planters along a walkway in front of the greenhouses, as well as in some other gardens in the area. Next one of the delospermas that seem to love Denver's high light intensity, low humidity, and generally drier winters than what we experience in the eastern states. It is Delosperma dyeri "Red Mountain". Soon to be released (by Plant Select, a partnership of DBG and local nurseries) as "Firespinner" is a somewhat similar species that blooms earlier and it will be a wonderful addition to the growing list of hardy mesembs or "ice plants" in the USA. If you see it get it! It is a selection of a species from a very cold area of the eastern Cape in South Africa, in fact I understand that it will not flower in places like Cape Town where the winters aren't cold enough. It most closely resemble D. dyeri, but the foliage is different and the plant grows into a larger mat. Next, a western phlox, P. nana, blooms as floriferously as our eastern mat forming ones do much earlier in the season. The yellow mat forming Zinnia grandiflora was everywhere in better Denver gardens, and so different than the commonly seen annual ones. It is a perennial blooming machine, and is very resistant to the highly localized but insane hail storms that can randomly devastate broad leaved taller plants in the area. Gardeners worldwide obsess about weather, but I learned that no place has more changable weather than Denver. The hail storm stories I heard from several people were legendary. Apparently its a matter of unluck as to when one strikes as they cover relatively small areas and generally some years go by between really bad ones. But when a bad one hits, nurseries can be devastated to the point of going out of business (unless they have great insurance), gardens are denuded of foliage and flowers on many taller plants while some smaller ones are just pulverized into mush, woody plants are injured and killed from foliar loss and even bark stripping, and houses end up with roof tiles stripped as well. Still many native plants like this zinnia are adapted to cope with such events, and with their narrow leaves and ability to bend rather than oppose the hail, they suffer less damage than broad leaved plants like hostas or annual zinnias would.

Centaurea rothrockii (closely related to and perhaps a variant of or conspecific with C. americana) is another wildflower native to certain areas of the southwest, but the only one I saw in the local gardens was the superb specimen in Mike's garden. It was huge, over four feet tall, with enormous white flowers. Apparently it grows as a biennial or short lived perennial, but when it flowers it is absolutely majestic.

All over the Denver area, and in every garden I visited, foliage in various shades of grey, silver, and blue green accentuate the visual aspects of the landscape. Silvery and grey leaved plants seem to love the abundant sunshine and they contibute much interest to gardens. Several cacti, such as various opuntias, pediocactus, echinocereus, and others are winter hardy and do very well in Denver, where excess winter moisture is less of a threat than in the eastern states. In the last photo such plants combine beautifully in Mike's home rock garden.

Searching for a Silene

2011-06-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager, I remember walking deep into the woods to find out what those pink blobs of color I saw each May on the rocks above the highway were. I climbed a small wooded slope from the side opposite the highway until I reached a cliff which had a fence running down it, parallel to the New York StateThroughway which was straight below the cliff edge. The fence had an occasional hole in it, so I could access the cliff edge, though I never went too far, I didn't (and still don't) like heights nor danger. Some rocky slopes were inside the fence at the top of the wooded slope, and these too sported the bright pink Silene caroliniana var pennsylvanica that I had seen from the highway before. One time after part of the adjacent slope was denuded of trees when someone decided to build some apartment buildings below. That following spring the plants grew in abundance, sporting flowers in various shades of pink from light to dark. I imagine they liked the increased sunlight.

Many years later I remembered speaking with the wildflower curator when I worked at the NYBG, and told her that I saw these plants, but could find no mention of them in a field guide covering all the native plants the NYC area by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. She had heard of the plant in the area, and told me it was considered rare in NY, and that the BBG field guide probably didn't realize that it was still extant in NY (I think a later edition added it in).

So finally one decent Sunday morning this past May I went out to the location where I remembered seeing the silene growing. I parked my car in the parking lot below the slope (despite the signs warning not to do so, the restaurant there was undergoing renovation) and hiked up the slope. There was more poison ivy and smilax than I remembered, but I carried on until I reached the cliff. It took me a while, but I spied some pink flowers in the short grass among the rocks, and found a few plants inside the fence, far fewer are there now than when I was a kid. I also found two fence openings, and a more robust population on the cliff margins outside the fence. It was past prime blooming time, but I was able to photograph some flowers and also gathered some stems with maturing seedpods and a few basal shoots for rooting. More seeds than I expected were produced by the ripening pods in the next few days at home, and the basal cuttings are still green so hopefully they are rooting.

Silene caroliniana var pennsylvanica is not a rare plant in general, but it is rare and localized in New York. I had no idea of that when I was a teenager, and would try and transplant plants to my small garden where they would die after a couple of seasons or so. It appears that they have a very specific habitat preference; very well drained acidic soil among large boulders, preferably in tight cracks, and with good sun exposure. This plant does not tolerate larger competion well, its immediate neighbors are grasses, Hypoxis hirsuta, Corydalis sempervirens, and some sort of small blue flowered annual linaria-looking thing. The soils it grows in must dry severely during summer droughts. It is opportunistic, spreading and/or growing more vigorously when nearby trees that cast shade on some plants are removed (in nature by fire), but fading out again as succession proceeds and the canopy closes again. The most secure plants are those on the cliff edge and and the cracks below it on the vertical side facing the NYS throughway--the latter are impossible for any human or animal to access. However development has occured nearby on the slope leading up to the cliff, it is a very developed area of lower Westchester county anyway. Not far north of there, also on cliffs overlooking NYS 87, is another colony I have observed from my car window, but a huge development of a mall and apartments appeared there in the last couple of years after the entire hilltop was cleared. Plants there can now only persist on the cliff face itself. So in both colonies the silene is only safe so long as the cliffs themselves are not dynamited during road widening or more development. However the silene's potential for expansion into nearby woodlands after fire or other successional event is nonexistant due to habitat destruction. Its long term future is also bleak since small limited populations separated by development from each other are more vunerable to extinction in general. I am not optimistic for its long term survival locally, in another generation the area it grows in will be indistiguishable from NY City.

Silene caroliniana in both of its varieties is a suitable plant for a rock garden, it being a natural chasmophyte after all. It is quite striking when in full bloom and has the potential to increase rapidly via means of the numerous seeds produced. I will start some seeds next year to try on the slope garden at school, in addition to what plants may result from the basal cuttings I took.

A Wall is an Amazing Thing for Zone Denial

2011-05-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

Quite a few things that would be considered too tender for a New York garden thrive against a brick wall in my school garden in Chappaqua, NY. The photos above were all taken within the last few days, and show some of these plants. In one pic, some Amaryllis belladonn hybrids and a Scilla peruviana (in bud) can be seen. Careful viewing will detect the dierama in front of the amaryllis with it upright narrow iris like foliage. The Amaryllis often get burned leaf tips when they try to make winter foliage, but new healthy growth comes out later in spring, and from the looks of it, I may get some nice flowers this summer. The hand-like divided leaves of Pelargonium luridum emerge in another pic, this really seems to be the perfect spot for it, and I look forward to the large trusses of pale pink flowers in a few weeks. Gerbera jamesonii, the true species (haven't tried the hybrids in the garden yet) is in bud in another photo, this particular plant is on its third year. I have several seedlings coming along to add nearby, as it is another one of those asteraceous plants that needs a genetically different clone to set viable seed. In the same photo shoots of a white flowered tradescantia species I got from UC Berkeley many years ago (I think Sean Hogan may have collected it in Mexico) are just emerging. The tradescantia is indestructable in that spot, and does very well all summer long. Fushia magellenica grows well as a dieback shrub, showing lots of branches right now, but it didn't like the hot summer we had last year, though it bloomed anyway and looked better when cooler fall weather returned. The melianthus I posted about earlier is coming back yet again, with more shoots than ever, so I will get to enjoy its attractive foliage and wierd dark flowers (though I am not fond of their peculiar ink like secretions if I squeeze them) come summer. Euryops tysonii benefitted no doubt from the snow cover it had this winter, although it does tend to blow away or melt earlier near the wall. It grows back swiftly from undamaged portions, though it can be bothered by spider mites in hot dry weather. I haven't got it to flower in this spot yet, though this year it seems to be growing very well and I will treat it if I see mites on it again. I did see numerous very vigorous flowering plants of it on the African Hill at the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden when I last visited during summer several years ago.

It is possible that some of these plants would manage in the open garden, perhaps with protective mulch during winter, but some of them definitely need the warmth provided by the wall to keep their roots from freezing deeply during winter. Some of the plants like the dryness of the site in summer (there is a large overhand two stories above) but most like additonal water if it gets too dry. There are quite a few other species along the same wall, and some of them (like Kniphofia northiae--which it turns out can do fine in the open garden, where I have some younger plants) get a bit too vigorous for neighbors at times.

Desert Iris in the Garden

2011-05-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

Iris "Dardanus" is an old hybrid of the Regaliocyclus group of irises, which means it has some desert species iris in its bloodlines. These give it the wonderful dark veining, which makes each flower a work of art. I got rhizomes a few years ago and had real difficulty figuring out which way to plant them--I've seen a lot of plant underground parts in my lifetime, but these rhizomes were impossible to orient based on previous experiences with other plants. Whatever I did, it worked, and now there is a thriving clump near the wall of my school garden. They like the dry, hot spot that they are planted in. Foliage is short lived compared to other iris in that it tends to die back in summer, but it does get an early start. It is in bloom right now, just before the bearded iris that will bloom in another part of the school garden in a week or so.

A Nice Combination

2011-02-25T14:49:00.000-08:00

Well actually both species pictured here can be thugs, but when they bloomed together they made a pretty sight. Campanula poscharskyana makes a pretty spreading mat, while Corydalis ochroleuca forms clumps wherever it can get a foothold. The corydalis is more aggressive and taller than the campanula in my garden, so I do remove excess corydalis plants after their first flush of blooms. The campanula flowers in spring, but the corydalis can keep flowering off and on throughout the growing season, especially in cooler weather, and is one of the last things to succumb to heavy frosts in the autumn.

A Nice Oxalis

2011-02-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

The genus Oxalis is probably best known for its few weedy members, but in fact the vast majority of them, and there are hundreds of different ones, are beautiful plants. Most of them grow from bulbs, an unusual feature for a non monocot plant. This one is probably O. nelsonii, a summer grower from Mexico. I got it from Bill Baird, who is the man to go to for anything oxalis in the USA, he only grows members of this genus, and has developed an elaborate setup to be able to grow them well in Brooklyn. O. nelsonii is a summer grower, making it simple to grow for those of us with a yard. Simply water in spring, watch it woosh into bloom and growth, keep watering and occasionally supplying fertilizer, and dry it off in the fall and bring indoors. Store dry until the cycle begins anew. It is before the first watering that one can remove excess bulbs from the pot and start other pots, for many of even the desirable oxalis species are able to multiply well when conditions are to their liking. No need to worry about this one taking over, though, as oxalis bulbs are eaten by rodents, though that is not generally a problem in my home garden. Gravel on top of the pot does discourage the more significant problem of squirrels, which like to dig in my outdoor pots.

Many more bulbous oxalis are found in South Africa, and all but a handful of these are winter growers. They do best in cool greenhouses, but I can grow them under lights, so long as they are kept dry for summer. They do bloom, but not with the abundance they do in cool greenhouses or outdoors in favored locations like California. Telos nursery is an excellent source for many such species.

A Hardy Garden Orchid

2011-02-25T13:44:00.000-08:00

Bletilla striata is both beautiful and easy to acquire. It has persisted for years in my home garden, though it expands during mild winter years and shrinks back during hard winters. It is cheap to buy making it easy to get replacements if they were ever needed. It has never self sown in my garden, but does set seed. I have grown, with limited success, some of those seeds sown on sterilized potting soil, but the seedlings are tiny and slow. In fact, its amazing they actually grew at all, since most orchid seeds will not germinate without special in vitro techniques as they require a fungal partner for success in nature. Recently I sowed seed on orchid media agar at school, using a microwave to prepare and sterilize the medium, and hydrogen peroxide as a sterilant. I did so in a laminar flow hood I got on ebay for 75 dollars (it was quite a project to get it hauled from New Jersey to the school, and then moved into my classroom), but I did not turn it on, as I suspect the hepa filter needs replacing. A couple of months later I have baby food jars full of nice young plants which will probably be ready for tranfer to soil well before school is out. With a little luck, I should be able to substantially increase this patch of bletilla, and add others, including some in my school gardens. After all, one can never have too many orchids in the garden!

Verbesina encelioides

2011-02-25T13:31:00.001-08:00

This species came in a seedmix sent as a free gift from a nursery on the west coast, and I was unable to figure out what it is for the two or three years I have had it. Finally I posted some what is it pics on the facebook group "Plantporn" (a plant geek group, obviously!) and got an identification. Apparently it mainly occurs in the southwest, but can be found in other states, even New York, though I have never seen it before. It behaves as a resowing annual here, growing about 3 feet tall and blooming from mid/late summer to frost. Copious seeds are produced, but it doesn't seem to produce excessive numbers of offspring thus far in my school garden, rather just enough to regenerate a few plants. I also save seed, which would be useful if I wanted a bigger display of it, though space is always at a premium given my penchant for high diversity in my gardens. Nothing seems to bother it, but pollinating insects are fond of it, and it is pretty much a carefree native species worth inclusion in a sunny garden.

Gazania variations

2011-02-25T06:53:00.000-08:00

Gazania linearis does throw some interesting variants, these two were grown from a seed from a different source than the ones mentioned in the last post. I particularly like the second variant with the orange center bounded by a dark brown partition before the yellow part of the petal.

Gazania linearis

2011-02-25T06:40:00.000-08:00

This cold hardy gazania was grown from seed, though the same thing is often marketed as "Colorado Gold" in better nurseries. It grows in the high Drakensberg mountains of South Africa, and is reliably perennial by all accounts in places like Denver, though winter wetness may be a more significant problem for its survival as a perennial here in NY. I will soon find out if they made it through our winter as the snowpack melts (and if the voles that apparently were eating things in parts of the school garden, protected from predators by the consistent snow cover, missed them). In any case, they are easy to grow from seeds as annuals too, but it takes more than one plant to set seed, as all gazanias in my experience are self infertile. I've also made some interesting hybrids with this species and other gazania species and cultivars, and hope to flower many more of them this year as well as to test them for cold hardiness. Gazanias do require good sun, and the flowers won't open without full sunshine. Unfortunately, they are edible and can be attacked by rabbits and presumably other herbivores, but deterrents of the same order as used to repel deer, as well as interplanting with less tasty/toxic neighbors, do repel herbivores.

Vernonia sp Piedade

2011-02-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

Well, actually I suspect that this is a species of Ageratum, but whatever it really is, it is a nice Brazilian plant that looks good in the garden and also doesn't mind being lifted before frost and brought indoors. In fact it continues to bloom and set seed in my classroom under lights at this moment. I hope it turns out to be daylength neutral, as I suspect, since it continues to set new buds indoors, though it did not begin to flower until fall outdoors, however the 2 plants were small when planted out rather late, and may simply have needed to get big enough to bloom. If it is daylength neutral, it will make a far more valuable contribution to the garden in northern climates than if it requires long nights to flower, since it could be grown as a summer annual. I rather like the foliage better than the messy leaves of the common garden ageratums, this specie's leaves are not so bristly and have a more substantial texture. It also appears to set numerous seeds by itself, but I have not tested these for viability yet. Most Asteraceae are self infertile, but some set copious seed via self fertilization or even apomixis (a kind of cloning via weirdly produced seeds, common in Taraxacum officinale, for example). I'm looking forward to propping it soon and setting more plants out next year in the garden, it is a pretty thing, and as might be imagined, butterflies and bees do love it.

Another cool sansevieria blooms!

2011-01-02T09:32:00.001-08:00

I grew this plant, and several others, from leaf cuttings I got many years ago from the Botanic Garden in Pretoria, South Africa. It was a species collected in Venda, one of the old "homelands" of South Africa, right up near the border with Zimbabwe. In doing some internet research, it might be the same thing as something going around with the name S. hallii "Pink Bat", but I have no idea if the plants come from the same source as mine. It is a slow growing and small species, but not hard to cultivate, and it eventually it produces a rather robust rhizome. This year one of the plants at school finally flowered--and what a surprise--flowers that pop right out of the ground, something I have not seen in Sansevieria before. Some more internet sleuthing reveals a similar phenomena in S. fischeri (aka S. singularis), maybe that is what my plant is? The flowers were very attractive, and now there are berries forming right at ground level, helped, no doubt, by my efforts to self pollinate the flowers. I wonder what pollinates it, is it rodent or moth pollinated? The pink foliage is attractive and distinctive, and the pink shows up even better in bright sunlight.

Helianthus debilis ssp cucumerifolius

2011-01-02T06:15:00.001-08:00

While meandering on the back roads of South Carolina on my way back from Woodlanders to my sisters apartment in Charlotte NC last July, I found this striking dwarf sunflower. I pulled over and went to take photos and gather seed, and when I got back to the car I realized my socks (and leg skin) were impaled with numerous spikey seedheads that looked like medievil weapons. They turned out to be seedheads of something called caltrop grass, an evil plant indeed! Trying to remove the spiked ball seedheads with fingers only invited more pain via perforation, so I removed them with pruning shears, not an easy task. Well, at least it wasn't fire ants or rattlers/copperheads, which represent other potential incoveniences for the down south seed collector.

This is an annual plant which has a preference for disturbed habitats, which indicates that it will be easy to grow in my garden next year. The seeds are smaller than typical sunflower seeds, and the plants evidently more floriferous. I think they would look great in a sunny, well drained spot.

Berkheya radula

2011-01-02T05:50:00.000-08:00

I have a particular fondness for the genus Berkheya, most of which are found in mountainous regions of South Africa. They tend to have prickly but attractive foliage and large daisies in yellow, white, or sometimes pale blue. Berkheya radula is one of the less viscious ones, with pale yellow flowers borne on attractively winged stems. Although I have two plants grown from seed, and they both flowered twice in the school garden this year, they never quite overlapped enough in flowering times to get them to cross pollinate--which appears to be essential in getting fertile seed set, as with so many other Asteraceae. The large leaves are also attractive in their own right; they are a deep green with a puckered texture and a white underside. This species is not from the highest altitudes in South Africa, so I chickened out and dug both plants for overwintering indoors after some light frosts. They appear to be regrowing just fine under lights in my classroom. I will set them out again next year, and hopefully get enough seed (or buy some more when it is available from Silverhill) to leave a few plants outside to test for winter hardiness in the future.

Monarch Madness

2010-12-28T18:54:00.001-08:00

Liatris ligulistylis is a plant that no sunny garden should be without. Not only are the long purple wands of flowers attractive, but they are irresistable to monarch butterflies. Supposedly there is some kind of pheromone that this species makes that makes the monarchs so eager to visit. They linger, fly away, then quickly return, and seem to have great difficulty making a final departure. I like the fact that my school garden offers food to these hardy migrants, not only from the liatris flowers, but also from milkweed foliage for their caterpillars (I do check to make sure the various Asclepias species are not overwhelmed, and thus far there has not been a problem--the hideous bright orange milkweed aphids are more of an issue at times). Butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii cvs) also are favored by the monarchs and many other butterflies in the school garden.

Arctotis venusta

2010-12-28T18:37:00.000-08:00

Near the rudbeckia mentioned in the previous post, a few plants of Arctotis venusta did very well, despite a hot and dry summer. This annual species is native to dry areas of South Africa and Namibia, and its range includes mostly summer rainfall areas. I started the seeds indoors and set the plants in the garden in early summer, and they really took off in August and September. Unlike many Asteraceae, it appears that this species is self fertile, though not all seeds produced are fertile--fertile seeds are distinctly larger than the smaller infertile ones, when one drops them onto a hard surface their is a slightly different sound than with infertile seeds, which are all seed coat with nothing inside. The rather large flowers are moderately frost resistant, and of a peculiar light mauve/bluish sort of color, with a distinctive darker blue eye. The attractive grey green foliage is also quite unusual. Like most South African annuals, this species likes maximum sun and good drainage, and it is not fussy about soil. I don't know if it would resow, in any case I collected most of the seeds produced so I can enjoy more of it next year.

A Really Nice Rudbeckia

2010-12-28T18:13:00.000-08:00

I got this floriferous perennial from a friend I know from my days at NYBG. She had it growing in her City Island (Bronx) garden for years, and allowed me to take a few clumps, which I planted in the school garden. She said it came via NYBG, probably from the native garden when we all worked there. I have not been able to figure out exactly which species it is, and have not seen it elsewhere yet, not even at NYBG. I presume it must be a southern species, possibly a rarish one. It is the best of the rudbeckias (and I have never met one that I didn't like) that I have grown in terms of neatness, good foliage, and floriferousness. The smooth dark green foliage is more attractive than the otherwise excellent, if overused, garden workhorse R. fulgida "Goldsturm", and the flowers appear later in the summer. It also does not get mildew, as R. triloba is sometimes prone to. The flowers are smaller than Goldsturm, and last a really long time, in fact there were still some flowers when frost finally arrived in November. This species seeds around a bit, but young plants are easily moved or removed as needed. It makes a bold statement in the garden and looks great when the students return for school in September.

A Cool New Gladiolus!

2010-10-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

Playing bumblebee is one of a this gardeners' favorite pastimes, since by crossing different forms of a plant, interesting new hybrids can be created. Among a few genera that I like to play bumblebee with, the genus Gladiolus offers much potential for creating quite different kinds of plants than the typical hybrids usually seen in flower arrangements, and seemingly less often, in gardens. I crossed several typical hybrid glads with a form of G. dalenii (itself a very variable species) that I acquired years ago from South Africa (by now I have a handful of different dalenii forms), and also included in my mix of crosses the yellow flowered dalenii hybrid "Boone", and the rather graceful and prettily picoteed cultivar "Atom". I haven't kept track of what the parents of the hybrids I have grown out are, but the plant shown was especially nice. It was quite tall, rising above the flower heads of some nearby Ornithogalum saundersiae, and even sporting a additional shorter infloresence off the main one as well. Quite vigorous indeed for a first flowering! I love the orange-red color and yellow markings on the lower petals. It shows its dalenii heritage in the hooded top petal, which is characteristic of dalenii. I crossed another form of dalenii, one found commonly in the southern states of the USA (has brighter orange and yellow flowers than my South African form) onto it, along with some of its siblings (which tended to be more pink in color and not quite as tall), and, no doubt, it may have selfed as well. Copious amounts of seed were produced, and I can't wait to plant them and see what will result in two or three year's time. Meanwhile I will have to dig out the corm, if it is like its parents, it should have plenty of small cormlets alongside the main corm, a feature which should allow rapid increase in numbers of this lovely hybrid. It is possible that it is winter hardy, but I will not test that until I have enough progeny to spare for such a test.

Melianthus Moment

2010-09-06T16:24:00.001-07:00

I brought a small plant of Melianthus a few years ago from Annie's Annuals when my wife and I were visiting California. I lost the tag, though I think it is Melianthus villosus. It has survived two winters against the wall in the school garden, both times dying to the ground and resprouting from the base. This year it rocketed upwards and flowered for the first time in June. The flowers are peculiar, kind of greenish dark violet, and if one handles them, a dark sticky liquid will stain your hands and clothes. In their native South Africa, honeybirds would pollinate them. Later, large three winged seed pods develop along the spike. I have not seen any seed pods thus far on my Melianthus, maybe it needs another clone to set seed. By now the plant is even larger than in the pic (taken in June), and I think I see another flower spike developing. It has grown robustly during this hot summer, relishing the heat, unlike its neighbor Fuschia magellenica (a clump of Gladiolus "Atom" can be seen on the other side of the melianthus), which is only now starting to recover from the hot weather by growing new leaves and flowers (it dropped some foliage during July/August and looked stressed).

I've tried a couple of small plants of Melianthus major, with striking blue green foliage, nearby, but thus far they have not made it through winter. To be fair, neither plant was as well developed as the Melianthus villosus, which I overwintered indoors the first winter to make sure it would get a decent chance to get well established before it faced its first winter.

I may try to root some cuttings of the melianthus before winter closes in, if they do take I would like to see if it can survive in a less protected slope garden location. While not a colorful plant, the foliage is attractive and the flowers certainly are interesting in a plant geek kind of way.

Golden Stars, Crocosmia aurea

2010-08-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

I really love this plant, its easy to grow, and my stock originates from seeds straight from South Africa, which I received many years ago from Martin Kunhardt, of the farm Wahroonga near Merrivale in Natal. For some years I grew them in pots, and although I was successful in growing them outdoors at the New York Botanical Garden when I worked there, I didn't start planting lots of them out until I grew many more from seeds off the original plants. Now I have thriving populations of them at home, and in one corner of the wall garden at school, and now a few on the open slope area as well. They form strings of corms, some of which can remain dormant for a year or so, though cutting them apart seems to encourage them to grow. Since it spreads by stolons, colonies can form over time. Crocosmia aurea is a forest plant in South Africa, but takes sun or part shade in New York, and is not as tall as the better known commercially available hardy hybrids like "Lucifer". The nodding flowers are also larger, and a most unusual vibrant orange yellow color, sometimes with faint markings on the lower side of the flower. Even the seed pods are colorful, they turn orangish when ripe, then split to reveal shiny black seeds with a bright orange covering.

Naked Ladies in New York!

2010-08-26T18:25:00.001-07:00

Amaryllis belladonna is one of two species of bulbous plants (the other being the hardier Lycoris squamigera,which has thinner petals and has spring growing foliage) that are known as "naked ladies" due to the fact they flower without the leaves present. The flower stalks of both rise out of the bare ground with suprising speed in August. Amaryllis belladonna is a common sight in California, to the point of occasionally naturalizing, as when I saw some in bloom on a cliff above a beach not far from the San Francisco area a few years ago. It is native to the Cape of South Africa, where it produces leaves in winter, which die off in spring and then the flowers emerge in late summer. It does the same in California, but in the eastern US its habit of putting out winter foliage which may be damaged by severe cold tends to weaken the bulbs over time, and deeply penetrating severe cold may kill the bulbs outright. I think I have found a sweet spot for them, along the wall of my school garden where a couple of bulbs have survived three winters thus far. The foliage does burn from the winter cold, but it continues to grow in spring and dies off in June, apparently long enough to allow the bulb to store enough food for flowers. This past winter was particularly cold early on, but not so cold later on, which may have delayed the leaf growth a bit, so damage was minimized--worse conditions would be warm early winter weather that draws out the foliage followed by severe cold later on to maximize damage. Unlike last summer, this one has been hot and rather dry, which gives the bulbs the kind of preconditioning they like in order to flower, so finally one is in bloom now. Planting them right up against the wall means that the soil probably does not freeze deeply, protecting the bulb, and the foliage can benefit from extra warmth during early spring. Overhanging eves also keep this area drier than the rest of the garden, though I do water it, as can be seen by the Euryops tysonii, Pelargonium luridum, and Dierama surrouding the amaryllis. A nearby group of diascia which made it through the winter (labelled as D. anistrepa ? from Silverhill) and bloomed profusely in spring died during the dry heat of summer in the same area (though it made a precious few seeds from which I can regenerate plants later on).

From what I know, its considered pretty remarkable to get Amaryllis belladonna to bloom in the eastern US, let alone persist more than a year. So I have excitedly (foolishly?) ordered a fairly large batch of mixed colors forms/hybrids (reds, pinks, whites) which will arrive in the next couple of weeks. I will plant them rather thickly close to the wall (I may have to move a few other plants to accomodate them) in the hopes of getting a more substantial display in future years, Mulching will probably be a good idea once the cold weather really sets in, and in any case even under good conditions Amaryllis belladonna bulbs take a year or two to settle down after being moved.

The best baptisia of all--B. arachnifera

2010-07-19T10:01:00.001-07:00

I know I already posted about this plant sometime ago, but it's such a photogenic species I can't resist uploading some recent pics of this specimen in the gardens at Plant Delights. It is very rare, limited to a couple of counties in Georgia, though it apparently benefits from disturbance (ie burning or tree cutting) of its sandy habitats and can become locally common, according to some sources. If you want one, however, you have to find a nursery propagated one (don't even THINK about bothering it in its native habitat), and that will entail a drive to the nursery since they cannot ship it across state lines if it is a federally endangered species. I was lucky to be able to purchase a second small plant on my most recent trip south to provide some company for a plant of it that has been in my garden for a couple of years. Its not a fast growing species, my garden plant is still a small thing with two branches, and no flowers yet. It is hardy here in NY (Zone 7, maybe mild Zone 6) and should love the record breaking hot summer weather of late. The silvery foliage practically shines in the bright summer sunshine, and the yellow flowers add yet more beauty to an exceptionally good looking plant.

More baptisias--B. simplicifolia

2010-07-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Another striking baptisia species, B. simplicifolia, struts its stuff among the agaves and dasylirions in Tony Avent's gardens at Plant Delights. B. simplicifolia is a rare species which is endemic to a handful of counties in northern Florida, where it grows in sandhill habitats. It's glossy bright green leaves immediately distinguish it from other Baptisias, and the yellow flowers, while not spectacular, are not without merit. PD reports that it is hardy in Zone 5, so I will have to add this one to my want list for the future. Like B. perfoliata and B. arachnifera, it seems to do best in sunny, well drained spots.

In search of Baptisia perfoliata

2010-07-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

The first two pics show Baptisia perfoliata in its native habitat, in this case the sandhills of South Carolina, where it resembles a somewhat stressed out sparse blue eucalyptus bush. Where I found it a week ago it grew among cacti and white flowered Polygonella americana, the latter being an attractive plant which is very common to the point of weedy in sandy areas down South. I managed to get a decent amount of seed from the wild Baptisia plants I found, once I figured out where the brown inflated seedpods were (see photo). The pods are hard to break into, and many are infested with a small species of weevil, which reduces the usual 6 or 7 or so seeds per pod down to 1 or 2 or even none. I will try and start some before summer's end so I can get some plants going for the new sandy area I am creating in my school garden extension.

The last two pics show the garden potential of this species, both were taken at Plant Delights in Raleigh, NC during my last visit earlier this month. Here, under better conditions than it gets in the wild, plants grow larger and more lush, and show no signs of drought stress. Like its gorgeous and rare cousin B. arachnifera, B. perfoliata creates a unique focal point in a garden, with its large size and unusual stem and leaf color and architecture.

Berkheya cirsiifolia

2010-06-27T20:18:00.001-07:00

Another exquisite delight from the Drakensberg, Berkheya cirsiifolia bloomed in its second year from seed in my school garden. There were others last year in another part of the garden that were mistaken for weeds and pulled up by well intentioned, but not very plant saavy, landscapers the school contracts out work to. Now they know not to touch anything in my garden, I do a better job of weeding anyway. I hope the berkheya is not self sterile, as are so many Asteraceae, but in case it is, I will be starting others from seed later on which hopefully will flower next year. It has very attractive spiny foliage and nice white daisies, which tend to open flat in the sunshine but partially close when shaded. I have seed pots of other Berkheya species coming up, and soon two plants of B. radula will flower in the slope garden. The latter was overwintered indoors, unlike B, cirsiifolia, which appears to be totally hardy, and grew rapidly once I put them outdoors. They should have yellow daisies on a much less well armored plants.

Among the Roses

2010-06-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, the roses at the New York Botanical Garden were at peak, and I went to see them with my wife Grace, Jonathan (former student, now University of Vermont graduate and fellow plant/animal geek) and Donna. We could have hardly picked a better day, though the afternoon sun was hot and accounts for my squinting in one of the photos. It was a perfect spring for the roses, not too stormy once they began growing, rather dry, and on the warm side with cool nights. I'm no expert on roses, and I didn't take notes, so I can only identify a few of the ones pictured. The single flowered pink rose with a large cluster of blooms is "Complicata", which makes a nice looking bush when in full bloom. The other single with a white center is "Cherry Pie" which has good foliage to offset the bright blooms. The weird blue purple one is "Veilchenblau", and climber with very unique colored flowers, nothing else I've seen resembles it. The last one that I can identify is "Fourth of July" which has striped red and white flowers which really stand out. There were endless numbers of other lovely roses there, with climbers, old roses, English roses, and species on the periphery and mostly tea and floribunda types in the central area. Many are fragrant, but we were a bit late to get the best of that, since rose fragrance is strongest in the morning. It was an especially good year for the old roses, since they suffer the worst in bad weather, the flowers frequently "balling" and getting destroyed by molds in really rainy weather. The English or Austin roses are a great improvment, in that they have the old rose flower form but tend to be more vigorous, everblooming (rather than one massive spring display as with many old roses), and more weather resistant.

It was a lovely day, but I should bring a notebook in the future so I can better remember what I photographed.

Beautiful Thugs

2010-06-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

There are some plants that are just too beautiful to not grow, but they need to be watched, for they would conquer the world, if allowed. Stylophorum diphyllum is a native plant which seeds around freely, very freely indeed. The sumptious yellow poppy like flowers are gorgeous, though, and the attractively cut leaves are not without merit either. It is either too happy or not happy at all, mine seems to have found a position to its liking, in rich soil in a shaded position between a yew and the neighbor's wall. It was not so happy in drier soil with lots of competition where I originally planted it.

Corydalis ochroleuca is another prolific self seeder, favoring partially shaded areas, with a particular ability to grow in crevices such as cracks in stone walls. Like the stylophorum, seeds are ejected so they travel for a distance from the parent plant. They germinate en masse the following spring, and quickly grow to flowering size. This plant flowers constantly, from early spring till early winter, with peaks during cool weather. Like stylophorum, exess seedlings are easy to remove but somewhat touchy about being transplanted.

Lamium galeobdolon is a wonderful groundcover for difficult dry shady places with tree root issues. It has beautifully patterned foliage which persists in winter, and for a short time in midspring, lovely masses of soft yellow flowers complete a beautiful picture. So what's not to like--well, it does send out rapidly growing runners that root at each leaf node, and are not particularly easy to pull up once they have a good foothold. Note that the supposed cultiver "Herman's Pride" is a totally different plant, a clumping perennial rather than a running groundcover, and is well behaved--I can't believe it is the same species (and don't, actually).

Of similar disposition to the normal form of L. galeobdolon is Ranunculus repens "flore pleno", the double creeping buttercup. I got my start decades ago from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden when I worked there one summer as an urban gardening intern, and its been with me ever since. I have a particular fondness for double buttercups, and grow a few other kinds, but this one is the only one that could be called rambunctious, for it is an aggressive spreader, much in the same manner as strawberry plants are. It blooms once in mid to late spring over a few weeks, then promptly sends out stolons in all directions. Periodically I go on a rampage to get rid of most of it, but the few plants left behind always repopulate their allocated area quickly, and I am thankful when the perfectly formed double flowers appear each spring. I recently set some loose in the slope garden at school, where they formed a nice mass of bloom as seen in the pic. No doubt I will be snipping off stolons all summer long.

All of these make fine garden plants, but with the caveat that they must be actively managed, or they will run over lesser neighbors. On the other hand, they tend to be great plants for tough sites where little else will grow, except, perhaps, for the stylophorum, which does like good "forest floor" type soil and decent moisture.

Elizabeth Town Hellebores

2010-05-29T07:04:00.001-07:00

Double hellebores, and nicer hellebores in general, can be expensive propositions when one wants to add them to the garden. I'm not willing to shell out 20 dollars plus for a plant that "probably" will be a double one, so I decided to grow some from seed. Elizabeth Town Hellebores in Tasmania (Australia) is one of the better known breeders, and they send out seed each winter, so I took a chance and ordered some a few years ago. I like that they precondition the seed beforehand to go through a moist warm period, thus by the time it arrives in the northern hemisphere its ready to go into the fridge, where it will germinate in a couple of months time. This allows me to pot up the seedlings right around the time frosts are ending outside but the temps are still cool enough to allow the seedlings to establish and grow. The plants do most of their growing when its cool, and by the third year I had flowers on a couple, and they all flowered this year--over a dozen lovely plants. I was very pleased, even with the singles, which often had attractive spotting or in the case of the white one pictured, had larger than normal flowers. Now the only thing I lack are some good yellows.

Hellebores are easy to grow plants, but success from seeds requires some knowledge about how to handle them. Fresh seed is a must, dried seed more than a couple of months old germinates poorly if at all in my experience. The seeds need a warm moist period of a couple of months to prime them for germination, then a cool period (freezing not required, and not beneficial though they naturally resow with abandon around the parent plants) which I supply by putting them in small ziplocks on moistened paper toweling in the fridge. When roots appear, I take them out and pot them up under lights (usually around March), then move them outdoors as soon as frost danger is past.

The flowers do hang downwards, so one has to "prop" them to get good views/pics, but in early spring when not much else is blooming, they certainly do present a cheery sight.

Spring Begins!

2010-03-16T18:14:00.000-07:00

I took the pics above just before the last nor'easter in my school garden. This part of the garden is protected by a south facing wall, and things get moving there earlier than elsewhere in the garden. The daffodil is one of the early blooming varieties, probably Rijnveld's Early Sensation, though since I didn't label it I am not absolutely certain of the variety. One of the Iris reticulata cultivars or hybrids popped up with large richly colored purple flowers, right after the first of the snow crocuses, Crocus chrysanthus cultivars, appeared. However, the earliest of all spring flowers is usually the winter aconite, Eranthus hyemalis. It's only serious competition for earliest spring bulb appearance is the snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis. This cheery buttercup like flower emerges as soon as the snow melts, or even under the snow if it lies around long enough. It grows from a blackened tuber that looks more like a rock than a living organism. The tubers are often soaked before planting in the fall, though I don't think it makes much difference. Purchased tubers may not always give one hundred percent success, since they may dry out too much if not planted as soon as possible after they are recieved. Nonetheless, once they get established, winter aconites seed abundantly so that within a few years drifts of them begin to develop in gardens where are happy. In my home garden this is happening, and its a real delight to see many dozens of them appearing in random spots throughout the garden.

Right now we are entering into a five day period of exceptionally nice sunny weather, with highs in the 60's F predicted. This will bring out even more spring bulbs, and perhaps other early flowers like Viola odorata. Already I see a few hellebores in flower at home, and see buds developing on nearly all of the hellebores I grew from seed I got from Elizabeth Town in Tasmania, Australia a few years ago. They are special plants indeed, a couple of precocious white doubles bloomed last year and I see darker buds among several of them this year. There should be a mix of anemone flowered, double, and really nice singles among them, so I am quite excited at what I will find.

Wild Weather Heralds Spring 2010

2010-03-15T17:13:00.000-07:00

As the years go by, it seems the storms are getting stronger than they used to be. The last couple of weeks have been a real eye opener, first the huge snowstorm that downed more trees than any storm in my memory, then the massive wind/rainstorm this past weekend that finished off several more trees. The pics above show the results of the latter storm at my friend Andrew's house. In one of the pics he is standing where he actually was the day before, when the neighbor's huge hemlock tree came crashing down. He ran for his life, good thing he heard the crack as the tree broke while he was righting some potted plants during the storm. He is convinced that he wouldn't be here if he hadn't looked up to see the tree falling in time to escape. It crushed the fence, and presumably two rhododendron bushes and a hardy clerodendron as well. The extent of the damage won't be revealed till the tree is chopped up and removed, but it could have been much worse. Another pic gives a better idea of the tree's size, it can be seen laying across the neigbor's yard before the top hit the fence between the properties. Andrew has a better appreciation of large trees than I do, but even he had to admit that the neighbor's huge oak towering over his house, which moved about 10 degrees or so off vertical towards his house during the storm, is a dangerous situation, so the neighbor will have to cut the tree down. Frankly if it were my family, we wouldn't have stayed in the house till the tree was cut down, but all seems fine so far. In my own home, a loud thunderclap heralded a lightning bolt that my wife said came in the window in front of where she was washing some dishes, and our daughter reported red and blue bolts arcing down from the kitchen light behind my wife. Fortunately everyone is okay, but it was quite frightening to realize that we might not be safe even in our own home, especially as the thunderclap came with no advance warning. As I continued my survey of the damage in Andrew's yard, we noticed the other neighbor's house had siding stripped off one of the walls. To quote my friend "that's what hurricanes do!". Ummm....Exactly.

The previous snowstorm, which was a massive nor'easter like the rainstorm that followed, felled countless trees and limbs, many of which I have been observing on my way to work and back. The Bronx River, Taconic, and Saw Mill Parkways are all littered with limbs, broken trees, and uprooted trees all along the roadsides and into the forests surrounding them. All of these major highways have been closed at times during the worst of the storm's fury due to fallen trees.

While one can never say with certainty that a particular weather event is due to climate change, there certainly seems to be a trend towards windier and more violent storms in our area over the last few years. For much of the US that would not be a major departure from normality, but in this area we have always felt safe from real weather extremes, we generally don't get really bad storms of any kind, and its been many decades since a serious hurricane hit. In my view, the prediction of more violent and extreme weather events that would be expected as a result of climate change due to anthropogenic warming seems to be coming true, in subtle and not so subtle ways. If there is a silver lining (albeit a small one), it is that us zone pushing gardeners will find that more plants can survive in this area as the USDA zones continue their slow march north.

Pelargonium tetragonum--and how what goes around comes around!

2010-03-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

I collected this nice purple flowered form of P. tetragonum from a garden near Gaborone Botswana way back in 1984, during my first trip to southern Africa. I maintained it for many years, and in the greenhouses at Cornell it flowered magnificently during spring. To get the huge four petalled flowers requires cool greenhouse culture in the north since it requires a cool period with short days to set flower buds. I also took the plant to the NY Botanic Garden when I worked there, but somewhere along the way I lost my plant. Later on, I ended up caring for someone's orchids and other plants while he was away for an extended period in Florida, to which he enventually moved. It turned out he had a small plant of my P. tetragonum, given to him by my friend Elena who grew it for a time in a NYC apartment, but then gave it to him. I got a small cutting back, and now maintain several plants of it. Although I am unlikely to get flowers under my indoor growing conditions at the moment, it is just about the easiest thing to grow and propagate. It is a rather sprawling plant, but stems are brittle and break easily when the plant is moved or otherwise disturbed, providing a ready means of further increase. Although it comes from the winter rainfall areas of the Cape of South Africa, it does not seem to mind summering outdoors, and even grows some more during what should normally be its off season. It grows well under lights too. I have another form growing from seed, and it too is an easy grower. Its a good subject for those who like wierd, though it needs to grow large and get the cool/short day treatment to get the fabulous flowers to appear.

Zingiber mioga-a hardy ginger for NY

2010-03-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

I got my start of this intriguing plant from a friend in Bronxville, the town next door. He has had a patch of it growing for some years, and also has a white variegated leaf form which appears to be somewhat less vigorous. My division has also spread a bit, producing typical ginger type foliage which remains green through the growing season. The foliage dies back completely come cold weather, and new shoots emerge when it gets warm. Most peculiar are the pale yellow flowers which appear around August, they come in short inflorescences which pop randomly out of the ground like some kind of strange mushroom. Eventually the attactive pale flowers open, just above ground level. I have read that the young inflorescences are edible, and in fact are rather esteemed in Japanese cusine, but there are also references which suggest they might have some carcinogenic potential, so for now I think I'll pass on the culinary option. No special winter protection appears to be needed for this ginger, since it has come through many winters without attention in my friends garden and several also in my garden.

Crepis rubra

2010-03-07T06:36:00.001-08:00

This is a rather attractive little annual, kind of like a pink dandelion, or a mini pink gerbera of sorts. The seeds are very thin and long, at first I thought the seeds were not viable b/c they were so thin. But they do germinate easily, and quickly produce rosettes from which emerge pink flowers over a fairly long period of time. Crepis rubra does not take kindly to too much competition though, it is a sun lover and is easily swamped by larger plants. Abundant seed is produced in much the same manner as dandelions.

A special form of Pelargonium alchemilloides

2010-02-20T14:35:00.001-08:00

Cliking on the pic will enlarge it so you can better view the relatively large flowers of this form of P. alchemilloides growing in grass in the south Cape near the Herbertsdale/Gourtizbrug area. Michael Vassar had collected this form before, and I grew it for years from seeds he sent me. I also recollected more seeds of it myself in 1993, and still grow some plants out every now and then from refrigerated seed. Most P. alchemilloides have flowers that quickly shed petals and set seed pods, so are best appreciated for their foliage, which is also variable. This form has copious good sized pink flowers that last a decent while, and can be grown as an annual outside in a sunny spot for the summer (or dug up and overwintered for another season outside the following year). It also makes a great basket plant in a greenhouse. There is an even larger flowered form of alchemilloides I have that comes from Stilbaai, also in the south Cape. While I never saw it on my trip, I got seed years ago from Charles Craib. It has comparatively huge white flowers, though it is not as floriferous as the pink form mentioned. Probably both "forms" deserve species rank, indeed I believe that much of what is called alchemilloides is really a swarm of distinct species, and I recall a paper by Mary Gibby stating as much years ago.

Massive Mushroom/Fungal Feast

2010-02-20T14:19:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are into gesneriads, perhaps you recognize Martin Kunhardt of Streptocarpus fame. In 1993 I had the privelage of visting his farm Wahroonga in the midlands of Natal, where I and Charles Craib, who I was travelling with, overnighted. He brought in this huge edible mushroom, which I imagine we ate, though honestly I can't remember if I did. What I do remember was the wonderful fields and wooded gullies at Wahroonga with all manner of wildflowers, including streptocarpus and impatiens in the lightly treed ravines and many other kinds in the extensive grasslands which predominate in the area. Martin had a most impressive collection of Streptocarpus species and equally impressive hybrids that he made himself, I've never seen anything like it since. He also had some other gesneriads such as sinningia species acquired from overseas contacts I imagine. They were kept in a plastic/lathhouse which could be closed up for the winter if needed, for sometimes they do get a frost and even a touch of snow, though nothing like here in NY! Wish I had time to visit a little longer, as Wahroonga was a cool place!

Pelargonium x glaucifolium

2010-02-10T19:26:00.001-08:00

I grew this huge specimen of the very old species hybrid P. x glaucifolium, for several years, first as a small plant I got from Logee's in Ct, then at Cornell in the Kenneth Post Greenhouses during my grad student years, where my pelargonium research collection was maintained. It is a night scented primary species hybrid with curious dark maroon flowers with yellowish edging. In summer it is best to let it go dry, whereupon it drops its foliage and all that remains is a tuberous rooted caudex and some rather thick branches. It can be propagated in fall when growth is ready to resume from cuttings or tuberous root divisions. Gertainly P. lobatum is in its ancestry, possibly with P. gibbosum, a very different looking plant with yellowish night scented flowers and long lanky stems. I was never able to get it to set its own seed, but it could be hybridized with another hybrid I made of Pelargonium gibbosum and P. cortusifolium, to make an interesting hybrid (which probably no longer exists, unless one of the various people I sent them to still has them). Pelargonium is an incredibly diverse genus with all kinds of hybridizing potential, far more than has been realized. Standard plant breeding techniques can produce many interspecific hybrids within the various pelargonium sections (subgenera), and sometimes between them, though the modified embryo rescue technique I developed as part of my doctoral research made even stranger crosses possible, such as Pelargonium luridum x incrassatum, another cool but probably now lost hybrid. Probably the most bizarre cross I made, but which I did not get to bring into full existance due to the fact that I had finished my thesis work and no longer had access to facilities to continue my work, was a cross of P. cotyledonis x bowkerii. I'd give my eyeteeth to see what that would have looked like, I had gotten it up to the stage of just beginning to produce shoots in tissue culture, but the the cultures died when I had to take them home. For those who know their pelargoniums well, it is a most unlikely cross, cotyledonis is a highly unusual island endemic (St. Helena Island) long isolated and far from all other pelargoniums, and P. bowkeri is a geophytic species with large fringed petaled flowers and carrot like leaves from KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Perhaps I will find a way one day, maybe after I retire, to recreate this and other new pelargonium hybrids, it sure was fun doing so at college!

My Favorite Snake Plant

2010-02-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

I've blogged about this amazing Sanseveria before, but I just found the pics which show the flowers in full bloom in the evening. They fade during the day, and a new ring of flowers opens up the next evening above the faded ring from the night before. The huge inflorescence is about a foot wide. These pics were taken a few years ago when I summered the plant outside, but for at least two years since I've left it in my classroom through the summer, since it is so now big that it is difficult to fit in in my car to drag it home. The one disadvantage of this is that I am not there when the flowers look their best, by the time I come in to check on the summer residents and my school gardens, the flowers are past their prime.

Its an enormous species with impressive foliage and massive rhizomes, even it its huge pot it is pushing on one side, so I will have to find something new to put it in this coming year--a bushel basket, perhaps?!

My source said he thought he collected the plant in Kenya many years ago, and he has it growing in the ground in his greenhouse for a long time. Sanseverias are great collector plants, they live forever, are hard to kill, very accomodating of less than perfect conditions (except cold and overwatering in combination, especially), and easy to prop (leaf sections). No one ever seems to admire their fragrant white flowers, but in this species they are a star attraction, easily rivaling any other flowering plant for bold effect and interest.

Pelargonium cucullatum white form

2010-02-03T19:23:00.000-08:00

This slide brings back memories of this fine plant I grew from a cutting I got from a friend years ago. This unusual white flowered form had been making the rounds and was supposed to have been originally collected by Ellaphie Ward Hilhorst, if memory serves me correct. She is the famous (among pelargonium lovers) artist who painted the superb illustrations in the Pelargoniums of Southern Africa book series. I had the pleasure of meeting her on my trip to South Africa in 1991, she was a most gracious lady.

Pelargonium cucullatum is the principal ancestor of the regal geraniums P. x domesticum. It is quite common around Cape Town, when I saw it in flower the bushes of it remind me of azaleas in effect. Typically the flowers are pinkish-purple, but as with most plants diligent searching sometimes reveals a mutant with a different flower color. There are three subspecies or variants of P. cucullatum, most easily distinguished by leaf shape and texture. This plant was from the ssp strigifolium form. I no longer have this plant, nor does the NYBG where I grew it years ago, though I think I have seed of it stashed somewhere in the fridge. Seed of P. cucullatum (and other pelargonium species within section Pelargonium of the genus) is very long lived, even if stored at room temperature seeds can still be viable more than a decade later. Depending on the genetics of flower color in this species, if I could find the seed I might be able to grow out a similar plant, or perhaps they would come out more typically colored. In any case, it is hard to flower P. cucullatum without a greenhouse or cold sunroom, since it needs cool nights, preferably with short days, to set flower buds.

Pelargonium lanceolatum

2010-02-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

I'm continuing to scan old slides, so forgive the black edges on the pic, no time to play with photoshop yet. Clicking on the pic may reveal more detail, I'm trying to upload pics with more "dpi" in them now that I figured that out. P. lanceolatum is one of the oddest pelargonium species, and one which I would dearly like to get some material of to grow again. When I did grow it, it was a good grower with a spreading habit and the most unusual succulent grey green leaves. Roots can sprout additional shoots, but it is self sterile, so one would need two clones to set seed on it. It is not widespread in habitat, nor, as far as I can tell, in cultivation. It is a beautiful plant, with lots of flowers in spring and would make an ideal basket plant or even a groundcover in a suitable climate--sunny, not too much rain, and with little frost.

Monsonia in the Magaliesberg

2010-01-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

Monsonia burkeana, I think, is this nice white flowered species I saw in the Magaliesberg mountains north of Pretoria in 1993. I wandered around on a farm where all kinds of neat things could be found among the rocks, more of which I will share later. Even avid gardeners generally have never heard of monsonias, though they are close relations of the much more popular genera Geranium and Pelargonium. Some are annuals with a weedy look, but others are perennials which produce flowers all summer long, like this one and the similar M. emarginata, which is occasionally available from South African seed sources. Monsonias make huge interesting seeds with a coiled structure that unwinds when wet, allowing the sharply pointed seed to dig its way into the soil. Some also have fragrant leaves as is common in Pelargoniums. The most outstanding species is Monsonia speciosa, easily grown if you live in a mediterranean climate or have a cool greenhouse, but more of a challenge to those of us who don't. It has spectacular pink veined flowers which resemble a giant dianthus. It can be grown from seed, and plants can be propagated from root cuttings as well.

Wildflowers in Botswana

2010-01-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

I finally got a scanner so I can begin converting my extensive slide collection into digital pics, and here are the first results from my 1993 trip to Gaborone, Botswana and nearby areas. Here are four different flowers, the yellow hibiscus may be Cienfuegosia digitata, the purple creeper is Aptosimum elongatum, the yellow flower in the Kalahari sand is Bulbine (maybe B. abyssinica) and the orange red one is a Tricliceris (older generic name:Wormskioldia) longipenduculatum (or a closely related species). All of these are ornamental plants, and I have B. abyssinica in pots and have grown Tricliceras before. I have tried off and on to get the Aptosimum seeds to germinate thus far without success, I imagine they like heat and sun to do well. I'd really like to get it going, since it has stunning deep purple flowers. It was quite common right in Gaborone, along with Sanseveria aethiopica, an aAbuca species, Crinum lugarde (in wetter areas), Felicia mossambadensis, Talinum caffrum, Pterodiscus speciosus, Ipomaea bolusii, and a Portulaca species. Botswana has quite a few nice flowering plants, more of which I hope to scan and blog about later on.

Neches River Mallow

2010-01-22T19:48:00.000-08:00

Hibiscus dasycalyx is an endangered plant in its home state of Texas, where perhaps considerably less than a thousand plants exist in the wild. Yet it makes an easily grown and long lived garden plant. I got my plant at Fairweather Gardens in NJ several years ago during one of their open house events. It has a more graceful, though vigorous, habit than most other perennial hibiscus, and the somewhat smaller flowers are more in scale with the foliage. It comes up late, though it is perfectly cold hardy despite its Texas origins. It starts flowering in July and will continue until fall. Copious seeds are set in bristly capsules, and are annoyingly painful to clean due to said bristles. I've had some volunteers from self sown seed, which I give to a friend who likes hibiscus and also intend to transplant to the school garden next spring. In its native range H. dasycalyx is a wetland plant, but it has no issues growing under normal garden conditions, so long as it gets decent sun.

Mountains and Memories

2010-01-22T18:25:00.000-08:00

In recent years I have been able to spend a few days each summer with my uncle and aunt in my original hometown of Bluefield, West Virginia, reliving childhood memories. Its a small town with perhaps half of the population it had back in the 50's and 60's when it was a bustling small city. Though, like most of southern West Virginia, Bluefield has fallen on hard times, it is still a beautiful place. It is where my earliest memories of flowers come from, from when I remember following my great grandmother around in her rose garden. She'd go out with a jar of kerosene and knock the Japanese beetles off the rose flowers in the morning into the jar to keep them from devouring the blossoms. I also remember spending summers in Bluefield even after we moved to New York when I was five years old. I spend much of my time in West Virginia admiring the garden flowers, hunting butterflies, moths, and other insects, catching "crawdads" in the local creek, and just generally being a budding gardening/natural history geek.

One can't go many places in Bluefield without catching a glimpse of East River Mountain rising to the east of the town, and there is a popular overlook atop the mountain that is easily accessed by road from the town. Some interesting wild flowers grow there, including the introduced blue Echium vulgare, and the natives Asclepias syrica (an underappreciated plant IMO, perhaps because it spreads too easily) and Phlox paniculata. The phlox forms a sizable colony in rocky rubble by the roadside near the overlook, where careful observation finds a nice range of variation in flower color among different individual plants. I've also seen ox eye daisies there too, and once collected a form there that actually lacked ray flowers. I had it in my garden (it may still be there but I don't recall seeing it bloom this past summer) as a curiosity, it looked kind of strange with its yellow button like flowers. Coltsfoot is also common in the rubble just below the observation area, its another Eurasian species, most interesting for its very early yellow flowers, but far too vigorous to be admitted to a garden. As is the case everywhere in the area, chicory abounds, supposedly this blue flowered import is where my hometown got the name "Bluefield" from.

There is also a smaller "Bluefield" across the Virginia border to the south (it really is one more or less continuous town with a state line running through it) where you can get a really good ice cream soda at the pharmacy at an old fashioned soda fountain setting. My grandmother, Olga Mae Johnson (Yancey), worked there until the day she died at 81, literally, and they had a clipping about her passing posted in the store when I last visited there a couple of years ago. I still have a few sempervivums from the second house she lived in (and an old fashioned difficult to bloom Christmas cactus that she told me originally came from her grandmother), and some heucheras from the original house she, we, and the rest of the relatives lived in before that, which today is a parking lot. My great Aunt Thelma is the one who gave me seeds of Silene armeria, which graces both my home and school gardens today decades afterwards. Its funny how some plants can outlive their original owners, and bring back fond memories of good people and good times from the past.

Driving around the area there are some nice gardens to be seen, the cool summer nights and copious rainfall favor nice flower displays. I remember yearly displays of calendulas, larkspurs, and opium poppies in my great grandmother's gardens, where they resowed with ease and vigor. When we would arrive in late June, after school let out, I recall the powerful fragrance of regal lilies as we opened the car door. All these are still grown in the local gardens, tried and true flowers that maintain themselves with little effort.

In the local woodlands and fields all kinds of interesting native wildflowers can be found, including hepaticas, trilliums, lilies, trailing arbutus, ironweeds, and even cardinal flowers, though the latter no longer grows where I saw it as a kid. There is also a kind of biennial wild lettuce, perhaps European in origin, which grows quite tall when it flowers. In years past when there was a small (touristy) train atop the mountain (worlds smallest interstate railway line at the time) there was also a small building displaying local crafts where I remember them having a huge dried stem from one of those large wild lettuces on display. Apparently they could be used as broom handles, though I doubt they were very strong.

Talinum caffrum-an easy geophyte

2010-01-21T18:49:00.000-08:00

I remember seeing and collecting the tuberous roots of this species years ago in Gaborone, Botswana, where it is a very common plant. The bright yellow flowers open in the sunshine, and the hard brown tuberous root is tough enough to sit dormant out of the ground for months. In fact that's what the root of this particular plant is doing right now, sitting on a table in my classroom. I planted it out in the slope garden last summer, and it grew several prostrate branches which bore yellow flowers and made quite a few seeds, despite a rainy summer quite unlike its preferred hot and sunny summer growing season in Africa. Seeds may take their time coming up, I suspect some kind of weird dormancy requirement, yet when I grew them at NYBG they sometimes self sowed in their neigbor's pots. Talinum caffrum is easy to grow and attractive enough to deserve a sunny garden spot for the summer, but it is definitely a plant geek's plant, and not something the neighbor, or the nursery down the road, is likely to have.

Poppies, Again

2010-01-21T17:59:00.001-08:00

During the dodrums of a northern winter, its always exciting to look over photos of the garden taken during the growing season. I've posted before about Shirley poppies, they are so easy to grow and so splendid in their appearance that I can't imagine why more people don't grow them. Perhaps its because they must be grown from seed (so no I just buy things in packs/flats and pop it in the ground "gardeners" need apply) and they don't flower much past early summer. Yet the seed is cheap, easy to sow (just throw it down on bare soil in late winter or early spring in a sunny location), and readily available, and best of all they resow with cheerful abandon--I already see some self sown small winter rosettes just waiting for spring to get here to burst into growth and bloom. Such a profusion of colorful beauty from such a small investment in money and effort!

Busy Bumble Bees Among the Forget-Me-Nots

2010-01-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

Anchusa capensis is a wonderful blue flower from South Africa, which is easy to grow here as an annual (if started early) or a biennial/short lived perennial. I've had a small colony for a couple of years in the school slope garden, and some of the plants have self sowed. They bloom in June and early July, mostly, and the bumble bees are particularly fond of them. Even though this African forget-me-not is from gentler climes, rosettes of non flowering first year plants (and occasionally offsets of a plant that finished flowering) do tend to survive whatever winter throws at them here in NY. Harvesting seed is not fun, the seedheads have irritating bristles and the dark, reasonably sized seeds are hard to separate from the chaff.

What the nose knows: Hemizygia petiolata

2010-01-18T06:07:00.000-08:00

It seems that the sense of smell varies greatly from person to person, for example I've heard it said that some people cannot detect the fragrance of freesias (I most definitely can). There are two extraordinarily smelly plants that I grow, among many with scented foliage, among which at least some of my students and myself detect individual differences in what we smell. The first is Agathosma gonaquensis, to me it smells like garlic, to most others it smells like skunk--so strong (the oder volatizes at times into the air) that I brought the plant home, where it does not bother myself nor my wife and stepdaughter. The second one is the plant pictured, Hemizygia petiolata. The description from my source, Silverhill, says it smells like coconut, and indeed some of my students also detect a coconut or suntan lotion like smell. To me it is a most obnoxious smell, though I do detect a certain sweetness to it, it also has strongly annoying quality to it. A quick survey on the net discloses that an essential oil is made from it and marketed, and there is also research suggesting that some of the oil components resemble alarm pheromones in some aphid species, so it may have repellant qualities for some insect pests. I can certify, however, that whiteflies have no such issue with it, they consider it salad.

I continue to grow it because it is interesting, easy to grow, and deer don't touch it in the school garden. White flowers are borne on slender terminal spikes which are themselves topped with small light purple bracts. No doubt the flowers would put on more of a show in places with milder falls and winters, but here the flowers come so late that there is little time to enjoy them before frost does them in. It would make an interesting addition to a herb garden.

H. petiolata is not cold hardy, so I take cuttings or dig up the roots for overwintering under lights in my classroom. One year I had plants in pots which were brought in as they started to flower, and with hand pollination a few seeds could be set indoors.

Salvia repens

2010-01-17T18:15:00.001-08:00

This South African salvia has been a surprise, in that it appears to be cold hardy, coming back from the roots for two winters thus far in the school garden. It also resows, so there is little chance of losing it, especially since it produces lots of seeds. It has pleasant foliage with a typical medicinal sort of salvia scent, and the small white flowers appear through the summer. It is not a tall plant, so it can be overwhelmed by larger neighbors, but it is also a pretty good competitor with plants in its own size class. Bees adore it, as they do most salvia species. I grew it out of a summer wildflowers seed mix that I got years ago from Kirstenbosch when they used to send free seeds to members of the Botanical Society of South Africa (sadly no longer the case, though you can still buy from their annual seed catalogue). I keep most seeds in the fridge, and thus they were still viable years later when I grew some of them out. Also seen in the pics is Silene armeria, a very easy to grow self sowing annual, quite pretty when it blooms en masse, though short lived. Both the salvia and the silene do best in sunny spots, and neither seems to mind less than ideal soil, so long as it is well drained.

Otacanthus sp--its a winner!

2010-01-10T07:50:00.001-08:00

What a charming little plant this is turning out to be, even though it came up in a pot that had a different label, and I can't find a record of my ordering the seed from my source. I suspect it could be O. crenatus, a newly described species, based on the info I can find at the moment. It comes from Brazil, and is an easy grower from rather fine seeds. Leaves are pubescent and have crenate margins, and the plant grows about a foot tall. It began to flower in fall, and by now is actually looking much better as more flowers open, than these pics, taken indoors when the flowers first appeared, reveal. I anticipate that it will bloom very well though next summer when placed out in the garden, and it is small enough to use as a container plant as well. It is much more restrained than the only Otocanthus seen occasionally in cultivation, O. caeruleus, which can get lanky.

Hybanthus communis

2010-01-10T07:27:00.001-08:00

This is a plant I've had, off and on, forever, from the time I got seeds from an outfit called Major Howell's Seed Service in the UK, when I was in college. Some years I've grown it in the garden, where it sometimes resows as an annual. I also saved and refrigerated seed, which was a good thing, since I lost it and was able to restart it this year from my stash. I have never seen it in anyone else's garden nor at a botanic garden yet, though it is a rather nice plant. The foliage is attractive as are the white spade shaped flowers. It is native to South America, and is a species in a genus of shrubs and small herbaceous plants related to, of all things, violets and pansies. This year I brought the two pots I had during the summer inside where they are continuing to grow and bloom under lights--the photos do show some glare from the lights above the specimen portrayed. I find they are susceptible to spider mites and sometimes whiteflies when brought indoors, but a good miticide does wonders in keeping them in check. The newer acaricides are prohibitedly expensive if brought from typical commercial sources in the container sizes that they sell. However only minute amounts are needed and even then only very infrequently--so luckily there are sellers on such places as ebay, who repack the stuff in small quantities more suitable for home growers. The funny thing is most of their customers are probably hydroponic dagga growers, but their products also benefit little old lady African violet growers (no offense to AV lovers, I also growsome AVs) and other plant geeks like myself!

Impatiens madagascariensis

2010-01-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

This photo actually looks better than this species deserves to be portrayed--it is a leggy thing that is prone to powdery mildew in cool weather, and the flowers are rather small for an impatiens. It came as I. madagascariensis from Silverhill, and as impatiens sometimes do, it reappears from time to time as a self sown seedling in some other plant's pot months or years after I last grew it. This one came up late last summer in a pot of an epiphyllum species, and managed to persist until shortly after the whole pot went into my classroom for winter. It produced some seeds before it died, which I stored in the fridge should I choose to grow it out again. I also wouldn't be suprised if it reappeared anyway, no doubt I missed some of the pods, which explode when ripe to scatter the seeds elsewhere.

Dyschoriste fischeri

2010-01-10T07:10:00.001-08:00

This rather pleasant small shrubby plant came from seed via Silverhill. In overall aspect it sort of resembles a weirdly colored salvia, though it is in a different plant family (Acanthaceae). I plant them out in the school slope garden for the summer, where they bloom all summer long, and then dig and pot them up for winter. They reside under lights, where they continue to bloom, provided spider mites and whiteflies are kept at bay. The flowers are a strange blue-mauve-grey color, the closest I've seen to the also indescribably odd color of some of the "blue" forms of Pelargonium quinquelobatum. It does set seed in small hard capsules that need to be broken open to get the flattened seeds out, after they dry. It is not frost hardy, so it must come indoors for winter, though it grows and blooms fast enough such that it could be treated as an annual if started early.

Dipcadi from Namibia

2010-01-05T17:43:00.000-08:00

I grew this interesting bulbous plant from seeds collected by Karen Peterson, a journalist I met when I worked at the New York Botanic Garden. She collected a variety of seeds (after I gave her a short primer in how to collect seeds) while travelling around Africa, and gave them to me when she got back. Not being a botanist nor horticulturalist Karen couldn't be expected to identify everything she got, though she did try, and she wrote descriptions of what the seeds were as best as she could. Many were not viable, being too immature, but a few turned out to be both viable and interesting. Pictured above is what grew out from seeds collected near Windhoek, Namibia. The leaves in the pic are a bit chewed up from slugs, but in more sun and when better protected from predators they are a nice grey green color. The tall flower stalks rise up to 2 feet plus, displaying dainty but odd, narrow petalled greenish flowers. The flowers are wonderfully fragrant at night, and they open wider as night falls, closing up a bit the next morning. I treat it as a summer growing bulb, though I have no idea of what it does in nature, but it does seem adaptable. Cross pollination last year, when the pot flowered in fall in my classroom, produced numerous flattened black seeds which now sit in the fridge as insurance should I lose it or want to propagate more of them. This Dipcadi is not likely to become a common garden feature, but it is just the kind of plant that sophisticated plant nerds would have the good taste to appreciate!

Daphne species from Tibet

2010-01-05T16:45:00.000-08:00

I got this Daphne from Heronswood (the real Heronswood of horticultural yore, not the current imposter in PA) as Daphne sp DJHC 98164. It was collected by Dan Hinkley near Dechen (Ch: Dequen or Deqin) in southeastern Kham, Tibet (Dechen and its surroundings were carved off from Tibet by China into a "Dequen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture within Yunnan Province) in 1998 at an elevation of over 10,000 feet. Once it starts flowering it continues until frosts stop it, and the white flowers are fragrant, especially in evenings, but they are not as strong as other white flowered shrubs such as jasmine. It is described in the 2005 catalogue as evergreen, which I am sure it is in Washington state, but here it tries in vain to hold onto its foliage as repeated winter cold assaults usually succeed in crisping the leaves right off the plant. They do regrow them in spring though, and the plant seems none the worse from winter wear. Attractive plump red berries with a single seed inside are produced though the summer and fall. The seeds can be removed and planted immediately to get new plants, but I have found that they need to be fresh, since dried seed dies. Even with fresh seed, dampoff is a threat, but I have a half dozen young plants growing well under lights inside right now. I will plant them out next spring in new locations at home and in the school garden. I have not been able to narrow down exactly which species of Daphne it is, but that does not detract in the least from my enjoyment of this modest, easy to grow small shrub.

Cryptostephanus vansonii

2010-01-05T16:27:00.000-08:00

Clivias have been all the craze for some time now among folks from here to China, South Africa, and Australia/New Zealand for some time now, so its only natural that their close relations would also begin to come into cultivation. The genus Cryptostephanus is close to clivia, with a similar plant habit and smaller flowers, and similar berries containing one or a few large seeds. Like clivias, the seeds need to be planted asap, so that is what I did when I got five seeds of C. vansonii from Silverhill Seeds in South Africa a few years ago. It is a forest plant from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The seeds sprouted nicely, and three of the four plants I have flowered this past spring for the first time, The plants are smaller than clivias, and easier to manage indoors where space its limited. I can't describe the white flowers (which develop a pinkish cast as they age) as stunning, but they are nice, and the effect a blooming plant presents is very nice. I managed to get a couple of seed pods to set when I cross pollinated some flowers, and they took forever to ripen. At one point they looked like little green watermelons, with the same pale green striping pattern on them that a watermelon has. I harvested a few brownish seeds from them in late fall, and they are already are sprouting.

I also have two plants of the more challenging C. haemanthoides, a somewhat larger relative from Tanzania and adjacent Kenya with deep maroon flowers. It goes dormant in winter, and thus far puts out a few leaves in summer, but is not as vigorous as C. vansonii, and I have not gotten them to bloom yet. I hope to see them bloom one day, from photos I have seen the inflorescences are quite spectacular. I understand that it requires more heat and sun than C. vansonii when it is in active growth.

A Yellow Rose That No One Knows.....

2010-01-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

Well, at least I don't know what it is. This rose has been in a hedge of forsythia which is at the back of my "street" garden behind my and the neighbor's house. It blooms for a brief period in June with small, perhaps a couple of inches wide, soft yellow single flowers. It is a lovely thing in bloom, but it seems out of place, did my dad's aunt plant it there before my parents inherited the house or is it the result of an errant seed dropped by a bird? I have kept the forsythias under firm control since establishing the garden, keeping them only because my mom really likes them, but I have favored the mystery rose bush, since I have never seen it elsewhere. It most closely resembles Rosa pimpinellifolia, though the flower color seems a bit out of the ordinary for this species. It does have the small leaves, numerous leaflets, profuse small thorns, and drab fruit of R. pimpellifolia, so maybe it is a yellow variant thereof. I rather like it, despite its short lived floral display.

Double Rainbow in Chappaqua

2010-01-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, its not about plants this time, but early last fall I saw the coolest thing at my school in Chappaqua. Right before open school night, a few of us were walking back to our classrooms from a very nice dinner the PTA kindly provides us beforehand. I saw other people with cellphones out, taking pics, and this is what they were looking at--a rare double rainbow. I've seen rainbows before, but I don't remember seeing a double rainbow, plus it was rather late in the day to see a rainbow anyway. Must have been some fog or rain between the lowering sun to the west and the eastern sky where we saw the rainbow. The upper rainbow is not as bright as the lower one, but it was more obvious in real life than my photo reveals. Quite a nice site, on what turned out to be a rather nice day as well.

Deppea splendens

2010-01-03T08:33:00.001-08:00

There are a few plants that really capture the imaginations of serious gardeners, for reasons of beauty and rarity, and Deppea splendens is one of them. I have grown it for some years, propagated from a single plant I brought from UC Berkeley BG to the NYBG years ago when I worked there. The original plant now grows in a rather inconspicuous place in the last "upland rainforest" gallery in the Conservatory, but it has done very well and it is in a good position to get unobstructed sunlight, though it is not in a prime viewing spot. It is a shrub with a sad history--one Dr. Breedlove discovered it in a Mexican forest and brought back propagation material to California, where a handful of clones survived after a frost wiped out several other clones. Even worse, the forest it grew in was cut and burned for charcoal, so it no longer exists, as far as is known, in the wild. It is not a hard to grow plant, though it is somewhat difficult to root from cuttings. It has the peculiar habit of sometimes losing much of its foliage--I have learned not to panic, just let it do its thing, don't overreact by watering it more, just wait and it will put out a new flush of foliage, often with flowers. Bugs such as spider mites, scale, and whitefly do find it to their liking, but I have been vigilant about eliminating them on this plant--it is too rare to lose to such vermin!

The flowers are borne in hanging multiple tiered chandelier like inforescences, even the reddish sepals are pretty, and the long tubed orange yellow flowers are spectacular. Unfortunately Deppea splendens is self sterile, so it will not set seeds unless another clone is used. I hope one day to obtain seed or another clone so as to set seed on my plant, since its survival as a species now depends on human intervention. I use it in my biology classes as a prime example of a species imperiled by human destruction of our planet's ecosystems, and as an example where humans can make a positive difference by conserving the plant, propagating it, and perhaps trying to reestablish it in a suitable habitat nearby its original location. Students tend to remember its name, especially when they have seen the live plant in full bloom.

Hardy Glads: Gladiolus oppositiflorus ssp salmoneus

2010-01-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

On various garden forums, I occasionally see questions about which glads are really winter hardy. Aside from a handful of European species, some of the South African ones are hardy, as are some of the gladiolus cultivars (though they are not usually advertised as such). G. oppositiflorus ssp salmoneus is a winner in all respects--it is an attractive species with elegantly shaped flowers, it is easy to grow, propagates well from cormlets and will produce copious quantities of seed if pollinated, and is winter hardy. It has the form of the larger gladiolus hybrids but is not so tall as many of them are, thus it is more suited to smaller gardens. It will bloom in summer, though some of mine (the ones I stored inside last winter as "insurance"--turned out this was not necessary as those left in the garden did fine) bloomed late this year because I planted the corms out late. Ellen Hornig reports in her catalogue that it has survived outside for her for years in (frigid winters!) upstate NY, so its got what I consider a real seal of approval for cold hardiness in the north!

Gladiolus dalenii "Halloweenie"

2010-01-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

This cultivar was grown from South African seeds and a selection of it marketed as "Halloweenie" by Plant Delights. It has very bright red and yellow flowers, but one serious fault--it does not bloom until very late in fall, hence the name "Halloweenie". This year I planted all the corms in a large pot and let it spike outside, then brought it into my classroom before frost threatened. The flowers were quite spectacular, and I did freeze some pollen to play with in my gladiolus hybridizing efforts for next year. I will cross it with other forms of dalenii that bloom in midsummer to see if I can get the color into them, so as to create a more useful plant of similar appearance for northern gardens. It multiplies readily, in fact some cormlets lifted themselves out of the pot on their long stolons, which are typical of G. dalenii. Hand pollinated flowers did not set seed, but that might be due to indoor conditions not being ideal, and in fact it was easier to let the plants go dormant after blooming, so they are now sleeping in their pot, waiting for spring to come.

Glads from Ebay

2010-01-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

Ebay has a lot of overpriced junk for sale in its plant listings, but a careful search does turn up some good bargains, and some cool plants. I got this form of Gladiolus dalenii (or hybrid thereof) from someone down South. I got a good number of corms for something like 99 cents plus shipping. It apparently is one of the common passalong plants in parts of the South, but it is never seen up here. I got around to planting the corms rather late but they did bloom nicely in the school garden, and the corms produced dozens of baby corms as well. Propagation will not be a problem! The flower is more open in form and a bit brighter in color than other forms of dalenii that I grow, except for "Halloweenie", a dalenii form that, while gorgeous, blooms too late to be of much garden use here. I dug most of the corms for winter, but left a couple behind to see if it is hardy in our climate. Its a nice old "antique" variety that is very hard to find via commercial retail nurseries.

Hemerocallis "Real Wind"

2010-01-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

I got this daylily from Greg Pitrowski, a daylily expert who has a nursery in NC now, when we both worked at the NYBG. A lot of daylilies were being moved out of an area for some reason I don't recall now, so I asked Greg for some that he thought were particularly nice and reliable varieties. I got a lot of nice no names and seedlings, but he gave me a divsion of one called Real Wind. He told me that Real Wind was an oldie but goodie, and I have to say that he was right. It is a tough as nails plant, which didn't sulk even when I moved to to the slope garden at school after a few years in my home garden. The flowers have great form, are beautifully colored, and the plant seems to do well regardless of how dry or wet the summers are. The foliage looks good too. I worry that the deer might find it, but I do spray it when it starts to grow and when it is in bud with obnoxious smelling stuff like a spray that keeps cats of furniture, and a homemade deer repellent mix of garlic powder, milk powder, hot pepper, soap and/or raw eggs, and (my secret ingredient) a tiny but funky touch of lime sulfer. I should note that lime sulfer should not be used when it gets really warm, since it can burn leaves and flowers at high temperatures. The deer did explore the garden briefly in early spring, but stopped after I made things smell less attractive to them, and they did not return during the summer or fall. Most of the surrounding plants are also not attractive to deer, so that probably helps as well.

Pelargonium luridum

2010-01-01T17:16:00.000-08:00

I have a special affection for this plant, since it was the main subject of my doctoral thesis work on micropropagation of geophytic pelargonium species. Basically I developed a protocol to grow new plants from leaf sections, since P. luridum cannot be propagated from stem cuttings as there is very little stem to begin with. I also made some really cool hybrids with it that required a modified embryo rescue technique to bring into existance. I no longer have those hybrids, but I did distribute them so hopefully someone has some of them, such as the hybrids I made with P. incrassatum, sericifolium, and cortusifolium, among others. P. luridum can also be propped by dividing the tuberous roots, which resemble small potatoes on a string. It is a summer growing plant, with large divided foliage (foliage gets more divided as daylength increases) and cream, pink, or yellow flowers in the forms I have grown. A closely related species, P. zeyheri, is essentially identical except for its very finely divided foliage, so fine that it resembles fennel--it is a gorgeous foliage plant.

P. luridum is winter hardy in protected locations, if the tuberous roots are planted deep enough. I keep some inside for the winter too, just in case something were to happen to the outdoor plants. It does not set seed readily unless another clone is around, and prefers a sunny place to flower well. The flower stalks are pretty tall so they will flop unless supported in some way.

My most treasured form is a yellow flowered form from Malawi, which I keep in a large pot and would not think of putting outside. It is much more reticent to flower, and when it chooses to it does so before the foliage emerges, unlike the South African forms which will flower continuously during the summer if they have enough sun.

Falkia repens

2010-01-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

One of the cutest plants which I brought back from South Africa some years ago is Falkia repens, a tiny member of the morning glory family. It looks and behaves like a very refined small bindweed--much smaller nicely shaped foliage, runs but not as fast as Convolvulus spp do, and it is in perpetual flower once it gets going in early summer. It is not very hardy, though it will take frost it will not survive our winters, even with protection. I brought some out to a nursery in California a few years ago, and they listed it for a while, so hopefully it is well established in cultivation here in the USA by now. I plant mine out in the school garden in a sunny spot and keep taller plants from engulfing it, then dig out divisions to pot up for wintering under lights indoors. The shallow stolons are easy to lift and propagate, and grow fast, but since the plant itself is so small, and is a dense grower, it is not able to quite conquer the world like its larger relatives. I have never gotten seeds on it, though I read that the seedpods bury themselves in the ground, but I have looked for them to no avail. I collected the original plant in the South Cape along a roadside not far from Mossel Bay. I was collecting with Ernst Van Jaarsveld of the NBG, Kirstenbosch, and it was a wonderful trip indeed that was surely one of the highlights of my life.

In one of the photos a plant of Monardella macrantha can be seen. It has bright red flowers, odd for a genus of mostly lavender flowered plants. It is a rather rare plant from the mountains near San Diego, I believe, but is available from some alpine plant nurseries. It creeps along, and can be showier than what my photo reveals. I left it out this winter, it will be interesting to see if it makes it. If not I'll get another one, as it is rather unique.

Double flowered perennial morning glory

2010-01-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

This is a double flowered perennial morning glory, Convolvulus hederacea flore pleno, a nice looking form of a rather weedy plant. I got my plant from Arrowhead alpines some years ago and it has done well, sometimes too well. Like the single flowered bindweeds it is cousin to, it spreads underground by means of long rhizomes, and if any piece is left behind when digging them up, it will come back as a plant. Still, I really do enjoy the beautiful flowers, and the vines must compete with other vigorous plants in a sunny but difficult spot. I'd say the thing I least like about it is that the foliage gets fairly ratty as summer goes on, since various bugs/slugs like to chew on it. If any vines appear to be overtaking any less tough neighbors, I merely pull them out, so that even though they will come back, the other plants have time to grow without serious competition for a while. It does not set seed, so its wandering is limited to the spot is is planted in, which is a good thing.

Gettin' their freak on!

2010-01-01T14:01:00.001-08:00

Aside from plants, I always found moths and butterflies quite interesting, and for the past few years I've occasionally raised some native moths, as I did when I was a kid. These pics show some rather frustrated male polyphemus moths, who in their dimwitted passion didn't realize that the females they sought are inside the cage (they sense them by smell from a pheromone released by the females--and there were several in the cage) so in their desperation they were trying to impregnate each other and the towel on the top of the cage. I had hoped to attract a few males to put into the cage with the females, but never thought that so many would show up--after all I have never seen one in my area in all the years that I have lived here. The females were from stock I raised from eggs laid by females that I caught in Bluefield WV the previous summer--several species of large saturnid moths can be found there, and are fairly easy to catch by lights at night. The larvae are easily raised on Norway Maple, a dreadful invasive tree anyway, but they also will eat oak (and seem to prefer it in the wild), any other maple, and other trees as well. The cocoons can be stored over the winter in a refigerator, but should NOT be put into the freezer, since they need time to adjust to cold. I take them out in spring, usually in May, and they emerge in June. Large native moths like the polyphemus are under increasing pressure from habitat destruction and the misguided introduction of a tachnid fly, Compsilura consinnata, meant to control the gypsy moth. Unfortunately this parasitoid fly lays its eggs into caterpillars of just about any moth or butterfly species, and the maggots eat the poor thing from the inside over an extended period of time. Most parasitoid flies and wasps are much more species specific, so why this particular evil fly was introduced to this country by officials that should have known better boggles the imagination. It may be the main reason that saturnid moths and many other moths and butterflies appear to be less common than in years past, especially in the Northeast, where Compsilura is well established.

Of all the great American moths, the polyphemus moth seems to be the best at coping with human pressures. Nonetheless I hastily detatched the sleeping males from their various imaginary mates and made them fly away to hide in nearby bushes and trees, for if I left them in place they would have ended up as bird food. A few were kept and placed into the cage, where they were able to find real females to mate with the following night, so that another generation of moths could be produced. I find the caterpillars and, to a lesser extent, the cocoons make interesting props to discuss in my classes, as do the adult moths, of course. Most students haven't seen a large caterpillar or cocoon outside of a textbook, plus science curriculums sadly pay little heed to the natural history, so its nice to be able to show young folks something that is actually alive and interesting.

What is it?

2009-12-31T08:21:00.001-08:00

This is supposed to be Gladiolus candidus, grown from seeds from Silverhill, and the plant does look like a small gladiolus, but the description I have in books does not seem to match the flowers. The flowers are perfectly regular, a rarity in the genus, and the seeds are large and round without the flattened wing typical of gladiolus seeds. If it is a gladiolus, it must be a very primitive basal species. It is a charming plant, easily grown from the rather pointy small corms, which seem to double each year. The long tubed white flowers are obviously adapted for moth pollination in their native habitat. I doubt it has cold tolerance, so I dig the corms up and overwinter them inside. From the appearance of the seeds I suspect it could be a summer rainfall species of Lapeirousia--and there is always the possibility I got the labels on the seedpots mixed up.

Gladiolus "Atom"

2009-12-31T08:09:00.000-08:00

Gladiolus "Atom" is one of the smaller Glad cultivars, with a distinctive bright red flower with a white picotee edge. I got my original corms from Ellen Hornig when I visited her some years ago, and got some more from Home Depot (not generally one of my favorite plant sources) which I put here in the school garden. I love the bright color, they seem to scream for attention! They have survived a couple of winters in the ground and this past summer just looked splendid. They set some seed which I sent in to the NARGS seed exchange, and I flowered some crosses I've made with Atom for the first time this year, and found out that the white petal edge can be passed down to hybrid offspring. Like most glads, staking is needed since stems can flop when we get heavy rains, as was the case throughout this past summer.

Candy Lilies

2009-12-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

I decided to post about these after seeing a thread today on the Pacific Bulb Society about how these plants are becoming harder to find in recent years and how some people have/had difficulty getting them to bloom. Candy lilies, also known as Pardancanda norrisii, are the result of hybridization between the blackberry lily I. domestica (formerly Belamcamda chinensis), and Iris dichrotoma. Both were formerly put into genera other than Iris, so now they should just be called Iris x norrisii. I grew these plants from seed from Parks, a company that has some good seed items, but over time has declined in terms of variety and quality of products offered, especially their non seed items, which are often not as reliable as their seeds usually are (see gardenwatchdog.com).

Now I have to admit, the flowers I got are not as exciting as the colors shown on Park's website, but I assume they are picking the best out of a huge field of plants to photograph. What I did get was variety, lots of it, mostly in shades of yellow-oranges, and pinks. Patterns of various sorts also appear, stripes and spots, bicolored flowers, and plain solid colors as well. I did not get much in the strong purple range, though such shades do exist and I'd like to get a good one some day. I was pleased overall, they flower in July when other irises are long finished, they are pretty, low maintenance, and you get lots of flowers from each plant. I found these easy to grow from seed, a few bloomed their first year, and most have survived for three years thus far. They seed prolifically (and the seed pods are pretty, like huge blackberries), and I've allowed a few seedlings to come up in the school garden where the parents are located, just to see if I might get some better selections. I am not exactly sure why some folks have had trouble blooming them, they seem quite happy in rather poor soil in good sun without tree root competition. I imagine they would be susceptible to iris borers, but (knock on wood) they don't seem to have found my school garden yet. They can flop, so stakes can be helpful to keep the inflorescences from leaning on neighboring plants.

One of the pics above shows candy lilies alongside a lovely white form of Lobelia cardinalis. I got the original plant from Goodwin Creek gardens, I think, and have saved seed to start new plants periodically to keep the strain going. Its quite lovely in its own right, and I keep the plants at school, and the normal red flowered ones at home, so as to maintain its genetic purity. I sent some seed to the NARGS exchange this year. As apparently might be the case with candy lilies, its long term survival relies to a great extent on capable gardeners growing, propagating, and sharing it around.

Cornell Plantations

2009-12-12T08:37:00.000-08:00

Since I mentioned the Cornell Plantations in my last post, I thought I'd upload a couple of more pics of some containerized plant groupings they had when we were visiting. Quite showy, and quite interesting combinations indeed!

Monster Leaves!

2009-12-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

My wife and I posed with this massive potted plant at the Cornell Plantations this past summer during a weekend trip to Ithaca NY to visit Cornell, a place where I spent 10 years in total getting all three of my degrees. I think this beast is Farfugium japonicum "Giganteum', a clone that has impressive glossy, heavily textured huge foliage. The Plantations has always been a nice garden, but I must say that it has improved considerably over the years, and is definitely a must visit for horticulturally minded visitors who are passing anywhere near Cornell during the summer (you really don't want to be anywhere near Ithaca in winter, unless you are a ski afficianado).

African Pedaliaceae

2009-12-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

I think plant enthusiasts tend to be drawn to particular kinds of plants over time, as their obsession deepens and they gain experience growing a wider array of plants. I've always liked plants in the Pedaliaceae, they usually have very nice flowers and unusually interesting seed pods, typically winged and/or with spines or hooks, sometimes quite savage spines or hooks. The orange flower is Pterodiscus aurantiacus, a small caudiform which grows in summer and needs to be dry in winter, when the leaves are shed. I've seen its cousin P. speciosus in habitat in Gaborone, Botswana. It has much larger purplish flowers and the caudex is buried in the ground, with only annual stems emerging during the rainy season. Pterodiscus are easy to grow, they like warmth and good light during their summer growing season, and dry conditions during their winter dormancy. Occasionally plants may fall victim to rots, but they set seed fairly easily, which can thus serve as a backup in case a plant is lost.

Dicerocaryum eriocarpum is a low growing creeping plant from the summer rainfall areas of South Africa and nearby nations. It makes flat seedpods with a couple of sharp spines projecting out, the better to embed itself within some hapless animals foot (or human shoe) to ensure that its seeds are dispersed far and wide. It is a nightmare to extract the individual seeds from the pods without crushing them, but if done successfully it is not hard to germinate and grow. Alternatively the entire pod can be sown and when it breaks down the seeds will eventually sprout. Like Pterodiscus it relishes warm sunny weather, but I find it hard to keep happy in winter--lthus far letting it go completely dormant results in a dead plant, so it appears best to bring it inside, keep it under lights or in a sunny spot, and water just enough to keep it alive. Pest control may also be necessary, white flies and spider mites are fond of it when it is indoors. The flowers are borne all summer, and it appears that more than one clone is needed to set seed, though I have not grown it long enough to definitively verify this. If the pods or plant is wet, it exudes a strange muciligenous substance, which probably aids in trapping/suffocating insect pests and making it less palatable to larger herbivores.

A good year for Impatiens flanaganae

2009-12-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

The summer of 2009 was unusually cool and rainy, which suited I. flanaganae just fine. This easy to grow cousin of the more touchy I. tinctoria grows and multiplies its huge red potato like tubers quite well during even normal summers, but it flowers best when temps are on the cool side. Hot days also seem to affect pollen development, something I've noted on other impatien species as well, so prolonged moderately cool weather allows the pollen to develop properly and a few seeds can set with hand pollination. Hot spells, however, can also cause young seed pods to abort. The large pots I grow these in filled up with tubers by the end of the growing season (October here), and one made of weaker plastic actually broke from the tubers splitting the side of it. I took out those tubers, cleaned and divided them, and sent them off to the Pacific Bulb Society (PBS), an organization of cool plant fanatics like myself, where they have presumably made their way to good homes by now.

Gladiolus papilio

2009-12-08T17:53:00.000-08:00

G. papilio grows in the summer rainfall regions of South Africa, often in marshy places. The two plants pictured came from Seneca Hills Nursery, though the red purple one may be a hybrid, according to Ellen Hornig. It apparently came up in the same batch of seed the more typical greenish yellow form came from, and some (lucky) customers like myself got it when we ordererd G. papilio bulbs from her. It is a gorgeous thing, perhaps the result of hybridizing with G. ecklonii, a species with densely spotted flowers. I've dug the corms and stored them inside for the winter until I have enough increase to leave some outside. They should be hardy, since I also have been growing another collection of G. papilio made in the old Transvaal province for several years outside without issue. It is similar to the greenish yellow form pictured, but with a less prominant dark blotch. G. papilio multiplies freely via corms produced at the ends of runners, (similar to G. dalenii, a much larger species), though it needs good sun to flower well.

An odd pair

2009-12-08T17:18:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe not so odd in that they are both South African, one being Crocosmia aurea, the other the Pelargonium x hortorum cultivar "Mr Wren". The crocosmia is from the forests of eastern South Africa, though I believe it does range further up into east Africa along the mountain ranges that start with the Drakensberg and border the Great Rift northwards. Its nodding orange flowers are a stunning sight, and the black seeds are displayed from three sided bright orange seedpods that split when ripe. It grows from corms that spread via runners terminating in more corms, and seems quite hardy in this area, though it is also easily maintained in a large pot if kept dry and cool in winter. Seed is easy to start and plants flower in their second year.

Pelargonium X hortorum has a complex history, but basically traces its orgin to two species from South Africa, P. inquinans and P. zonale. "Mr Wren" is a sport from an unknown cultivar which apparently is a chimera, that is it contains two different cell types, one of which makes the white edge on the petals, the other is the red part. This means the plant can be propagated from cuttings to retain the picotee flower pattern, but it cannot be used to breed new picotee patterns, since only one of the cell lines (the red one, most likely) will be represented in the progeny sired by it. This past summer was not a great one for zonal pelargonium flowering, as it was too often cloudy and rainy.

Ouhout

2009-12-08T17:08:00.000-08:00

"Ouhout" means "old wood" in Afrikaans, and indeed Leucosidea sericea can get quite old looking in the cold and windy places where it is found in the mountains of South Africa. What I find interesting about ouhout is its cold tolerance, for there are very few woody South African plants that can live through our winters. Ouhout is tough, at home I've grown it in a garden for at least 4 years, and the plants in the photo at school are only a couple of years old, having gone through last winter quite well (though they do have a good spot by the wall). The foliage is rather nice, kind of potentilla-like, but the flowers are not particularly fetching from the pictures I have seen, so far no flowers on my young plants. Branches are flexible and can be bent to the ground and mulch/debris piled on them to reduce cold damage, but frankly its easier to leave them alone, if its really cold they will die back but new ones quickly grow from near the ground.

Late Bloomer

2009-12-07T18:37:00.000-08:00

Senecio achillaefolius is perhaps the latest blooming outdoor plant I grow. It comes from the Drakensberg in South Africa, and is a fairly rambuctious grower. It grows about a foot or so high and roots along the ground as it spreads outwards. I coddled it by a brick wall its first couple of years but now its present in a few patches in the school slope garden, where some of the patches have weathered the unwelcome attention of non-staff "landscapers" in late August who tore out a few plants they thought were weeds (they now know not to touch/worry about my gardens, they are well taken care of by yours truly, even during summer vacation!), the sewer problem in Sept that necessitated a large hose being drug up from a truck through the middle of the slope garden to drain the sewer that lies beneath two metal plates above the garden (who knew, it certainly was news to me what nasty underworld lurked under those gates to hell) and the sudden construction of a sidewalk to replace the dirt path that was located in the same area as the sewer in November. Lucky this senecio is one tough plant!

As December begins, it begins its yearly show of bright yellow daisies, which are very frost resistant. They will provide color until the temps get below 20F or so, though I imagine this species would put on a much more spectacular flower show in areas with warmer winters like the Carolinas. Here is is a plant of interest for its late flowering, but not one for a small garden as it does like room and is unlikely to get much blooming in before winter finally overtakes it. Now, if someone could find a clone that starts flowering in summer, that would be something special!

Melianthus

2009-12-07T18:32:00.000-08:00

This melianthus made it thru last winter with the protection of the brick wall behind it and some dead plant rubbish on top of its roots. It resprouted and grew back with a vengence, picking up speed in late summer and fall. I got it from Annie's Annuals in California on my visit there a couple of years ago, but I lost the label--could it be M. villosus? I doubt it will ever flower in Chappaqua, since the stems are likely to be killed back each winter, but it does make a fine foliage plant.

Candy Cane Lobelia

2009-12-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

This brightly colored tall plant did very well in my school garden this year. It was a lot happier than in the pot that I kept it since I got it from Plant Delights a few years ago. I took some offsets inside for the winter in case the mother plant does not make it through a New York winter. It comes from Mexico, and may either be a new species of Lobelia, though it looks rather close to L. laxiflora to me, though the foliage is much wider and the plant taller. It set some seed despite all the rain and clouds this past summer, and has underground spreading rhizomes, like L. laxiflora.

Nemesia sp Verlatenkloof

2009-12-07T18:01:00.001-08:00

This wonderful annual, or rather semihardy perennial, is from a collection made near Verlatenkloof in South Africa by Panayoti Kelaidis. This area is near one of the coldest areas of the old Cape Province. The original plants I grew were pale flowered, whitish sometimes tending towards light pink, but when I planted some blue flowered similar nemesias I brought one summer at a nursery on the wine route near Seneca Lake in upstate NY, they hybridized with the orginal collection's descendents. Like the original, the hybrids reliably resow every year, providing color from summer till very hard frost. They tend to look their best in fall as neighboring plants fade out, and the flowers are quite frost resistant, a feature not uncommon in high altitude South African plants. This year they are doing fine as I write this, in early December! They do best along a street curb, where competition from taller plants is reduced, and produce copious seed to ensure a new generation the following year. In an exceptionally mild winter some plants can resprout from their base, but here they do best as a resowing annual. Unlike N. strumosa, this nemesia is heat resistant and long blooming, though the flowers are considerably smaller. The pinks and lavenders tend to deepen as temperatures drop, creating a very nice palette of colors in my garden.

Phlox pilosa

2009-06-21T19:13:00.001-07:00

Phlox pilosa is native to the midwestern and central-southern states of the US, and is rarely seen in gardens. I got seed from Prairie Moon Nursery, a very fine source of seeds and bare roots of native plants. The seed germinates best after exposure to cold. I set a few plants in the "wall" school garden, where they bloomed in their second year and again this year. Phlox pilosa produces masses of fragrant blooms which are much loved by bees and butterflies. It forms dense clumps and grows a couple of feet tall or less. Unlike more common garden phlox, it does not get leaf mildew, at least not thus far. Its only fault is that it tends to flop when it blooms from the weight of the flowers, so it is best to tie it up or place it among other plants that might help support it.

Some Deer Proof Perennials

2009-06-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

One of the scourges of gardens throughout the eastern US are the deer. I've heard and read so many horror stories about them, but my home garden is in a densely populated area so they are not a problem there. But things are different where my school is, deer freely roam around the school at night, and I find their footprints in my slope garden, and occasionally other signs of their presence, like a double flowered helianthis stripped of foliage, or missing branches on my Anisodontea julii plants that I had in the slope garden last year. They seem not to bother the garden near the wall, perhaps it feeks to enclosed for them to feel safe, but they do check out the slope garden. I have found that they never touch certain plants, especially ones known to be toxic or herb type plants that emit odors from their foliage. They don't like most salvias, nor marigolds, and only took one chomp of a young Shirley poppy before they decided that wasn't so good either. I started several perennials from seed last year from a "Zone 6 mix" that was offered a couple of years ago by Gardens North (an amazing resource for seeds). I love surprises, and indeed I couldn't figure out what some of the plants were until they bloomed. Some did bloom the first year, most notably some salvias and an agastache, both of which the deer refused to touch. A large leaved plant also was untouched, but only when the shaggy yellow daisies appeared this year did I realize it was Telekia speciosa. Telekia is definitely a space hog, but the foliage is attractive and the flowers quite nice. Surpisingly I could not identify Sweet Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) before it bloomed this spring, even though it grows in the woods around here. It is an invasive species, but one of the better ones, I suppose, since it has lovely fragrant flowers and is not as aggressive as its ugly cousin garlic mustard. I did cut it back after blooming to prevent it from further seeding in my garden so as to enjoy it in strictly limited quantity in the future. A pink silene also came out of the mix, I think it is Silene dioica. It started blooming in May and is still blooming right now. Some bearded Iris cultivars were also planted among the perennials, and they were not bothered either, but I admit to putting down some homemade repellent (hot pepper, milk, eggs, garlic powder with my own added special touch of a bit of lime sulfur to worsen the already repulsive odor) when their buds got close to opening. Iris are toxic, but I have read accounts of deer "testing" the flower buds. Achillea (yarrow) is avoided, and is so easy to grow from plants or seeds. The pink forms are especially pretty in a cottage style garden.

The local deer also have plenty of other things to eat around Chappaqua, so that may also be a factor in preventing really serious damage to my garden. Still I think it is prudent to plant things that make them feel unwelcome so as not to encourage them in any way. The real answer to the deer problem lies in reducing their numbers, since we killed off their natural predator (wolf) and created much more of the "edge" habitats that they prefer. Its not just gardens that they terrorize, but also increasingly threatened native wildflowers, particularly cypripediums and trilliums, among many others. And don't get me started on Lyme disease, that's a whole 'nother discussion!