Begonia sutherlandii

When local gardeners speak of a hardy begonia, they almost always mean Begonia grandis (the plant long known as B. evansiana). Claims of hardiness are sometimes made for other species, but to my knowledge none of these has proved to be enduringly hardy in our climate.

The one shown above, Begonia sutherlandii, is sometimes cited as a hardy species. In fact, my start with this species came from plants brought to our local rock garden group's plant exchange years ago. The donor claimed that they had grown in his garden for years with no special protection. I tried it here in the open garden and never saw it after the first year. It will survive in the rain shadow of the eves right against the house wall, and although I have not tried it there, I'm sure it would do well in a cold frame.

At the end of the growing season, before the plants die down for the year,  numerous little vegetative propagules appear in the axils of the leaves. It's a simple matter to collect these and store them dry in a zip lock bag in the refrigerator (cold is probably not necessary) for the next year. The main plant will survive from year to year from a compact, tuberous, underground, perennial stem; if the plant is growing in a pot, simply store the pot somewhere dry and above freezing.

The little flowers look like those of a bedding begonia of the semperflorens sort, and the orange color is unusual among commonly cultivated begonias. This is a small (rarely as much as a foot tall in my experience) and rather dainty plant, so keep an eye on it.  

Lilium 'Netty's Pride'

'Netty's Pride' is one of the so-called Asiatic Hybrid lilies. The name of this category preserves a bit of lily history in the sense that when the group was first named it included many hybrids raised directly (i.e. as primary hybrids) from lily species such as Lilium davidii, Lilium dauricum, Lilium amabile which are native to central and eastern Asia.  These and a few other species were thought of as a group because experience had shown that they were somewhat interfertile: thus, hybrids were possible.  However,  not all lilies which are hybrids of lilies native to central and eastern Asia belong in this category; there is another group of lilies native to that region which,  under normal circumstances, are not fertile when crossed with the so-called Asiatic lilies and their hybrids. Another name was needed for these, and these became known as the Oriental Hybrids. These are derived primarily from Lilium auratum, L. speciosum and a few other species.

A variety of modern hybridization techniques have broken down the old barriers, and there are now hybrids available in all sorts of combinations of ancestry.

'Netty's Pride' is an Asiatic Hybrid in the old sense, although it sports a color combination which not long ago would have been considered fantastic. The ones in the image above are providing a nice bit of color in the garden, but that density of color comes at the expense of a defect in the plant: in a lily show this stem would not stand a chance because the stem has produced an umbel of congested flowers. I like it, and maybe you do, too, but the judges at the show would not think much of this particular stem.

Lilium tsingtauense

This handsome Korean lily was grown from seed obtained through the North American Lily Society seed exchange. For several reasons it’s one of my favorites. It emerges early, and the developing foliage has the sort of watered silk pattern seen in some trilliums. The tepals of the flower have a lacquered quality. The color of the flowers is almost an exact match of the color of tawny daylily (and the two bloom together), yet the shiny surface of the lily flowers makes them seem brighter.

This lily does well in this area, yet it has never been common in our gardens and remains a specialist’s plant. It’s easy from seed, but keep in mind that when it comes to raising lilies from seed, easy does not always mean fast. Several years will probably elapse before it blooms from seed.  

 

Paeonia 'Yellow Crown'

Like a pile of blood stained plumage of some gorgeously arrayed tropical bird brought down and gutted by a hawk, this disheveled heap of petals gives little indication of its former glory. Two weeks ago this was a full blown blossom of the peony ‘Yellow Crown’.  I picked it back then and put it into the refrigerator with the idea that I would remove it later for a photography session. And then things got busy. Yesterday it was still intact, but as I moved some things in the refrigerator, I touched it and it fell apart. So this is all I have to show this year for this, which might just be my favorite peony.  

This plant has an interesting and confused history. It and several other similar hybrids were raised in the late 1940s by one Toichi Itoh in Japan. It is said that Itoh did not live long enough to see any of the several hybrids he raised bloom. His wife sold them to an American businessman after the war. In the early 1970s the Louis Smirnow firm offered some for the - back then - princely sum of $25.00 each. That catalog might still be somewhere around the house, but the last time I looked I could not find it. I was so tempted to buy one, but I was put off by the remark that even the roots were yellowish. There is an old tradition among tree peony growers of soaking the roots in dye to produce unusual flower colors.

So I hesitated, and missed that chance. Forty years later I decided to give it another go. The name 'Yellow Crown' was appearing in catalogs now and then, yet the price was very off-putting. And then there were the rumors circulating which claimed that the names of the several plants Smirnow bought had over the years been jumbled. For that matter, I don't know if the name 'Yellow Crown' was Itoh's name or one made up for the English speaking market by the Smirnow firm.   

Peony enthusiasts eventually added more confusion to the story by deciding to call all Interdivisional hybrid peonies Itoh peonies. But Itoh himself raised only those few original cultivars. Other hybridizers soon were able to duplicate Itoh's work, and now the term Itoh peony generally refers to one of these hybrids and not to one of Itoh's original plants.

And then there is this confusion: Itoh's plants resulted from the hybridization of a herbaceous peony with pollen of a yellow-flowered tree peony hybrid. From the beginning the hybrids were described as herbaceous peonies. But they are not: my 'Yellow Crown' produces short (6"), perennial woody stems.

The comparatively huge, sweetly scented, globular flowers of 'Yellow Crown' hang down from their own weight, so much so that they are often hidden by the foliage of the plant. Some peony enthusiasts fault it for this. I'm not one of them: 'Yellow Crown' reminds me of a gracefully nodding tea rose.

Warfare in the garden

It's surprising to me how often it is a plant which keeps some memory alive for me. Shasta daisies take me back to the 1950s when my playmates and I turned a garden visit into a preparation for warfare with other neighborhood gangs. We called them "gangs" back then, but they were nothing like what are called gangs today. All the boys had vague senses of where "their" territory ended, and trespassers were apt to be dealt with. Rock fights were not unknown. Actual physical contact was all but unknown, but we had sure aim with those rocks. None of this had anything to do with drugs or associated illicit activity. It was more of a group/neighborhood identity thing.

If my gang had a name, I was never aware of it. My gang was in fact not so much a gang as it was a group which stayed together for mutual protection from the other gangs. In our travels through the local woods we were continually aware of our vulnerability.

That sense of vulnerability kept us on the lookout for ways to protect ourselves. Real weapons were out of the question: our parents would have confiscated them immediately. So we improvised with what was around us. I still remember the summer day that a garden provided me with plenty of inspiration. We were in a neighbor's garden (I'm not sure why because that neighbor had older children who because of the age difference were not our playmates). A big patch of Shasta daisies was in bloom. But that was not what caught my eye. There were also big patches of perennial pea (the plant which is idiotically called perennial sweet pea by so many), and those were full of ripening seed pods. And there were daylilies which had bloomed long before and were now sporting dry scapes.

Those daylily scapes were about a yard long and hollow. The seeds of the perennial pea were about the size of bb's (bb and pellet guns were definitely off limits to us, but every once and a while someone from outside our group would turn up with one). It didn't take long to collect a handful of pea seed ammo, and armed with the dry daylily stalks I soon had a very effective pea shooter.   We had a great time shooting each other until a horrified (as in "you might put your eye out") parent appeared and sent us all home.

That was over a half-century ago, yet every time I see Shasta daisies I remember that day. The Shastas in that garden long ago were the tall, single sorts. The one above is the cultivar 'Esther Reed', now in its second year at my little garden up on the hill.

There are already daylilies in that garden - maybe I should add a perennial pea.

Oxalis triangularis

This is the oxalis which is commonly sold around St. Patrick's Day as shamrocks. It's not native to Ireland but rather to Brazil. Big pots thickly filled with foliage of these easily grown plants are very ornamental. I'm apt to regard the flowers as a distraction and  pull them off.

There are several Central American species of Oxalis which are readily and inexpensively available and also make very decorative pots. Look for Oxalis lasiandra and the forms of O. deppei.

All of these can be stored as dry bulbs/rhizomes during the winter if there is no room to grow them as house plants.

Clematis glaucophylla

The clematis of the viorna group have long been favorites here. The one shown above is Clematis glaucophylla, this one from a Kentucky population and distributed by Ellen Horning. I was well on as a gardener before I actually saw a member of this group as a living plant. I knew about them from books - not that there was much to be found about them in most books. I think it was an encounter with Clematis addisonii at the Morris Arboretum back in the 1960s which showed me what I was missing.

kniphofias and larkspurs

I can't take any credit for any good qualities of composition seen in the image above. That it happened is pure serendipity. That larkspur, over four feet tall, well branched and full of bloom, is a volunteer, self-sown from plants growing nearby last year. I did plant the Kniphofia, but as it turned out it is not the variety it was supposed to be. In the image the color is a bit off: in life it's more of a rosy coral, a hard color to describe. It's such an attractive form that I'm willing to overlook the slip-up on the part of the supplier - although it's a lot harder to get over not having a good name for it.

If you have been disappointed by the performance of annual larkspurs in your garden, make a note to sow the seed in late summer or early fall. That way you are almost sure to get stunning four and five foot tall plants the following spring (and note that spring still has a week and a half to go). Self-sown plants are typically bigger and lustier than those carefully cossetted.

Mammillaria plumosa

Cactuses intrigued me when I was a child. They posed an interesting dilemma; they would not die, but I could never nudge them into doing anything except producing elongated, etiolated growth. Eventually I found out that to bloom many require a cold dormant period. This led to an occasional foray into the realm of hardy cactuses. Our climate is hardly cactus friendly, but there are plenty of hardy species which will survive and bloom in our gardens. If you decide to give them a try, don't even think of asking me to help weed them.

The plant shown above is Mammillaria plumosa, long a favorite among cactus collectors. It grows wild in northeast Mexico, and has no trouble surviving the winter here in a cold frame. The plant shown in the image had a recent drenching, and so the plumose quality of its spines is somewhat lessened. The big surprise for me, of course, are the flowers. I had other plants of this species in the past, but they were grown as house plants and never bloomed. Yet the young plant shown above is blooming freely: evidently life in the cold frame is good for it.

Rheum rhabarbum 'Crimson Red' rhubarb

 

Last year I bought two rhubarb plants for my little garden up on the hill (my community garden plots). I didn’t plant them in time and they rotted in their bags. By the time I thought about replacing them this year, it was already well into May. In a moment of weakness I ordered a replacement plant offered in an end-of-season clearance sale. Why did I do that? The plant was sent promptly, but it was nothing like what I expected. It was a brick-sized block of crown: the sides were flat as a sheet of paper and the corner angles were right angles.  Other than the fact that one end of the brick had scattered bumps which, with some imagination, might be construed as dormant buds for vegetative growth, it looked like a block of dressed wood.

I had no idea what to do with this thing. There was not a root in sight. I decided to soak it overnight. The next morning the seemingly dormant buds had indeed started to swell. That's what you see in the upper image.  So the brick was alive after all.  It was planted into the ground later that day, and I’ve got to say I was mightily surprised when within a week I noticed that the brick has put up small leaves. That’s one tough plant!

Rosa 'Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria'

 

 

 

 

In its day (it was introduced in 1891 by German rose breeder Peter Lambert) this rose was one of the most famous, widely grown and esteemed roses in the world. In the English-speaking world it was "KAV" to many, some of whom no doubt also eventually grew "K. of K." ('Kitchener of Khartoum'). But K. of K. wasn't introduced until 1917, and by then sentiment for things German had shifted in the English-speaking world, hadn't they?

For a full decade the Kaiserin did not have a rival. But in 1901 that same  Peter Lambert introduced 'Frau Karl Druschki', another white-flowered rose of undoubted garden worth. Beautiful as she is, the Kaiserin prefers to be pampered, and the rumor is that she is not really hardy enough for garden use in really cold climates. Frau Karl is not only hardy, but she is also vigorous.

The two roses make an interesting contrast: the Kaiserin is a rose in the style of the old tea roses: not too hardy, with sweetly scented, nodding flowers, white with a warm suffusion of yellow in the center. The Frau on the other hand is hardy, not scented, with flowers borne rigidly upright, and of a cold, brilliant white (although she is known to blush very slightly pink in some weather).

My preference is for white flowers with a slight wash of warm yellow.

The form grown here is the climbing form of 1897.

Rosa 'Lamarque'

Two famous old white-flowered roses are blooming this week: 'Lamarque' and 'Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria'.

Let's take 'Lamarque' first. This is one of the so-called tea-noisettes from the early nineteenth century. It was raised before the craze for high-centered roses developed.
The flowers are heavy and nod; they have a distinct fragrance which has a citrusy quality. There is no use asking for a dozen long-stemmed 'Lamarque' roses: cut blooms are suitable for low bowls or for floating in water. Or, for really grand effects, entire branches in bloom can be cut.

I've heard of thriving plants in the Fredericksburg, Virginia area, but Philadelphia-area gardeners during the twentieth century struggled with it. Given the milder winters we are experiencing now, there's a chance it might establish itself here. My guess is that near a sheltered wall it would be a sure thing. And a thing well worth having!

Pleione limprichtii

Here's another of the Pleione which seem to take well to life here. This is another old-timer in our gardens ( or at least in catalogs), yet I'll bet that it's all but unknown in our gardens. I don't trust my pleiones to the garden: they come in for the winter, either to be stored in the refrigerator or to spend the cold season in a cold frame.

Compared to those of 'Tongario' shown in a recent post, the flowers of Pleione limprichtii are smaller.  The bright color pattern and delicate fringing on the lip of the bloom get my attention.

 

Rosa hemisphaerica the sulfur rose

Rosa hemisphaerica put on a good show this year.

Of this plant, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, in a chapter entitled "The Small Rose Garden" in the book The Gardener's Week-end Book (co-authored with Eric Parker; the edition I have was published by J.B. Lippencot Company, Philadelphia & New York, 1939) had this to say: "The far-famed yellow Provence, R. hemispherica (sic), surely the most beautiful of all yellow roses, is now exceedingly rare...Its rich color (unlike that of any modern yellow rose), the tasselled beauty of its centre, its habit of growth, are all arresting."

As proud as I am to have this rose, evidently thriving, in my collection, I don't think I would call it the most beautiful of all yellow roses. When Rohde wrote that, the rose world was swarming with Pernetiana roses and hybrid teas of Pernetiana ancestry, many of which did (and still do) yellow very well.

Surely she would have known those roses, too. Perhaps rarity and antiquity colored her opinion: few roses can compete with Rosa hemisphaerica on those terms.

The heavy, very double flowers of this rose hang down; indeed, entire branches laden with these blooms hang down. When the plant is in full bloom, the effect is that of a small shrub hung with yellow globes.

The flowers of this plant are sweetly scented and the foliage does not have the fruity scent of that of the so-called Austrian briars (the roses often called Rosa foetida).

Wayne took the top two images with his new camera.

Salvia 'Big Swing'

Salvia expert Richard Dufresne is in town this week: he had a booth at Green Spring last weekend and will be giving a talk this evening. I won't be able to attend the talk, but I was able to buy some plants from him at Green Spring. Above you see one of them, Salvia 'Big Swing'. This has the potential to go up to three feet, maybe more,  and Dufresne told me it will bloom throughout the hot summer. If you like blue, you'll love this one. The flowers appear to be literally ephemeral: so far, my plant has dropped its blooms each evening.

With luck I'll have some pictures of this one later this year when it should be much bigger. The intense blue of these plants is almost invisible in the garden, but close up it's an amazing color. This one is probably not hardy here, so someone please remind me to take cuttings late in the summer.

Check out Dufresne's web site here:
http://www.worldofsalvias.com/index.htm

Rosa 'Paul Ricault'

This mid-nineteenth century beauty has the characteristics of several classes of roses, and as a result its placement has long been a topic of discussion.

The blossom shown above opened in the refrigerator: it had been picked as it was opening, and since a storm was predicted, I put it in the fridge to hold it for a photography session later. This rose has a great scent.

Pinellia pedatisecta, a plant with high invasive potential

The aroid genus Pinellia includes two species with the potential to be invasive plants under our local conditions.  These are P. ternata and P. pedatisecta. In the image above you see the inflorescences of P. pedatisecta. What you don't see are the propagules deep down inside the spathe. In a few weeks those I did not pick will shed these propagules and soon another dozen or two of this plant will appear.

I've called these propagules because I'm not sure just what they are. Are they seeds? Are they produced parthenocarpically? I don't know, but whatever they are, every one seems to grow.

These plants are interesting, but I suggest you avoid them and never plant them in your garden.

Fragaria 'Mara des Bois', a yummy strawberry

When the other gardeners at the community garden plots see me they like to ask me "Jim, are you going to plant any vegetables this year?" And my standard reply is "No, vegetables draw too many bugs." But if they were to look closely, they would find some comestibles among the roses: garlic, shallots, multiplier onions, asparagus, newly planted rhubarb and, maybe best of all, strawberries.

The strawberry variety I planted is the newly fashionable 'Mara des Bois'. Please don't assume I'm one of those folks chasing after boutique vegetables such as ramps, fern fiddleheads or whatever it is that that crowd is currently celebrating. I picked this variety because the catalog description suggested that it might be a strawberry bred with the things in mind which make strawberries so wonderful.   

I had two hours free today to work in my little garden up on the hill, and after doing the things on my list, and with a bit of time left, I took a look at the strawberry patch. The corn poppies are in full bloom there, and when the poppy flowers shatter, their petals fall among the strawberries. As I looked at the patch I thought "Surely all that red can't be strawberries". But most of it was, and I spent a happy half hour combing through the strawberry foliage, time after time uncovering yet another cluster of ripe fruits. I was working quickly and raked in a few poppy petals, too.

You see the results in the image above. I wish you could smell the fragrance!

Rosa 'Souvenir de Madame Léonie Viennot'

Roses and books make a potent combination, and I can't imagine being a rose grower without a substantial pile of books to keep the flame going during the dark seasons and years.  Long ago I picked up a slim paperback book with the intriguing title The Bedside Book of Old-fashioned Roses by Keith Money. His approach to growing roses seems much like my own. It was there that I learned about the rose shown above. It's a late nineteenth century tea rose, not a hybrid tea rose but a tea rose. It's a climbing rose - and a vigorous one, too.

Iris pallida 'Dalmatica'

Before the development of modern tall bearded irises,  Iris pallida was one of the most widely grown garden irises in European and American gardens. Once you've seen it in a congenial garden setting you won't have any trouble understanding why. Nor will you have any trouble understanding why so many of us still grow and cherish this iris. I'll stick my neck out and say if I could have only one tall bearded iris, this would be it.

The flowers are not huge in the way of the modern hybrids, and the overall shape of the flower is basic bearded iris. The poise is rigidly upright, and the flower is taller than it is broad. The fragrance is intense and wonderful. The color is marvelous. While photographing the plant this year, I was not paying attention to the background (in this case masses of tulips). When I got home and saw the image of the iris against the varied tulip colors (but especially the soft pink, salmon orange of tulip' Menton'), I realized the potential this plant has in a mixed garden setting.   

Iris 'Quaker Lady'

It's hard to believe today, but a century ago the tall bearded iris as we know it now can hardly be said to have existed. There were a few tall bearded irises in gardens, but even the best of those are smaller and plainer than the modern tall bearded iris. The early twentieth century saw the tall bearded iris undergo a multifaceted transformation: the colors were clarified, the color range was widened, the scapes became taller and stronger, the number of blooms on a scape increased, the individual flowers increased in size and acquired flounces not seen in the old forms.

Those were the days when the tall bearded iris emerged from the category of general favorite to become a specialist's plant. Iris societies began to pop up across the country and backyard breeders raised hybrids by the thousands. And, over time, thousands of these hybrids disappeared as newer, bigger, more colorful hybrids were introduced.

There is no way it all could have been saved for the future.Yet here and there old varieties did survive, some no doubt due to nothing but chance, others because they have qualities which endear them to iris enthusiasts. In the image above is Bertrand Farr's 'Quaker Lady', an iris which dates from the days before the First World War. Note that the colors are not clear, the color range is narrow, the scapes are relatively short, the number of blooms on the scape is low, the individual blooms are relatively small and the overall form of the bloom is plain and lacks the flounces which almost all of the modern hybrids have. And yet 'Quaker Lady' is as beautiful in its way as any iris needs to be. Generations of iris enthusiasts have felt the same way - that's one reason why we still have it. I'll try to remember that the next time I'm out deaccessioning things in the garden.

Narcissus poeticus 'Albus Plenus Odoratus'

Here’s a daffodil I really didn’t think I would ever be showing you. This is the double flowered form of the poet’s narcissus, Narcissus poeticus. Its garden names are ‘Albus Plenus Odoratus” and “the gardenia flowered daffodil”. it’s an old plant in gardens. It keeps the fragrance of the typical wild form. The plant itself is easily grown, and it annually produces budded scapes. But in a climate such as ours, these buds rarely open: typically, the floral parts rot inside the sheath.

Heat is probably the culprit. So in our climate it’s rare to see a fully formed flower. But this year was different, wasn't it? Not marked by extreme cold, late winter and early spring this year remained stubbornly colder than normal. And here’s one plant which actually benefited from that prolonged chill.

I’m keeping these in the refrigerator so I can get a good long look at them: I don’t expect to see them again next year. 

Mixed tulips

My caretaker responsibilities limit the time I get for gardening to the point where, if I'm lucky, I see my garden once or twice a week. As often as not lately "see" is the operative word, because I sometimes make a quick walk through on the way home from a grocery shopping trip. Time actually working in the garden is even more precious.

Tulips were in full bloom last week, so I cut a few of each of the seventy-five or so varieties growing at my little garden up on the hill (my community garden plots) and brought them home for a photography session. Once their pictures were taken, they were left out on the deck to provide a bit of color. The weather is cool and sometimes rainy, so they are lasting well.  

Pissaladière

 

I had an early morning appointment which fell through, and so I found myself at home with the full day before me. What a beautiful morning: just about everything was right – the light, the temperature, the birds singing. Breakfast turned out to be some thick slabs of almost stale, good quality bread slathered with olive oil, chopped garlic and then put under the broiler. I found myself reading Elizabeth David’s Mediterranean Food. The household copy is now over forty years old, pretty badly beaten up, the pages have almost reached the point where they will crumble if bent, the spine is broken, and pages fall out now and then. It’s obviously a very well loved book. I reread for the umpteenth time her description of pissaladière , a sort of pizza from the south of France with an onion topping without cheese. That, I decided, would make a fine dinner for tonight. So I got busy on the dough and the onions, and by 3 P.M. I was assembling it. In addition to the onions, there were canned tomato chunks previously sautéed in olive oil, slivered oil-cured black olives and rolled anchovies with capers.

You can see the result above, both before baking and after. The “before” picture was taken in the sunlight, so it’s a lot brighter. What you can’t see is the look of sublime contentment on my face right now.  It’s amazing how good, how deeply satisfying, such simple, inexpensive food can be.

Pleione 'Tongario'

Why has it taken so long for Pleione to catch on with the gardening public? They are relatively inexpensive as orchids go, they are easy to grow, and at least some have been in commerce in this country for decades. And even the plainest ones are lovely.

I went through my Pleione stage decades ago: before CITES I imported about a dozen hybrids from an English grower. It was a real eye-opener when they bloomed: until then I knew only the familiar Pleione bulbocodioides, but these then newer hybrids had flowers with really brilliant combinations of color. Some were white with bright red spots, some had a strong flush of yellow.

The main problem with these plants is that they are not garden plants in our climate. That means that you have to bring them in in the autumn and get them back out in late winter or early spring. They bloom early, before the frosts are over, so there is also that to deal with. Also, the flowers are better if they can develop under cool conditions - and typical house temperatures are not cool. You'll do well with them as long as they are the apple of your eye; but don't expect them to gracefully accept a place in line for your affection and attention with everything else.

The corms can be wintered in the refrigerator in a plastic bag; I'm using a cold frame with good results.

The one shown above, 'Tongario', is an old hybrid which appeared on several American lists this year. It is probably too late to order them for bloom this year, but you never know.

The word Pleione is a four syllable word; since the o is short (it's the Greek omicron) the stress falls back on the i for those who use the text-book Latin pronunciations.

Potato chips

Now that I'm housebound taking care of mom, when I run out of things I have to improvise. The other day I had a real hunger for potato chips, but there were none in the house. So I got out the mandoline and made my own. The half life of a batch of freshly made chips is about ten minutes!

Paeonia 'Roselette's Child'

 

 

Hybridizer Arthur Percy  Saunders did more than anyone else to broaden the genetic base of garden peonies. He systematically produced hybrids which included as many as four different species in their background. This one, ‘Roselette’s Child’, has three species in its background: Paeonia mlokosewitschii, Paeonia tenuifolia and Paeonia lactiflora. It is said to have been raised from a self pollinated blossom of the hybrid ‘Roselette’.

The nomenclature of the wild peonies continues to shift; the plant he (and many of us) knew as Paeonia mlokosewitschii is often now made a form of Paeonia daurica. To generations of peony growers it was long famed as the only herbaceous peony with truly yellow flowers. A huge effort on the part of peony hybridizers went into producing yellow-flowered garden peonies. Few of the hybrids are truly yellow: the yellow pigments seem particularly sensitive to heat, and generally prove evanescent under warm conditions. But when the weather is just right,  some of these hybrids produce flowers which are unmistakably yellow.

This year, that’s what ‘Roselette’s Child’ did. This peony has been in the garden for six years, but never before has it produced a flower as distinctly yellow as the one shown above. This peony blooms very early in the peony season, and its buds are sometimes destroyed by freezing. This year several of the buds did die, and the ones remaining gave the impression of being about to produce green flowers. But as the bud expanded, the green became flushed with yellow little by little. It’s been unseasonably cool this week – night time lows have been down in the lower 40s F.  Is that what allows the yellow color to develop? Or is it a case of the low temperatures suppressing the development of the pink which sometimes appears in blooms of this peony? Whatever the cause, I never know what to expect from year to year with this plant. But I would not complain if it looked like this every year!

Double-flowered hyacinths

Double -flowered hyacinths, those where the normal six perianth segments are multiplied, are probably as old in western gardens as the typical single sorts. Parkinson, nearly four hundred years ago, menitons several double-flowered sorts in cultivation in his time. The ones we grow now are sports (somatic mutations) of forms with normal flowers. Since most garden hyacinths have that well-fed-to-the-bursting-point look, you might think that these double flowered sorts are beyond the pale. In fact, from a few feet away it's hard to see that the flowers are doubled, and they make a fine effect in the garden.
Five sorts currently grow in the garden, and there are a few others still in commerce which I have not grown yet. 
In the images above you see 'Crystal Palace' (dark blue)  and 'Chestnut Flower'. The chestnut flower in question is not the flower of the chestnut (Castanea) but rather the flower of the hybrid horse chestnuts such as Aesculus × carnea.

Corydalis solida 'G.P. Baker'

When we think of bulbs for the garden, the plants we have in mind are almost all monocots. In that respect, this plant shown above is an anomaly: it's a dicot. There are a few other dicots familiar in the bulb trade, cyclamen and  oxalis for instance, but they are a small minority. And strictly speaking, corydalis and cyclamen do not grow from true bulbs (but some oxalis do).

Corydalis ( ko-RĬ-da-lis) is related to bleeding heart, dutchman's britches, squirrel corn and, more remotely, to poppies. They are, at best, a fleeting presence in the garden: the blooming period is short, and the plant soon after disappears under ground for the rest of the year.

The genus Corydalis offers the grower a wide range of challanges: some of them are weed easy, some are best enjoyed in books. The one shown above is one of the easy ones.  

Eranthis cilicica

This is the other yellow-flowered winter aconite which is sometimes, rarely, seen in local gardens. It blooms much later than the usual winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis, and in my experience is much trickier to grow. I'm getting the impression that it needs dry summer conditions. It's also a smaller plant overall.

By the time it finally blooms there is a lot else going on in the garden, so it's tempting to nominate this one for the collector's garden. I'll take a few, thank you.
 

First snake of the season

Late last October there was a post about a garter snake which appeared on the winter jasmine at the front door. You can see that here:
http://mcwort.blogspot.com/2012/10/thamnophis-sirtalis-unexpected-visitor.html

Yesterday, when I opened the door to get the  mail, I spotted what seems to be the same snake sunning itself at the front door. I carefully closed the door and went for my camera. When I got back and opened the door again, the snake slowly started to move. The picture above isn't great, but I'll bet it's the same snake: "our" garter snake.

Vomit season

It may be true that there is no accounting for people’s tastes, but you can’t help but wonder. This is the time of year when the tidy yard folks are out there demonstrating their superior good taste by mulching their shrubs and trees and anything else which gets in the way. There is no disputing that the result can be visually satisfying. But vision, although it is the strongest of our senses, is not our only sense.

Who would have thought that even in the garden, beauty must suffer.  Local gardens now are full of daffodils, early plums and cherries, magnolias, hyacinths, the earliest tulips and lots of odds and ends which might tempt one to linger and enjoy both the visual beauty and the olfactory pleasure. But just as you settle into enjoying the dreamy, languor inducing aroma of the magnolias, things go terribly wrong. The wind shifts, and suddenly the neighbor’s mulch asserts itself. Rudely shaken from your reverie, you bolt aimlessly to escape the offensive assault. That mulch reeks of vomit.  

But it sure looks pretty.

Aponogeton adventures

 

 

An early February thread on the Pacific Bulb Society discussion group touched briefly on aquatic crinum. At first the focus was on Crinum thaianum, a species described on the one hand as endangered and on the other hand as readily available in the aquarium trade. Eventually it was mentioned that dry bulbs for aquarium plants were being sold in some shops - not as actively growing plants but as dry bulbs sold in a clamshell package. This really got my attention, so off I went to two local aquarium stores.

At the first shop I asked for Crinum thaianum and got a blank stare. But then the cranial bulb began to flicker, and the aquarium guy said something about "crinium". Off we went to check out the selection. They did have an African species with decorative foliage, but not C. thaianum. And their plants were in active growth, not dry, dormant bulbs.

At the next shop, my first impression was dismal. Things didn't seem too promising. That's because my aquarium sensibilities never advanced much beyond 1960. After looking around for a bit and not seeing anything, I finally asked. A query about Crinum thaianum brought no response, but when I mentioned "bulbs" I was ushered into what for me was a new world. We walked away from the aquariums and instead he left me in front of a display rack/shelf of the sort you might see in any dry goods store. He pointed, and I didn't see. But I was looking right at them. There they were, row after row of little plastic clamshell containers each of which held what at first glance looked to be little oval lumps of dry dirt.

My first thought: these are alive? I was assured that they were. So I bit: I bought one box  of the "Betta Bulbs" and one box of the three-in-one combo. As soon as I got home I took some photos and then got the bulbs into water. That most of them floated like corks was not encouraging. I decided to save the boxes with their guarentee and the address to which I could apply for a refund.

Now fast forward about a month and a half: the Betta Bulbs, which were identified on the box as a species of Aponogeton, have not only surged into growth but are blooming! The sweetly scented flowers are nothing to look at, but this whole affair is certainly interesting.

I have no idea which Aponogeton these are. IPNI lists 142 names assigned to this genus, and the Wikipedia entry suggests that there are between 40-50 species.  The branched inflorescence suggests that of the southern African A. distachyos (distichous in English means in two rows or segments), but the individual flowers are not as conspicuous. A. distachyos is sometimes available in the ornamental pond trade, and has a long history of cultivation in England. The Missouri Botanical Garden site suggests that it will survive in ponds in USDA zone 6 climates as long as the tubers do not freeze.

I vaguely remember that when I was a teenager I obtained some of these dry Aponogeton tubers and sprouted them.

The three images at the top are of the "Betta Bulb" Aponogeton. Of the three obtained, one is in bloom, one is about to bloom - so maybe I'll get seed. Then there are two images of the clamshell boxes, and finally a line up of the items in the box. Of these, the bottom three are the Betta Bulb Aponogeton. The ones in the upper row are problematic, but the two on the left might be Zephyranthes candida (a suggestion from a PBS member), the five in the middle are probably more Aponogeton, and the one on the left might be a Nymphaea (waterlily). We'll see - or maybe we won't, because the maybe-waterlily is hard and floats like a piece of wood.