The fire pink

This is Silene virginica, the fire pink. It’s another example of an undeniably worthwhile native plant which is largely neglected by gardeners. It’s a hummingbird magnet, and it makes a good rock garden plant. It’s easy from seed. It’s also somewhat shade tolerant. Why is it so uncommon in gardens?

Bletilla ochracea 'Chinese Butterfly'

This is Bletilla ochracea 'Chinese Butterfly'. I have this thanks to the kindness of a friend. At one of the big local plant sales earlier this year I ran into him at one of the booths. I was curious to see what he had picked out, and he began to show some of his choices to me. He also explained that they had been pre-ordered. At first I missed that part because I heard him mention Bletilla ochracea, a plant high on my want list. I had grown this yellow-flowered species years ago, and was keen to acquire it again.


So as it turned out, there were no plants of Bletilla ochracea for sale at the booth. I must have gone into a visible tail-spin, because he offered to let me buy the plant for myself. I jumped at the chance. And when I had the plant in my hands, I noticed an until-then unnoticed bonus: the plant had an inflorescence.

After paying for the plant and again thanking my friend for his generosity, I noticed the stick tag in the pot. I expected it to say Bletilla ochracea, but instead it said Bletilla ochracea 'Chinese Butterfly', a name I knew nothing about. And the color picture on the tag was disturbing: it showed a white-flowered plant. When I got home, I did some Googling: I didn't like what I saw.

Last week the picture changed entirely. The flower buds had developed to the point that I could see color, and it was not white. It was a definite soft yellow. I was happy again. Last night the first flower had opened enough for me to see that I indeed had a yellow-flowered Bletilla again.

It's a beauty, isn't it?

Japanese iris

These amazing flowers really have to be seen to be believed. Although their color range is very limited, the individual flowers are sumptuous. Yet these huge flowers last only about two days. My plants came from a sale sponsored by one of the local iris groups over a decade ago. They came with names, but the labels were buried under the plants, and I’ve not been able to locate them since. I have a list of the names, but they don’t seem to match similarly named images on the web. In a sense, this only adds to the mystery surrounding these plants.


These grow in the bog trays at the edge of the pool. They have been carefree since the day they were planted, and over the years they have spread into clumps, some thick, some far ranging. In bloom the plants are between three and four feet high.

In old books these irises are called Iris kaempferi, newer books call them I. ensata. They do not require to be grown in water throughout the year. If they are not grown beside a pool or other wet place, it is traditional to flood the growing site as the budded scapes appear.

They are particularly beautiful at the waterside, especially if the water is alive with bright orange goldfish: the contrast between the bright, contrasting color and active movement of the fish on the one hand and the somber hues and staid poise of the irises on the other is enchanting.

If you want to enjoy them, drop what you are doing and get out to the garden: they will be gone for aonther year before you know it.

Brachystelma cathcartense

Imagine, if you can, a Stapelia trying to be a Fritillaria, and you’ll have a rough idea of what this plant suggests. It’s a South African asclepiad and evidently will eventually form a substantial caudex. It’s not a garden plant here, or at least I don’t expect it to be. When dormant it will probably endure sub-freezing conditions as long as it’s dry. I’ll keep it in the protected cold frame during the winter. Or maybe I’ll relent and keep it inside as a house plant.

The many uncertainties expressed in the preceding paragraph are the result of my almost complete lack of real knowledge about this plant. It came from Seneca Hill Perennials a few months ago; I took it out of the box, watered it, and a few weeks later took the picture above.

Green edged petunia déjà vu

Gardeners vary a lot with respect to their grasp of the traditions of gardening. Many know no more or less than the information given in catalogs. Many probably don’t want to know any more than that. I’ve seen beautiful gardens made by people who wouldn’t be able to name their plants at any more than a very superficial level, who have only the vaguest notions of botanical relationships, who don’t know or want to know anything about the origins of their plants or about the persons and circumstances who/which brought those plants into cultivation.


At the other end of the spectrum are those of us who want to know everything. We live to get our fingers onto a keyboard and Google away the afternoon. Learning has never been so easy. Luckiest of us are those who have extensive personal libraries. Even those of us with relatively modest personal libraries often have access to information still outside the reach of Google.

And sometimes things come together – call it déjà vu, what goes around comes around, nothing’s new under the sun, or just waiting patiently – in ways which have us digging into the arcane depths of our collections of ephemera. I had just that experience yesterday while examining, of all things, petunias. One of the local big box stores had hundreds of pots of selected petunias selling for about $4 per pot. It’s not hard to see why there have always been gardeners who are enthusiastic about petunias. Unlike impatiens, fibrous begonias and zinnias, all of which might just as well be made of plastic, petunias are indisputably real flowers. The slightest breeze moves the flowers, the shape of the plant changes over time as the plant slowly expands and, best of all for me, some of them are deliciously fragrant.

But back to those petunias at the big box store: as I looked over the plants, I spotted something which really gave me a jolt. There was a petunia with flowers which had a distinct green edge to the red-violet flowers. That such a petunia exists is not what surprised me. Such petunias were well known over seventy years ago, before the Second World War. And how do I know that such petunias existed long ago? Among the ephemera I have collected over the years is a catalog from 1937 from the Richard Diener company, then of Oxnard, California. The catalog contains the photograph shown above (the upper image); at first glance, it does look a bit like some strange lettuce. But it’s a double flowered petunia whose outermost petals have a distinct green edge. I’ve had that catalog for decades, and so I’ve known about such petunias for that long – but until yesterday I had never seen anything like it.

Here’s what Diener had to say back in 1937: “ No. 26, GREEN EDGED DOUBLE.- This type comes in all colors but all have a seam around the petals which is grass green. I have been working on this variety for the last eight years to bring it to perfection, as it was at first somewhat weak, The Green Edged variety was a sensation at the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1934. It will attract attention everywhere. “

The petunia I bought yesterday, the cultivar ‘Supertunia ® Pretty Much Picasso ™‘ of the Proven Winners range, has single rather than double flowers. But the green edge is there and it’s distinct. That's it in the lower image above. How long have I waited to see a petunia like this? And I wonder if there is any connection between Diener’s breeding lines from so long ago and this new cultivar?

Here's a related funny story. Once, while searching a local library for old catalogs, one of the librarians made a comment about my interest in "ephemerata". The word ephemera is itself already plural. But this word "ephemerata" does sound like a Greek plural, and I was momentarily flummoxed. What, for instance, would the singular form be? Well, as it turns out, "ephemerata" exists (in the sense that if you Google it, there are hits), but it isn't defined as far as I can find. It's one thing to make a mistake; it's another to make it in a way which sounds so authoritative!

Three great roses

Here are three similar roses, roses which have long been favorites wherever they can be grown. The images above are stacked in chronological order: on top is ‘Lamarque’, a tea noisette raised in 1830 and one of the most popular roses during the nineteenth century. Next comes the climbing form of ‘Devoniensis’ a climbing tea rose. The bush form was raised in 1838, the climbing sport was introduced in 1858 . This climbing ‘Devoniensis’ has a suffusion of soft peach color in addition to the soft yellow. I’m enjoying both of these now from newly received plants, but I really don’t expect either to become well established in the garden without extensive winter protection and a carefully chosen site.


The third rose is ‘Albéric Barbier’ of 1900. This flower opened during relatively cool weather and thus shows a suffusion of yellow in the center. On the rare occasions when the weather conditions are just right, the flowers open pale yellow; in typically warm weather the flowers open white with no trace of yellow.

It was only when I noticed the suffusion of yellow in each of these roses that I began to connect them and see them in a historical context. Their recorded parentage suggests that they have little in common, yet they are much alike. When ‘Lamarque’ was introduced, roses in the modern high-centered style had yet to be developed. By the time the climbing form of ‘Devoniensis’ was introduced, the roses which were to become known as hybrid teas were already making the rounds. And by the time ‘Albéric Barbier’ was introduced, it must have seemed a bit old-fashioned from the start.

But maybe that was a good thing. When ‘Albéric Barbier’ was introduced, there must have been many rosarians who were very familiar with ‘Lamarque’ and ‘Devoniensis’. In ‘Albéric Barbier’ I wonder if they saw a chance to grow a similar rose under harsher conditions. Here in eastern North America, both ‘Lamarque’ and ‘Devoniensis’ are dubious much north of zone 8; ‘Albéric Barbier’ on the other hand takes our winters with ease and becomes a force with which to reckon.

Much as the flowers look alike, the fragrances of these roses are different. ‘Lamarque’ is sweet tea, ‘Devoniensis’ is tea with added sweetness and body, ‘Albéric Barbier’ is refreshingly tart green apple.

'Lamarque’ and ‘Devoniensis’ are results of cutting-edge hybridization in the early nineteenth century. The newly introduced tea rose (itself an old hybrid from China) was crossed with various existing European roses; the result was a sudden profusion of roses unlike any seen before. Because the potentially huge climbing Rosa moschata figured in the mix, some of these new roses were climbers by nature. These came to be known as Noisette roses or, if the tea influence was strong, tea-noisettes. Those which remained bushy, such as ‘Devoniensis’ came to be known as tea roses. When they produced climbing sports, those sports were called climbing teas rather than tea-noisettes. But the differences involved are differences of degree rather than differences in kind, and the resulting horticultural categories are highly artificial.

‘Albéric Barbier’ was the result of a similar but utterly different burst of cutting-edge hybridization nearly a century later. A newly introduced rose then known as Rosa wichuraiana was used to produce hybrids which in some ways paralleled the early nineteenth century hybrids and in other ways were very different. It’s easy to believe that those first hybridizers who used Rosa wichurana (as it is now called) had the high bar of accomplishment set by their early nineteenth century predecessors in mind: they managed to combine the grace of the early nineteenth century hybrids with a degree of vigor and cold hardiness formerly rare in climbing roses. The resulting hybrids were hugely popular for the next twenty or thirty years, and then began to slip into obscurity. Tastes have changed, but the roses themselves are as good as they ever were; and some of us are very glad indeed that so many have survived and can be grown in our gardens today.

The Moss Rose

I still remember the first time, now over a half-century ago, I saw a moss rose: my high school biology teacher, Miss Boyer, had brought one from her garden to class. I remember spending some time examining it carefully, enjoying the fragrance of the flower and the resinous fragrance of the branched glands which give this rose its name. This fragrant resin clings to whatever touches it, and if you stroke the soft moss or draw the mossy stem across your lip, you will be able to take the fragrance with you and enjoy it for hours.
The bud shown in the image above is that of the so-called common moss rose, although it’s anything but common in either the literal or figurative senses. Surely someone in my gardening circle must grow moss roses, but if they do, I’ve never seen them. And among roses, the moss roses are anything but common.

The moss mutation seems to have occurred several times in roses. Graham Stuart Thomas made a firm distinction between the soft moss of the moss roses derived (probably by somatic mutation) from the cabbage rose Rosa 'Centifolia'  and the hard moss which characterizes the moss roses derived from the autumn damask rose. In addition to these, there are numerous hybrids in which the moss effect is found; these mostly have moss roses of the autumn damask sort in their background. I’m not aware of any hybrid moss roses which can be said with certainty to have the common moss in their background. However, it is said that a single-flowered (i.e. with few petals, viable pollen and capable of setting viable seed) mutation occurred in the early nineteenth century, and from this plant many hybridized mosses were raised.

With all of that in mind, it's evident that there are several sorts of roses which are being called moss roses. Four groups make sense to me: 1) the mosses derived as somatic mutations from Rosa 'Centifolia'  2) the mosses derived as somatic mutations from Rosa  'Bifera'  or, as it is often called 'Damascena Bifera'; 3) the hybrids derived from the single-flowered mutation of the common moss rose; and 4) the hybrids derived from the mossy mutation of Rosa 'Bifera' aka 'Damascena bifera'.

If it is true that the common moss originated as a bud sport of the cabbage rose Rosa 'Centifolia', then it can be said that the moss rose and the cabbage rose are pieces of one original seedling; in other words they form a variable clone. And if the single-flowered mutation mentioned above was in fact a bud sport, then it, too, is a part of this same variable clone.

A word seems necessary about the formatting of the names. In old books it's usual to see the names Rosa centifolia and Rosa damascena bifera, the names italicized as if the plants in question were species. These are in fact ancient hybrids. The one known as 'Centifolia' (the name here formatted to reflect the belief that it is a clone of garden origin) seems to have originated in the late seventeenth or even early eighteenth century; it is the  "perfected form which produced the moss rose" (to use Dr. Hurst's phrase as quoted by Thomas), the ultimate form in a series of hybrid roses which had been in development for about two centuries among the Dutch.  The Romans used the term  "rosa centifolia" for a rose they knew, but it was not this plant.

Rosa 'Damascena Bifera' or Rosa 'Bifera' is said to be a hybrid of Rosa gallica and R. moschata. This plant is of truly ancient origin, and might have been known to the Romans of the Classical period.

The Spanish Upstart

Writing in the early 1930’s on the occasion of the death of a twelve-year-old plant of the rose ‘Alida Lovett’, Richardson Wright had this to say in his Another Gardener’s Bed Book: “Ah well. I could buy another. Or perhaps it would be better not to try Alida again. A wise man never attempts to attain the same perfect enjoyment twice in the same place…It might be better to substitute for Alida some Spanish upstart with an unpronounceable name.”

The rose ‘Alida Lovett’ is all but forgotten now, although it is still in commerce thanks to the efforts of certain old-rose enthusiasts. One of them is sending me a plant very soon (that’s still true, isn’t it, Connie?).

But this post is about the Spanish upstart. It’s not hard to guess which rose Wright had in mind. Almost certainly it had to be ‘Mme Grégoire Staechelin’, the beauty you see above. She made her debut in 1927 to great acclaim (and back in those days she was called a climbing hybrid tea). The rose world embraced her enthusiastically, and to this day she still has a keen following wherever fine roses are grown.

She has at least three qualities which people of orthodox taste do not like. For one, this rose blooms only in the spring. For another, the flowers nod charmingly in the style of tea roses. And then there is the name: the ethnocentric spirit of early twentieth century America rejected the name 'Mme Grégoire Staechelin' and substituted "Spanish Beauty". 

In the modern scheme of things, she is now placed among the large flowered climbers.

The buxom flowers have a great scent and a color combination which almost everyone likes. A well-established plant in full bloom is very easy indeed to look at, and it will scent the surrounding garden.

About this word buxom: after typing buxom, I was curious to see how it would be defined by the Encarta Dictionary which is available when I use Microsoft Word. There it was grossly defined as “with large breasts”. I’m used to men and women with only one breast, and indeed persons with “breasts” are so rare that it’s hard to believe that a word was coined for them. A pack, a big pack, of chicken breasts is a possibility; but to tell the truth, I doubt if even a circus side show has ever exhibited a person with more than one breast. At this point I was feeling a strong need for some old-fashioned sensibilities, so I checked my Webster’s Seventh and found that it gives two archaic meanings for this word. And then it gives the meaning I had in mind: “vigorously or healthily plump; specif full-bosomed.”

Rosa 'Scharlachglut'

Here’s another favorite rose, the Kordes hybrid ‘Scharlachglut’.

Every rose in this garden is a favorite. Why should it be otherwise in such a small garden? There isn’t room enough here for all the roses I want, so what sense would it make to have any but favorites?

‘Scharlachglut’ has been in the garden longer than any other rose – so long that I forget where it was obtained. That information is probably buried in the manuscript gardening diaries I’ve been keeping for forty years. Over the years it’s been moved several times.

The parentage of this rose is given variously; evidently it’s a hybrid between a modern rose and one of the old European garden roses. It forms a shrub about six feet or more high where there is room for it. Here, it gets cut back enough to fit into a smaller space. It blooms only in the spring, and then for about two weeks or so. Many people who are drawn to this rose because of its intense color – and “drawn” to it is an appropriate way to phrase it because the strong fragrance of this rose carries well on the air – lose interest as soon as they hear it blooms only in the spring. Yet these same people plant other herbaceous and woody plants which bloom only once a year; why are the roses held to a different standard? Learn to think of them as you would an azalea or a peony; enjoy them in their season and then go on to other things.

This rose is sometimes compared to or confused with the rose ‘Altissimo’. ‘Altissimo’ is one of those roses which looks great in catalogs. When you get it in the garden you notice that its red is a very cold red and there is no fragrance to speak of. ‘Scharlachglut’ on the other hand has the most wonderful warm red color when the flowers first open; they later fade a bit, especially if the weather is hot, and the old flowers do “blue” a bit. But in a cool spring a bush in full bloom is a glorious sight.

Paeonia 'Dawn Glow'

This intriguing peony was raised by Sylvia Saunders, daughter of Arthur Percy Saunders. This cultivar has Paeonia macrophylla in its background. The coloration is very subtle and what you see depends a lot on the quality of the light. If you look into the heart of the flower, you will notice slightly darker flares of color.

The flowers are not the only unusual feature of this cultivar. The foliage is said (I have not yet noticed this myself) to have sometimes a scent of cloves. It was this quality more than the qualities of the flower which caused me to acquire this one. Years ago I grew a peony received under the name Paeonia wittmanniana macrophylla which produced foliage with a distinct aroma of boxwood. I would like to acquire that one again, but for now ‘Dawn Glow’ is a nice substitute.

Beautiful bracts

Heavy winds during the last few days have left the ground littered with the bracts of the dove tree, Davidia involucrata. Among gardeners of my generation, a freely flowering dove tree is a bit of a trophy plant. I planted my first one when I was a teenager; it survived only a few years. Looking back, I’m glad it didn’t make it – I had planted it in the middle of the front lawn, the last place I need another tree.


Years later I tried again, this time successfully. I didn’t do any better in choosing a site this time. If you are thinking about planting a dove tree, plant it where it can be viewed with the sun in back of you. The only easy way to see the big flowering tree in the garden now is to look up into the sun – not a nice experience.

This is a tree which requires patience from the gardener. Our tree started as a three footer. The first blooms came seventeen long years later. The tree developed with two trunks; for years only one of those trunks bloomed. This year the second trunk finally started to bloom. In fact, this has been the best year yet for bloom from this tree. On rare occasions it sets seed, but this is not a regular occurrence.

Iris ‘Albicans’

This is the so-called Muslim cemetery iris. It’s been known for centuries in western gardens. It was originally named Iris albicans, as if it were a species. But as it turns out, it’s an old hybrid. As a result, one modern way to format the name is Iris ‘Albicans’.

The modern tall bearded iris is just that, modern. Nineteenth century hybridists began to expand the variety in bearded irises, but the forms raised then hardly qualify for consideration as tall bearded iris. During the first decades of the twentieth century, developments in tall bearded irises really began to take off.

Old Iris ‘Albicans’ remains a worthwhile garden plant. It blooms with the earliest peonies and columbines, well before the tall bearded sorts.

Polygala paucifolia

Many birders keep a life list, generally a list of every species they have seen. Some vary the game by keeping a list of birds they have heard in song, If I’m not mistaken, a lot of the birds John James Audubon painted were later invited to join him at the table: did he keep a list of the birds of America he had eaten?


The idea of a life list for plants intrigues me, but I don’t keep one. Yet I am aware of certain plants I would very much like to see, and it becomes a sort of celebration when I do. I had such an experience the other day, and it was occasioned by the little charmer you see in the image above. That’s Polygala paucifolia, a plant native to widely scattered acidic woodlands here in eastern North America.

I would like to say I had grown it myself; but as you can see, it's in a pot. I purchased it last weekend at a native plant sale.

I’ve probably known about this plant since I was a teenager, and photographs of the plant never failed to pique my interest. It’s such a beautiful little plant that one would expect it to be widely grown, and yet…there are problems. It’s native to acidic woodlands, and like so much of the native acidic woodland flora, it does not last long under typical garden settings. One possible culprit: I’ve heard that the local tap water is treated to have a pH of about 7. Water plants which need acidic conditions with that, and it’s only a matter of time before they depart. I’ve got my fingers crossed, and there is plenty of vinegar on hand to treat the tap water. But I might be publishing an obituary in a few months.

Gerbera “Madame 5 by 5”

I picked this up at one of the local grocery stores the other day. The flower is huge (a bit over five inches in diameter) and the stem is not much taller. Had the plant been treated with some sort of growth retardant to keep the height down? And will it eventually produce taller stems?


And why in the world am I buying gerberas? They are not dependably hardy here, so that rules out their use as garden plants. I suspect that they will not bloom once the night temperatures go up.

But this plant combines a spectacular flower with an improbable plant size so well that it’s irresistible. Do you know who Madame 5 by 5 was? That was one name used for the early twentieth century opera singer Luisa Tetrazzini. As a singer she was spectacular, and the recordings exist to prove this. As her celebrity grew so did her girth. Short to begin with, at the height of her fame she was very well rounded indeed! Her name survives, outside the rather esoteric world of those of us who still listen to recordings made a century ago,  as a name for certain pasta preparations for which, as you might suspect, a proper serving is, shall we say, copious.  

So in this garden, Madame 5 by 5 it is. Now I’ll go listen to Tetrazzini’s wonderful recording of Tosti’s song “Aprile”.

Yet another new rose

Another of the new roses from Vintage Roses has started to bloom, this time the oddly-named ‘JACtan’ which you see in the image above. When I selected this one, I broke one of my most basic rose-buying rules, the rule that dictates that I buy only roses noted for great fragrance. ‘JACtan’ has fragrance, but evidently it is not notable for that. I have not tested the bloom shown above in warmth: it’s been rainy and cool during the period in which the blossom opened. So far, I detect a slight tea fragrance (this is not a tea rose but rather a modern, large flowered climber).

‘JACtan’ is such an ugly name that I’m determined not to use it in this garden. For now, I’ll think of it as the “melon rose” since the color approximates that of the flesh of some ripe melons. I’ve read that the rose was originally named ‘Butterscotch’, and what in most respects a great choice that was. Unfortunately it failed in one key respect: the name ‘Butterscotch’ had already been used for another rose. 'JACtan' was originally introduced by the Jackson & Perkins Company not quite twenty-five years ago. Apparently it was never given an agreeable name, and it has been making the rounds all these years under the repellent moniker given above. This is, I suppose, an abbreviation of the company name squashed together with the color (which is, in some lights, tan).

I think I’m going to like this one!

Another new rose

Here’s another newly received rose from Vintage Roses. This one, being a “found” rose, has so-far not been identified but goes under the working name “Pleasant Hill Cemetery”. It’s thought to be a tea noisette rose – the tea noisettes are just about my favorite roses. The opening flower you see in the image above was on the plant when I unpacked it. The instructions that came with the plants said to pinch off all buds – fat chance that will happen!


This is another rose about which I knew nothing until I visited the Vintage Roses website. They praised it highly for fragrance and that’s enough to get a rose into my garden. Now that it’s blooming, what’s the verdict? Oh my gosh, this is another one with a fragrance which is amazing. The fragrance is nothing like the fragrance of ‘Dreaming Spires’; I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s light, intense, very sweet, rose but not Damask rose - maybe a bit of sweet pea? Whatever it is, it’s wonderful. Here again, there is no scent in the cool of the morning, but as the temperature rises, the scent eventually pours out.

Wow! Does this ever make me happy!

First bloom on a newly received rose

The rose in the image above is the cultivar ‘Dreaming Spires’, a rose introduced almost forty years ago. It’s one of the so-called large flowered climbing roses. Until I visited the Vintage Roses website for the first time about a month ago, I had never heard of it. They had some nice things to say about it, and so I decided to give it a try. The rose arrived with several buds, and the first of them is now opening.

This is definitely my kind of rose. The scent is wonderful. Early in the morning while it’s still cool there is no scent to speak of. But as things warm up, the scent slowly develops into something amazing. To my nose it’s a combination of Damask rose, canned peaches and musk, the sort of scent which, strong as it is, I still can’t get enough of.

Good choice, Jim! And thanks to the folks at Vintage Roses for sending such a nice plant. You can check out their web site at:

http://www.vintagegardens.com/

Paeonia mascula

Peony season 2010 opened on Tuesday of this week with, as usual, Paeonia mascula. Some recent accounts make this P. caucasica, but I've known it as P. mascula most of my gardening life;  and I'm rapidly approaching the age where I can claim to be an old dog who won't learn new tricks.

The flowers of these wild peonies are a fleeting presence in our gardens. Temperatures earlier this week were hovering around 90º F (~32 º C) for several days in a row. Under those conditions, the flowers can be literally ephemeral, although so far they have lasted for several days. Late yesterday afternoon, as I was cleaning up in preparation for the incipient rain storms after a long and very productive day in the garden, it occurred to me to photograph the peonies now in the event that they fell apart during the rain storms. The light was not good, so the image above in not the best. There will be another chance soon: the flowers survived the storm - and so I might replace the image above soon.

Lilium tsingtauense

If I told you that this is the foliage of a lily, would your next question be “Is it diseased?” If so, you would probably have lots of company. On the lily discussion forum this week someone asked just that question about his seedlings of this species.


This is Lilium tsingtauense, one of the eastern Asian martagons. It does not look like a martagon, but it breeds with the martagons. In bloom, the flowers are the exact color of the tawny daylily, Hemerocallis fulva. But there is this difference: the flowers of the lily are shiny, as if lacquered.

This species is noted for the handsome (NOT diseased) mottled pattern seen in the newly developed foliage. Later in the season the pattern disappears.

I’ve never seen a plant of this species higher than about two feet at the most. But it is said to reach four feet under good conditions. It is well adapted to our local conditions but rarely seen in local gardens.

Narcissus 'Maximus'

The pert looking daffodil shown above is Narcissus ‘Maximus’, and it is said to have been blooming in English gardens over 400 years ago. Initially my attention was drawn to this daffodil due to a misprint in Bowles' Handbook of Narcissus: it is described there as being 30 inches high when in bloom. That would make it a real giraffe among daffodils. But the 30 inches is evidently a misprint for 30 cm; among the daffodils of the Elizabethan garden, even that made it a tall one.

The orchid grower in spite of himself

I’ve mentioned in this blog before that I’m not really an orchid person. But they are tempting, aren’t they? The one above came from the discount bin at a local grocery store in 2008. Most of the flowers had faded, so it was put out for $2 or so. I bought it to see if I could bring it back into bloom. And now, not quite two years later, that’s what has happened.


The plant shown above is known as Colmanara (a nothogenus) 'Kilauea Pacific Flare'.

Assaying the Chilean Tropaeolum

The little specks of yellow in the image above represent – unlikely as it seems – a sort of gardening triumph for me. Those flowers are the flowers of Tropaeolum brachyceras, a plant which grows wild in Chile. The familiar garden nasturtium is a Tropaeolum, a much more showy and easily grown one. But for the grower in our climate looking for a challenge, these Chilean species provide a stiff one.


The garden nasturtiums are grown in our climate as annuals, although by nature they are perennials. These Chilean Tropaeolum are also perennials, perennials which grow from a tuberous corm (or if you prefer, just plain tuber). In September 2008 I received one of Tropaeolum brachyceras. It was about the size of a fat grape (sorry to be so technical), and was planted in the soil of the most protected cold frame right away.. It did not begin to sprout until almost a year later; that’s typical for these plants – they sometimes take a year off.

Last fall I noticed the hair-thin sprouts of the plant emerging. They reminded me of the fronds of some Adiantum ferns – they were that thin and delicate and black, too. The plant continued to grow throughout the fall and winter. At one point, the outside temperature dropped to 3 degrees above zero F. Yet things inside the cold frame must have remained snug, because the tender new growth never showed any damage.

Several weeks ago flower buds began to appear. I let out a cautious, preliminary YIPPEE. On April 4 the first flowers opened. I had done it, I had flowered one of the Chilean Tropaeolum. I suspect that I now belong to a rather exclusive club.

It has not gone entirely to my head: I admit it, those little yellow flowers look suspiciously like those of the little weedy oxalis which infests the lawn.

Gardeners need patience

When I was a kid in my very early teens I mail-ordered a European fire-bellied toad from a small company in Vermont. Kids, of course, have very short attention spans; the toad did not appear in the mail any time soon, and so I more or less forgot about it. The tumultuous life of a teenager provided plenty of distractions. Then a year later, without any warning, a tiny match-box sized container appeared in the mail. I was skeptical: could the toad possibly be in that little box? It was. We develop patience, whether we want to or not it seems.


A bit over twenty years ago I imported a rose of some historic importance from the famous English firm, Hillier Nursery. It grew slowly and eventually after several years became strong enough to bloom. For two or three years it bloomed, and then it suddenly died. At the time I was not about to go through the hassle of importing a rose again (permits, methyl bromide, quarantine), and the years passed. Then I began to miss it, and wanted a replacement.

In November 2003 I put down a deposit to be put on a list for this rose. Then the wait began. I went into this thinking I would get my rose by 2005 at the latest. But things happen - or, in this case, don't happen. I wrote the occasional plaintive letter; the responses were always cordial and encouraging. That I knew the difficulty of propagating the rose in question helped - I felt things were going in the right direction. I know about patience.

The other day I realized that since it was already mid March, and the rose shipping season was underway, maybe it was time to nudge the grower again. I made a mental note to myself to do just that.

The very next day the postman dropped off an unexpected box. I've ordered a lot of stuff lately, and I had no idea what was in the box. When I saw the return address my heart leaped: could it be, finally, after all these years? Yes, it was: after six and a half years I finally got my rose.

There is a lot more to this story, and I'll tell it later.

Note: this posting was originally posted last week; I had to change a comment, and the only way I know to do that is to delete the original posting and re-post it without the comment.

Boy plants

The ancient botanists sometimes distinguished between male types of plant and female types of plant. For instance, there were male ferns and female ferns, and the names were picked up and carried over into modern plant nomenclature as filix-femina and filix-mas. The distinction had to do with how finely the fronds were cut.

I think of some plants or flowers as feminine and masculine. Sweet peas are definitely feminine to me, feminine in a girly way. Some hybrid tea roses are feminine, but often in an aggressive, threatening sort of way.

And then there are the boy plants. These are not simply masculine in the way of, for instance, oaks. They are plants in which boys, even boys who ordinarily don’t have an interest in plants, will take an interest. The best examples are those priapic aroids which are the subject of the Chautauqua show given by Tony Avent: when he’s in town, be sure to get into the tent and catch the performance.

There are other categories of boy plants: the ones which stink (lots of aroids again) or the ones which are simply a gross-out in appearance. The asarums provide some good examples of gross-out plants. When Asarum noibilissimum blooms, you want to try to say something nice about the flower (“It’s sure big!”) but “prepossessing” won’t be the word you are looking for. It’s not just the look, it’s the texture and the colors. To me it looks like a big fat scab, or suppurating flesh or, and this really isn’t nice so close your eyes for the next few lines if you are sensitive, “where the sun don’t shine”. OK, I warned you. We have to be objective (or is it obnoxious?). But that’s why it’s a boy plant.

Brain coral sedums

There are a lot of good reasons to like sedums, and here’s one of them. The big border sedums, after they have put on a few years of growth, form wide mats dense with sprouts. Early in the year, just before they put on much new growth, they go through their “brain coral” stage. It doesn’t last long, but it’s totally cool as long as it does.


Here you see Sedum ‘Munstead Dark Red’, a form or hybrid of Sedum telephium I think. Other good sedums for this effect are S. sieboldii, S. spectabile, S. ‘Autumn Joy’, S. cauticola and its close relations, S. ‘Vera Jameson’ and similar forms – there are probably lots of others which I have not yet grown.

Wine, friends and roses

Long piece...

Yesterday I attended an informal gathering of shakers and movers of the local gardening scene. The event was occasioned by the visit of Sean Hogan of Cistus Nursery in Portland, Oregon. A copious meal served in three removes kept the group circulating, meeting and greeting. Our hosts, Jim and Dan, are probably still in bed this morning: what a spread - and all of it home made! Maybe I should have volunteered to come back today and help with the clean up.

The weather was perfect, the garden was full of hellebores, and the many conversations were intense and entertaining. I ran into two fellow bloggers, Connie of Hartwood Roses

http://www.hartwoodroses.com/index.php

and Chris U of 1003 Gardens:

http://1003gardens.blogspot.com/

Chris is interested in everything; Connie and I share an enthusiasm for certain roses. I could have talked to each of them all day without getting bored.

Now to the roses.

A bit of history helps here. What follows was taken from Graham Stuart Thomas's Climbing Roses Old and New of 1965 and Helen Van Pelt Wilson's Climbing Roses of 1955. I acquired and devoured Thomas's rose trilogy near the times they were originally published. These provided the structure on which my subsequent understanding of garden roses was based. Callow youth that I was, I had a low regard for two important home-grown products: Helen Van Pelt Wilson's Climbing Roses mentioned above and Richard Thomson's Old Roses for Modern Gardens of 1959. My appreciation for these works came only after I realized that Mother Nature has a thing or two to say about which roses we can grow.

Late in the nineteenth century the Belgian botanist François Crépin described two new Asian roses using the names Rosa wichuraiana and Rosa luciae. Some modern botanists treat these as conspecific. For over a century the names were spelled as I have given them. Recently there has been a move to change the spelling of each name: wichuraiana becomes wichurana and luciae becomes lucieae in the new spellings. Or at least I think that's what is happening. And there are other spellings. Max Wichura would no doubt be surprised at the trouble his name has given gardeners.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the American nurseryman William Manda began to use the one he knew as Rosa wichuraiana for hybridizing. The results were amazing: he produced several roses of unique character, roses unlike any which had been raised before. These roses produced prodigiously long limp canes ideal for training on walls, pergolas and fences. One of Manda's roses, 'Gardenia' of 1899, is still grown and loved by many gardeners. Before I leave Manda, I should mention that I grow an ivy Hedera helix 'Manda's Crested' which might have originated in his nursery (I have not been able to confirm that yet).

Manda's success was quickly imitated by others, most notably by Dr. Van Fleet in the United States and by the firm of Messieurs Barbier et Cie in Orléans, France. Dr. Van Fleet's hybrids became well known here in the US - and deservedly so. It's time for a revival of interest in the Van Fleet hybrids. Other than the excellent and still widely sold 'New Dawn', a bud sport of 'Dr. Van Fleet', few are now widely grown.

The Barbier firm used what they knew as Rosa luciae to produce a line of these hybrids over a period of two decades, although the best known ones were produced early in the century. The Barbier hybrids have medium-sized flowers which are produced prodigiously. Some rebloom in some climates. The ones I know do not rebloom for me.

Here's what intrigues me: for all their good qualities, these Barbier roses do not seem to have caught on in America. I checked McFarland's Modern Roses (1930), and many of them are there: someone must have been growing and offering them. Mrs. Wilson mentions only 'Aviateur Blériot', a rose Thomas does not mention. I can find no reference in Wilson's book to 'Albéric Barbier', 'Albertine', 'Alexandre Girault', 'Auguste Gervais', 'François Juranville', 'Léontine Gervais' or'Paul Transon' - to cite just some of the once better known members of this group.

Could it have been a language thing? Maybe Americans didn't like being told they were misspelling names when they wrote e instead of é (or printers despaired because their fonts did not include é or ç. McFarland got the é right, but the ç seems to have eluded him). Or could it be a case of the public confusing these excellent roses with rambler roses? I suspect the latter. The early rambler roses were largely derived from Rosa multiflora. As a group, they were and are very mildew prone: some of the older varieties are full of mildew by the time they come into bloom. The first generation hybrids of Wichura's rose are free of mildew and generally black spot also. Someone was not getting the word out.

Another possibility comes to mind: then as now, people want roses which bloom continually. Even now, a century later, we have very few contenders for that distinction. And for the most part, fragrance has been a casualty in this pursuit. In June I wouldn't look twice at a Knock Out rose; but in early December, when it's likely to be the only type of rose blooming freely, I see it in a new light. Now if most of them only had fragrance...
And there is this possibility for explaining the seeming scarcity of Barbier roses in gardens back then: why grow foreign roses when excellent and somewhat similar roses were being produced in the US by Van Fleet? Most of us have outgrown that sort of chauvinism by now, but it was common back in those days. Here's a photo of Dr. Van Fleet from McFarland's Modern Roses:

New and from seed

I was checking the seedling frames the other day and a spot of blue caught my eye. It was a flower, a first flower, from some Hepatica nobilis grown from seed received in May, 2005. The blue flowered hepaticas are my favorites, and this one was well worth the wait.

Winter jasmine

This is Jasminum nudiflorum, the winter jasmine. It’s one of those plants which is likely to appear on lists of “100 plants every garden should have” – and I’m inclined to agree with that point of view. Beginning gardeners confuse it with the much more widely grown forsythias. That’s not surprising: they both bloom early in the growing season, they are both yellow flowered shrubs and, something which most gardeners are probably not aware of, they are related. Both are members of the Oleaceae, the olive family.

The display here has been good this year. In most recent years the sparrows have treated the winter jasmine as their winter salad bar: as soon as the blooms begin to swell, the sparrows strip the branches. Usually only those buds closest to the ground mature successfully.

This plant can be allowed to sprawl, allowed to hang over a wall, allowed to mound itself up into a little bush, or be trained against walls or pillars. It's beautiful or at least interesting at all seasons: the small, three parted leaves are handsome throughout the summer, and the green branches are decorative throughout the winter. It has no significant pests or diseases of which I'm aware. Plants against a wall are apt to be in bloom on and off throughout the winter.

Although it is a true jasmine, it has no scent. Most of us think it’s already doing enough to earn its keep.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

And here's a lovely green flower which so far has never missed the celebration in this garden: Helleborus foetidus.  It's also my favorite hellebore. This is not the only green hellebore blooming in the garden today: I noticed that Helleborus multifidus is also in bloom. And three flowers of Iris tuberosa are open today. Only three: if you're in the mood for the wearin' of the green, I'd better not catch you wearing any of these today!

Tommies doing their magic trick

In the images above you can see a selection of forms of lawn tommies, Crocus tommasinianus, performing their little magic trick. In cold, dull weather the flowers are bolt upright and tightly closed. All the viewer sees is the silvery exterior of the slim buds. But once it begins to warm up a bit, the flowers start to open. This is when the magic takes place: the silvery exterior hides an intense amethyst interior. The sliver spears slowly change into cups of amethyst.

Even the commonest plants sometimes provide the most engaging enchantment.

The most beautiful red witch hazel...

...except that it isn't a witch hazel. From a few yards away you might confuse these with one of the red witch hazels. But that’s not what they are: these are blooming branches of the native Acer rubrum, the red maple. This is a common wild tree locally, and for years I have enjoyed the red haze made by this very early blooming species.


In fact, for years I’ve been asking myself why more people don’t grow these maples for their flowers. One reason is that they are big trees, and the flowers are usually high up in the canopy and not easily viewed. The ones in the image above were on branches which came down in the recent heavy snows. They had been heaped along the road side to be hauled away. Here was an opportunity I had been waiting for: I took my pruning shears down and cut out a nice bouquet.

When these trees are in bloom, the ground beneath them is littered with the flowers. I had long suspected that squirrels were causing this. When I got my bundle home, I had proof of it. I placed the cut stems in a bucket of water on a table out on the deck and then went inside to get my camera. By the time I got back, two squirrels had found the cut stems and were already helping themselves to the flowers. I wonder what it is that they are eating. They seem to drop the flowers after biting them: are they after nectar?

Daphne odora

Yesterday Wayne and I visited our friend Hilda to participate in a celebration of her 80th birthday. There are several reminders of her generosity in my garden, and the one I'm enjoying the most right now is shown above: Daphne odora. She gave this to me as a potted,  rooted cutting - a budded rooted cutting - in 2008. When I got home with it, I put it in one of the protected cold frames; that's where it's been since then, and it's still in the same pot in which it was brought home. It bloomed in the winter of 2009 from the buds on the rooted cutting. This year it's in bloom again, this time with more flowers.

Daphne odora is known to survive local winters occasionally, but there seems to be a grudging consensus that it is not really a plant adapted to our conditions. Still, many gardeners plant it and enjoy it as long as it lasts. This uncertainty about its long-term adaptability to our conditions has prompted me to keep my plant in one of the protected cold frames. It's a real pleasure to open the frames when this plant is in bloom: the fragrance is wonderful. And it's a nice way to be reminded of a dear friend.

Iris lazica

This iris was obtained in 2007, but it has taken its own time to settle down and flower. It's blooming here now for the first time. Said to be hardier than Iris unguicularis, it's another of those winter-growing irises which have the potential to bloom over an extended time. I've seen it growing unprotected in local gardens, but here - for now, at least - it grows in one of the protected cold frames.

Out in the garden reticulate irises are starting to bloom. The flowers of Iris lazica are much larger than those of the reticulate irises but not as large as those of the form of Iris unguicularis growing here. I've checked the flowers of Iris lazica several times for fragrance but so far have detected none.