They're not exactly Rip-van-Winkles, but the Clivia in my collection HAVE been snoozing since the middle of November--under the bench, no water, no fertilizer. As I witness a bit of rousing from their slumber, I help them along. Moving them into warmer, brighter conditions and watering, judiciously at first, and then with increasing frequency helps them shake the cobwebs. The plants respond, and, since they've had their requisite cool, dry rest, they do this: http://bestc.am/f3P
The exciting news this year is the first blooming of my yellow seedlings. The best so far is a clear "real-butter" yellow that I'd name Clivia miniata 'Land-O-Lakes' (but not without first getting the permission of the churners at Land O' Lakes). As you can see, the yellows have lost none of their cache, despite being more available and affordable than ever. They are a beautiful addition to any plant collection. http://bestc.am/mGK
Among the finer attributes of these plants is their willingness to tolerate household conditions with great aplomb. Mine get placed around the house while in bloom, spend their summer outside, and, as mentioned above, are happy to take their positions in the cool, relatively dark spaces under the plant benches in the basement for their winter rest. What more could you ask?
At long last I am about to bloom Bulbophyllum
echinolabium under lights. Something of a geek's delight--the plant's
flower is fabulous and large, but its scent is a dead ringer for decaying
mouse--I've had it for some time without the pleasure of its particular fetor.
I first saw--and smelled--the plant in the collection of The New York
Botanical Garden. It has one of the largest flowers in the entire (and rather
populous, with over a thousand species) genus Bulbophyllum (from the Greek bulbos,
meaning “bulb” and phyllon meaning
“leaf”). It can reach nearly 16” long on inflorescence that approaches 28” in
length.
The huge flower is graceful in appearance with spreading sepals and petals
and a dark red labellum (the third petal) variously described as papillose or
carunculate…both meaning having small growths (the first meaning “nipple-like”
the second “lumpy”) and with a long tubular apex.
The species hails from Sulawesi and Borneo
where it grows in warm, moist environments. That’s your clue for growing the
plant: warm and moist, good but not scorching light, loose potting mix (bark,
perlite, charcoal, etc….). Pots or baskets suit it equally well as it does not
scramble as much as some of the other species rather it plods along in an
ever-expanding clump.
Even amid orchid growers, certainly amongst the geeks of the
plant world, this plant is a world apart. Someday I’ll catalogue some of the
other “unique” fragrances of the orchid world…. Can’t wait, right?
You may recall that I've written in this space before about marauding chipmunks performing laparoscopy on the lawn to get at crocus bulbs, leaving only surgically precise holes just large enough to remove the small bulbs. It was pretty much a clear cut, returning the lawn to a monoculture.
In several other areas, new plantings of crocus managed to get their heads above ground and bloom this spring. Wonderful. I've been enjoying the flowers, returning to them to watch the numbers increase on sunny days. And now this....
Once again the crocus are gone. It's different this time. The bulbs are snug (for the time being) in the ground but the flowers, oh the flowers.... They've exploded.
Where once there was a natural-looking, small, drift of crocus there is now a splattering of petals--like shreds of paper left by firecrackers after all the fun. The leaves remain, mute witnesses to the slaughter. What the hell?
There's never anyone around...no suspects upon which to foist the blame for this travesty. My early spring colors on the ground in tatters but there’s no enemy to rail against. There’s nothing worse than an undirected rant; little satisfaction in spewing expletives if there’s no furry ear to catch their fury.
I will continue planting crocus, in the perhaps futile hope that numbers will prevail (or that predator populations will catch up to the spike in rodent numbers…). It’s not exactly “plant a row for the hungry”, but the more I plant, the better my chances that some will remain, untouched, to start naturalizing.
I've got a nice Jatropha podagrica that's been blooming with leaves and without, for over a year. This “bottle plant” is a member of the euphorbia family, grown as much for its swollen, Barbara-Eden base (you dream of Jeannie...this is her bottle) as for its umbels of bright orange flowers. Since it's prone to drop its leaves when the weather turns cold, those flowers are delightful—especially when little else is happening in the winter.As a result, I was happy to learn that the plant was self-fertile. Without any help on my part, it began developing seed capsules—a good sign that I might be able to create more of these curious tropicals. With increasing interest, I began keeping an eye on the infrequent swellings. I'd watch them, searching for telltale signs of ripeness—yellowing, a split....
Then, overnight, they'd be gone. No capsule, no seed. Nada.
Knowing of the propensity for members of the Euphorbiaceae to explosively discharge their seed, I conducted a search, examining ever-widening circles around the plant. There...on the floor...twisted shards of capsule, torques inside out. There had to be seed—and there was, good-sized, but not easy to find. Two capsules were finally captured by slipping small, sealable bags over them while they were still on the plant and closing them just enough to keep the seed from escaping, but still allow air to circulate.
It was clear that the seed capsules opened with some force, but I had no idea of the explosive power involved until this week. A capsule nearing maturity appeared to be ready to fall from the plant because of an injury to its stem. Rather than lose the seed, I plucked the capsule intact and set it on the counter in my kitchen. For several days it remained there...unchanged and unchanging, or so I thought. Then, one morning, it was gone. Not a sign remained behind. I hadn't seen a mouse in the house all season (knock on wood). That left only one possibility. It had done its thing, and I missed it.
I sat down to breakfast and, sure enough, there on the table, like a bullet's spent casing, was a twisted segment of capsule. The floor yielded more...but no sign of the seeds. Late in the day I went to my favorite chair to read. Plodding along in stocking feet, I stepped on something at the foot of the chair. It's certainly not an uncommon event at my house to have something on the floor, BUT this happened to be a seed!
Now these are not small seed (roughly the size of two or three grains of rice banded together). Yet, here it was over 15 feet from where its capsule had been placed! Then I found another. The lost seed in the growing area could be almost anywhere if its being flung this far.
Once or twice a year I go fungal. No...it's not some dread disease that casts me into a "socially unacceptable" category. And I'm not "going postal" with mushrooms, running around and launching them into the stratosphere with well placed kicks. Rather, going fungal is what I do when conditions conspire to permit the overnight appearance of a bumper crop of fungi.
You see, despite the fact that many people regard them as a nuisance to be done away with like a weed, I find fungi in the garden fascinating, beautiful, and eminently photogenic. My reaction, rather than mild revulsion, is to run for the camera, drop to my knees, and engage in a little impromptu portrait session. Today was a day to go fungal.
In a brief walkabout before starting the day, I became aware that the smattering of mushrooms and other fungi that I'd been observing for the past few days had reached an apogee of sorts. The odd group here or there that seemed to disappear as quickly as they popped up, culminated in a cornucopia of fungal fecundity.
Correct I.D. will await closer examination of the photographs, but a delightful hour or so was occupied by composing shot after shot of large meaty mushrooms, bright orange colonies, black, diamond-studded beauties disgorging spores as if they'd been disemboweled, beautiful browns, reds, snow-whites and nearly every color in between.
It will happen again before winter sets in. Fall is a great time for mushrooms--cool, moist conditions that they favor will return and I'll get another chance to add to the stock file of photographs that I'm continuously building to showcase their beauty and diversity.
You know how it is. You get new plants and, flush with the excitement and novelty of their newness, your lust is--however momentarily--sated. For the time being, all is right with the world.
Then it starts...
"Well," you think, "this is nice...."
"I've already bloomed it. It's been photographed...."
"It's growing pretty slowly. It'll be years before it looks like anything...."
"Gee, orchids are great, but I'd really love to try some cacti...."
Once you get to this point it's all over. You have to bring in something new.
I've been through many phases in my plant-growing career. Orchids, cacti, passion flowers, tropicals, clivias, succulents, anything bizarre. Most blaze like a comet for a undetermined length of time...then smolder languidly while a new passion rears its head. This results in a highly diverse collection--with needs that don't suit themselves to consistent, uniform treatment. Hence I create work for myself. That's just what we do.
The last phase, and one that has continued for quite a while, is caudiciform succulents. They are lumpy, bumpy, grotesques that have swollen stems/underground storage organs. They are bizarre, unusual and amazingly attractive for all their ugliness. Having grown them for a while, something else was needed.
Enter Asarum: the temperate, evergreen gingers of North America and Asia. Flipping through "Toki No Hana" a Japanese picture book of cultivated Asarum (they are the acknowledged masters and have selected hundreds of unique cultivars), should be enough to whet any plant lover's appetite, and since mine isn't all that hard to get going, I was hooked.
I knew exactly where to go, and a short time later an order for sixteen or so plants was emailed. The plants ship today and I'll have them by the end of the week. They are each distinct from the other, have fabulous and unusual flowers, and many have mottled or otherwise marked leaves. They are all Japanese or Chinese and will have to be grown in pots and brought in the winter. Luckily, I've grown a couple of similar species and they've done well with an outdoor regime in the season, and a cool windowsill for the winter--so I know I can maintain them.
Most people don't go through the trouble and expense of putting hardy orchids in their gardens to use them as cut flowers. Just getting them to thrive and bloom is a challenge--taking a scissors to them is unthinkable. Taking advantage of a natural disaster, however, is just putting the resource to its highest and best use.
I grow Calopogon tuberosus (Grass Pinks) in a bog garden. They come up relatively late and begin blooming in late June and early July. Their inverted (well they look that way--I'm sure the plant considers them quite normal) pink or white flowers are fantastic bits of architecture.
The other day, having gone out to photograph them, I noted a broken stem with an open flower and a string of buds. Not wanting it to go to waste, I cut it and brought it into the house to stick in vase. Now I know that many orchids are useful as cut flowers, but I'd never thought of Calopogons--or any of the other hardy orchids--in that way.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that the stem lasted. One by one the buds matured and opened (although the flowers got progressively smaller). At nearly two weeks on now, I still have a fresh Calopogon flower on the kitchen counter.
Don't get me wrong. The success of this little experiement doesn't mean that I'm going to run around next spring cutting Cypripediums and other hardy orchids. I still prefer them in the garden, doing what I originally intended for them to do. It's nice to know, however, that should disaster strike, I can take advantage of the situation to enjoy them in another way.
Why not stop at the mother-site BotanicalGardening.com to explore other ways to take advantage of the things that happen in your garden.
Funny things, we gardeners. I just finished reading a short interview with Anna Pavord, author of "The Naming of Names" and "The Tulip" in Gardens Illustrated the BBC publication mentioned in an earlier post.
In the space of just a few short lines she revealed the quirky nature of all of us who toil in the soil. In response to a question about whether there are any plants she can't stand, she replied, "Dwarfed cultivars of plants." Shortly afterward in recommending her favorite show, the Melplash Agricultural Society Show, she confesses, "I'm mad about the shrines to monster vegetables in the horticultural tent."
I'm willing to bet that most people, hearing the response to the first question, wouldn't anticipate
the disclosure that follows. After all, the implication of the abhorrence to dwarf plants is that they are somehow gauche, ill-bred and vulgar. Yet somehow this woman finds room in her heart for "monster vegetables;" freakish brutes that rarely, if ever, make their way to the table to fulfill their destiny.
Unlike Gilda Radner who said, "I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch," our taste in plants is rarely a rational, logical thing. Having one's fancy struck is all that is necessary to launch a thousand ships of horticultural bliss. Pavord's dwarfs might be just your stick of licorice. Monster vegetables don't do much for me.
And size is only the tip of the iceberg. I know people who won't allow a yellow flower in their gardens--and there are even more idiosyncratic preferences than that.... To be fair, although Anna prefers monster vegetables to dwarf plants of any stripe, it's not clear that she grows either.
What a lovely anniversary present. The candy-sweet flowers of Coffea arabica (from whence comes our daily dose of caffeine) are open TODAY for the first time, on plants I raised from seedlings so young their beans were still attached like a tiny placenta.
Coffee is easy to grow, even in pots indoors. Good but not intense light, relatively constant moisture (a little drier in winter), room temperatures, and fertilizer every few weeks is all that is needed--in addition to a little patience. It takes a few years for seedlings to reach blooming size.
These plants are attractive at all times with beautiful, glossy, dark green leaves. The small, fragrant white flowers occur in the leaf axils are followed by the fruits which go from green to red to black; and contain a pair of coffee beans each (probably not even enough for a thimble of coffee!).
I won't be giving Guatemala a run for its coffee dollars anytime soon, but one day I may roast a cup or two worth of my own beans.
Colchicum x agrippinum is in bloom today...the first of
the colchicums to emerge. The flowers are a bit squinny--not worth a
picture--but it's a stunner when it blooms well. The tesselated petals
it is known for are there, but the relatively dry period leading up to
flowering, or the first-season status of the planting have obviously
played a role in the less than stellar display.
These "fall crocus"--among the most beautiful of the fall-flowering
bulbs-- are wonderful, poking flowers out of the ground before any
leaves at a time of year when perennials are beginning their seasonal
swoon. I'll be looking for more to show their faces in the coming days
and weeks.
Yesterday I visited Sunny Border in Kensington, CT for their annual
open house. Great lunch, good company and a great selection of
wonderful, clean, healthy plants. (Thanks Pierre, et al).
I picked up only three things (but enough of them to fill up the jeep). First, a wonderful little Euphorbia
called 'Bonfire'. It's outstanding characteristic is that it doesn't
wait until fall to get dressed for the party. As you know, many
euphorbias color up nicely when the weather cools. 'Bonfire' wears its
party dress all summer long, resplendent in red finery and its small ,
rounded habit.
I also succumbed to temptation and picked up one of the new Echinacea purpurea
cultivars. I have to admit that I have not been too crazy about all the
new colors ('White Swan' one of the oldest and best excepted). The
oranges and yellows have been intriguing but, with one exception,
they've always seemed to underperform in garden settings. (The one
exception: a magnificent display of one of the orange cultivars outside
a Chili's Restaurant--I'll take a division of that one!). ANYWAY, Echinacea purpurea
'Green Envy' called like a siren from the benches, luring me into its
clutches. Bright green petals around its cone, developing purple around
the cone only after flowers mature. I can't wait to get the camera on
this one. We'll see.....
The real star of the day, and my pick for the best plant shown: Gentiana scabra
'Zuikorindo', a pink-flowered scabra. The plants were huge, in the pink
(no pun intended) of health, and gorgeous. Ironically they didn't seem
to be moving well (people weren't buying because they weren't IN BLOOM,
can you imagine!), until I cleaned the bench out and loaded up a
cart--they had to bring more out and then people started giving them a
second look.
I love gentians and G. scabra has been a
favorite since the NYBG days when it used to bloom its normally purple
flowers at the same time as its leaves colored up for the fall--quite a
display. The prospect of a deep pink flowered form was too much to pass
up.
You'll be hearing more about these plants as I see how they do in the ground.
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