The daddy long legs flower

The upper image is of the inflorescence of Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chips'. The lower image is of the inflorescence of Manfreda virginica. Manfreda are so closely related to tuberoses (Polianthes of various species) and agaves that they will form viable hybrids. Manfreda virginica is hardy here; I keep 'Chocolate Chips' in a cold frame during the winter for now; I'll try it in the open after it pups a bit.

It took Manfreda virginica years to build up to blooming size; when it finally did the scape was seven or eight feet high. The inconspicuous flowers were not fragrant as far as I could tell - that was a big disappointment. I had been growing it with the idea that it would be a sort of hardy tuberose.

'Chocolate Chips' was obtained in 2010, so it has been by comparison quick to bloom, especially for a pot grown plant. The rosette of foliage is only about a foot across, so this is not a big plant. But the scape quickly pushed up to the five foot level. My experience with the flowers of M. virginica did not prepare me for the flowers of 'ChocolateChips': they''re not showy, but they are definitely unusual and in their way eye-catching.

When I described the flowers of this species on the Pacific Bulb Society forum this week, another contributor, Nan,  responded with the information that she thought the inflorescence looked like a cluster of daddy long legs (aka crane flies). What a great description!

'Chocolate Chips' does not smell like its namesake. It has a very odd scent - my first impression was that it smelled like hot metal. But there is also a fermented fruit quality to the scent, too. What pollinates the wild forms of Manfreda undulata? I'm guessing bats.

Japanese irises

The poppies of the community garden field in the previous entry are all lightness, bright color and cheer.

Back in the home garden, the high drama of the Japanese irises is reaching a peak. Somehow these huge irises escape being ponderous in spite of their sombre colors, the substance of the petals, the solid form and the stiff bearing, And yet each iris flower typically lasts no longer than one of the poppy flowers.

Japanese irises have a devoted following, are readily available in the trade, and have been grown in this country for well over a century. Yet they are not often seen in gardens, certainly no where nearly as often as the various bearded irises. Nor are they more difficult to grow than the bearded irises. Nor do they compete with the bearded irises in season of bloom: among the widely available irises they are among the last to bloom.  And to see them well grown is to want them. Yet I don't see them in gardens that often.

Those with somewhat muddled color patterns  remind me of the Japanese morning glories more than some sort of iris. Those with dark pin stripes against a white background pull off this effect as well as the arilate irises.

Two photos are given here. The first one shows them in natural light. The exposure of the second photo was  deliberately manipulated to produce the sort of effect seen in color illustrations in books from the early part of the twentieth century.   I obtained these years ago from a sale sponsored by the local iris society. The names were carefully recorded in my notebooks, and labels were buried with the plants. I've not been able to find the labels buried with the plants, and the names recorded in my notebooks do not match images brought up in Google Images.

Papaver rhoeas, the corn poppy

The corn poppy season is rapidly coming to an end here: this might be the last substantial bouquet I get this year.

If you go out into the garden during the middle of the day and pick poppy flowers, they soon wilt. The poppy literature mentions two ways to avoid this wilting, and Celia Thaxter suggests a third. The two ways usually mentioned are 1) to sear the cut end of the stem in a flame; I have not tried this method. And 2) to pick the unopened buds the evening before the flowers are wanted. As the buds develop they hang down; when they are about to open, they become upright. They can be gathered as soon as they become upright. This is perhaps the most charming way to gather poppies, because the cut buds can be presented the night before, then the recipient has the pleasure of watching the buds pop open and drop the hairy calyces on the table top the following morning. Once the calyx falls, the crumpled petals of the flower slowly expand: it's hard to describe how beautiful they are at this stage. So much about these poppy flowers is improbable: the thin, flexuous stems; the comparatively big expanded flowers; the intense color; the delicacy of the pollen dusted dome of anthers at the center of the blossom; the crepe and satin like quality of the expanding petals and the pepper shaker at the center of the flower. Any child can grow them, and I'd be concerned about any adult too sophisticated to appreciate them.

Now here's the other method for picking them, a method suggested by Celia Thaxter over a century ago:  pick the opening flowers at sunrise. I've done this three times this year; the two times I picked the opening flowers at about 6 A.M. (sunrise here is at about 5:45 now) they held up beautifully and developed fully. The one time I picked them at about 7:30 A.M. they did not last.

It's too late to plant poppy seed and expect to get great results, but it's not too late to start reading Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden.

Two odd new lilies

The lilies shown here are (above) 'Tiny Padhye' and (below) 'Tiny Sensation'. These are new to me and were planted last November or early December. Evidently they were bred to be very short, yet the flowers are comparatively enormous.

'Tiny Padhye' has a color patern very similar to that of 'Netty's Pride', but the flower of 'Tiny Padhye' is bigger and the color contrast even more vivid.  

Canna 'Ehemannii'

Canna 'Ehemannii' is already blooming! This canna went through the winter dry in the clump of soil with which it was dug. It retained viable foliage - it never died down to a dormant rhizome as most cannas do. The foliage was in very dim light most of the time, really almost in the dark - but it persisted. Once the weather relented, the clump was placed outside in a place not exposed to full sun to allow the foliage to firm up. Once it got water, it surged into growth.

Last year this did not bloom until very late in the season; there are several other sprouts on the way up, so this one might be in bloom throughout the summer. The plant shown above is only a bit over two feet tall - later sprouts will easily go to double that and more.

Community garden plots update: poppies, larkspurs and lilies

Things are happening so fast this year! I feel guilty that I am not keeping more extensive records, but with everything rushing into bloom at once, it's hard to keep up.

Here are some photos of the community garden plots taken within the last few days. The poppies are nearing the end of their blooming period, the larkspurs are at their peak and the lilies are catching up. As of today, there are Asiatic hybrid lilies in bloom, LA hybrids in bloom and trumpets in bloom. In most years trumpets begin in late June and spill over into early July. The lilies in these photos were all planted from newly received bulbs last November and early December. I planted generously in order to have lots of lilies to cut in support of the local lily shows. It's not to be: foiled again by that trickster Mother Nature.

Early or late, they're all beautiful..

Community garden plot update: poppies!

Agrostemma githago has been blooming freely for about a week, and the other day it was joined by poppies, poppies in numbers. These are corn poppies, Papaver rhoeas.They are gorgeous, exciting and so easy to grow. Like them? Make a note to yourself to buy the seeds in September and to sow them once you have cleared a space for them in the autumn garden.
Don't make the mistake of waiting for spring to sow the seeds. By then the plants should be several months old, not just starting out.
It took three things to make this display happen. Two were of the nature of inspiration from gardeners of the past. If you love poppies be sure to read, and read again and again,  Celia Thaxter's An Island Garden.(1894, Houghton Mifflin, available in an excellent paperback reissue of 1988).
Another old book provided another: J. Horace McFarland's My Growing Garden (1915, Macmillan). Color plate xviii shows an eighty foot border planted to mixed Shirley poppies with the caption "An ounce of Shirley poppy seed... sowed along an eighty-foot border... in mid-June came days of poppy glory." Here's a scan of that plate:

The planting in the images from my community plot is of two parallel forty foot borders: so my eighty foot poppy border has two mirror image sides.

 

And then there is the third thing: a source of quality, inexpensive poppy seed. Such a thing does exist: check out Wildseed Farms in Fredericksburg, Texas. McFarland's ounce will set you back all of $4.60 the last time I checked. Try to think of some other purchase of that amount which gives even remotely so much delight.

Flowers of the corn fields

Back in the mid 1970s a series of compact, information filled and very well illustrated little books came out of the Netherlands to be published in this country by Collier. They were authored by Rob Herwig. I have the ones treating bulbs, house plants and varied garden plants. The one treating varied garden plants was illustrated by Herwig and Wolfram Stehling. You can easily see the seeds of the so-called New American Garden in these books, and it's hard to avoid the point of view that the New American Garden was in fact America's belated adoption of pre-World War II north European gardening sensibilities.

When they were new, I pored over these little books and their illustrations, and even now, decades later, I still occasionally consult them.

The image above was inspired by a comment in Herwig's 128 Garden Plants You Can Grow. Writing about corn poppies and bachelor's buttons, he wrote "It is very effective to grow some wheat or barley with these flowers, reminding one of old-fashioned wheat fields." I've been waiting decades to make this image!

The plants shown are corn poppies, Papaver rhoeas; corn cockle, Agrostemma githago, and what might be wheat. The corn poppies and corn cockle are from my community garden plots; the grass is that sold as "cat grass", grass intended for consumption by domestic cats. Keep in mind that the word "corn" in these names does not refer to what we call corn here in America, but rather refers to grains in general.

Mixed gleanings from the May garden

There is so much happening in the garden now that it's hard to keep up with it. There is so much to do, and it's hard to take the time to appreciate things properly. Here are some recent glimpses from the garden:

First, Silene virginica, the fire pink. This plant grows wild in eastern North America, and one might expect to find it in every garden. But it's not a common garden plant at all, although it's readily available in the trade.

Here's another plant which, if easy availability and low price were considerations, one would also expect to find in many gardens. This is Ixiolirion tataricum (aka I. pallasii, I. montanum among many others). In this case its scarcity in local gardens probably has an explanation in the plant's requirement for dry summer conditions. Other than that, it appears to be easy to grow.

Here's Zephyranthes atamasco, said to be native to Maryland. I've never noticed a fragrance with this plant.

Here you can see the elongating scapes of culinary leeks. When they bloom they are as handsome as the ornamental onions. The related elephant garlic (which is a form of Allium ampeloprasum, the same species from which the culinary leek is derived) is even more ornamental as it approaches bloom: the spathe which sheathes the umbel of flowers suggests the onion domes of Russian churches.

The past winter was so mild that plants of cilantro (coriander) survived and are now blooming.

Here are some of the roses blooming now. First, 'Chevy Chase', a rose raised here in the greater Washington, D.C. area about seventy-five years ago. This is a very vigorous climbing rose with excellent, disease free foliage. The flowers are not fragrant, and the plant does not repeat, but other than that it is about as good as a rose gets. Few local gardeners seem to know about it; when I talk roses with a new acquaintance and they indicate that they know about 'Chevy Chase', I know I've found a new rose friend.

This is 'White Cockade', a climbing rose introduced about forty years ago; it's noted for very disease resistant foliage.

And here is 'Alida Lovett', one of the famous Van Fleet roses from the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

Here's a once famous mid-nineteenth century rose 'Rêve d’Or', one of the Noisette or tea-Noisette roses. This rose is a good example of what passed for yellow among rose enthusiasts of the time.  The best of the roses of this group combine beautifully blended soft colors with sweet fragrance.

This next one is 'Silver Moon', another Van Fleet rose, and one said to be a hybrid of Rosa laevigata. Rosa laevigata, sometimes called the Cherokee rose, is naturalized in the far southern states; it's noted for its huge white flowers. It's not hardy in the north, and it's not surprising that hybridists made an early effort to produce a rose such as 'Silver Moon' which is,  in effect, a hardy Cherokee rose.

Here's one last one for today: 'Eddie's Crimson', a hybrid of Rosa moyesii.

There is more on the way!

Sometimes it feels so good to be wrong...

While driving home the other day a bit of color on the road caught my eye. As the car passed, something attached to that bit of color flapped. My first thought was that one of the newly returned  warblers had been a victim of automobile traffic.  I thought I saw pale yellow, maybe a spot of orange, some blue-gray. My imagination quickly converted that quick glance into a Parula warbler.

At the first chance I had I pulled the car over and walked back to examine the casualty. I'm happy to say that it was not a Parula warbler. It was not even a bird. Here's what it was:

This is the flower of the tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera.  The genus name Liriodendron is formed from the classical Greek words for lily and tree; the name of the species, tulipifera, is New Latin and means "tulip bearing".  Many people are surprised when they learn that it is a member of the magnolia family. And those flowers do look like tulips - there is a horticultural class of tulips sometimes called Viridiflora tulips, some of which have green flowers.

In popular parlance there is another "tulip tree" in our gardens: the early flowering magnolias are often so called.

All of my adult life I've been curious about the source of a scent which fills our local woods early in the growing season. I think that scent might be from the Liriodendron tulip trees. This scent is apparent long before the flowers open, so it must be coming from the new vegetative growth if in fact it is coming from the tulip trees. For me, this scent defines the scent "woodsy". 





Smilax walteri

After a very long wait, Smilax walteri has finally bloomed here. I collected the seed of this plant about twenty years ago in southeastern Virginia during the same trip on which seed of Smilax laurifolia was collected. Smilax walteri is one member of this genus which is worth having for its showy fruit: it's sometimes called the coral berry cat brier. It was my original intention to make this post later in the year when the fruit was in color. When I saw the developing flower buds earlier this year the excitement began to mount. Finally the little rust colored buds began to open. Something about them reminded me of the flowers of the little orchid Aplyctrum hyemale. Once the flowers were open, I picked one with the intention of cross-pollinating other open blooms. That's when the big disappointment came: the flower I had plucked had only stamens. A quick check confirmed that all of the flowers had only stamens. There won't be any coral berries this year.
There was supposed to be an image of the flower with this posting, but if I took one I can't find it now. I remember taking a picture, or rather thinking I was taking a picture, but it must have been one of those times I ran out without a memory card in the camera.

Community garden update

Growth at the community garden plots has surged since the last post on this topic. The 40' parallel rows of corn cockle, corm poppy and larkspurs are finally starting to bloom. The lilies are budded and some seem on the verge of bloom. Hard neck garlics are putting up their scapes: I'm growing these as much for their scapes as for their potential use in the kitchen. There has been a scattering of rose bloom, too. The ornamental onions and Dutch irises are still blooming freely.

Community garden plot photo update

Here's a photo of one of my community garden plots; this was taken on April 17 of this year. Green is slowly covering the site. Flowering along the central path are parrot tulips and various ornamental onions. The onions are in general shorter than expected - this is no doubt due to the drought we are experiencing.

Compare this photo to the photo posted March 29: the lilies on the right are filling in nicely, too. On the left of the image are rows of multiplier onions, shallots and garlics. 

The importance of matching the tool to the job...

One of the large white oaks was taken down today. Most of it was run through a chipper. When the truck arrived this morning it already had a substantial load of chips from an earlier job, and all were eventually dumped in the driveway and on the front lawn. Anyone care to estimate how long it's going to take me to move all of this?

When I looked at my puny wheelbarrow beside that huge double humped mound of mulch, my sense of humor provided the title for this post.

Arum dioscoridis

The arums are, as I know them, summer dormant winter growing plants notable for lush foliage and foul-smelling "flowers".  Most of the members of this genus produce foliage in the autumn; in our climate this foliage sometimes persists through the winter but is more often than not destroyed. I tried this species years ago in the open garden, and it lasted about three years before it finally gave up. Four years ago a tiny offset appeared at one of the local plant exchanges and I decided to give it a try again. This time it was planted in the protected cold frame. It's blooming this year for the first time.

Arum dioscoridis is notable for the color pattern of the interior of its spathe. Something nicked this one just as the spathe was unfurling, and so the spathe is not quite as striking as it might have been. But you can easily get the idea from what's there.

This one produces a pervasive, reeking, stealth stench: I could smell it from inside the house (there was an open window near the plant).

Paeonia 'Coral Charm'

This beautiful, robust peony has done well here. It's valuable for its early bloom and its ease of culture. It has every good quality expected in a peony except one, and that one is a significant failing: it stinks. It reeks of stale fish. To be sure, one has to bring the flower right up to the nose to detect this, but it's definitely there.

The color changes as the bloom ages. By the time the flowers are mature they are sometimes a sort of

café au lait  tone or even pale yellow. In the lower image you can see this range of color.   

Tulip medallion with broken tulips

The combination of brown, broken tulips with the young leaves of the copper beech produces one of my favorite color associations. The tulips you see here are 'Absalon' (this time with very little color breaking so that it is essentially a brown tulip), 'Lord Stanley' (boldly streaked red and yellow)  and 'Insulinde' (slate colored). A few pansies in a similar color range complete the group.

The color of 'Absalon' matches the color of the copper beech leaves almost exactly. The appearance of this tulip varies much from season to season. In the lower pictures, taken in 1981, you see other ones including a boldly broken example. It's not only the color pattern which varies: the shape of the tepals also varies.

Next year I hope to have more tulip flowers with which to work up such a combination, but even these three produce a rich effect all out of proportion to the meager resources used.

Tulipa 'Uncle Tom'

To my tastes tulips do red better than any other flower; and my favorites are those dark ones which show hints of the color of dried blood. Beautiful as they are in full bloom, for me there is something almost unbearably poignant about the color of fallen red tulip tepals as they begin to darken, dry and wither. I've been known to cut some of these and as the tepals fall allow them to lie on the table surface for weeks.  It means, of course, that another tulip season is ending. Any tulip which shows this dark red color is apt to be a favorite here.

Above is 'Uncle Tom', a late double tulip which was introduced about five years before I was born. I've probably known about it most of my gardening life, and it's another one I would not like to be without. When the flowers begin to open the color seems off: it's not the brown-red expected. But as the flower matures it becomes suffused with the rich color for which it is so famous.

Viola dissecta

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

The sprout season

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

Things are really happening quickly this year.