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.  

Petroselinum crispum root parsley: A surprise vegetable tells the rest of the story.

For most of you, the vegetation shown above will probably be unfamiliar. I’ve known about it all my adult life from reading, but until the other day I don’t think I had ever encountered it in a grocery store. It’s what in the old days was called Hamburg parsley (and by old days I mean when Hamburg refered to the city, not to a meat patty), but it was also known as root parsley or parsley root among other names. It is a form of true parsley. The foliage is coarser and rougher than that of the usual culinary parsleys such as the curled sorts or the flat leaf sorts, and the flavor is a bit more assertive. The entire plant is edible. I’ll boil the chopped roots with potatoes to make parsley flavored mashed potatoes tonight.

A year or two ago I was listening to a local radio broadcast for which several local vegetarians were being interviewed. One of them got on the topic of parsnips: she woke up everyone who knows parsnips  with this claim: after you have eaten the parsnip roots, be sure to eat the greens attached to them because they are parsley. In fact, not only are parsnips and parsley different species in different genera, but some people have an allergic reaction to parsnip foliage! See the Wikipedia entry for a discussion of the phytophotodermatitis which can result from contact with parsnip foliage.

How in the world would someone with an interest in vegetables come to make a claim like that? When I was picking out my root parsley at the grocery store the other day, I think I was shown how. As I picked up the bunches of root parsley (imagine white carrots with a bushy head of parsley-like foliage), a woman who had been watching me finally asked “What are those, parsnips?” They do look like parsnips. As I heard that question I thought back to that radio broadcast: I’ll bet that the young woman who made that terrible mistake about parsnips and parsley had sometime been around someone who used root parsley as a parsnip substitute in cooking –or, maybe it was just someone who never learned the difference and thought the root parsley was a form of parsnips. Maybe they had been using root parsley all that time thinking they were parsnips with edible leaves.

I don’t think you will ever see parsnips sold in the grocery stores with their leafy tops still attached: carrots yes, root parsley yes, but not parsnips.

And should you ever brush against parsnip foliage (it’s a common weed locally) keep the area touched by the foliage out of the sun until you get home and can wash it off.      

Osmanthus × fortunei a shape shifter

In the image above are two branches taken from the same plant of Osmanthus × fortunei. The branch in the foreground, with spiny, holly-like foliage, is the form typically seen in nurseries. But after the plant becomes established in the garden, something interesting happens: it begins to produce branches whose leaves lack the spines and have a more rounded form. Typically this change takes place in the uppermost branches only: the lower ones retain the spiny leaves.

This also happens in Osmanthus heterophyllus, one of the parents of the hybrid Osmanthus × fortunei.

This name Osmanthus × fortunei is the name for all hybrids of the given parentage. Had the name been written Osmanthus 'Fortunei' , that would have indicated a particular clone or cultivar, which is not the case here. If the form I grow has a cultivar name, I'm not aware of it.  

Iris lazica

Iris lazica is blooming freely now, and the big blue flowers are certainly welcome at this time of year. It's very similar to, and related to, Iris unguicularis. To tell the truth, I'm not sure how to tell them apart. Iris lazica has the reputation of being hardier than I. unguicularis, and for garden purposes it might be a better choice because hardier or not it generally blooms later. This year the two were in bloom for several weeks together.
The plant of Iris lazica growing here is in a cold frame, but I've seen it in the open garden in other local gardens.   

David Griffiths' 1934 BULBS FROM SEED

The post title says it all. Here is the full text of David Griffiths' BULBS FROM SEED, published in June, 1934, as Circular No. 311 of the US Department of Agriculture.

Two of my favorite passages: on page three, he points out that a seedling bed 3 feet by 50 feet can produce about 25,000 plants! That should rejoice the heart of all of you who cherish dreams of a back yard cottage industry. On page 25, he points out that many bulbs need to mature into a drought - I've worked this one into many of the bulb presentations I've given. I think it's one of the most important things to know about bulb culture in our climate. 

The plant he mentions as Cyclamen europeum (sic) is almost certainly C. hederifolium. 

Witch-hazel in morning sun

What a treat in the middle of winter! The flowering of the witch-hazels always catches me by surprise. Yes, I know from long experience that they bloom in the winter. But really severe conditions will delay the flowering, and I've never been sure just what combination of conditions allows them to bloom. This winter, another of our recent mild winters, has had its mild and its bitter times, enough cold to shut down the snowdrops for a while. A haze of red out over the pergola caught my eye the other day, and sure enough Hamamelis 'Feuerzauber' was in full bloom. Yesterday I got out into the garden to do some close-up checking, and found 'Jelena' also in full bloom. 'Diane' is also blooming. That's 'Jelena' in the image above.

Nothing lights up the winter garden the way a witch-hazel in full bloom does.

It's spring in the cold frames

We are in the throes - temporarily I hope - of another cold wave.  Recent mornings have brought temperature readings of 16⁰ F. Early bloomers outside in the garden are frozen stiff. But it's spring in the cold frames. If you look carefully, you should be able to make out four flowers of Iris unguicularis, the Algerian iris. To the right of the iris is a white-flowered Cyclamen persicum. And then there are the primroses. These are garden forms derived from Primula vulgaris (long known as P. acaulis).

What a pleasure it is on a day like this to bundle up, go out into the garden and open the frames to find a sight like this! This really cheers me up. And it matters not if the temperature again drops: all of these plants are snug in the cold frame.

The iris took a couple of years to dig in and begin to bloom: but you can see that it's now putting on a good show. The cyclamen was purchased either late in 2011 or very early in 2012: these deliciously scented plants bloom for months - they will probably still be in bloom in April! I bought the primroses last week at the grocery store. They cost all of three for five dollars: what a deal! In the house they would probably last only for a week or two before the heat gets them. In the cold frames they will go on for weeks as long as they are watered regularly.

Fox sighting!

I was absentmindedly looking out into the garden about a half hour ago and noticed something brown moving around. At first I thought it might be a small deer, but then an immediately recognizable face came into view: it was an adult red fox. It was sitting out in the sun grooming itself and scratching now and then. Every once in a while its eyes would start to close, as if the warmth from the sun might be inducing a nap. But it remained alert, continually turning its head this way and that.

This was probably the first time I've seen a fox seemingly at east in broad daylight. Usually I see them as a fleeting blur of color at the edge of the woods or fields.

When we first moved here a bit over fifty years ago, I saw a gray fox once. And there were local skunks back then, too. I have not seen a local skunk for decades. Opossums are still here, but they seem to be either very uncommon or very secretive - and more likely to be seen dead on the road than live in the woods. Groundhogs seem not to remain in the immediate area for long, but do occasionally pass through. Raccoons are a common sight. Foxes, always red foxes,  I see infrequently, but often enough to suggest that the local population is healthy and here to stay. They can occasionally be seen prowling the road side at night down in the park.

A mid-winter surprise

There was a surprise waiting for me out in the garden earlier today. At the front door there are plants of Cyclamen persicum, garden primroses and winter jasmine in bloom. But here's what's remarkable, and it would have been just as remarkable in the middle of the summer: there were bees, honeybees, many of them, visiting the flowers. I can't remember the last time I saw even one bee in the garden. Of the plants mentioned, only the cyclamens have a fragrance which I can detect - did they draw in the bees?

One of my neighbors several blocks away got started with honey bees last year. After she told me about that, I began to keep an eye on the flowers in the garden. But the bees never found my garden - or if they did they took no interest in it. During October and November, when there were plenty of asters blooming in the garden, I expected to see plenty of bees. But I don't think I  saw even one.

Were the bees I saw this morning from her hives?

Popovers again

I fell asleep last night resolving to make popovers for breakfast today. One of the tricks to integrating popovers into the morning routine is to get them into the oven before you start to do anything else. That way the 45-50 minute  cooking time passes quickly. By the time they are ready and you sit down to eat them, you can reward yourself with a few extra ones for what you've already accomplished that morning. If the only thing you've accomplished that morning was to read the morning paper, then be assured that a nice plate of popovers is a great way to assuage the anxiety provoked by reading the news. If you've done nothing but loaf and daydream while they were cooking, go ahead and dig in anyway: after all, you made them!

The last post on popovers was done in 2009; the image above looks a lot like the one posted back then, but the ones you see were baked and consumed this morning.   Popovers are very photogenic, aren't they?