The dragon yawns...

...and is his breath ever foul! Dracunculus vulgaris is blooming today. The flowering of this plant is always an event in the garden - a wonderful celebration of the grotesque, ribald, disgusting, exotic, outrageous, extravagant, repellent and of course hilariously vulgar... Hold your nose and enjoy it as long as you can.

Clematis 'Sieboldii'

This is the plant more often called Clematis florida sieboldii, or C. florida bicolor, or even C. florida sieboldiana. It’s doubtful that it is unhybridized Clematis florida, so I’ve listed it as you see it above.

It’s an old garden plant, how old no one really knows. It was introduced to European gardens from Japan in the early nineteenth century according to Bean. That means that it’s about two hundred years old at least. Clematis florida itself is not native to Japan, and that lends credence to the notion that this cultivar is of hybrid origin.

In the older literature it has a bipolar reputation: extravagant praise for the unusual flowers (when I Googled it I discovered that some are now calling it the passion flower clematis) combined with sourpuss comments about the difficulties encountered in growing it. Even now there seems to be uncertainty about its cold hardiness. I had to try more than once before I got a plant to settle down here.

This is not a large-flowered clematis: the blooms are about three inches wide, comparable to those of many of the viticella hybrids.

I’ve known about this plant for most of my gardening life, and it’s very nice now to have it – evidently established – in the garden.

Another dead rat story

I’m a foodie, and evidently a bit of a “super-taster”. Let me get wind of some obscure taste sensation, and I want to try it. More often that not, these “taste sensations” come from the humbler ranges of the food spectrum. Cilantro provides a good example: when I became aware of cilantro over twenty years ago, it took many trials before I could get used to its distinctive taste and smell. But get used to it I did: a day came when I smelled a bundle of fresh cilantro and began to salivate profusely. Since then, there has been no turning back.

Some people can not abide the taste and aroma of cilantro, even after many trials. I’ve been feeding Wayne cilantro, or trying to, ever since my own conversion. But to this day it’s “soap plant” to him. There is speculation that the aversion some people experience is genetic in origin: try as they might, these people will never get over their dislike of cilantro.

Cilantro has its enthusiasts, and I’m happy to count myself among them. But if it had turned out that I could not get used to it, I probably would not have cared much. But what happens when your genetic makeup denies you a pleasure which is, if not universally trumpeted, at least widely and persuasively pressed? I’ve got truffles in mind as I write this. It turns out that all the exquisite things attributed to truffles are genetically denied to some of us. To some people they are the food of the gods, evidently the naughty gods in partiuclar. To a smaller group they are nothing special. And to a third group, they are repellent. It’s my misfortune to be a member of that third group. To me, truffles smell like dead rat.

Years ago, when white truffle oil began to appear in the high end food shops, I parted with about twenty dollars for a tiny container which probably deserved the name phial. When I got home with this treasure, it was with a sense of exalted high purpose that I unscrewed the cap and brought the opening of the vessel up to my expectant nose. I sensuously inhaled the long anticipated essence - and nearly barfed. What a reek! It was not just the vague smell of rancid oil, it was the assertive scent of dead rodent. I was furious: had I been sold an out-of-date bottle? Then I tried it on someone else. I didn’t tell them what to expect. I mischievously waited for them to get the whiff of dead rat. But they seemed to like it. I tried it on the dog: the dog loved it!

What was wrong with me?

Years later I Googled truffles, began to read what other foodies were saying on their blogs about them, and discovered that I was not alone in my reaction to the aroma of truffles. In fact, I found one blog entry which described this odor exactly as I did: dead rat.

No one else complained about the odor coming from under the stove this week (see the previous entry). Were they all smelling truffles?

Dead rat story

For the last two weeks, whenever I open the cabinets under the stove where I store potatoes and onions, there has been a strong dead mammal reek. When I first noticed it, I assumed it was a potato which went bad. I took out all of the potatoes, sorted out any which had even the slightest sign of trouble, and sat back thinking the problem had been solved.

It hadn’t. Not only was the odor still there, but it seemed to be getting worse. My first thought was that it was a dead mouse. Mice follow the gas pipes which lead to the stove, and that takes them right to the potato/onion bins. I’ve never known them to bother onions, but on rare occasions a potato will show signs of gnawing. Sweet potatoes on the other hand are quickly sampled. And then there was this: the odor seemed to be getting worse. A week later it was as strong as ever. A dead mouse would not stink that long; was it a dead rat?

The vegetable bins are on one side of this space. The other side is occupied by an assortment of culinary potions which has accumulated over the years. This includes things like various vinegars (there were four different rice vinegars when I looked today), what in the bad old days were known as sauces (ten-year old oyster sauce anyone?) and various spirits ( port, sherry, rum, a very old un-opened bottle of Canadian Club, Marsala, vermouth) and the results of various impulse purchases at the import store (mostly Russian fruit syrups and juices – Aronia, black currant, sour cherry).

Convinced that the decomposing corpse of a dead rodent lay hidden among all of those bottles, I took each one out, dusted it off, checked the cap for a good seal, and put them aside. As the last few bottles came out, it was clear that there was no dead rodent. Yet the stench was still there. I got a flashlight and peered down along the gas pipes as far as I could see: there was no sign of a dead anything.

What was going on? If anything, the smell now seemed to be stronger in the kitchen itself rather than under the stove. But where in the world was it coming from? The only thing I had not examined carefully was the onion bin. I took the onions out one by one: they were Vidalia onions, an onion which has a half life of several hours in our kitchen. No, the Vidalias were fine. There was a sweet potato in the same bin – it was light and dry, well on its way to becoming a cork. There was a shallot – nothing bad there.

And there was a plastic bag with garlic. Uh oh, what’s this? The plastic bag had traces – stains - of some now mostly dried brown liquid all over it. When I lifted the bag, there was a nearly dry puddle of the same dark brew. The stench was now reaching the truly disgusting level. Of the three heads of garlic in the bag, two seemed fine except for the bad company they were keeping: the third head was soft and reeking.

Problem solved – well, sort of. Now that the stench is gone, the mice will no doubt return.

Clematis 'Madame Jules Correvon'

I first became aware of the excellence of this cultivar years ago when I read an article about its use at Wave Hill. It's one of the viticella group hybrids, a group known for the great vigor of its members. The best known member of this group is Clematis 'Jackmanii'. The pruning of the clematis in this group is simple: in early winter cut them down to about a foot above the ground. They respond in the spring by putting up new growth which can be fifteen feet or more long. Plants pruned in this way bloom a bit later than those not pruned, but they make much more vigorous, cleaner growth.

The clematis of this group are ideal for combining with the hybrid roses derived from Rosa luciae and Rosa wichuraiana. They nearly match them in vigor, and their colors harmonize nicely. Years ago this garden boasted a huge plant of Rosa 'New Dawn' through which grew an equally robust plant of Clematis viticella: this was a great combination.

Clematis 'Madame Jules Correvon' is frequently misnamed Madame Julia Correvon or some variant on that.

The wash bear

Raccoons are a common sight here: they raid the garbage cans nightly, they dig in the garden, they party on the roof, they make a mess in the pond and terrorize the gold fish. They are also charming, engaging, intelligent, quick to learn and brave but not aggressive.

They are also vulnerable to rabies, and folk wisdom says stay away from any raccoon wandering around in the daylight. The other day while walking Biscuit, I noticed a neighbor peering into the bushes around his house. He told me there was a sick raccoon in the bushes, and he was waiting for "animal control" to come and pick it up.

The one in the image above was doing just that, wandering around in broad daylight. I was sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper and out of the corner of my eye noticed something outside, something big, crossing the deck only a foot or two from where I was sitting. It was the young raccoon you see above. It looked half starved and a bit sickly. I opened the door a bit to shoo it away, and it just sat there looking up at me. And then I noticed something else: it has an open gash on its back.

I took a quick look in the refrigerator to see what I could give it, give it for what might be its last meal. A moment later it was gnawing on a piece of chicken. After it left the deck, I encountered it again in the back of the garden. I think it's a female, and I'm hoping that it will show up a few months from now with some young ones.

Lilium hansonii

Lily season 2009 opened yesterday with Lilium hansonii, Peter Hanson’s Lily, and one of its hybrid progeny, a lily I call “Preston Yellow”. Both have interesting histories.

Lilium hansonii was introduced from Japan in the 1860s. To this day there is an element of uncertainty with regard to the natural distribution of this lily. There are seemingly wild populations in both Japan and around Vladivostok on the mainland; but there is suspicion that these are introduced. The known sexually reproducing, indigenous populations are apparently all Korean.

The form of Lilium hansonii introduced to the West was evidently clonal in nature: all the bulbs introduced were pieces of one original plant. Throughout the nineteenth century it was standard practice to multiply this species from bulbs and not from seed. Viable seed was rarely set. It wasn’t until the middle of the twentieth century that new, non-clonal material was introduced from Korea, material collected by Richard Lighty. There have been subsequent collections of non-clonal material also. These newer collections evidently did not prove to be as easily grown as the original introduction from Japan.
Nor has any effort been made to maintain a distinction between the original clone and subsequent introductions.
The lily is named for one Peter Hanson (who?), a nineteenth century Brooklyn (yes, I didn’t make that up) lily enthusiast. It gets stranger. The lily was named by Max Leichtlin, one of the bright lights of nineteenth century horticulture.
Little is known about Hanson, and what I know mostly comes from some notes put together by Marco Polo Stufano years ago. Hanson, an immigrant from Denmark, collected lilies for his Brooklyn garden. He corresponded with Henry Elwes. He grew Cardiocrinum giganteum. In Hanson, it would seem that lily culture in North America was getting off to a splendid start. But it all seems to have come to nothing: Hanson was not the harbinger of great things to come, he seems rather to have been an anomaly. If this lily had not been named for him, he probably would have been utterly forgotten. And if there was ever a "Brooklyn school of lily growing", it, too, is gone without a trace.
The old clonal form of Lilium hansonii has the reputation of being about as tolerant of garden life as any lily. This is not one of those lilies which after being planted in November bursts into glorious bloom eight months later. It’s a slow, deliberate grower. It might take several years to become truly established. But once it digs in, it stays.
It emerges very early, so early that in areas with late freezes the inflorescence is sometimes lost. The plants do not seem to suffer long-term damage from this. David Griffiths mentions that in all the years this species was grown at the Bellingham Experiment Station in Washington State, it rarely if ever bloomed because of late frosts. Yet the stock grew and increased without other problems.

Because this lily blooms so early in the lily season, it is rarely seen at the shows unless growers from north of us are in attendance. It's also hard to determine how widely this lily is grown: yet I know that it is cherished in many gardens other than my own.

Dichelostemma week

There is mention in Col. Grey’s Hardy Bulbs of a plant known to him as Brevoortia venusta. Grey notes that Carl Purdy (a once famous early twentieth century west coast collector and seller of native plants) suggested that this plant might be a hybrid of Brevoortia ida-maia (to use the name Grey used) and Brodiaea congesta (again using Grey’s names). Over the decades I remembered this name and the speculation about its parentage. All of these plants are currently placed in the genus Dichelostemma.

When Dichelostemma ‘Pink Diamond’ came on the market I made the connection: ‘Pink Diamond’ is evidently Brodiaea venusta. I don’t know if it is derived from wild collected material or if it is the result of a deliberate hybridization to test the hypothesis of the origin of what Grey called Brevoortia venusta.

Above you see ‘Pink Diamond’ at the top followed by the parent about which everyone seems to be in agreement: Dichelostemma ida-maia. Dichelostemma ida-maia (said to have been named for either, or both, the Ides of May when it was found in bloom or for one Ida May, daughter of the collector’s guide) in the past was sometimes called the Californian Floral Firecracker. The Dutch commercial stocks seem to be very vigorous and about thirty inches tall – good for cutting.

There is controversy about the other parent. The bottom image shows the one I vote for: Dichelostemma volubile. One of the oddest plants, the scape of the inflorescence twines around other objects like dodder or a morning glory. I’ve heard that ‘Pink Diamond’ has inherited some of this tendency, and that reinforces the hypothesis that D. volubile is the other parent of D. venustum.

These name changes illustrate some of the pitfalls awaiting the unwary. Brevoortia is feminine, so the name is written Brevoortia venusta. Dichelostemma, although it deceptively ends in an a, is neuter, so in that combination the name becomes Dichelostemma venustum.

I’ve heard that these plants sometimes survive our summers, but to be safe they should get a long dry period.

Sneak attack!

I spent the morning, an overcast morning which already had a hint of the heat predicted to come later today, out on the deck reading the paper and eating a bowl of corn flakes with strawberries and banana. When I got up at 6:30 A.M., it seemed cool. But after being outside for about a half hour, it was easy to sense the slowly rising temperature.

The south side of the house is covered with what are probably thousands of fragrant rose flowers. Nearby, Japanese honeysuckle and Goldflame honeysuckle are in full bloom. Peonies bloom here and there in the garden. I ate my cereal in a cloud of gentle floral fragrances, enjoying the cheery chirping of “our” sparrows.

I relaxed and opened my olfactory sensibilities to allow me to enjoy this to the fullest.

There I was, unsuspecting and vulnerable; and then it happened. At first I wasn’t sure – there was just a hint of something wrong. This is a holiday and there is no trash pick up today. But it wasn’t the garbage can at the other end of the deck that had interrupted my reverie. This was something initially more subtle but eventually unmistakable. The odor seemed to wrap around me, as if determined to disgust me.

I know that odor. It accompanies one of the uniquely repugnant floral displays of the year. It’s a combination of warm rat feces and rotten meat which quickly evokes revulsion in me and just as quickly attracts a swarm of expectant flies. A quick trip to the garden and a brief search in some likely places turned up the culprit: the voodoo lilies are blooming. These are not lilies in the botanical sense; they are aroids, jack-in-the-pulpit relatives. And what we call the bloom is not a flower: it's an entire inflorescence. The actual flowers are tiny things deep down within the sheathing spathe.

When I was a youngster they were often sold from crates in dime stores – just the thing to give a curious boy to get him interested in science, gardening or grossing-out the rest of the family. Back then we thought they were tropical; now we know that they make themselves at home in our gardens very well. The inflorescence is followed by very tropical (and very aroid) foliage.

In books this plant is variously called Sauromatum venosum, S. guttatum and also Typhonium combined with either of the two species names.

It sets seed here; the seed clusters are about the size and color of a ripe pomegranate.

The stench comes from the spadix: remove it and what's left can be enjoyed close-up. You're left with what might pass for a very oddly shaped and colored calla lily.

Dahlia 'Goldalia'

I bought these at one of the big box stores when I was last in western Virginia a few weeks ago. The label – annoyingly – states only Dahlia Goldalia. And the same label is used for each of the several color combinations I saw. A bit of Googling turned up these likely names: 'Godalia Scarlet' and 'Godalia Rose'.

Wayne and his mom had been shopping in the store in question; when they got back his mom mentioned that she had seen a flower for sale there which she did not recognize. That was all the incentive I needed to get Wayne to hop in the car with me, go back to the shop and check things out. We drove by them (they were on the parking lot) and even from inside the car I could see that they were dahlias.
It was not until I got out and examined them closely that I saw what nice dahlias there are. Dahlias with this flower form are known as collarette dahlias, and they are an old group. I brought home the two you see above. It will be interesting to see how they take the hot weather ahead.

Paeonia 'Hot Chocolate'

There is another intriguing peony blooming in the garden today: 'Hot Chocolate'. When the bud began to open two days ago, the color was the darkest color I have ever seen in a herbaceous peony. Now that the flower is fully open, the color is more obviously red. But the bud had the sort of very dark shadows which one sees in the darkest red tulips - a really wonderfully rich color.

'Hot Chocolate' just happens to grow beside 'Garden Treasure': they make a good combination to my eyes.

Paeonia 'Garden Treasure'

There is major excitement in the peony patch this week: for the first time one of the so-called Itoh intersectional hybrid peonies is about to bloom here. The cultivar in question is Don Hollingsworth’s ‘Garden Treasure’.

Yesterday the bud had progressed to the point where a bit of the yellow color showed. I could not help wondering what it must have been like for Hollingsworth those many years ago when he stood before the first plant of this cultivar as it was about to bloom for the first time and saw that first hint of yellow. Imagine the excitement he must have felt! That’s easy for me to do, because I felt a real rush when my own plant began to show its colors.

Several good yellow-flowered garden peonies are now within reach of those of us for whom the old expression “if you have to ask how much, you probably can’t afford it” has relevance. The week before last I saw nice gallon pots of several of these intersectional hybrids for $40 each. That’s hardly inexpensive, but compared to what they brought in the recent past, it’s within reach of just about anyone.

With respect to this yellow color, peonies are now where roses were a century ago. Although there were pale yellow hybrid garden roses throughout the nineteenth century (just as, if you count Paeonia mlokosewitschii, there were pale yellow peonies), it was not until the so-called Pernetiana roses appeared about a century ago that bright yellow roses began to become common in gardens. To this day, yellow roses have a certain cachet among rosarians, a certain apartness which roses of other colors do not share.

And there is another parallel: just as the longest-known yellow-flowered garden rose, Rosa hemisphaerica, played no part in the development of yellow-flowered garden roses, so Paeonia mlokosewitschii played no part in the development of these yellow-flowered intersectional peonies. These yellow-flowered intersectional peonies get their yellow color from one of the early French hybrids of the woody Paeonia lutea. I’ve read that the tree peony hybrid used by Itoh was the cultivar 'Alice Harding'. If that’s true, it’s a nice touch: Harding did much to promote peony culture during the early twentieth century. So much, in fact, that there is a herbaceous hybrid named 'Alice Harding' and a woody tree peony hybrid named 'Alice Harding'.

To some people, flowers are just flowers; to me, they are history books.

Moraea polyanthos

This handsome South African is blooming here today for the first time. The individual flowers are said to be fugaceous; this one opened in the late afternoon (at about 4 P.M.), and I expect it to close later this evening. The frail-looking plant seems to have several flower buds on each of two scapes.

I'm still unsure about the culture of this plant. It's been in growth since last fall, yet it's coming into bloom only now. Will it have a dormant period? In the wild it grows in areas with abundant rainfall which is likely to occur throughout the year. I don't expect it to be winter hardy here, so it will spend the winter in the protected cold frame.

The remains of a giant

The huge black oak which dominated the back half of the garden was taken down this week. The tree seemed healthy, but recently it dropped an enormous, live limb. It also had a slight tilt - in fact it leaned directly towards the house. I agonized over the decision, but the thought of several tons of wood dropping onto our house during a storm helped me to make the decision.

I have not been able to find any sign of decay in the trunk.

It's surprising how little damage the tree crew did: parts of the area under the tree were trashed, but other than that the garden escaped major damage.

We're keeping the wood and the chippings. I'll be working (struggling) to store the wood at the periphery of the garden during the next few months. There is enough oak firewood there to last us the rest of our lives. And here's an idea: maybe I'll start a shiitake farm!

I'll try to make a ring count soon and report it in a future entry.

Delosperma 'Red Mountain'?

Here's another bit of brilliant color. This is one of the Delosperma - but which one? I purchased it last weekend at a small nursery in western Virginia. It was in a tray of Delosperma nubigenum, the only one of its kind.

A bit of Googling suggests that it might be the new cultivar 'Red Mountain'. Whatever it is, I'm glad to have it. The color and its intensity are hard to describe: the copper-red of the upper petal surface is wonderful to see. Turn the petal over and you'll see that it's purple-red. If this one settles in to be a good garden plant I'll be very happy.

Scarlet tanager

Wayne came by yesterday with a sad gift: he found this gorgeous bit of color dead on his patio. It had evidently hit a window on one of the upper floors of his condo building. This is the scarlet tanager, a bird we see once or twice a year here. You would think that a bird which is both common and so brilliantly colored would be easily spotted. But once the trees leaf out, this shy bird becomes very hard to find.

As I examined the dead bird I was amazed at the intensity of the red color: the red feathers look as if they had been crafted of red reflective metal.

Guaraná

Has it ever been so easy to learn? Has it ever been so easy to track down otherwise obscure concepts or assemble tenuous scraps of connections into a meaningful whole? Or for that matter, to follow up on one concept only to find yourself wandering off onto something related but utterly unanticipated? How did we survive without the Internet, Google and Wikipedia?

One amazing aspect of all of this is that it is not only the major, important issues which get the in-depth treatment. The mundane and trivial also get a good going over.

Until today I knew, or thought I knew, about the botanical families Aceraceae (maples) and Sapindaceae (various mostly tropical trees and shrubs). What I didn’t know is that some contemporary botanists now place these two groups into one family, one family for which they use the name Sapindaceae. The term I grew up with, Aceraceae, is no longer used by those botanists.

But it is how I learned this which is the point of this piece. The other night I was skimming through a forty-year-old cook book, Latin American Cooking, from the Time/Life Foods of the World series. Much of what I read was by now a bit stale: our eating habits have changed a lot in the last forty years. Ours is a household where the tortilladora gets a frequent workout, and the diners (with one holdout) have long since made their peace with cilantro (but not hot chilies). But our knowledge of south-of-the-border cooking has a strong central American flavor; other than a few well-known national dishes, South American food does not appear on our table too often.

Now try to imagine a sixty-five year old man tasting Pepsi or Coca Cola for the first time. I had that experience today. But it wasn’t Pepsi or Coke I was tasting, it was guaraná, the Brazilian soft drink. And it was all due to what Jonathan Norton Leonard, author of Latin American Cooking, had to say about it those forty years ago: “To my palate, no commercial soft drink in the United States is nearly as good”. I was not only intrigued, I was pretty sure I had seen guaraná on the shelves of the local import store.

When I got to the store I discovered that I had two brands from which to choose. Within a hour I was home having my first sip. It’s hard to describe the taste – it’s fruity, but unlike any particular fruit I know. And it’s delicious and easy to drink. It’s also sweetened with sugar, not high fructose corn syrup.

At this point an appeal to Wikipedia was in order: what is guaraná made with? And that’s where the big tie-in happened. Guaraná is made with the fruit of a sapindaceous vine, and since one thing led to another I was soon also learning that maples are now placed in the Sapindaceae by some botanists.

To celebrate all of this I poured myself another glass of guaraná.

Jonquils

The little sweeties seen in the image above are true jonquils. Each flower is about the size of a penny and has a potent, characteristic fragrance.

Just when gardeners new to the genus Narcissus think they have gotten straight the usages of the words daffodil and narcissus, they no doubt encounter the generally dubious usage of the word jonquil. The etymology helps here: jonquil itself is derived from the Latin word for rush, juncus. Have you ever seen the foliage of a rush? Jonquil foliage looks like rush foliage: very thin, superficially tube-like but actually not round in cross section. From that, it’s an easy step to the point of view (encouraged here if not everywhere) that no daffodil with flat leaves is a jonquil.

Hummingbirds and columbines

The first hummingbirds appear in the neighborhood at about the same time that the native columbine comes into bloom. I assume these little birds follow the blooming of the columbines northward, although I can’t rule out the possibility that we simply notice the hummingbirds for the first time as we’re admiring the columbines. We humans are definitely drawn to red things. Hummingbirds on the other hand show virtual catholicity in their choice of flowers to patronize. The only criterion seems to be that the blooms are full of readily accessible nectar. The cobalt blooms of Salvia guaranitica are as readily visited as those of scarlet Cuphea.

In other words, I think the reason we associate hummingbirds with red flowers is because we humans are apt to be looking at the red flowers when the hummers visit. But the hummers themselves visit any suitable flower without respect for color.

That's Aquilegia canadensis in the image above.

Asarum nobilissimum

Gross, repellent, bizarre: there is something of all three about the flowers of the members of the genus Asarum. The fact that some members of the genus are pollinated by slugs hardly adds to their allure. But they do have allure, and it’s mostly derived from their handsome, often evergreen, foliage. The flower shown here is that of Asarum nobilissimum, one of the larger, marginally hardy forms. It grows in the protected cold frame here, and seems to be taking well to life there.

The evergreen asarums would seem to be a boon for our gardens, but I have not found them to be reliable for winter interest in our climate. Some species, notably the European Asarum europaeum, although technically evergreen, collapse during the winter: the foliage becomes thin and papery and lies flat on the ground. The foliage of other evergreen species seems to be easily damaged by below freezing temperatures if not covered by a protective mulch of some sort.

In the garden of my dreams I have them growing in an extensive battery of cold frames where throughout the winter their handsome foliage will be snug under the glass yet still plainly visible to the gardener.

Those species with deciduous foliage generally are much better garden plants in my experience. The common local species is Asarum canadense, generally if misleadingly called wild ginger (it’s not related to gingers in the botanical sense; the dried roots have been used as a ginger substitute).

Several of the other evergreen species from the southeastern United States are in commerce, but as a group they don’t seem to have caught on outside of the always acquisitive coterie of most enthusiastic gardeners.

It's very unpleasant to hear so many American speakers pronounce this name a-ZAR-um. Historically, the stress has been on the first syllable. Years ago I was very happy to hear an Italian gardener refer to the plants as A-sa-ro, with the stress on the initial A: that's where it has presumably been since before the days when Latin was morphing into Italian.

Peony 'Early Scout'

This handsome early-flowering peony has been in the garden for decades. But for most of that time it rarely bloomed; in fact, it came close to dwindling away. As the back garden became shadier over the years, several once flourishing plants began to slowly decline – among them was this otherwise fine peony.

‘Early Scout’ is a hybrid of Paeonia lactiflora ‘Richard Carvel’ and an unnamed form of P. tenuifolia. It was raised by Edwin Auten Jr. and presented in 1952 (this from The Peonies edited by John Wister). It’s been a reliable grower and bloomer here, and it’s among the first of the peonies to bloom each year. The flowers are small as garden peonies go, but at their early season they are not in competition with the big garden peonies.

The plant is worth having for its foliage alone: long after the flowers have gone the mound of finely cut foliage remains handsome and distinctive.

Peony season 2009

The first peony to open here this year was Paeonia mascula. It was followed almost immediately by three others: a white-flowered Chinese tree peony with no name (one of their utility grade peonies grown for the medicinal bark), a peony long-grown here under the dubious name P. arietina, and the little hybrid ‘Early Scout’. By now, several garden tree peonies have also joined the party.

That's the medicinal bark peony shown above.

These earliest peonies bloom when the garden is at its most tender, freshest best. There are dogwoods, redbuds, tulips, wisteria, phlox, daffodils, and a bewildering array of minor players; the foliage of the trees is still tiny and pale green, giving a magical greenish haze while allowing in plenty of light.

Little by little the migratory birds are reappearing. I sat on Wayne’s patio the other morning listening to a wood thrush and watching two male hummingbirds trying to boss each other around at the feeder. The first towhee of the year appeared on the patio the other day. The dawn choruses of birds are at their best: strong and varied and urging the sleepy-headed gardener to get out of bed and get going. The chortling of woodpeckers is now an oft repeated part of the daytime bird sound: are they poking fun at me?

Bird song is not the only aural entertainment on the air now: toads continue to call at the ponds. The call of the local toads is very soothing on the sort of nights we’re having now, nights which suggest July rather than April.

What a year: we’re just out of the first full week of spring, and the weather is saying summer. In response to this, there is another less pleasant sound now demanding attention: the whine and whirring of air conditioners has already started: what are those people thinking?

One each of how many tulips?

Tulips have been a constant thread in the fabric of my horticultural life. There have been years when it took some discernment to notice that thread, and there have been years when that thread has been one of the dominant ones in the rich tapestry of spring.

This year the tulips are here in both abundance and variety. Over the decades I have occasionally done something unorthodox to enhance my tulip experience: I’ve gone out in the autumn and bought one each of every different tulip sold in local shops. I did this to celebrate my sixtieth birthday, and I did it again last autumn. The result is that there are well over two hundred different tulips blooming in the garden here this year.

In the view above you can see the main planting of these one-each tulips.

A Well-reconciled Troad?

Words fail me on this one, so I'll let Reginald Farrer take it: "They are a doomed and lonely race of irreconcilable Troades in weeds of silken crape, sullenly and grandly unresigned to exile and captivity, passing out of their captor's hands in a last defiant blaze of dark and tragic magnificence. They are chief mourners in their own funeral-pomps, wistful and sombre and royal in an unearthly beauty of their own, native to the Syrian hills that have seen the birth of gods, but strange and hostile to the cruder colder lands. They are the maidens that went down into hell with Persephone, and yearly in her train they return to make a carpet for her feet across the limestones of the Levant. But not for ours - their loyalty to their mistress holds only good in Syria; they do not recognise her in the rain-cloaks that she wears in the West, and lands of younger divinities shall never twice re-greet such children of mystery as these."

Nobody does purple as well as Farrer! And let's hope that his "lands of younger divinities shall never twice re-greet such children of mystery as these", appropriate as it might have been for Farrer's Scotland, finds an exception here in warm, sunny Maryland.

And so what is the glorious creation shown above? She is a hybrid of Iris kirkwoodii and Iris hermona, two oncocyclus irises. The internet bulb forum friend who raised it from seed sent me a piece last fall; if he reads this, I hope he realizes that my not mentioning his name is an act of kindness on my part, not one of ingratitude. How, indeed, does one express gratitude for such largess?

Eating locally

While walking Biscuit this evening, we stopped at one of our usual corners; Biscuit seemed undecided about which way she wanted to go. While waiting for her to make up her mind, I was absentmindedly scanning the vegetation in the area. I noticed a patch of seemingly dead grass, and then, on second look, I noticed something else, something exciting. There, pushing up through the grass at the edge of the dead grass patch were morels, several big, fat morels.

I pass this place as a rule twice a day when walking Biscuit. The morels were not newly emerged - to judge by the bit of dryness on some of them, they had probably been up a day or two. But they were still fresh and esculent.

Now to get out some cream, butter, eggs and maybe a bit of chives and parsley - some thick, crusty, toasted, real bread will serve to soak up all the goodness.

Fritillaria michailovskyi

This plant, Fritillaria michailovskyi, is a good example of the power of modern growing practices. Twenty years ago it was still a rarity. Now it is one of the commonest Fritillaria in commerce. I've heard grumbling from long-time growers that the plant in commerce is a much pumped-up version of the original.

Fritillaries are a bit like tropical fish: once you start to collect them, it's hard to stop.

Tulipa cretica

Tulipa cretica is a small tulip, smaller even than its two relations Tulipa saxatilis and Tulipa 'Lilac Wonder'. It has grown here for several years now, and seems to be a good doer. However, so far it has always had the advantage of a cold frame: at first in the protected cold frame and last winter in one of the unprotected frames. As does Tulipa saxatilis, it produces above-ground foliage in the late autumn. Unlike Tulipa saxatilis, it blooms yearly.

More frits

The peak season for Fritillaria bloom is fast approaching. Here are four winsome, dainty species which would get lost in the garden. Top to bottom they are Fritillaria kittaniae, F. forbesii, F. carica and F. bithynica. They are a lot alike, aren't they? Once the collector's urge sets in, the names sometimes come to mean more than the plants themselves.

Not only are they winsome and dainty, they are tiny. The plant of Fritillaria carica shown here was all of three inches high - if that - when its picture was taken. Frits have a way of expanding in size as they mature, and some are noted for emerging from the ground buds-first, only rising to their full height later.

Magnolia stellata

Decades ago I planted three tiny Magnolia stellata between the sidewalk and the street. Now they form what one of the neighbors has called "the hedge" in front of our house.

The three are in full bloom now, freely scenting the air with their potent fragrance. On a warm, moist day the fragrance carries on the air freely. Passers-by frequently stop to enjoy the fragrance (and occasionally to snitch a bloom; that's fine with me).

When these were planted they were little better than eighteen-inch sticks. Two of the neighborhood boys took delight in riding their tricycles into them. A few years ago, I answered a knock on the door, and there was one of those boys - now a young man. He asked me if I remembered him: I sure did! I didn't tell him I remembered his tricycle, too.

The image I've used here is from 2007; it shows the trees with the masses of Helleborus foetidus which grow under them. This is a favorite combination.

Hacquetia epipactis 2009

I showed this to you last year; as you can see the plant is getting thicker and more floriferous.

This is a favorite. And no plant I have featured on my web site or blog has elicited as many requests for information about sources.

Some early fritillaries

The fritillary season is underway, and here are four early ones. From top to bottom they are Fritillaria montana and then the very similar F. nigra; then follow Fritillaria caucasica and F. pinardii.

F. montana and F. nigra are about eight to ten inches high at this time; F. caucasica and F. pinardii are tiny things only about three or four inches high. Fritillaria pinardii is very variable, and when this plant first bloomed I did not recognize it. I had grown this species about forty years ago, and the form I grew then was a dull mousy gray-brown with a thin yellow edge to each tepal.

Some early tulips

The first tulips to bloom this year bloomed in one of the unprotected cold frames. Their congeners in the open garden are only now coming into bloom.

First above is one of the many forms of Tulipa humilis. These do well here if given a dry summer. There are five or six readily available cultivars of this species, and even more are available if you search around a bit. There is a raised bed in the garden where a collection of these tulips grows: year after year they bloom freely and make a happy beginning to the tulip season.

Tulipa kaufmanniana is even earlier in the open garden. This year I'm trying a new cultivar named 'Ice Stick'. It's blooming today in the garden. If you know Tulipa kaufmanniana itself or the so-called kaufmanniana tulips (most of which garden cultivars are hybrids with Tulipa greigii), you know that they are characterized by very low growth: the blooms appear just above the foliage. But 'Ice Stick' has a typical kaufmanniana flower on a tall stem. I'm still getting used to it, and for now it's nickname is "the giraffe tulip"..

Gymnospermium altaicum

This odd looking little plant, Gymnospermium altaicum, is an interesting departure from the usual run of "bulbs". It's not closely related to any of the usual bulbs; it's not even a monocot. What it is is perhaps even more surprising: it's a member of the Berberidaceae. It grows from a round, corky corm and requires careful protection from summer moisture.

There are other species of Gymnospermium, and there are several related genera; and few will probably ever be grown outside the collections of confirmed collectors.

Yet more reticulate irises

Here are three more reticulate irises. Top to bottom: 'Cantab', 'Gordon' and 'Harmony'.

'Cantab' must be nearly a century old by now; 'Harmony' was in commerce about a half-century ago and 'Gordon' is a more recent cultivar.

I grow other reticulate irises, but the ones shown in these recent posts give a good idea of what is readily available. These little plants are worth a bit of extra fussing; once you have had them for several years, and have learned to look forward with confidence to their annual return, you will feel that that bit of extra trouble to keep them dry during the summer is worth it.

I hope I've got the names right on these reticulate irises: I keep hearing rumors that the commercial stocks are sometimes not true to name. The plants are no less beautiful with the wrong name.

More reticulate irises

The reticulate iris season is over by now, but this year a nice, representative selection bloomed in the cold frames. Three are shown above in images made the second week of March of this year. The top one is the cultivar 'Natascha', not quite white but rather a soft gray or skim-milk blue.

Next is one called 'Sheila Ann Germaney', and she is followed by 'Katharine Hodgkin'. Not shown is another one very similar to 'Katharine Hodgkin', this one known as 'Frank Elder'. I have plants under both names, but the flowers look alike to me.

Until recently, all of these were scarce and expensive. Now they can be purchased at the local garden center, and they are less dear than tulips or daffodils.

Reticulate irises in general seem to persist well in the garden, but they rarely bloom well after the first year or two. On the other hand, plants grown in pots or in the cold frames and kept dry during the summer do bloom well year after year.

Fritillaria raddeana

March 2009 was not all bad. The first of the Fritillaria showed easily counted buds by March 11. This was Fritillaria raddeana, and by March 18 it was in full bloom. This plant has bloomed for the last four years here. It's never been more than about a foot high, and it grows from a walnut sized bulb.

Last fall I received some comparatively huge bulbs of Fritillaria raddeana. These are emerging now, buds first, the same way the small form described above does. The sprouts from these new bulbs are big, like those of the crown imperial.

The two images above show the small form on March 11 and on March 18.

March 2009

March 2009 was a big disappointment to me. That brief mild spell we had at the very beginning of the year raised great expectations; March dampened most of them. Not only was the month cold, it was also dry and windy. There was a bit of rain towards the end of the month, and last week we had several days of slow, gentle rain which gave the garden a good soaking - and brought on a surge of growth.

Spring peepers have been in chorus now and then since March 8. Last weekend Wayne and I stopped by the local "peeper central" to check out the action. The peepers were singing in their hundreds, maybe thousands. Through the din of the peepers we could also make out chorus frogs and wood frogs. Today I heard toads calling, too.

It puzzled me that there have been no toads at the waterlily pool in the garden. Today I found out why: as I approached the pool today I heard a loud splash, the sort of noise turtles sometimes make. I didn't see anything - then. I decided to sit and watch. Several minutes passed and then suddenly, so suddenly it startled me, a muddy brown cylinder nearly as thick as my forearm shot up to the surface of the water, grabbed a quick breath, and just as suddenly disappeared. It was a snapping turtle, evidently not a small one. That no doubt explains the disappearance of most of the fifty gold fish I put into the pool last summer. Yesterday I noticed some small gray feathers floating on the pool surface.

So March this year came in like a polar bear and went out like a snapping turtle.

Reticulate irises

Forget the old line about March coming in as a lamb or a lion: this year it’s coming in as a polar bear. It’s mid-day now; we woke up to a light dusting of snow. This afternoon and evening we’re expected to get several inches. How many inches is that? To the east of us it might be as much as 10-12”; in the immediate area it will probably be about 4-5”.

Last week the first of the reticulate irises began to open, open slowly over a period of several days. Two are shown above: above is ‘Pauline’ and below one which came under a now obviously incorrect name. I don’t know what this one is - yet.

Hundreds of thousands of reticulate iris bulbs must be sold annually in this country, and I’ll bet most of them get planted out into the garden. There, they bloom well the first year, maybe even for a few years after that; but most gradually disappear or fail to bloom again even when they persist.

Certain cultivars persist indefinitely and bloom annually: the old original form of Iris reticulata has been blooming here for over forty years; ‘Pauline’ also seems to be very persistent. In general, if they don’t persist on their own and re-bloom annually, we assume they are not for us. In fact, with a bit of help a nice array of these can be enjoyed annually.

Part of the problem is that they are ridiculously inexpensive: that in itself removes much of the incentive to try and learn to grow them. The formula for these is the familiar one: a bit of lime and dry conditions after the foliage ripens.

Adonis vernalis

When the first flowers of this Eurasian wildflower, Adonis vernalis, open, it's as if the sun itself were rising from the soil of the garden. It has the same greenish-yellow color of the winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis. The same color is seen in a very few daffodils, too. It's a yellow which has a glowing quality, soft and very appealing at this time of year, especially in dull weather. The blooms of this Adonis are not large, but it has no competition in the same color range at this time of year - although a particularly well-nourished dandelion, should it produce an early bloom, might be just as big, if not as subtle.

The Adonis is very tidy when it blooms, but it soon sprawls laterally: give it some room.

The propagation of this plant poses some challenges. Division works and is probably the easiest way. Seed is set freely, but there seems to be no agreement about how to get it to germinate. Evidently, even sowing freshly collected seed does not guarantee germination.

The plant shown in the image above is growing in one of the unprotected cold frames. These frames provide protection from browsing animals and bad weather, and on sunny days keep the temperature within the frame a bit above what prevails outside - but they do little if anything to moderate the temperature at night.

The dog days of winter

The walk with Biscuit this morning provided some unexpected entertainment. Biscuit has been very attentive to all other dog noises lately: if she hears another dog barking in the distance, she immediately stops and listens. If the sound is nearby, she intently searches for the source.
Well, this morning she heard some barking nearby, looked around and didn’t see a dog. I heard the barking and was similarly confused. We moved on a few paces, and the barking resumed. Clearly it was very close, but both Biscuit and I could not locate the source. I expected a door to open nearby any minute and see some little yapper come dashing out. But no dog appeared.
We moved on a few paces, and the barking resumed. This time, we both took the time to carefully figure out where the barking was coming from. Once we realized where the barking was coming from, it was apparent why neither of us had figured it out before, and it was also apparent why we had not seen a dog.
The barking was coming from a place about thirty feet away: from the branches of a tree. Biscuit and I both looked up: was she as surprised as I was? The barking was not coming from a dog. It was a crow, a crow doing a very convincing imitation of a yappy dog bark. It was not the only crow in that tree, but it seems that it was the only one which had mastered the dog bark.
During the summer we have plenty of cat birds; now we have a dog bird, too.

The Lenten Rose

The history of the garden hellebores is a bit of a Cinderella story. I wonder how many of the current enthusiasts for these plants realize that they are nothing new in our gardens. Mable Cabot Sedgwick’s The Garden Month by Month, compiled early in the first decade of the twentieth century, mentions several species of Helleborus and even a named garden cultivar, ‘Frau Irene Heinemann’ of H. orientalis (what we today call H. × hybridus). Sedgwick lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, so her month by month sequences are of course a bit out of line with what we experience here. But this is a wonderful book, evidently carefully researched and wondrously detailed. Boston area gardens of a century ago must have been very well stocked indeed!

And by “our gardens” I don’t simply mean our eastern North American gardens, I mean more specifically our greater Washington, D.C. gardens. Hellebores have been growing in local gardens since at least the time of the First World War. They were growing in the Washington, D.C. garden of David Griffiths back then.

You’ll have to search harder than I did to find much mention of them in eastern gardens during the next half century. Literate gardeners no doubt knew about them because these plants have long figured prominently in the British horticultural press. Mrs. Wilder celebrated them. But the gardening public seems to have been clueless.

How can that be? How can the plant which is now widely appreciated as the best late winter flowering perennial in our gardens have been all but totally overlooked? How can it be that we had this plant in our gardens a century ago and then, then what? Did we lose them? Did they not prove amenable to conditions a century ago? Was the prevailing taste in garden plants at such an appallingly low level to allow this plant to sink into obscurity?

Or was it simply a case of get-rich-quick America not being ready to embrace a plant which grows slowly, provides opportunity for only infrequent division, and takes as long to bloom from seed as a trillium or peony?

A generation ago, hardly anyone grew them. Today there is a dizzying array of garden forms available - readily available, if for a price.

The genus name is hel-LE-bo-rus. Those who pronounce the name Hell ‘il BORE us may know something I don’t – but I don’t want to visit that place to find out for myself.

And on this first day of Lent I have to ask: does anyone else still call them Lenten Roses?

The hellebore season is just getting started here: the one in the image above is one which always has bloomed well before the other garden hellebores growing here. Please don't leave a comment here on the order of "Jim, I sell hellebores I raise from seed, and I throw away the ones that look like that".

I'm happy to record that hellebores have been blooming in this garden for about forty years. For more views of hellebores here, see:

http://www.jimmckenney.com/helleborus_pages.htm

Shrove Tuesday

We had the traditional pancake dinner tonight. Whenever I make pancakes, the ones to be consumed immediately are made in the usual four to five inch diameter. When I've made enough for the meal at hand, there is usually batter left over. Because this batter does not store well (even in the refrigerator it quickly molds), I pour all of it into the pan and make one gigantic pancake to use up the batter. The bottom of the ladle is used to spread the batter as thinly as possible. The result is what you see in the image above. This big pancake then reappears at lunch the next day, typically as a wrap. The filling might range from savory to sweet, depending on what's at hand or left over from other meals. If there is some leftover chicken, I'll make a quick white sauce for a savory course. If there is fresh fruit, I'll whip up some cream for sweet filling.

Since tomorrow is the beginning of Lent, tradition will frown on the whipped cream.

Early crocuses

Several years ago I discovered what a pleasure even the commonest crocuses can be when grown in the protected cold frame. There isn’t room in the protected cold frame for all of the crocuses I grow, so this year I planted many of the crocuses in an unprotected cold frame. The main difference is that in the unprotected cold frame they do not bloom as early. But they do bloom ahead of crocuses planted in the open garden. And the protection provided by the frame makes all the difference in the world. Now I can ignore the sparrows which in most years treat the flowering of the crocuses as the beginning of the salad season. And I can ignore the bunnies I saw hopping merrily around the other day – and I can ignore the deer, too. Hail, sleet, ice – forget them, the cold frame protects the crocuses from all bad weather.
Is it my imagination or do the flowers actually last longer in good condition in the cold frames? I think they do.
The crocuses with interesting markings on the outside of the outer tepals are more easily observed in the cold frame, In fact, when these plants are grown in the open garden they collapse into two main varieties on sunny days: the white ones and the yellow-orange ones. That’s because the beautiful markings are on the outside of the flowers; when the flowers open widely, they all look like white or orange-yellow crocuses.
Those with tender and exquisite colors such as ‘Weldenii Fairy’ and ‘Blue Pearl’ are more readily appreciated in the cold frames. Both of these are blooming today, and until today I never realized how beautiful they really are. They are simply too good for the open garden.
Here’s the list of familiar crocuses blooming in the cold frames today: ‘Gipsy Girl’, ‘Goldilocks’, ‘Advance’, ‘Snow Bunting’, ‘Lady Killer’, ‘Blue Pearl’, ‘Weldenii Fairy’ ‘Firefly’, ‘Uschak Orange’, ‘Blue Bird’ and ‘Whitewell Purple’. You can see some of them in the images above. From top to bottom:'Gipsy Girl', 'Weldenii Fairy', 'Lady Killer', 'Herald', 'Goldilocks', 'Blue Pearl', 'Blue Bird' and 'Advance'.

The days before spring

The first big burst of bloom has yet to occur in the garden this year: I’m still waiting. There have been many plants in bloom since the turn of the year, but they have occurred only sporadically. January and February have both been cold, windy months. My eyes are aching for a big burst of floral color.

The early snowdrops are at their peak now and have been for about a week. But try enjoying snowdrops in thirty-mile-per-hour wind gusts and a temperature in the low 40s F. When things moderate a bit I’ll put together a little bouquet of snowdrops and other early bloomers.

Crocuses are blooming in the frames - but do they count?

Last Friday Wayne and I drove down to visit his mom in western Virginia. Along the way we passed brilliant, green fields of what I assume is winter rye. It’s a real treat to see such an intense green spread out over acre after acre. The greens of summer never seem so bright, so intense and so pure.

Back in the home garden the prevailing colors are dingy browns and grays. But little Ranunculus ficaria is rapidly leafing out, and soon there will be plenty of green in the garden. And at that point I’ll be trying to figure out how to get rid of it.

Scallions, green onions, spring onions, Welsh onions, shallots

I’ve noticed that the grocery stores where I shop no longer sell something called scallions. What they sell now are called green onions. If you know your onions, you know that green onions and scallions are not necessarily the same thing.

Green onions and spring onions should be immature Allium cepa (this is the botanical name for culinary onions).

Scallions, on the other hand, are either those certain forms of Allium cepa which do not bulb or (and this is where it gets confusing) forms of a related species Allium fistulosum, the so-called (i.e. misnamed) Welsh onion. This “Welsh onion” is actually native to Siberia.

Where do shallots fit into this picture? Many texts currently attribute shallots to Allium cepa as a “Group” called Aggregatum. A Group in this sense - notice the capital G - is an assemblage of forms which might or might not share the same origin but which share so many similarities that for practical purposes they are treated as essentially the same thing until someone parses their ancestry and interrelationships. This usage of Group is not taxonomic: these Groups do not fall into the traditional taxonomic hierarchy.

The old name for shallots was Allium ascalonicum. Ascalon was an ancient Mediterranean port city in what is now modern Israel. Notice the similarity between the words scallion and ascalonicum: it’s no accident. Scallion is ultimately derived from the old name ascalonicum. In English, it’s not a direct borrowing: the word had to travel through several languages before it made its way into English. You would therefore think that shallots are the rightful claimants to the name scallion, but I can’t recall any recent American text which calls shallots scallions.

After writing the above, I Googled shallot and read the wikipedia account. The writer of that account assigns the French gray shallot to Allium oschaninii and the other shallots to Allium cepa.

The plot thickens…

Takoma Park Garden Club Daffodil Show

“…the Garden Club of Takoma Park, outside of Washington, which has for nine years past had its annual Daffodil Show…”

Those were the words which quickly brought me out of my bedtime reverie last night, as I lay in bed reading Mrs. Francis King’s 1925 Chronicles of the Garden. I grew up a stone’s throw from Takoma Park; some of my grammar schoolmates probably lived there. Even now, over eighty years after Chronicles was written, Takoma Park has retained both a very distinct identity and a vigorous enthusiasm for gardening.

It was Mr. Benjamin Y. Morrison, again quoting from Mrs. King “one of our finest amateurs and an authority in horticulture”, who wrote those words. There was something comical about her description of Morrison as an amateur: he went on to become one of the leading lights in twentieth century horticulture during a career which culminated in his becoming the first director of the U.S. National Arboretum - not bad for an amateur.

Does Takoma Park still have daffodil shows? If they do, I don’t know about it. The greater Washington, D.C. area does have a big, active daffodil society, The Washington Daffodil Society. The WDS was organized in 1950 – “ it grew out of the first daffodil show in the Washington area, sponsored by three local garden clubs” reads the account on the WDS website. This was twenty-five years after the events described by Morrison, and it thus seems unlikely that the show sponsored by three local garden clubs could have been the ones in which Morrison participated. Here’s a link to a page giving the early history of the WDS:

http://washingtondaffodilsociety.org/

and then click on About Us.

Don’t miss the photo of the founders: the clothing reminds me so much of family photos we have from those days.

It’s hard to believe that the Takoma show would have been anything like the shows of the WDS: for decades these shows have exhibited hundreds of cultivars yearly. This should surprise no one: not only is the daffodil charming, it generally makes itself very much at home in local gardens.

All of this talk about daffodils: there are no daffodils blooming in the garden right now, but two forms of Narcissus cantabricus are blooming today in the protected cold frame.

Am I cheating if I announce the beginning of daffodil season 2009 in my garden based on these somewhat coddled darlings?

3° F

We’ve just come through a cold spell which the local weather people are claiming was the coldest in many years. Luckily it was brief and was not accompanied by destructive wind. The low temperature in the immediate area was said to have been 3° F Saturday morning. The temperature remained below freezing for a three day period. On one day the daytime high was in the low twenties F.

Before the arrival of the coldest weather I closed the protected cold frame and covered it with a double ply tarp. It remained closed and covered until this afternoon. There was definitely a sense of trepidation when I opened it today. This is only the third winter for the protected cold frame, and those first two winters were not much of a test. This cold spell provided a good test.

And what did I find when I opened the cold frame? Other than some minor foliage damage to some leaves touching the glass, there is no bad news. I’m a happy gardener today.

While walking Biscuit in the extreme cold of Saturday morning I heard a chickadee calling: the first bird call of the year for me. There was a nuthatch about, too, giving its nasal buzz sound.

While typing this entry I heard another bird calling. I didn't recognize it, but there is a resident mockingbird. I jumped up, got my coat, and was about to head out to see what it could be. As I passed through the living room on my way to the door, I asked mom if she had heard the bird. She grinned and said "You mean this one?" and at that she squeezed the stuffed toy cardinal she was holding. The living room filled with the song of this other "bird" as we both had a good laugh.

January optimism

Although we humans have invented plenty of diversions to get us through that most depressing month of the year December, mother nature provides the only one I need during January: already I sense that the days are getting longer. It's early winter, bitter cold is predicted, the garden is frozen, and yet this for me is probably the most creative time of the year. I revel in the buoyant sense of optimism the gradually lengthening days bring: I'm looking forward now, looking forward with enthusiasm.

It's also the time of year when I pull out all the old catalogs and books to read about annuals. And not just any annuals. I can't explain why, but every year at this time I experience a surge in interest in poppies, morning glories and nasturtiums. Night after night I fall asleep thinking about ways to use them in the garden, in particular in the garden of my dreams where space is unlimited and frost is unknown. All of this is just a memory, if that, when the actual time for planting these in the garden comes. And there is no real loss in that because there is hardly a place for even a few annuals in the garden now - it's that packed.

And how is the creativity expressing itself? This is the time of year when plans for major garden changes hatch and are brooded into feasibility. This time I think I've finally hit on a plan which will turn the site of the never-fully realized sunk garden into something a lot more satisfying. The site poses a major challenge: the main axis of the garden points right at a gap between two trees - good so far - and the gap allows a nice view out into the surrounding woodland. That sounds nice at first, but that open view has prevented any sense of enclosure in that space. In fact, it makes the space feel like a passageway.

And what's the solution? Right now in my mind's eye I see a curved path extending from the area of the border on the north side of the garden and extending to the back part of the south side of the garden. This border will delineate a border facing south - and facing the main sitting area planned for this site. This curved border will not only provide the much needed sense of enclosure but will also allow the plants to be staged more effectively (since most plants face the south).

This is a major change for the garden. It will take at least two years to accomplish this change because it will involve moving tree peonies, and they cannot be moved until fall 2009. To be effective, it will also involve some grading: back, do you hear that? I was out in the garden with the tape measure yesterday - things are off to a good start.

New French doors into the garden

Lows here in Montgomery County, Maryland, are predicted to be around 10° above zero F both tomorrow morning and Saturday morning. Several of my gardening friends have commented on this, as if it were something unusual. But that temperature is right on the line between USDA zones 7 and 8. Has everyone here forgotten those scary winter episodes when the wind howls, the trees snap, the house creaks and the temperature drops to zero F or even a bit below? When a weather front like that comes through at night, I don't sleep.

The protected cold frame was covered with a double ply tarp the day before yesterday, and the tarp won't be removed until Sunday at earliest. The overnight lows are only a part of the picture. This week the day time temperature is not expected to rise above the freezing point all day today and tomorrow.

New doors, French doors, were installed in the fireplace room the day before yesterday - just in time for this very cold weather. These French doors replace old, single-pane sliding doors which, over the years, had become warped, difficult if not impossible to close with a tight seal. And then a tiny hole in the glass (probably from a stray bullet or BB - several neighborhood boys had and used BB guns back in those days) began to expand into a major crack in the glass of one of the two doors. Soon a big piece of glass nearly two square feet in area was just barely hanging on.

Negotiations for these new doors began back in October; I was beginning to wonder if we were going to have to endure the winter with the cracked glass pane. The old door with the cracked pane will go to the dump. The other door already has a job assigned to it: it's about to begin a new life as a cold frame light.

Now that the new doors are in place, the fireplace room is once again an agreeable part of the house's living space. Even at night it's comfortable down there: it's a great place for reading. And best of all, these new doors give a fetching view of the garden.

Camellia japonica "red survivor"

The red camellia shown above has been in this garden for a long time – long as in decades. Early in its stay here it was killed down to the ground during a particularly severe winter. It eventually re-sprouted from the roots; but for a long time, decades again, it made very meager growth. During the last three years it’s been doing much better, and it is now in the five to six foot range and blooming yearly.
When I was in high school I was taken to see the garden of one of the teachers at our school. The only plant I remember from that visit was a camellia, a very big camellia. I remember us standing beside it and looking up into it at the huge red flowers. Local gardens back then probably boasted many such plants, but some very severe winters in the 1970s brought an end to those glory days: most big Camellia japonica in the greater Washington, D.C. area went down during those winters– most never to reappear.
The comparatively mild winters we’re experiencing now have been good for camellias. Once again there are big camellias in local gardens. And if this continues, it won’t be many more years before I’ll be looking up into a big red camellia in my own garden.
Few things in the garden are more beautiful than red camellias in the snow.

What a difference a day makes!

Today I re-composed the material shown in yesterday's post and photographed it in natural light. What a difference a day makes!

First week of January 2009

The garden has been good to me this first week of January 2009. Although it took some searching, there have been some things in bloom this week. And there are many things in “advanced bud”, so next week should be even better if the weather cooperates.
In the image above you can see some of the things now in bloom: Galanthus elwesii, Jasminum nudiflorum, Chimonanthus praecox ‘Luteus’, Hamamelis ‘Jelena’, H. ‘Feuerzauber’, Helleborus foetidus (with an unopened bud of one of the garden hellebores) and perhaps most surprising of all, Iris unguicularis: not bad for the first week of the year! There is also foliage of Arum italicum, Danaë racemosa, Hedera helix and Sarcococca humilis.
Crocus ochroleucus is blooming in one of the cold frames, and in the protected frame some of the white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are about to bloom, too. Out in the garden, Sarcococca humilis is heavily budded and the first Camellia japonica of the year are opening.

The image above was done indoors early in the evening: we've had no sun for days now. It was cropped and rotated and as a result the image quality has suffered. This softening of line and lack of crisp detail, which some might see as defects, nevertheless give the image the quality seen in early twentieth century color images. Think Gartenschönheit in the early twenties. I guess I've just snubbed my nose at nearly a century of technological advancement in photography.

Early January 2009

So, what does the garden have to offer this first week of January?

Nighttime temperatures have been regularly dropping into the low 20s F lately, so I had no hopes for a long list. And the short list is indeed short, but it includes some flowers which make a trip out into the otherwise quiet garden well worthwhile. Here it is: Jasminum nudiflorum, Galanthus elwesii, Chimonanthus praecox, Helleborus foetidus and Iris unguicularis. In one of the unprotected cold frames Crocus ochroleucus is blooming.

In the protected cold frame, some of the little white-flowered hoop petticoat daffodils are about to bloom, as are Narcissus tazetta ‘Ziva’ and N. pachybolbus. This last is a white-flowered daffodil of the tazetta group, smaller in all parts except its bulb than ‘Ziva’.

The handsomest of all of these, and – given the weather - the most unseemly, is Iris unguicularis, the Algerian iris. This grows in the open air planted right against a wall of the house. It gets covered nightly. Last year I discovered that it will reward this slight bother with intermittent bloom from November until April. At this time of year it's a real treat to linger over this plant and soak up the gorgeous color.

While walking Biscuit the other day I noticed that the buds of Acer rubrum seemed to be swollen a bit: it’s ready to go, too.

The Last Day of the Year

As the weather allows, I’m still working out in the garden. Temperatures today reached the mid-forties and it was sunny. Ordinarily that would be good weather for garden work, but today the wind was terrific and relentless. I spent about two hours in the early afternoon working with the plants in the protected cold frame. It was good to see that many of the Narcissus of the cantabricus-romieuxii sorts are budded and should be in bloom soon. Two of the tazettas, 'Ziva' and Narcissus pachybolbus, have scapes up, too.

There are fresh flowers of Crocus ochroleucus in one of the unprotected frames, and some Crocus longiflorus on their last leg are still colorful. All of the fall-blooming crocuses were plated very late this year, and so in effect I lost this year of bloom (although some are still trying).

Tomorrow I’ll do the official New Year’s Day count. I’m not expecting much: the temperature is expected to drop into the low 20s F by morning.

Lycoris aurea of commerce has produced a thick clump of foliage this year, and that’s raising hopes that it might bloom next fall. This grows in the protected frame: the foliage will typically not survive our winters in the open ground. Several of these have been acquired from various sources during the last two years; they all agree in having yellow-green foliage. The plants grown in the past had much darker foliage. All of this adds to the anticipation of the first flowers.

Season's Greetings Everyone!

A forty-foot pergola divides the garden into two unequal parts. The near side of the pergola forms the wall of the pool garden. In the center of this side of the pergola is an oculus, an eye-shaped opening which allows a view along the garden's main long axis. Here you see the oculus in its holiday season dress.

Welwitschia mirabilis

The Welwitschia gave me a scare about two weeks ago. It went from a healthy green to a pale, dull green with much too much yellow. It was still green, but it reminded me of pea soup.

I've had this plant for eleven years now; I acquired it as a one-year old seedling in 1997. It was raised from Silverhill seed by a member of our local rock garden group. Earlier this year I acquired more fresh seed from Silverhill, but I have not attempted to germinate it yet. I sent Rachel Saunders a photo of my eleven-year-old plant. When I did this, a little voice warned me that some envious demon lurking in the background might interpret this as the sort of boasting which merited a bit of taking down. So when my plant began to lose color, I momentarily wondered if I was getting what I asked for.

My first impression was that I might have over-watered the plant. I carefully tipped the pot sideways to see if any water would drain out. But there was no sign of water. Then I tried to remember the last time I had watered the plant. Hmmm......maybe it just needs a drink. So I watered it. Within a few days the good, healthy color began to return and I breathed a major sigh of relief. I'm very attached to this plant. I expect it to be the Gila monster of my adult life (when I was a kid I had a Gila monster which lived for a bit over twenty-five years).

Several years ago the Welwitschia put on another, more dramatic scare. Again, it was shortly after I brought it in for the winter. For several days it sat in my bedroom far from any window and without any supplementary light. And then it happened: its usual healthy green color began to change. The color became streaked with mustard yellow and rusty red. At one point most of the surface of the leaves was brilliant iridescent blue such as is seen in Selaginella uncinata. It was a bizarre sight, and I was panic stricken. But after a few days under fluorescent lights the odd colors began to fade, and eventually it was back to normal.

When I'm a very old man I might will this one to some public collection; but for now it's staying put.

November, the busiest month of this gardener's year

If you go back and look at the postings from 2007, you'll notice that there were no postings in November. Today's post might very well be the only one for November of this year. Here's why: November is the busiest month of the gardening year for me. On top of that, it's also a hard month to get good value for your time: not only are the days getting shorter, but the sun is low in the sky and frankly very annoying. Luckily, the sunshine is abundant, and it usually takes the edge off the bite in the wind. We'll soon be reaching the point where the sun will rise hours before the ground defrosts enough to work - if it defrosts at all.

This is the time of year I rework the garden; it's the time of year when the plans for next year are put in place. It's prime transplanting time for most herbaceous and woody plants. And this year, more than anything else, it's bulb planting time.

Beginning in late May, I dug as much of the bulb collection as I could. Little by little I've been replanting it during the last few weeks. There is a lot of documentation involved, and that really slows things down. New beds have been prepared.

In addition to that, I binged on tulips again this year. The last time was about five years ago. What do I mean by binging on tulips? I bought one each of every tulip on offer in local garden centers and ordered others from mail order suppliers. I do this every so often just to see what these tulips look like in real life.

In the past I let these tulips on their own after blooming, and as a result most did not survive for long. Then, years ago, I noticed a place in the garden where the tulips persisted indefinitely and bloomed yearly. The plants got smaller, and the clumps got thicker, but they were still there and evidently thriving. This was happening at the edge of a dry-walled raised bed: the drainage there must have been excellent. I tried another group of tulips in a different raised bed and five years later they are still blooming freely each year.

The simple truth about tulips, a truth about which almost every tulip grower in this area is in deep denial, is that under typical garden conditions tulips must be dug for the summer.

Raised beds provide one alternative to digging.

Once you realize that yes, you can grow tulips in this area and have them year after year, it's hard to resist the urge to collect them in all their wondrous variety. In a small garden such as this one, there is hardly room for one of each of everything available - and that's with close spacing. For years I tried growing them in the ground with labels buried with the clumps, but that system was not really satisfactory. For one thing, once the plants had died down, it was difficult to locate the clumps - and to be sure where one clump ended and the next began. At digging time there were always mix-ups - with the result that the stocks became mixed. And often bulbs were missed altogether.

Last year I tried planting bulbs in plastic berry baskets. I've been very pleased at what a difference this makes: now I can grow hundreds of varieties closely spaced without any serious concerns about mixing bulbs. The digging goes quickly, too.

In the image above you see the back edge of the raised north border where the main concentration of the "one-of-each" tulip collection is growing this year (the site rotates from year to year). There are over two hundred different cultivars planted here.

Clerodendron trichotomum

Wayne and I visited our friends Hilda and Charlie last week, and Hilda sent me home with a handful of seeds of Clerodendron trichotomum. This is one of those plants which is not as common in gardens as its several merits might suggest it would be. In our climate it's a low shrub. The white flowers are deliciously fragrant and are followed by bright blue fruits backed by the red calyx: as a result, it has a long season of interest. The foliage has the usual disagreeable scent of the family, but that scent is not noticeable until the foliage is rubbed or crushed.
Look carefully and you can make out a bit of the red of the now dried calyces and maybe even a bit of the now dark blue of the fruit.

Almond crown

The good baking weather continues, and this week there was this almond crown to enjoy. The filling was based on ground cardamon, almonds and orange zest - a nice, old-fashioned suite of flavors. This one disappeared very quickly!

Crocus kotschyanus with acuminate tepals

The crocus in the image above is Crocus kotschyanus, the crocus known to generations of gardeners as Crocus zonatus. I spotted this years ago in the lawn of a neighbor of a friend. I could see from a distance that it was Crocus kotschyanus, but I could also see that it was different from the usual forms I grow. When I got up close I noticed that the petals were pointed - acuminate in botanical terminology. This is not typical for this species, although it is for Crocus vallicola, a species in which the points are much drawn out. Crocus kotschyanus and Crocus vallicola share several characteristics, and their ranges overlap: is my plant from a hybrid population?

It was several years more before I was able to dig some corms for the garden, but it is now growing here well.

Woolly bear

What does the woolly bear say? I don’t know, but here is its picture and maybe you can figure it out for yourself. I found this one the other day while walking Biscuit. Now that it has had its picture taken, I’ll release it in the garden.

Crocus oreocreticus

This crocus was received in the summer of 2005 but is blooming for the first time this year. The members of the saffron group of crocuses appeal to me greatly. Crocus oreocreticus has a fragrance which suggests the typical saffron crocus fragrance with a strong overlying note of hyacinth. This and another member of the saffron group, Crocus thomasii, are worth growing for their fragrance.
One of the reasons this plant took so long to bloom might be that it grows in a pot in the cold frame. I grow the plants in the frame in a very lean medium and do not water them much. As a result, many of them give little increase and simply maintain themselves from year to year. I’m still learning how to manage these plants: this year Crocus oreocreticus will probably be planted out into a bed in the open.