Viola dissecta

What a sweet, both literally and figuratively, little violet. The small fragrant flowers come on long stems and have a perky quality which I find very appealing. Their prominent spurs remind me of little delphinium flowers. The finely dissected foliage is just beginning to emerge, but the plant is already in full bloom. Bluets would make a nice partner for this one.

The sprout season

Here's a view of one of my community garden plots taken a few days ago. The two rows of densely planted sprouts in the center of the image are rows of ornamental onions, tulips, irises and ornithogalums. On the left, the stakes mark the locations of various lilies. On the near  right is a bit of as yet unclaimed ground (maybe the peas will go there today - they are sprouting on a zip lock bag on the kitchen table) and farther down some other early risers including garlics, daffodils and some grape hyacinths.

Things are really happening quickly this year.

Helonias bullata

This is Helonias bullata, sometimes called swamp pink. It's native to Maryland, and it takes well to local conditions. It's been here in the garden for many years in one of the bog trays. It does not bloom unless I feed it occasionally. 

In some circles this is regarded as a bit of a trophy plant, but I've got to say that the first time I saw one in bloom in my garden it reminded me of some sort of bistort or clover.

Periwinkle

That's the periwinkle Vinca minor in the image above. There are some houses on the other side of the creek with steep front yards, and some of them are planted to periwinkle. As I was driving by the other day the mass of blue color caught my eye. I came back the next day to get some photos.

Here and there I've seen periwinkle used as a companion plant for daffodils - it's an appealing combination, especially with white-flowered daffodils.  

More crocuses

The temperature reached 80 degrees F this afternoon - and it's been very dry. The remaining crocuses will probably go in the rain. With that in mind I went up to my crocus plots and took some more pictures. The main purpose of these photographs is to help me keep straight what I've got - and to give me a good idea of the colors after the flowers are gone.

In the top row, left to right, are Crocus etruscus 'Zwanenburg' two samples, Crocus minimus  (the false C. biflorus isauricus 'Spring Beauty'), Crocus 'Prins Claus', Crocus 'Lady Killer' and Crocus 'Blue Pearl'.

In the lower row, left to right, are Crocus 'Ard Schenk', Crocus sieberi 'Tricolor', Crocus 'Advance', Crocus 'Cream Beauty', Crocus 'Romance' and Crocus olivieri balansae 'Zwanenburg' two samples.

When the flowers of 'Prins Claus' are fully developed they have the outline of a broad, shallow, rounded goblet. 'Lady Killer' has somewhat pointed tepals which are not so broad and the fully developed flower is not so bowl like. Both are well worth having.

Also especially well worth having is 'Blue Pearl': this is an exceptionally lovely crocus in the hand but is wasted in the garden, where it becomes just another nondescript little white crocus.

All of these little crocuses belong in pots where they can be closely examined under congenial, comfortable conditions.

Litttle blue things

The first wave of color to wash over the garden each year - the wave of snowdrops, little bulb irises, crocuses and a few precocious shrubs and trees - is now receding: in its place comes the wave of the little blue things. You see a selection of these above. Included are some run-down garden hyacinths (what they lose in girth they gain in charm), two glories-of-the-snow (the larger one is 'Blue Giant' and the smaller one is Chionodoxa sardensis), the Siberian squill (Scilla sibirica), the Greek anemone (Anemone blanda) and two lawn weeds, Glecoma hederacea and the lawn veronica, Veronica persica.  Seeing these flowers together reminds us that not all of them are as blue as we think they are.

With the exception of the Greek anemone, all of these are good stayers. Get a start going, and you are likely to see their sweet faces yearly. The Greek anemone is not difficult and will sometimes self-sow around the garden; but each wet hot summer seems to take a few, so the time will come when you will have to buy in a few more. On the other hand, if you can arrange to keep it dry during the summer it should last and reappear yearly.  If your Siberian squills disappear over time, try giving them the dry summer treatment, too.

Glecoma hederacea, gill-over-the-ground, is a serious weed here. But one look at a plant in full bloom gives a hint of why it has been brought into so many gardens.

During the next week or two the little lawn veronica will make some of the loveliest pictures in local lawns. If while walking around you see a shimmering flat haze of blue about a yard or two in diameter in sunny lawns, it's probably this veronica. Few deliberately cultivated plants create such a charming effect. Its success in lawns is largely attributable to its growth cycle: it's a winter annual, most active when the lawn grasses themselves are largely dormant. Mowing keeps the otherwise easily overwhelmed plants out in the sun.

Claytonia virginica

Claytonia virginica, familiarly called spring beauty, is such a common plant here that whole hillsides where it grows are covered with its flowers during its brief blooming period. A few weeks later the shiny black seeds ripen and then the plants are gone above ground for the rest of the year. Below ground a miniature potato-like structure keeps things going until next year.

Claytonia belongs to the same botanical family as Portulaca, Montia, Lewisia, Talinum and Phemeranthus and with all of these it shares a sort of waxy, turgid succulence. The leaves have the same curiously  rubbery, floppy quality felt in the native "aloe", Agave virginica (Manfreda virginica), although they are much smaller.

Sarcococca humilis, sweet box

I had something to do at the back of the garden yesterday, and as I rushed from the house I was stopped in my tracks by an intense fragrance which I did not expect. It turned out to be the fragrance of the sweet box, Sarcococca humilis. It's blooming better this year than ever before. That's it in the upper image above.

Since Sarcocca (sweet box)  and Buxus (boxwood) are closely related, seeing the sweet box in bloom reminded me to check the boxwood plants also. Sure enough, Buxus sempervirens 'Vardar Valley' is in full, sweetly fragrant bloom. When the topic of scent comes up in a discussion of boxwood, most people seem to know only about the cat scent of the foliage of Buxus sempervirens. Because the dwarf box 'Suffruticosa' is the most frequently encountered box in this area, and that form evidently never blooms, many people do not realize that not only can boxwood bloom but also that the flowers can be sweetly and agreeably scented.  But maybe not all forms of common box are agreeably scented. Buxus sempervirens 'Graham Blandy' is also in bloom, and the scent to me is more peculiar than pleasant.

Note: after writing the above about two weeks ago, I noticed something odd looking on one of the 'Suffruticosa' boxwood here: it was in bloom! So dwarf box does bloom after all.

Welwitschia death watch

The week before last I took a look at the Welwitschia and got a nasty shock: it seemed to be dead. I've had this plant for fifteen years, but even so it occasionally surprises me. The leaves looked dry as cardboard and had lost most of their color. At the base of each leaf there was a hairline of seemingly sickly, pea soup green. That was the only green evident on the plant.

What in the world happened? In retrospect, I think I simply forgot to water it. I gave it a good soaking and changed the arrangement of the lights. I made sure it stayed moist and under intense light. After about a week of this therapy, I started to put it outside in the sunlight any time the air temperature was over 40 degrees F.

Now, between frequent knocks on wood, I'm pretty sure it is on its way back. The line of green seems to have widened just a bit. Let's hope the mirabilis part of the name proves true.

In the image above you'll have to look hard to see any sign of life.

Tulipa praecox : legacy slide

The topic of Tulipa praecox came up today on the PBS forum. Here's a scanned slide from May of 1974. It's not the best image, but it does show one of the salient features of this plant: the difference in size and shape of the inner and outer tepals.

Iris susiana: legacy slide

I bought a slide scanner yesterday, and above you can see the first slide I scanned. As I go through my slide collection and scan them, I’ll be adding some images to this blog – in particular plants no longer in commerce. They will be identified as "legacy slides".

Here’s the first one: that’s Iris susiana in the image above. It was photographed in May of 1971, and it was about then that it disappeared from the lists of my source. It has always been a mysterious plant to me; evidently it’s not known in the wild, and the plants in cultivation which went around under this name varied a bit. It was grown in European gardens four hundred years ago, and over the centuries its intricate color pattern of fine, very dark blue veining on an oyster shell white background has challenged many famous artists.

I still remember the first time it bloomed here: as I came around the corner of the house and saw it, it immediately brought to mind  this  description of the flower:  like a ball of crumpled newsprint. Was it E.A.Bowles who said that?   I also thought I was among the elect: I’ll bet not many of you have seen this plant, much less grown and flowered it.

It’s hard to believe that this plant does not survive somewhere in a garden somewhere around the Mediterranean. I’m hoping hard that it does.  

A lamb in the countryside

As  expected, March came in as a lamb: daytime temperatures today were well over seventy degrees F.  I went down to the ponds early this morning, but in spite of the gentle rain we had last night things were quiet then; but when I went back later in the day the peepers were in full chorus.

More rain is predicted for the next few days, and we need it. Seed of larkspurs and corn poppies sown back in December are now germinating freely, especially the poppies. Seed of corn cockle sown last fall germinated almost immediately, and the resulting plants now have several true leaves. Those are corn cockle, Agrostemma githago, seedlings in the upper image. The lower image shows corn poppies, Papaver rhoeas: did every seed germinate? I'll have plenty of thinning to do later.

Peepers at KenGar: take a listen!

It's about 7 P.M. February 29, 2012. I've just come back from the local wetland site of the peeper ponds. It's raining and the temperature is about50 ⁰ F (about 10⁰ C): good conditions for the annual emergence of the peepers. I listened carefully and I think I heard two widely separated peeps. That's justification enough for me to make this posting. Tomorrow the temperature is predicted to be about ten degrees F higher, and sometime during the day the big choruses should start.

What are peepers? They're small (almond-sized) frogs.  For well over a century peepers were known as Hyla crucifer; in fact, the vernacular name hylas is still used. But in modern arrangements they are called Pseudacris crucifer. I attended an Episcopalian funeral recently and was intrigued to see that there is a participant in the ceremony called the crucifer. The word literally means cross bearer. The frog merits the name because of the big X on its back.

Here's a link to a recording I made last April at the same ponds. The sound of the peepers is accompanied by images of tommies, Crocus tommasinianus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH5pT3If_nA

Some familiar crocuses

Here is a selection of some of the readily available crocuses sold as "snow crocuses", "chrysanthus hybrid crocuses" or "species crocuses".

In the top row, left to right, Crocus ancyrensis 'Golden Bunch',  'Goldilocks', maybe 'Fuscotinctus', 'Gipsy Girl', and Crocus olivieri balansae 'Zwanenburg'

In the lower level, left to right, 'Snowbunting', 'Romance', 'Art Schenk', 'Blue Pearl', 'Lady Killer' and 'Spring Beauty'

The name Zwanenburg which appears in some of these names was the name of the homestead where the van Tubergen family started their famous bulb company in the second half of the nineteenth century.  

The plant in the middle of the top row was received as 'Zwanenburg Bronze', but that's not what it is. Any ideas? I've called it 'Fuscotinctus' but that's a guess.  

'Spring Beauty' is sold as Crocus biflorus isauricus 'Spring Beauty' but it appears to be Crocus minimus. 

Note: some of the blossoms shown above are much bigger than others. This is largely but not entirely due to the age of the flower. Some were picked as soon as they emerged above ground, some had been above ground for days and were fully developed. However, the one shown as Crocus olivieri balansae 'Zwanenburg' remains relatively small.

Geese

I don't have an image or a sound recording for this, but one of the big excitements of the season is taking place daily now: when I walk Biscuit in the morning we see and hear formations of geese heading north. This is a moving, even thrilling, thing to experience.  I used the pronoun "we" deliberately in that first sentence: Biscuit will look up into the sky and watch as the geese pass. The group we saw this morning easily numbered over one hundred geese.

I've always assumed that these birds respond to the changing day length rather than to temperature: is that true?

Some familiar netted iris

Above you see a series of netted (reticulate) irises which gives an idea of what is readily available among these plants. Throughout my life I watched some of these go from expensive rarities to improbably inexpensive staples of the bulb trade. In common with so many other bulbs raised in their millions by the highly skilled commercial growers,  these irises do not get the respect they deserve from most gardeners. They are so dependably available year after year and so inexpensive that few gardeners evidently think them worth the bother to take seriously. And as the indifferent gardener soon discovers, simply planting the bulbs in the garden and then walking away is the short cut to eventual disappointment. Most do not persist without some help.

Yet there is one which does persist: the old form of Iris reticulata which was the only readily available form when I was a boy. And how long does it persist? There are plants here which were planted in, I think, 1963. But that one is the exception.

They thrive in an easily penetrated, high mineral soil of high pH; summer drought is essential. Pot culture with annual re-potting and summer storage of the pots under cover of some sort of rain cover sometimes works well. One summer I dug some after the foliage had ripened and stored them (with their numerous offset bulbs clustered around the big ones) for the summer in improvised paper envelops made of newspaper; these were stored in the basement. When I examined them in the autumn, I was amazed that even the smallest bulbs were still plump and ready to go.

In the early twentieth century all the variants which appeared were generally regarded as forms of Iris reticulata. Several of these very old cultivars are still in commerce (or the names are!): 'Krelagei', 'J.S. Dijt' and E.A. Bowles’ ‘Cantab’. Later introductions show the plain influence of Iris histrioides and we can safely call these hybrids. These include such handsome forms as  ‘Joyce’ and ‘Harmony’. With others such as ‘Spring Time’ and ‘Pixie’ it’s hard to say. In any case they are all well worth having.

In the photo above you see left to right, in the top row, Iris danfordiae, Iris winogradowii, 'Katharine Hodgkin', 'Cantab' and 'Harmony'.  In the bottom row are 'J.S. Dijt', 'Joyce', 'Pauline', 'Spring Time', 'Pixie' and 'Lady Beatrix Stanley'. I hope I've got the names right!

Lady Beatrix Stanley and Edward Augustus Bowles stop by for a visit.

Lady Beatrix Stanley and Mr. Edward Augustus Bowles visited today. They left their floral calling cards: an iris and a snowdrop from each. The irises are 'Lady Beatrix Stanley' (the larger, darker  blue on the right  in the image) and ‘Cantab’, raised by Mr. Bowles in the early twentieth century. Bowles called this iris his "turquoise treasure" in My Garden in Spring, where it is obvious that he is proud of his accomplishment.  He fills a page and then some with asseverations and supplications to the deities governing pride before daring to even give the name, 'Cantab', of this beauty. The snowdrops are ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’ (the one with the thick rosette of multiplied inners) and ‘Augustus’, named for Edward Augustus.

In the other image you see them in 1935, in the throes of judging a daffodil show. This image comes from The Daffodil and Tulip Year Book 1955 published by the Royal Horticultural Society. If you are the copyright owner of this image and you object to its usage here, notify me and I will remove it.

To fill out the arrangement, there are a pansy, a Cyclamen persicum leaf and blooms of Helleborus foetidus and garden hellebores.

Winter blues got you down? This might help.

This one is for those of you who are experiencing a really bad winter. Click on the link below to see a brief YouTube video I put together last April. It's a little slide show of spring flowers accompanied by a sound track of our local birds singing in the rain. The image above is one of the images from the slide show - that's the ancient daffodil cultivar 'Maximus'. It's been known for over four hundred years.For me, it's the sound track of the birds which does it.

Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-UJLOAaxZ8

Netted irises

The irises shown here, blooming today in the open, are typical examples of the netted irises or, as they are more commonly called, reticulate irises.The name comes from the appearance of the fibers which cover the bulb: the fibers form a net-like pattern: the word reticulata in Latin means (among other things) netted.The name reticulate irises has successfully spawned confusion with the name of the species Iris reticulata, once the best known member of the group. But most of the garden irises called reticulate irises are in fact hybrids, not simply forms of Iris reticulata itself. To counteract that confusion, I'm using the older term netted iris.

The irises of this group are sometimes placed in a genus of their own, Iridodictyum, from the classical Greek word τó δίκτυον for fishing net. This word Iridodictyum probably looks rather forbidding to those of you without a backgrouind in the ways of botanical nomenclature; but it's simply a restatement in romanized Greek of what the combination Iris reticulata says in Latin. Note that while Iris is feminine, Iridodictyum is neuter, so if you use Iridodictyum, you'll have to change some of the species names to agree with a neuter genus. Thus, Iris reticulata would become Iridodictyum reticulatum. In German they are called (among other names) die Netziris, from the German word das Netz for net.

They are easily grown with one caveat which one ignores at great risk: in our climate most of them require a very dry summer to persist from year to year. I'm experiencing an illustration of this now in my own garden: for years I covered the iris beds with a glass door during the dormant period of the irises. During those years the plants increased in numbers and size. Last summer I did not cover the beds. This year there are many disappointing gaps in the plantings. Mice, rabbits and deer do not seem to bother these plants, but hot, moist soil can be deadly when they are dormant.

Shown above is the hybrid 'Pixie'.

Tommy time

Tommies are in full bloom this week. These are Crocus tommasinianus, in many respects the best crocus for our gardens.

Buying tommies can be tricky because the widely marketed forms such as 'Ruby Giant' are not really true tommies. They are probably hybrids with Crocus vernus. But even if that is not the case, the forms such as 'Ruby Giant' do not behave in the garden the way true tommies do. True tommies seed around and form thick clumps of bloom; if you have the time to spend with them when they are in bloom, you'll notice that every plant is just a bit different from its neighbors.

When they are naturalized in lawns in their hundreds they produce a charming (but fleeting) effect on warm winter days. Look for the ripening seed capsules in late April; collect and then scatter the seeds to get colonies going in other parts of the garden.

If a gardening friend offers you some crocus corms with the comment "I don't know the name of this one - it's the little purple one that you see in old lawns in February", accept them with thanks! That was the source of one clump here in the garden.