Bloom Day January 2012

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Denise

Bloom Day brought the rain back. A solid month of dry weather and blue skies was getting very tedious.
Thank you, Carol! And congratulations on five years of hosting Bloom Days at May Dreams Gardens.

Much of what was blooming in December still holds. The cloud forest salvias from Mexico like S. chiapensis flower well in a zone 10 winter. And there’s a handful of plants of Helleborus argutifolius now in bloom. (The fancy hybrids still scare me. I imagine a very expensive, painfully slow trial period with them, at the end of which I’ll inevitably conclude that they prefer more winter chill than I can give them.)

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Although its leaves aren’t much to look at for the moment, Cotyledon macrantha’s flowers are doing their part to promote Pantone’s color of the year for 2012, Tangerine Tango. The new flowers on a kangaroo paw, Anigozanthos ‘Gold Velvet,’ are brushed in Tangerine Tango too. In fact, orange is old news to this garden.

“Sophisticated, dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenalin rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.”

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January is the month for peering in close at odd and subtle means of pollination, like the flowers on the String of Pearls, Senecio rowleyanus. In June I doubt they’d get a second look. And I’m wondering if the inflorescence on Pennisetum ‘Princess Caroline’ will consistently arrive this late once the grass settles in after a year or so.

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Begonia luxurians in flower this Bloom Day, just as it was in 2011. Euphorbias are budding up, including E. rigida.

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Centratherum punctatum, Brazilian Buttons, is always willing to bloom in January, usually overwilling. Just one plant was spared and allowed to grow. Some years the brick pathways are overrun by it. Nice, fruity smell to the leaves too.

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The Gerbera ‘Drakensberg Carmine’ hasn’t mushed out or fainted in the heavy, cold soil of December and January but instead seems to be thriving, pushing out more blooms daily. I’m impressed, even though the blooms swivel in several directions like distracted geese.

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Echeveria agavoides with twin antennae bloom spikes, annual linaria in the background.

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And closing out Bloom Day January 2012 with broad bands of lantana and Helichrysum ‘Limelight’ from a local municipal planting.

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phoenix plants

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Denise

First bloom on little Pelargonium echinatum, which I wrote about last January here. That its gnarled, dessicated branches somehow put on this performance every January is like getting a sneak preview of spring in a 6-inch pot.

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And oh, happy day, the first bloom my garden has ever seen from coronilla, which I wrote about last May here. The short version is, plants mysteriously die. Sometimes cuttings can be taken before they do, sometimes not. Mercifully, this last cutting I took of the dying shrub rooted.

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This lanky shrub shimmies through a spiral tuteur I bought for it last summer, which gathers up its many scandent stems and lends some needed organization and support. Goldeny pea flowers, beautifully glaucous, rue-like leaves, delicate tracery, shadowy patterns, coronilla has it all. And scent too, though I haven’t detected any yet. Maybe as more blooms open.

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I have one more phoenix plant coming along, a single cutting of Euphorbia ceratocarpa that took well over a year to root, which it finally did this summer. The cutting is now about a foot high and seems to be safely on its way to planthood. I had no idea cuttings could take such time to root. Seeds, yes. But waiting over a year for a cutting to root, as was the case for both the coronilla and the euphorbia, was a complete surprise. The only photo I could find of this willowy euphorbia is from very early days in the blog.

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The typical euphorbia flowers can be seen against the blue fence, to the left of the golden duranta, which is also now gone. Indeed, the pathway that I’m standing on is mostly gone and given over to planting. My neighbor now has the potted Agave americana, and those smoky columns to the left of the agave are the lophomyrtus I just moved to the front garden. I was apparently intending a formal parterre-ish framing for the agave, then obviously changed my mind. There’s a golden coprosma in there too that has been moved to make way for a melianthus. (What a lot of goldeny stuff I had going.) The pergola has since been repainted, and Digitalis ferruginea has been planted where the agave pot once stood. The only thing that remains the same is that ratty robe, which I coincidentally am wearing now. Seems I change out plants much more frequently that I do my wardrobe.

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Fedor String Gardens

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Denise

It occurred to me last night that I need to visit Amsterdam at some point, so naturally I spent a bit of time today researching Dutch gardens. To that end, I came across these heavenly botanical objects, which have been featured on many design blogs over the past few years, but somehow I managed to miss them. So please bear with me if this is old news.

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Labeled “String Gardens,” they are based on the Japanese floral art of kokedama, a kind of floating bonsai. When the rootball becomes densely compacted, the bonsai can be released from its container and hung. These photos are all the work of Dutch artist Fedor van der Valk, who has taken this basic idea of wrapping rootballs in moss and tying them round with string to dazzling heights. Plants are liberated from the earth, pots, shelves — the ceiling and one’s imagination are the only limits. These and many more photos can be seen at the site stringgardens. He works out of his Amsterdam shop Pompon.

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Some basic instructions can be found here.

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An idea full of buoyant possibilities.

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describing plants

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Denise

It’s plant catalogue season. Plant Delights and Derry Watkins’ Special Plants both arrived in the mail today, although I also seem to be getting quite a lot via email. Selfishly, my preferred format for the long, slow perusal required of a first-rate catalogue is on paper. (Next best is the iPad I don’t yet possess.) A string of computer glitches has put me in a technophobic mood, not to mention the glut of Clay Shirky reading I did yesterday, not to mention the new Gmail format. That this process of constant upgrades and innovation seems to have hit breakneck speeds is why I expect to wake up one morning looking like this fellow. (Image found here)

Did I already mention that I loathe the new Gmail format? Like the insomniac developers at Google who just can’t leave well enough alone, plant names can also really grate on the nerves. Just check any catalogue list of hosta or daylily offerings. Then there are those names that bring really sweet associations, like Melianthus ‘Purple Haze,’ which always reminds me of my brother’s hero worship of Jimi Hendrix, and when he mastered a reasonable approximation of the guitar solo from ‘Little Wing’ and first played it, to the rapturous awe of my 11-year-old self. Different song entirely, but if it wasn’t for the purple haze all in his eyes, we wouldn’t have the perfect name for this compact cultivar of Melianthus major with the lovely purple wash to its serrated leaves. The agave ‘Jaws’ is another name I never forget, which surely must be the aim when selecting names. But my being unable to forget this agave’s name might also have something to do with the fact that I coinicidentally purchased it on the day Roy (“That’s some bad hat, Harry”) Scheider died, February 10, 2008. Unfortunately, I can’t cite a source for this melianthus at the moment, but Plant Delights carries ‘Jaws’ in its extensive online agave offerings.

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Agave ‘Mr. Ripple.’ Another memorable name.

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But the name of this dark-leaved, lophomyrtus I transplanted yesterday always eludes me.
(Checking old blog entries, I find it’s ‘Red Dragon.’ Evergreen New Zealander.)
The euphorbia I remember only as not the weak grower ‘Tasmanian Tiger,’ a name easy to recall. Its true name, ‘Silver Swan,’ I can’t seem to commit to memory.

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Roses tend to have memorable names, even when in French, e.g. Cuisse De Nymphe (“Thigh of Nymph”).

But the difficulty in finding catchy names for cultivars is nothing compared to the slow progress made in describing plants in Latin.

“Botanists are probably only about halfway through describing the plants on Earth, with roughly 200,000 species described. Yet only about 2,000 names get published a year at the current pace.” (ScienceNews.)

And having to publish new species in a printed format has proven cumbersome in the electronic age:

“[I]n July 2011, the international congress that meets every six years to revise the nomenclature code convened in Melbourne, Australia, and voted to accept certain forms of electronic publication.” (ScienceNews.)

“[R]esearchers have agreed to drop the requirement for hard copies of papers describing new species. Also vanishing from the code is a requirement that species must come with a Latin description.” (Nature.)

Names must still be in binomial Latin, as prescribed since Linnaeus, just not the physical descriptions. Beginning January 2012, “diagnostic botanical descriptions may be written in Latin or English, and the electronic publication of new names is accepted,” The New York Times 1/5/12, “The New Universal Language of Plants.”

Now, that’s progress even I can appreciate.

Added 1/23/12: “No longer will botanists have to write sentences like: ‘Arbor usque ad 6 m alta. Folia decidua; lamina oblanceolata vel elliptica-oblongata, 2-7 cm longa,’ as I did in 2009, describing a new species from Mexico. Instead, I could simply write that Bourreria motaguensis was a six-meter-tall tree with deciduous leaves that were 2 to 7 centimeters long.” – “Flora, Now in Plain English,” by James S. Miller, dean and vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden. The New York Times, 1/22/12.

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Occasional Daily Weather Report 1/4/12

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Denise

Unusual for January 4, 80 degrees, dry, and piercingly blue sky.
Sweaty weather for garden work. Great weather if you’re a succulent.

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percolating

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Denise

The garden continues to percolate along in a quiet January fashion. Poppies, lunaria, Orlaya grandiflora, and Geranium maderense seem to be what’s on the menu for spring — their seedlings are everywhere. A nice problem to have and easy to edit out where they’ve sown too thickly. The nubby tips of tulips are starting to pierce through the soil in their pots. Recent daytime temps in the high 70s and even crossing over into the low 80s are rushing spring a bit. The chronic sweeping of leaves might be just about over this week since the trees appear to have none left to give. This nice pairing of a dark phormium and budding corsican hellebore was revealed when a leaning athanasia shrub was cut back and off the phormium. There’s been a lot of settling such disputes via loppers lately. The phormium was one of two dwarf kinds planted (‘Tom Thumb’), only one of which survived, definitely labeled incorrectly and not ‘Tom Thumb’ but still a moderately sized phormium and not prone to gigantism so far.

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Four seedlings of Ammi visagna are thriving, all that germinated from a fall sowing.
My first attempt at growing this supposedly superior kind of Queen Anne’s Lace.
Can’t wait to see if and how the umbels differ from A. majus.

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The chilly, east-facing bathroom has proven to be optimal for paperwhites.

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I spent a good part of yesterday rummaging through bins of old bulbs in local nurseries, hoping to find a few more of these narcissus since I planted so few in fall. I managed to find a source and bought just three more for continual, staggered bloom, hopefully into March. Why’s it so hard to envision in fall how happy-making these bulbs in bloom in January will be? The bathroom is transformed by a couple bowls of paperwhites in bloom from a utilitarian space into a conservatory, albeit one you can still brush your teeth in. Since I always seem to have a couple bags around, I use builder’s sand as a matrix for growing these bulbs. Cheaper than fancy pebbles, and the weight keeps tall glass vases from tipping over.

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My beautiful Agave guadalajarana in better days.

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The leaves had become dull and curled inward. Investigating the problem this morning, the entire agave sheared off from the base with a light tug. Agave snout-nosed beetle? Nearby agaves seem unaffected so far. What to plant in its place, and in place of the yards of rampant Senecio mandraliscae I also pulled out, will need a little more percolating this winter. Aloes?

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, Bulbs, garden visit, Plant Portraits | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

here’s to 2012

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Denise

The usual quiet of my little garden was broken by lots of chatter and laughter in 2011.

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Thank you!

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I’ve been entertained, educated, enthralled, and enchanted by our garden blogging community in 2011 and can’t wait to read what you’re up to in 2012.

With much affection,
Denise/A Growing Obsession

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, creatures, Occasional Daily Photo, Plant Portraits, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

gentlemen, stop your motors

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Denise

The Los Angeles Times ran this piece in their Pro Portfolio section on Monday, December 26, and it really deserves another look. The article profiles the home garden of Katherine Spitz, of Katherine Spitz Associates, Inc., Landscape Architecture.

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The Pro Portfolio format allows for the designer to describe their project, in this case, her home garden, in their own words. This little snippet reveals what may be a timeless conflict:

“Our biggest issue was the lawn. I wanted less and my husband wanted more. It has been incrementally reduced but remains an issue. Concrete pavers replaced lawn around the circular fountain in front of the follies.”

Here’s the “before” photo, with lawn still in place:

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I showed Marty both photos and asked for his honest preference, then about fell out of my chair on hearing his answer.
He prefers the photo with the lawn. Even though the luminous top photo looks like it was lit by Terrence Malick, with the windows of the twin follies gleaming gold behind the balletic arch of the fountain jets over the reflecting pool — he prefers the lawn. There is clearly an emotional attachment to well-mown turf grass that eludes me. As more frequent droughts and water scarcity necessitate increasingly smaller (or entirely absent) lawns, will it be men who mourn the loss the most?

Feel free to try this test at home.

Checking my choice for a title, I find via Google that it’s been used a mere 1,800,000 times. The Internet is certainly one of the most effective means to disabuse one’s self of any pretense of originality. Still, the title stays. I’m referring to lawn mowers, of course.

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poinsettia hangover

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Denise

I was up early with the possums this morning after Christmas.

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Seconds before we startled each other, my attentions had been directed at the Euphorbia milii, or Crown of Thorns, on the other side of the hedge.

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A couple neighbors have outlined their front lawns and walkways with extensive potted collections of this euphorbia. An interesting choice for a collection.

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Apart from the very scary thorns, I suppose I can see the attraction. Tough, drought tolerant. Blooms in an array of colors.

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What really had me up early, prowling the still-drowsy neighborhood like my possum friend, was another euphorbia, the large poinsettia trees a couple streets over.

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There’s a rare, concentrated mood in a neighborhood just after a holiday, just beginning to dissolve away until it rebuilds next year, but still palpable, especially before sunrise. Most days, it’s anyone’s guess what occupies my neighbors’ hearts and minds. The possible range of concerns is too vast to fathom. Whether we’re happy, sad, or indifferent to the winter holidays, they have the unique ability to narrow that range for a brief time, and that overlap of shared concerns can be very warming indeed.

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Think of these poinsettias as visual “hair of the dog” for the holidays.

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Although belated, the very warmest season’s greetings!

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Occasional Daily Weather Report: Hailstorm damage

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Denise

There’s really nothing else I can think of that could cause this mysterious pitting:

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Last week a very local weather system kicked up, causing a tremendous downpour and hail. The rainfall was that rare, torrential, deafening kind that always makes me laugh in amazement. The thunder and lightning soon put a stop to the frivolity, and all of us, cats and dog in the lead, skidded and sloshed in frantic search for shelter. I thought I sensed maybe some hail mixed in as I ran for cover but wasn’t sure, until my neighbor Holly told us she made a little snowman from the hail she found on her back deck. Since then, I’ve been finding this kind of damage everywhere in the garden. On echeverias, aeoniums, and some of the softer-leaved agaves, like the attenuatas and desmettianas.

Agave ‘Kara’s Stripes’ and Agave celsii ‘Multicolor’

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What’s even more surprising to me than this hail damage, if that’s what it is (and what else could it be?) is the fact that this has never happened before. From Wikipedia: “Hail formation requires environments of strong, upward motion of air with the parent thunderstorm (similar to tornadoes) and lowered heights of the freezing level. Hail is most frequently formed in the interior of continents within the mid-latitudes of Earth, with hail generally confined to higher elevations within the tropics.”

This video taken at a local high school, and which — WARNING — contains very “strong” language, offers an inside look at Southern Californians’ response to a hailstorm.

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