Crabs!

What would summer be without tomatoes, corn, peaches - and crabs, plenty of salty, succulent Chesapeake Bay blue crabs. My niece and her hubby live near the water and love to crab. And the rest of us love to eat crabs: what a team! Mema, the matriarch of our family, celebrates her birthday in early July (this year, the 88th), and for the last couple of years we've enjoyed a big crab feast to mark the event. This year it was about a month late, but it was worth the wait.

My niece Ashley and her hubby Drew got up at about 4 A.M., drove out to the bay, crossed the bay and set up off Kent Island. They use crab pots, and they're good at it. Half a hundred crabs later they're back in the car and on the way home. Sometime in the early afternoon the unmistakable aroma of steamed crabs begins to permeate their yard. Soon the picnic table is covered with coarse brown paper, the hammers, knives and napkins are out, the drinks appear (soon to disappear and be replaced!) and the expectant crowd surrounds the table. Then Drew, master crab cooker, opens the pot and begins to arrange the crabs on the table. There were a lot of them this year, lots of huge Jimmys heavy with yummy crab meat.

And then begins the merry clatter of a summer afternoon of crab picking, something we Marylanders know how to get into. Last summer my friend Hilda in Virginia taught me to pick crabs Northern Neck style, and I tried to demonstrate - but the crabs were so good that the lesson quickly disappeared into my mouth.

In the top picture, you see Ashley and her Mema; in the next one, left to right, Ashley, Mema and Drew; the next picture shows some of the crabs; then there are photos of remains after five stuffed Marylanders have kicked back and settled into a postprandial near coma. Boy they were good! In the last picture, nine-month old Ashton Frederick perks up as if to say "what smells so good?"

Northern Ring-neck Snake

One of the advantages of gardening green and living next to a park is that all sorts of interesting little creatures move into the garden and take up residence. It’s mid-August now, and that means it’s baby ring neck snake time. For years I’ve been finding these in the basement at this time of year. When I find them they are often tangled up in a spider web. Wayne, who lives about a mile south of me and on the same side of the creek around which the park is centered, finds them in his bedroom and living room tangled up in the fibers of the carpet. He rescued the one shown above from the carpet: after taking the image above he released the snake.

The ring neck snake here is the northern ring-neck snake, Diadophis punctatus edwardsi. The generic name is an allusion to the bright golden ring around the neck (think diadem), and the specific epithet is a reference to the spots on the abdomen in some other subspecies but not on the northern subspecies.

These small snakes are probably a lot more common than we realize, but they are very secretive. If you are in likely habitat, turn over any flat objects lying on the ground: these snakes are often found in such situations. They are relatively slow moving (at least when first uncovered) and harmless to humans. They might however excrete a malodorous fluid if molested.

Nasturtiums

I don’t remember when I first became aware of garden nasturtiums. They were among the familiar flowers which grew in the neighborhood gardens of my childhood, and they might in fact have been among the plants my mother planted each year around our Silver Spring home. And I think I remember the thick clusters of black aphids which cluster under the leaves as well as I remember the flowers, their fragrance or their taste.

Nasturtiums have personality: they are distinctive, and you’re unlikely to confuse them with anything else. The seeds are so big and easily grown that generations of writers have recommended them for children’s gardens. The seeds look like small chick peas. They bloom in familiar colors; I think of their color range as the color range of wall flowers – reds, yellows and those very dark red-browns and tans. They manage to be easily grown and familiar, and yet at the same time they retain a mysterious, sophisticated quality.

The ones shown here are from a packet of seed labeled “Jewel Mix” as distributed by W. Atlee Burpee & Co. Garden nasturtiums, which are by nature perennials, are available in climbing forms, semi-climbing forms and forms which grow as compact clumps. The flowers are single or semi-double in the usual seed raised forms, but fully double forms propagated from cuttings are sometimes available. The flowers come with and without spurs; the ones without spurs are apt to face upright. My favorites are the ones in dark, muted colors, single, with spurs and fragrant.

In the very old days, garden nasturtiums were sometimes called “Indian cress”. The peppery fragrance causes some people to scrunch up their nose when they smell them, and that in effect is what the Latin term nasturtium means. Botanically, cress, as in watercress, is a crucifer, Nasturtium officinale. On the other hand, our garden nasturtiums are botanically Tropaeolum majus. In old books the names T. minus and T. lobbianum (or T. peltophorum) appear: these are species sometimes cited in the ancestry of the garden nasturtium. Tropaeolum are generally placed in their own family Tropaeolaceae which is related to geraniums of the Geraniaceae. If you look closely at one of the images you can make out foliage of Oxalis lasiandra: the Oxalidaceae are also closely related to these plants.

Our garden nasturtiums are “cress” only in the culinary sense: all parts of the plants appear to be edible and palatable and do have a peppery quality which is a refreshing addition to salads or chopped into cream cheese for sandwiches. Even the seeds (sometimes pickled as a caper substitute) are edible.

The flowers in the images above were photographed early in the morning; the orange ones still show the crinkled petals which have not yet full expanded. These remind me of opening poppy flowers.

Sedum pachyclados

I found this little plant, Sedum pachyclados, in a nursery in western Virginia earlier this year. What is there about sedums which makes them so collectible? I find it hard to resist them. The small ones in particular catch my eye. At the meetings of our local rock garden group they often appear in the plant exchanges – and rarely have either names or the compact growth which characterizes commercially grown plants. Although there are a few which are properly shade plants, in general they are for full sun and show their best habit when grown right out in the open with nothing between them and the sun. Move the ones adapted to full sun into the shade and the growth form changes: the compact mass you plant soon becomes a rangy tangle of brittle stems.

One of these days I hope to have a long narrow border planted with all of these small miscellaneous plants I’ve accumulated over the years. Not just sedums but sempervivums, small bulbs tolerant of summer wet, Delospermum and company, Nierembergia rivularis, small erodiums, tiny alliums and hundreds of others. The weeding will probably be a nightmare.

The Jaguar Flower

This startling flower, Tigridia pavonia, has been known in the English-speaking world since at least the sixteenth century: there is a crude drawing of it in the Elizabethan edition of Gerard’s Herball. I would not be surprised to learn that Tigridia had been introduced to Europe long before that by the Spanish, but I can’t cite a source for an actual date of introduction.

In the English-speaking world the name Tigridia has traditionally been interpreted as having reference to tigers – and more than one merry commentator has noted that tigers have stripes, not the spots seen in these flowers. I think a more sensible interpretation takes into consideration the likelihood that the first descriptions in a European language were in Spanish, and in Spanish the jaguar is called El Tigre. And jaguars are spotted. That explains my choice of title for this post.

Patchouli

Our little dog Biscuit provided some unexpected merriment yesterday. Wayne and I were examining a plant of patchouli, Pogostemon cablin: this is the plant which provides the scent many people associate with the smell of hippies. It’s a scent which evokes mixed reactions: Mrs. Wilder wrote "Valuable India shawls used to be distinguished by their odour [sic] of Patchouli and it is one of the commonest perfumes found in the bazaars, a most peculiar fragrance, vary disagreeable to some persons." Years ago I asked an Indian co-worker about patchouli: before I could finish my inquiry, I was being told that only “they” (i.e. not her “we”) use it; and “they” use it because “they” don’t bathe. One of these days I’ll ask one of “them” for their side of the story.

Wayne and I decided to make Biscuit a hippie dog, so I rubbed her with a patchouli leaf. I then showed her the leaf, and she took a keen interest in it. She tried to eat it in fact. And she became very frisky and playful. “Catnip for dogs” Wayne speculated.

I had never read anything about patchouli being toxic to humans or dogs, but I wasn’t about to let Biscuit eat it without knowing for sure about its effect on dogs. A Google search was in order: it didn’t take long to discover that there are plenty of canine grooming products out there which contain patchouli. I even ran across a blog posting asserting that dogs love patchouli. Who would have known?
So I rubbed some patchouli scent on one of her balls; off she went, suddenly energized and full of it.

Now begins the wait to see if she can find the plant on her own and crop it.

Newly dug bulbs

For this gardener there are few pleasures keener than that experienced when he's digging bulbs and big, fat bulbs come out of the ground. The images above show some bulbs dug earlier this summer. They have been dried briefly but not cleaned.

Earlier this year an image of Tulipa 'Casa Grande' was posted. Now you can see the bulbs: they are very nice ones, too.

Of the fritillaries shown, Fritillaria persica has been known to persist in this area for years left in the ground. That has not been my experience in this garden, so I dig them.

Top to bottom, the bulbs shown are: Tulipa 'Casa Grande', Allium stipitatum 'White Giant', Fritillaria cf. acmopetala, Fritillaria persica 'Ivory Bells', Fritillaria imperialis 'Rubra' and Fritillaria liliacea.

The bulbs were photographed against a quarter-inch grid.

Bulbs in storage

This year I made an effort to inventory the entire bulb collection. I never finished, but I dug and stored so many bulbs that I've heard lots of complaints about the continuing mess in the basement. It is a mess, too. There are heaps of little paper packets of alliums, crocus, fritillaries, hyacinths, muscaris, tulips plus smaller mounds for those groups of which I grow fewer varieties.

The tulip mound is the biggest.

If there is a secret to growing summer dormant bulbs such as tulips in our climate, it's simply this: get them out of the ground by the end of May. I used to think that the bulbs were eaten by voles during the summer, or that they eventually rotted well into the summer. But years ago I began to keep track of when I was digging the bulbs, and I noticed that certain stocks, tulips in particular, often showed extensive rotting even in early June. And in general, it's the biggest bulbs which rot first.

This early rotting is consistent with the usual history of garden tulips in our gardens: glorious bloom the first year (thank the Dutch growers for these), sporadic if any bloom the second year, and nothing or leaves only from then on in most cases.

No one in my circle grows tulips as far as I am aware. Everyone plants them and enjoys the first season display, but no one I know tries to keep them going from year to year. The annual digging wrecks the garden just as it is coming into its early summer beauty, so it's not surprising that so many gardeners leave the tulips in the ground and replace them yearly.

The digging is not as much work as you might think. I grow my bulbs in little plastic berry baskets. The digging itself goes quickly: it's the sorting, labeling, record keeping and summer packaging which take the time.

The image above shows bulbs in their summer packages, a wrapping of newspaper. After the bulbs are dug they are spread out to dry slowly in a shady place outside or even in the basement. This prompt drying-out is important: the bulbs come out of the ground heavy with moisture, and if not dried promptly the bulbs rot. It's a big mistake to store the newly dug bulbs in plastic bags: that's an invitation to trouble. But once the bulbs have dried a bit, some benefit from being transferred to plastic bags to prevent further desiccation.

What keeps this interesting to the hobbyist are the varying requirements of the different bulbs. Tulips are very tolerant of dry summer storage. Fritillaries on the other hand are a lot touchier. The treatment which works for tulips won't work without modification for most fritillaries.

Lilium superbum

Lilium superbum, which still grows wild here in the greater Washington, D.C. area, is blooming now in the garden. How is it that this lily, which is one of the most spectacular of all lilies, is so rarely seen in local gardens? Even in my circle of lily-growing friends, it's all but unknown.

In the wild it is generally associated with water in some way. I've seen it on floodplains, along streams or drainage ditches, in steeply sloping seepage areas in the mountains, once even growing right out of the flowing water of a stream. But water is not necessary for it: I've also seen it growing in dry, sun-baked fields. If nothing else, it's adaptable. Plants in deep shade are sometimes six or more feet high - and often have but three or four blooms. Plants in sunny sites are apt to be shorter but with more flowers. The usual flower color is a vivid orange, but plants with a strong red suffusion such as the one shown above are not uncommon in some areas.

Another native lily, Lilium canadense, seems to have been known to English gardeners as early as the early seventeenth century. But Lilium superbum, a much grander and more conspicuous plant, was evidently not recorded in England as a living plant until about a century later.

Add my name to the long list of commentators who have been puzzled by the low regard in which we hold our native flora.

Cardiocrinum cordatum

This odd Japanese woodlander is blooming here for the third time this year. It first bloomed in 2000, then again in 2004. As Cardiocrinum go, this species is a small one: my plant is evidently the typical form, Cardiocrinum c. cordatum. It has never been more than about thirty inches tall when in bloom. The northern subspecies glehnii is apparently taller.

So far, the flowers have never opened here any more than what can be seen in the image above. The three upper tepals are separated from the three lower tepals by a long opening along the side of the blossom. This reminds me of the mouth of a hand puppet or the beaks of ducks and geese: I almost expect to hear these flowers quacking or honking at me.

That this plant has proven to be so easy to grow comes as a surprise: why has it taken so long for this species to be introduced to our garden flora? That the Chinese species have remained obscure is understandable. But surely you would think that someone along the way would have introduced this Japanese species.

This plant has a very odd growth cycle. The foliage emerges in late winter or earliest spring. It remains huddled on the ground until early June. At this phase it suggests a clump of skunk cabbage. Then in early June the annual stem of plants which will bloom begins to elongate under the foliage; this elongation lifts the false whorl of foliage up about a foot or more above ground. At this stage it looks like a hosta on a stick. Then sometime in late June the annual stem begins to elongate above the false whorl of leaves: this elongation eventually develops into the inflorescence.

As I've grown it here, it has always been few-flowered, with two or three flowers per inflorescence. But the sweetly scented flowers are big: each is about seven inches long.

One of these days I hope to have a nice group of these.

A summer meal

Here's a simple meal full of the flavors of the season. The peppers are stuffed with jasmine rice, sautéed eggplant, roasted red pepper and cilantro. The chicken was slathered in mustard and then given a coating of home-made breadcrumbs (old chiabatta bread, garlic and a bit of thyme ground in the food processor). It was then baked in the gas grill at very high temperature (over 450º F) for about forty minutes, then for another thirty minutes at about 350º F.

The clafouti, shown here with a cigale, was a nod to the trip my niece and her hubby took to Provence last summer.

We ate out on the deck in the gathering dusk; there were few mosquitoes as we listened to the katydids take up where the cicadas left off. The day had been warm and humid, but once the sun went down it was pleasant. Some dark purple petunias nearby began to pour out their vanilla-clove scent as the dark closed in. Time flies very agreeably in our little green bower.

Summer

The lily shows are over, the crepe myrtle and the Franklin tree are blooming, we had blueberry pancakes for breakfast, the cicadas and katydids are calling, the wood thrushes are still tuning up their flutes, the first flushes of rain lilies are withering on their stems, the newly mowed grass has a beguiling sweetness, local tomatoes, corn, peaches and steamed crabs are in our immediate future: it's summer.

The mystery sound

The other day while sitting in the kitchen reading the paper and absentmindedly nibbling on something I heard a noise in the house. It's summer, and all the doors and windows were open to let in the cool morning air. At first it sounded as if a bird had come into the house; that happens occasionally, and the bird usually turns out to be either a wren, a starling or an appropriately-named house sparrow. The sound seemed to have both a fluttering quality and a ventriloqual quality - at least in the sense that I was having trouble deciding where it was coming from. When I got up to investigate, the sound would continue for a moment, then stop. At one point I went down to the basement to see if something was caught in the curtains over the door (which happen to be just under the spot where I had been sitting). Eventually, by triangulating the sound, I narrowed it down to a spot where there were a pile of papers and a bag of bird seed. The bird seed was the obvious candidate, so I boldly scooped through the seed to see if anything was in there. For a moment I thought I felt something lumpy pass through my fingers - but there was no subsequent movement. Then I investigated the pile of papers: nothing there either. Suddenly, the sound started again. And this time, there was no mistaking that it was coming from the bag of bird seed. I began to think insect: surely, no mammal or bird would be so oblivious to the nearby presence of the master predator.

Without touching the bird seed bag, I peeped into the bag: there it was, quivering at the edge of the bag. It was a young deer mouse, almost full grown but evidently not yet old enough to have learned how the world works. I got a glass jar and gently scooped it out. Camera in hand, I took it outside to get some photos. But while I was fooling with the camera, the little mouse got out of the jar. I was out on the deck, using the wire-mesh table there as a work surface. The mouse stopped as soon as it touched the table top: the table was wet from the last night's rain. Although I was standing only about a foot away, the mouse began to lick rain drops from the wire mesh. Then it made a sudden dash to the underside of the mesh grid and continued to drink.

I got a few pictures, but the mouse was hardly posed as I wanted. Then I watched it scamper off to the far side of the deck - whence it no doubt eventually made its way back into the house.

Zephyranthes atamasco

This is the native Zephyranthes atamasco. The upper image shows it blooming in the protected cold frame. The lower images show it blooming very beautifully along the road side in northern North Carolina. My friend Mary and her artist friend John and I were on our way to visit a famous garden in the area. Traveling with keen gardeners/botanists can be an occasionally harrowing experience, as when one quickly slows the car and veers off the road to park, all the while yelling the name of some plant. Only confirmed birders are worse. In our case, the plant was spotted on the trip down; we were sensible enough to postpone the pullover for the trip back.

Until a few years ago I did not realize that this was a native plant (in the sense "native to Maryland"). A seemingly wild population turned up about twenty years ago on the Eastern Shore.

The name of the plant has appeared in some publications recently as Zephyranthes atamasca (rather than atamasco). The explanation for this is long and convoluted, but the simple version is that Linnaeus published the name Amaryllis atamasca for this plant. That is almost certainly either a typo for Amaryllis atamasco or a failure on the part of Linnaeus to recognize that the word atamasco is a noun, not an adjective. The word atamasco, or variants of it, had been in use for a century and a half before Linnaeus. If authors other than Linnaeus have used atamasca, I'm not aware of it. Phillip Miller, the Linnaeus of gardening, spelled the word with a final o, although there are seeming typos in his account also.

Unlike most of the neotropical members of the genus, this species flowers in mid-winter through early spring, depending on location. I've seen it growing as a lawn weed in parched, hardscrabble, run down southern towns and also growing out the sphagnum moss of roadside bogs. If there is no rain, it simply remains dormant from year to year. The plants in my protected cold frame did this: they got little if any water during the summer, and the time came when they simply no longer appeared above ground at all. After an absence of nearly two seasons, I dug them out. The bulbs had shrunk down to the size of peas, but otherwise seemed sound. I planted them in a pot with some bog plants - and a week later the first foliage began to appear.

Rain lilies

Throughout those warmer parts of the New World which are characterized by periodic droughts, the native amaryllids have developed the ability to bloom opportunistically in response to rain. When I was in the Army forty years ago stationed in central Texas, I had the chance to witness the flowering of the rain lilies on many occasions. It's really charming: a day or two after a deluge the ground would be spangled with egg-sized flowers bobbing and swaying over the ground on foot-high stalks. Some of them were deliciously fragrant at night.

The name rain lily might be a misnomer: there is controversy about exactly what it is which triggers bloom in these plants. The plant shown above is Zephyranthes grandiflora, and it spent the winter in full leaf in the protected cold frame. That cold frame is covered during the summer to keep rain out: most of the plants in the frame are summer dormant plants which do not tolerate summer wet. Although the Zephyranthes was not moistened by the recent rains, it did bloom with the rains. It surprised me to see this plant blooming from a clod of hard, dry clay.

Zephyranthes grandiflora is one of the commonest and least expensive members of the genus in cultivation. It's one of those plants which has a cult-like following. Once you learn how to cultivate it, and you have built your stocks up to dozens or hundreds of bulbs, you can count on them to put on an impressive mass display yearly. It's not reliably hardy here, but it takes very well to container culture. When I first wrote that I wrote "pot culture". But as often as not, the prolific bulbs end up in some improvised, bigger container. During the cold part of the year simply store the entire container - bulbs, soil and all - dry in the basement.

There are other Zephyranthes in the collection here, including the Maryland native Z. atamasco. The flowers of all of these are of such fleeting duration that they always catch me by surprise. One day they are not there, the next day they are. Individual flowers last only for about two and a half days.

Hymenocallis liriosme

The plant shown above is Hymenocallis liriosme, a native of Texas. An email friend, Joe, sent this to me a few years ago. I first had this plant forty or so years ago from Thad Howard's Zephyr Gardens. I grow it as a pot plant, although it will survive the winter easily near the house foundation and maybe even out in the open if planted deeply. It probably benefits from a prolonged dry season. The sweetly scented flowers are very fragile: the staminal cup begins to show signs of wear shortly after the blooms open. It's about three feet high when in bloom, and the foliage suggests that of a garden amaryllis.

Kangaroo paws

While checking out a local nursery last week I spotted the plant shown above. This is one of the Australian kangaroo paws, members of the genus Anigozanthos of the family Haemodoraceae. The plant did not have a tag giving a name; by the looks if it it's a dwarf cultivar. That suits me just fine: I intend to winter it in the protected cold frame. The nursery in question is a sprawling, somewhat disorganized affair: I searched in vain for more plants in other colors, in particular for some red, green or black forms, but found only one more yellow. I've read that some Anigozanthos are somewhat freeze tolerant: they would make really impressive additions to our garden flora, but I don't expect to see that anytime soon.

Lilium regale

Lilies are a varied group, so varied that it does not make much sense to pick one favorite. But throughout my life as a gardener, Lilium regale has always been high in my esteem. It’s typically the first of the trumpet lilies to bloom, and that’s a good thing in itself: most of the other trumpet lilies are taller and more imposing. If Lilium regale bloomed later it might not make such a good impression.

It has an interesting history. At the beginning, it was not recognized as a distinct species, and the first plants in cultivation were grown under the name Lilium myriophyllum. E.H. Wilson’s famous account of bringing the first shipments to the West down out of the mountains of western China must be the most frequently quoted passage in all of his writing – and with good reason.

Given the wealth of lilies we now enjoy, it’s hard to conceptualize the state of lilies in gardens a century ago. One had basically two choices: lilies collected from the wild were the fashionable choice. Many of these quickly proved to be intractable. The other choice was made up from a collection of dismal virus-infected hybrids, most of which had flower colors fairly described as either harsh or muddled.

The gardening world lacked a good, easily grown, handsome, fragrant garden lily. Several early introductions such as L. speciosum, Lilium henryi, and the tiger lily proved to be easily grown. But the latter two are not noted for fragrance, and Lilium speciosum, while it’s one of the most fragrant of lilies, presents cultural problems which have kept it out of the truly easily-grown class. Another early introduction, the clonal Lilium brownii, was as elegant as any lily but also unpredictable as a garden plant. Lilium longiflorum was widely regarded as a greenhouse plant, not a garden plant. Lilium hansonii, introduced early in the second half of the nineteenth century, was as easily grown as any lily, but it’s not the sort of lily to fire the public imagination.

It quickly became apparent that Lilium regale had it all: ease of culture, fragrance and poise. Early in the twentieth century there was a keenly pursued effort to establish this plant as a viable floriculture crop here in the United States. It wasn’t until the early 1920s that affordable bulbs began to become reliably available. Soon it was in all the catalogs and books and in a lot of gardens, too. Unlike so many other lilies introduced at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Lilium regale has been in continuous cultivation since its first introduction.

It was one of the first lilies I grew as a child. I still remember buying the bulbs at a local grocery store about fifty years ago. The bulbs came two or three in a box which had slits cut into the sides and no packing material. The bulbs were free to shift around inside the box. When I examined them, they were very dark purple-black and somewhat shriveled. Such roots as they had seemed to have been cut back. They were bought in the spring or early summer, and they made indifferent growth the first year. But they eventually bloomed and introduced me to one of life’s small but keenly appreciated pleasures. I can look back on a half-century of lily growing now and realize that a lot has changed. In so many ways things are much better than they ever were in the past. Yet I’m happy to say that the annual flowering of Lilium regale provides as much pleasure as it ever has, even if the plants blooming now are not those purchased so many years ago.

Cistus psilosepalus

It’s a rare gardener who doesn’t at least occasionally feel a bit of that “the grass is greener" curiosity about plants we can’t typically grow well. The so-called rock roses, members of the genus Cistus, have caught my wandering eye occasionally over the years. Several trials in the past came to grief – quickly. Even sorts said to be hardy in zone 7 or zone 6 didn’t amount to anything.

Last fall at the plant exchange of our local rock garden group I spotted a non-descript little plant which no one else had yet claimed. Curious, I checked the label: a Cistus! I had space in the protected cold frame, and the Cistus seemed to be an ideal candidate for that spot. It took well to cold frame life, and throughout the winter slowly expanded.

I was pretty sure that I would finally be seeing a home-grown Cistus blooming here, and last week the first flower opened. This plant was received under the name Cistus psilosepalus, but I know nothing about these plants and can not vouch for the name. This is nice, but already I’m dissatisfied: I want one of the species with gummy, fragrant foliage. In the middle of winter it’s a pleasure to open the protected cold frame and be greeted by both color and scent.

Allium schubertii

I first grew this plant decades ago but soon lost it. That acquisition produced flower umbels about a foot in diameter, bigger than those of Allium cristophii but not by much. Some books suggested that this species might not be hardy, and I attributed the eventual loss of the plant to lack of winter hardiness. More about that below.

Two years ago, while attending a meeting in the home of some well-practiced flower arrangers, I noticed several dried umbels of Allium schubertii. But these were Allium schubertii as I had never seen it: they were huge, easily eighteen inches in diameter.

That did it. It was time to try this species again. Last fall some new bulbs were acquired – nice big bulbs. The other day I went out and measured the umbel on one: it was twenty-three inches in diameter!

This species is low growing: those huge umbels are only just barely lifted above the ground. And the very muted colors combine with the diffuse structure to produce a nearly invisible inflorescence in the garden. The photo above, for better or worse, shows that well.

Is it hardy? In the past, questions arose about the identity of the material in cultivation: is it A. schubertii or A. protensum? The former was said to be tender, the latter hardy. I have a hunch winter hardiness isn’t the issue with this plant. I’ll bet it’s intolerant of summer wet. I’m not taking any chances: once the foliage on my new plants is ripe, the bulbs will be dug, wrapped in newspaper and stored for the summer in a hot but dry spot.

Later in the summer, after I’ve harvested the mature umbels, I’ll post a better image of those tumbleweeds against a suitable background. Hmmm….that means more dust collectors in my bedroom, doesn’t it?