Tagetes 'Disco Orange'

The sort of weather we’re having now, weather characterized by extreme heat, is the sort of weather which helps us to appreciate some of the plants grown as annuals. Hardy perennials are nice, although I think their value to the garden has been hugely exaggerated. Perennials in general are like determinate tomatoes: they do their thing and that’s all you get.

The plants grown as annuals have the advantage of blooming all summer and into the autumn until cut by frost. As long as they are watered, the better ones take care of themselves and continue to produce.

Tagetes marigolds (in contrast to Calendula marigolds) as every beginning gardener quickly learns, perform in our climate as well as anything. If I had a big garden I would have a big, long planting of nothing but these Mexican marigolds in all of their varieties.

As it is, I have room for one pot full of them. A few years ago I spotted some single-flowered marigolds which looked a bit bigger than the single-flowered forms I had grown in the past. This was my introduction to Tagetes ‘Disco Orange’, a current favorite. That's what you see in the image above.

Is it a sign of ageing? I’ve learned to like the pungent, bracing fragrance of Tagetes marigolds. When I was younger I used to think that these were the plants which should have gotten the name nasturtium (literally nose-scruncher). A little bit goes a long way, but I like that little bit.

Torenia ‘Clown Blue’

I’ve been growing Torenia fournieri off and on since I was a kid. In recent years the old seed grown typical form has been replaced by seed grown strains such as the ‘Clown’ series. In my experience these have a tendency to produce the occasional deformed flower, but they are bigger than the plants I remember from my childhood.

The first edition of the wonderful Bush-Brown America’s Garden Book had good things to say about Torenia fournieri, and that’s what got me started with it. I used to save home grown seed (produced by the zillion as it were) and sow it on the ground in the late spring. The resulting plants did not come into bloom until well into the summer, but they were care free from sowing until they were cut by frost.

Now I’m a bit ashamed to say I buy a few plants each year from growers of bedding plants. They are well worth having for their cool colors, interesting form and sturdy poise. And they have a curious trick they perform if you know how to get them to do it. The stigma has two flaps; touch the inside of the flaps gently and the flaps will slowly begin to close up over the “pollen” you have deposited there with your touch. This is the sort of thing a high-minded Victorian parent would have taught the children.

Hypericum frondosum

This post is out of chronological order: it should have been done a few weeks ago when the plant shown was actually in bloom. The plant in question is Hypericum frondosum. It’s native to the eastern United States with a distribution which ranges from Texas to New England – but apparently not in Maryland.


This is another one of those native plants which, in spite of all of its good qualities, is not often seen in gardens. I first saw it used well in many of the gardens on the quadrangle of the University of Virginia. A plant in full bloom is very handsome. It forms a low woody shrub, often with only one main stem up to several feet high – this gives it a sort of bonsai quality. The flowers are about two inches across and are produced so abundantly that it’s hard to find space between them.

The plant in the image above is a self sown seedling. It appeared in one of the bog trays years ago. Another one appeared in some nearby brickwork. It's not weedy at all, and these volunteers are always welcome.

Cactus Flower

The other day I was in a big box store and noticed some trays of those Canadian grown cactuses and succulents. Many of them had been stuck with dried flowers of straw flowers (Helichrysum). This gives a fair imitation of a cactus in bloom, and for me it brought back memories of the baby turtles with painted shells which were sold in all the five and dime stores when I was a kid. There was muffled outrage against this back then, but the practice continued. It took a "medical excuse" to get the job done: once baby turtles were publicized as a potential source of salmonella infections, they disappeared from the stores. The fate of the turtles has probably not changed much: you don't see the baby ones sold en masse  for pets anymore, but neither do you see the thousands trapped in the summer or dredged from the mud in the winter and exported  to Asian stew pots.

But now back to those Canadian cactuses: as I glanced over them, I noticed that one or two actually had genuine flowers. When I was a kid, the flowering of a cactus was viewed as a near miracle.

In the image above is one of the so-called chin cactuses, members of the genus Gymnocalycium. I have no idea which one this is, and I’ve had it for so long – easily twenty-five years – that I don’t even remember where I got it. This might be the first time this one has bloomed.


Generally speaking, I don’t do well with houseplants. Some begonias and selaginellas in big glass jars have survived for decades, and several cactuses and other succulents have hung on since who knows when. There are several exceptions, but typical houseplants don’t have a chance here as a rule.

Smilax

Are there any other smilax enthusiasts out there? In the old days this genus was included in the Liliaceae, but now it gets a family of its own, the Smilacaceae. Some are reviled as obnoxious weeds, some are hugely ornamental. The ones I grow range in size from little S. pumila and S. bifolia to mighty S. smallii which covers the side of our house and part of the roof, tangled with noisette roses and Campsis 'Mme Galen'. The smilax is the boss of that group.


Most species have black fruits, but S. walteri has very ornamental red fruits. It’s a treat to visit the black water swamps of the southeastern states during the winter and find broad tangles of this species spangled with the bright red fruits – but at first you’ll probably be tricked by the more numerous red-fruited deciduous hollies.

Some of the southern species flower regularly here and set fruit, but the resulting seed do not survive the winters here.

I’ve always liked these plants and had a few in the garden. It’s hard to find anyone else with much of an interest in them. Professional horticulturists in general neglect them, although in the early twentieth century no less a luminary than Beatrix Farrand used them on some of the walls of Princeton University (or so I recall reading).

Most I grow in the open, but little S. pumila gets cold frame treatment. Its mottled leaves (in the style of some Asarum) make it worth the space. It will survive indefinitely in the open here in a sheltered spot, but the fruit will not ripen in the open air and bad winters can damage the plant severely.

I’m training S. laurifolia onto the deck: so far, it has climbed to the 10’ level. Mature plants in the wild are awesome, like something out of some lost world fantasy. The canes sometimes go thirty or more feet straight up into trees – I assume they have grown up with the trees. I grew my plants from seed collected more than fifteen years ago after a storm had brought down some smilax festooned trees – otherwise I never would have been able to reach the seed. This species has great ornamental value but is almost completely neglected. The foliage suggests that of Clematis armandii or Holboellia – it’s a rare garden visitor who has any idea what it is. There is nothing else like it in our indigenous flora.

The flowers of S. smallii are sweetly fragrant. Other species such as S. herbacea smell of carrion. When I was a kid I used to think of S. herbacea as “hardy philodendron” – it resembles that house plant (the heart-leaf climber) a lot.

Are they geophytes? Some grow from clusters of banana like tuberous growths.

Sarsaparilla was (still is?) made from some tropical species.

In the photo above is little Smilax bifolia, which is small enough to be used, potted, as table decoration.

King of the lilies

Here’s what I see when I look out my bedroom window this week: that’s Lilium ‘Leslie Woodriff’, a lily which will keep green the memory of not only Leslie Woodriff but also of the hybridizer who raised it, Robert Griesbach. If you are looking for an easily grown, reliable and tall lily with a potentially huge inflorescence, this is it.

Two weeks ago this lily had developed sufficiently for me to see that it had Best in Show potential. But that wasn’t meant to be: it was not open in time to exhibit at the show.

It’s now over eight feet high and has several dozen buds.

Lily Show Season 2010, part 2, more silver

If you have never entered a competitive flower show, you can have no idea of how stressful, comically stressful, it can be. The flowers develop at their own pace. Good planning will place the show date at a propitious time, but variable weather can play all sorts of tricks on the aspiring entrant.

As the date for the show approaches, the grower keeps a nervous eye on his best stems. Should the weather turn unusually cool, the best stems might not be open in time for the show. More likely in our climate, unseasonably hot weather will push the plants into bloom too soon. Small stems can be kept in the refrigerator for a while, but many modern lilies are so big they will not fit into the home refrigerator, even an empty refrigerator. And a day or two at 90º F plus temperatures will ruin the flowers for show purposes.

Our home show, the show of the Potomac Lily Society, took place last weekend. As the show date drew near, one particularly huge lily in my garden seemed just about ready to go. It had Best in Show written all over it: the plant in the garden was approaching nine feet tall, there were over two dozen buds, all arranged perfectly.

I was really feeling the pressure. If the plant did not bloom in time for our local show, the next show was two weeks away. There is no way I could keep such a huge stem in show condition for two weeks.

Meanwhile, there was another lily about to bloom which I intended to take to the show. My first idea was to take it just to let people see it and not enter it into competition. That lily was a pot grown plant of Lilium canadense, a form with a beautiful red flower. It came into bloom a week before the show, and I put it into the refrigerator right away. Although this species is native to Maryland, very few people have ever seen it. I blogged about it here:
http://mcwort.blogspot.com/2010/06/lilium-canadense.html

I was up and about early on the day of the show. The huge lily on which I had based my hopes was just beginning to open a first flower. The rules require that at least one bloom be open to its typical form for the stem to be judged. At 6:30 A.M. this one was not ready. Nor was it ready at 7:45 when I left for the show.

So I resigned myself to taking my “show and tell” lily with me and abandoning almost all hope for my best Best in Show candidate.

At about 10 A.M. I dashed home for one last look: had it opened enough to show? No, it had not.

As a member of the show committee, I had a lot to do the morning of the show. I was helping with staging, classification and judges. I was so busy I was not paying much attention to everything else going on around me. I decided to enter my “show and tell” lily into the show in the pot class. About twenty minutes before the judging started, a friend mentioned to me that I should check my entry for “livestock”. I did. Oh my gosh: my pot lily which had been in the refrigerator for a week was filthy with aphids: hidden on the underside of each leaf, they coated the under surface in their huddled masses. I worked as quickly as I could to remove all traces of them. At one point they seemed to be everywhere – on the lily, on the table, on me. But I got the job done – and just in time.

When the judging started, I took a break and faded into the background. I didn’t pay any attention to the judging, although at one point I did take a quick look and noticed what seemed to be a blue ribbon beside my show and tell lily.

After the judging was over, people began to come up to me to congratulate me. I though they were congratulating me for the blue ribbon. Then I went over to the awards table to take a look: there was my little pot lily, thoroughly beribboned, standing tall as Best in Show! I still can’t believe it.

In 2008 one of our members, Kathy Digges, donated a huge silver tray to the society to be awarded to the exhibitor winning Best in Show. Kathy did not live to see the tray awarded for the first time in 2009 to my friend Kathleen Hoxie. The tray will be engraved, showing my name as the winner for 2010. That's it in the image above (and as you can see I did not compensate for the light).

And the lily on which I had showered all my hopes in the weeks leading up to the show: it’s blooming now outside my bedroom window. I’ll post more about that one later.

Lily Show Season 2010, part 1

For the competitive lily grower, what could be better than winning a big award at a major lily show? How about having a big award named for you? The Lily Group of the Garden Club of Virginia did just that this year: they have established a perpetual award in my name for the best LA hybrid in the show exhibited by a GCV member.
How cool is that?

LA hybrids are hybrids derived from crosses, difficult crosses, between Lilium longiflorum and Asiatic Hybrid lilies. Because these lilies are not easily hybridized, they have remained a specialty of certain Dutch commercial growers. As a group they are big, vigorous, many flowered, bodacious, buxom and typically softly fragrant hybrids that are easily grown in our climate. The individual flowers can be huge, and strong plants can have literally dozens of them. The name LA has nothing to do with Los Angeles or Hollywood, but these lilies definitely have that sort of glamour.

When I was new to lily shows I remember seeing the annual lineup of old silver arrayed on the awards table, silver engraved with the names of famous persons in our lily world. Now I’m one of them. I feel as if I have been promoted into the lily pantheon.

That’s “my” award in the image above, in the center.

Please keep the jokes about my rapidly enlarging head to yourself.

Bad news in the lily department

On one of the on-line lily discussion forums reports are beginning to appear describing the beginning of the active period of the lily beetle, Lilioceris lilii. As far as I know, this very serious pest of lilies and fritillaries has not yet reached Maryland.

Yesterday evening I was touring the garden and noticed that a nice big clump of martagon hybrid lilies had damaged foliage. Neat little circular or semicircular patches were cut out of the leaf edges. I've read about this in British books; curious, I turned up a few leaves and suddenly something compact and black dropped to the ground and disappeared. All of that fits the modus operandi of another serious pest. I think the plants are being attacked by black vine weevils, Otiorhynchus sulcatus, a pest I had never before noticed in this garden.

Later today I'll post images of the damaged leaves and, if I can catch one in the act, of the culprit itself.

Houseleeks

These otherwise cheery plants, whose botanical name, Sempervivum, is generally translated as "live forever", do not in fact always live up to that seemingly care free term. Lack of sun will do them in, and during the summer a lack of moisture evidently will, too. Their general ease of culture gives them the reputation as the sort of plants to give to children. Many serious gardeners turn their noses up at them. The somewhat similar plants of the genus Sedum often get the same treatment. Yet both have valuable contributions to make to our gardens.

Here you see a mix of un-named sorts happily grouped in a low terra cotta pot saucer. Working out satisfying color combinations with these plants is tricky because their colors change continually. Some have bright red tints earlier in the growing season, others have contrasting colors on each leaf. Yet when you see the same plants months later, it's hard to believe that you are looking at the same one. At first, I thought I would be very systematic and photograph all of my plants. They produce runners with little plants at the tips, and it's not unusual to find satellite plants detached from the main clump. That means that there are always plants in need of identification. A nice series of photos would solve that problem, wouldn't it? Well, as it turns out, to be useful  the photos would have to be made monthly.

Some new sempervivums arrived in the mail several weeks ago. The labels of four of them were loose in the box. I went to the grower's web site to try to identify the plants which lacked labels. The four plants without labels matched nothing on the web site - at least for now.

The musk rose

To those for whom appearance is everything, the rose you see in the image above is as homely and unremarkable as any. Yet to those who know the history of the roses it is one of the most important roses ever grown. This is the storied musk rose, Rosa moschata. In the early nineteenth century it revolutionized garden roses as one of the parents of the Noisettes and Tea-Noisettes. It caries one of the archetypal rose scents, said to be musk-like (and let’s be honest: how many of us really know the scent of genuine musk?). Whatever that scent is, it is remarkably strong and free on the air.

Another interesting characteristic of this rose is that it comes into bloom much later than most garden roses. My plants began to bloom this week, well after the season of the once-blooming garden roses.

Learn to close your eyes and give that other more primitive sense a chance to work its wonders.

Danish Flag poppy

Of the many cultivated varieties of the bread-seed poppy (that is its polite name; in fact, they are cultivars of Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy) Danish Flag is a favorite. I first grew this decades ago, and when I saved the seed and planted it the next year I got some double-flowered forms in the same color pattern. The single flowered form shown above appears in an approximately three hundred and seventy year old painting by Jan Davidsz. de Heem which hangs in the National Gallery of Art. When the poppies are not blooming in the garden (and they make but a fleeting appearance), there is always de Heem's handsome Vase of Flowers to enjoy.

You can see the de Heem here:
http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/timage_f?object=46097&image=8803&c=

Container plants

Years ago one of the local big box stores had some very handsome, tall, terra cotta planters on sale. I bought three; a few years later, one was knocked over and broke. The two remaining are used for summer flowering container plants. They are moved around from year to year, but typically they are used as end points for long borders.

This year one is right at the front door. The house is brick, and the color of brick is notorious for the successful warfare it wages against reds with even a hint of blue in them. So the suite of plants chosen for this group includes only reds which lean ever so slightly to the orange side of the traditional color wheel. The plants used are Salvia splendens 'Early Bonfire', Solenostemon (coleus) 'Henna', Cuphea 'David Verity', Cuphea 'Fireworks', Begonia boliviensis 'Bonfire', Crocosmia 'Emily McKenzie' and Ageratum 'Blue Horizon'  and Ipomoea batatas 'Blackie' for a bit of contrasting color. There is also a plant of lemon verbena, Aloysia triphylla, to provide scent.

As you see it here, the plants have been in place for maybe a generous two weeks. I'll try to remember to post another image later in the season when things have put on some size.

Lilium canadense

Here is another plant which fits into that theme of the native plants which gardeners neglect. Generations of lily growers have held the opinion that this is just about the most graceful of lilies, yet it is virtually unknown as a garden plant throughout most of its former natural range.  Here you see it in one of its red-flowered forms.

The cultural requirements of these lilies are not at all like those of most garden lilies. If you plant them in the local soil, it's only a matter of time before they depart. Site them where they will get sun for only part of the day. Use a very open medium made porous with bark chips and something to keep it open such as crushed granite. Feed them gently. Plenty of moisture while the plants are in active growth is good. Although these plants will survive in woodlands, they are better in clearings or places where they will get several hours of sun each day.

An old name for this species is meadow lily, so it's no surprise that the big old populations quickly fell to our uses-of-choice for meadows: farming and housing development. It's now an uncommon plant. 

Brodiaea californica

The various Brodiaea are not common in our gardens, although one cultivar, 'Queen Fabiola', is widely marketed and very inexpensive (and very attractive!). When I first started to grow the members of this genus long ago, I had doubts about their hardiness. And after a year or two the plants did disappear in the garden. But cold hardiness pure and simple is probably not the main problem; wet summers are a big problem. I now grow many of the bulbs native to the west coast of North America under summer cover – the cold frame lights are placed over the beds from late May until sometime in September. This keeps the soil relatively dry; under these conditions many bulbs difficult in the open garden will thrive. In the image above, what looks like a reflection is a reflection: the lights are already in place.


If you have already grown some of the other species of Brodiaea, be sure to give this one a try. It’s taller and has much larger flowers than most species (in fact, I don’t know of one larger).

The genus Brodiaea has been placed in the Liliaceae, the Amaryllidaceae, the Alliaceae, the Themidaceae and, according to the PBS wiki, the Asparagaceae at various times.

Arisaema candidissimum

The arisaemas on the monsoon schedule are beginning to grow and bloom now. I’ve found some of these to be very difficult to keep, but others are relatively easy, including the one shown above, Arisaema candidissimum.

I’m trying this one again after tossing the ones I had decades ago. That earlier acquisition was planted in a shady part of the garden and, although the plants bloomed each year, the stem of the inflorescence elongated and flopped into the mud after a day or two. After years of this I simply lost interest and tossed them. When I mentioned this on an on-line discussion forum, I was advised to plant them where they get more sun. By then those original plants were compost, but I vowed to try again – this time in a sunnier spot.

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.