Pinked

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Denise

Not quite sure how this happened. I didn’t seek out pink.

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But it arrived anyway, on some great plants like the annual knotweed, Polygonum orientale, a 6-footer with splashy variegated leaves.

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And when I decided to go passiflora shopping, ruddy pink arrived on the diminutive passionflower P. sanguinolenta. (Passiflora grows like kudzu in zone 10, and a judicious selection is key.)
This may not be the passionflower for me, so it’s confined to a pot for now. If I’d known they bloom on such small plants, lots more summer containers would be draped with passionflowers.

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Palest pink hitched a ride on the maple-leaved begonia, B. partita.

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And snuck in on cat’s paws with this Asarina scandens vine, which I could’ve sworn was labeled a white variety.

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More reddish pink arrived when, having to choose an iochroma, I decided against the purple. Orangey-gold would have been preferable. (Is there a gold iochroma?)
But with such a great plant, choosing the flower color is just quibbling. Pick one or the other or another color, but choose iochroma, even if only for containers where this tropical is not hardy.
The red is Iochroma coccinea. I have no idea now why I decided against purple. Probably because the red is less ubiquitous, but that would be a silly reason, right?

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Not that there’s anything wrong with pink. I’m just surprised there’s so much this summer.
This little tropical area is almost a ghetto of pink flowers. But choice has always been guided by consideration of the overall plant first, with color last for me.
So some summers, getting pinked occasionally happens. For “pink eye,” Euphorbia mellifera is the perfect antidote. So soothing.

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And the big leaves of the ‘Siam Ruby’ banana are helping to keep everybody in line as well.

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Cinema Botanica (In The Mood For Love)

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Denise

Saturday night at Cinema Botanica. It was only a matter of time before I dragged movies into this blog ostensibly about plants. I’ve wanted to see this movie since it was released a decade ago, so I’m definitely late to this show. I knew it was a slow, elegant mood piece, and just the right moment to savor it had to be found. As long a wait as it was, now I’m thankful some movies this good are left in reserve. I knew it would be a visual knockout, that Maggie Cheung’s qipaos had caused a commotion when the film was released. But watching her walk in these gorgeous dresses is to witness the crowning glory of human bipedalism. It is these qipaos that rate this film a slot in the Cinema Botanica, or one dress in particular. You can’t miss it. The shock of that huge daffodil on the pale, straw-colored bodice had me gasping out loud. What a bizarre but bold idea, and the perfect touch for a movie partly about a woman stoically holding on to her self-esteem while her husband spends his passion on interminable “business trips.” The passage of time is subtly handled, and what may seem like an extended dinner scene is actually several dinners, as quietly revealed through the changing qipaos worn by Ms. Cheung.


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This same dress appears later on in the movie, seen full length, one of the rare times a qipao is repeated. The stylized cheongsam, the qipao, would seem to be one of the few garments capable of absorbing whatever colors and patterns the designers dream up, even full-length flowery chintz, but I think this has as much to do with the graceful bearing of Ms. Cheung. If you’ve ever sewn a garment, you’ll appreciate the fit of these dresses to this actress for the astonishing piece of dressmaking artistry it represents. And if you’ve ever wondered why Americans can’t seem to bring a gorgeously designed movie to the screen without a superhero anchoring it, this is your movie, which celebrates the intimacy of sharing food, the exuberant use of pattern and color, the bottomless depths of suppressed feeling expertly performed by virtuoso actors.

The exquisite music and, oh, the food, the dumplings, those noodles, bear equal billing. One of my favorite lines, because I was thinking the same thing is, paraphrasing: “She goes out dressed like that for noodles?” Yes, she does, gliding in the qipao, the thermos of noodles swinging at her side. Our neighborhood is just now getting some decent street food, little taco carts open til all hours just a block away, but to have a little thermos like the character of Mrs. Chan to fill with pork and noodles at the end of a workday — personal misery notwithstanding, dinnertime would be bliss.


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For color theorists, this movie is a master lesson, awash in strong Fauvist contrasts like red and green.
Supporting role here played by an aspidistra. Overall amazing set design for this story set in 1962, like Mad Men of the Orient.

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In The Mood For Love. The link details the plot, so if you haven’t seen this extraordinary movie yet, read at your own risk. Even if it takes ten years, find the perfect moment to watch this movie. For anyone with even a remote interest in color and design, you’ll be richly rewarded, I promise.

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A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Denise

Elvis Costello does Penny Lane for his mum and the POTUS, filmed June 2, 2010, for PBS. I know I’m betraying both my age and a schmaltz streak a mile wide, but…

this is lovely. Well done, Elvis. I was too young to catch the Beatles, but Elvis and I go way back (1976 My Aim Is True).

Found at Open Culture

And of course the pretty nurse knew that, for cut flowers, she needed to sear the ends of the poppies with a lit match first, right?

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Salvia calcaliifolia

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Denise

There’s bound to be something doing well, no matter what the weather, if you just can’t keep yourself from stuffing all kinds of plants in your garden. Vegetable growers know this too well; the green beans crop in bushels while the tomatoes languish, but it also goes for ornamentals. The grasses might be having a good year while the tropicals sulk. It’s a rare year when everyone is happy.

A friend told me that the first 15 days of July along the coast in Southern California were cooler than the first 15 days of last January. This Blue Vine Sage has been having a fine summer with these record low temps.

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The leaves are constantly chewed upon, a culprit barely visible on the left in the above photo, but the flowers keep coming.

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That this cool summer has been very much to the liking of this salvia is no surprise, since its habitat is the high pine and oak canopies of the mountains from its native Chiapas, Mexico, and in Guatemala and Honduras, 5000-8000 feet. It is believed that Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco and the Huntington Garden in Pasadena, California, introduced this salvia to California gardens in the 1970s (from Betsy Clebsch, The New Book of Salvias: Sages For Every Garden.) Hardy to 20 degrees but makes a great container specimen even when not in bloom, for its succulent, intensely green, triangular-shaped leaves and viny habit alone.

Salvias were a rabid enthusiasm about ten years ago. Although I don’t trial as many new ones currently, I always keep a few salvias in the garden. The hummers would probably go on a homicidal rampage otherwise. Salvias could patent the color cobalt blue.

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Even a plant tough enough to be named the Cow Horn agave, A. bovicornuta, appreciates a little cloud cover and overcast skies.

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And I’m not complaining either.

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In Bloom: Coreopsis ‘Full Moon’

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Denise

The yucca has been a strong support to many this summer, in early summer the Geranium ‘Dragon Heart’ and now this coreopsis.

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It seems the first question asked about these new coreopsis hybrids is: Do they flop? So let’s get that out of the way. On the floppage meter, ‘Full Moon’ rates a 7.

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That’s an arbitrary rating system, of course, but it’s safe to say this coreopsis is not a tidy, self-supporting clump. It splays out and leans into the yucca, who fortunately can take the abuse. And that’s after giving this clump the “Chelsea chop” in early summer, cutting it back by half (named after the famed British garden show, which takes place in late May, about the same time that it’s best to cut back perennials to grow them more compact.) Since I don’t grow many perennials, I don’t mind this kind of wayward behavior from the few I do grow. I don’t have the space, climate, or the inclination for a bravura perennial summer show, but I do like the freshness a few can bring to mid-summer and usually binge on trialing a few new ones every fall.

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This is the coreopsis’ second year in my garden. This simple fact alone puts me solidly in its corner. Most perennials can’t make it through a zone 10, dormancy-free winter in cold clay soil. Once in bloom, judging from last year, this coreopsis will bloom until the cows come home, up into November here, and is very drought tolerant. A piece was stuck in the gravel garden in spring and is now in bloom, and sprawling less, too, in the even drier conditions there. Another clump deeper in the border didn’t get the Chelsea chop, and I was forced to cut a large section of it off yesterday that was smothering some yarrow. As floriferous as this coreopsis is, it won’t be missed.

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These coreopsis hybrids come from Darrell Probst, his secret recipe of perennial and annual species in new colors bred to be hardy to zone 5. ‘Full Moon’ has a bigger flower than the classic ‘Moonbeam,’ C. verticillata, the threadleaf tickseed, which has never enjoyed my zone 10 growing conditions. I love pale yellow daisies, my very favorite being anthemis, like ‘Susanna Mitchell’ or ‘Sauce Hollandaise,’ but I’ve run out of them at the moment. A small unnamed cutting of a buttery anthemis is being nursed along for next year.

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Yes, there’s a surfeit of yellow composites to choose from for mid to late summer, annual and perennial, if you’re so inclined. This exuberant one with a heart of gold suits me and my garden fine.
I suppose it depends on how much rampant serendipity you can tolerate from a willful little daisy.

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In Bloom: Crassula falcata

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Denise

Last year I popped a few more cuttings of this crassula amongst the Senecio mandraliscae, the bluish blur in the background, aptly named Blue Fingers or Blue Chalk Sticks.
Just the one bloom stalk from the crassula this year, but oh, how these two plants sing to each other. Quite the duet from Ol’ Blue Fingers and the Propeller Plant.
The crassula’s winged leaves have inspired the common names of Propeller Plant or Airplane Plant. Really makes me wonder about that moment in time when enough people have referred to a plant as, say, the Propeller Plant, for that to become an official common name. Also known as Sickle Plant (falcata means “sickle-shaped”), it was introduced from South Africa well over a century ago.

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The newspaper delivery person has unerring aim for this bed of succulents, most of which can take an occasional hit, but not this crassula when it’s in bloom, or the agaves ever.
Since the newspaper is thrown stealth-mode out the window of a moving car in the early morning hours, there’s not much recourse. So no irreplaceable treasures are planted here. The steely blue bumper of Senecio mandraliscae growing around this bed does a pretty good job of absorbing some of the impact. The senecio’s insignificant flowers are in bloom now too.

San Marcos Growers says the crassula’s correct name is Crassula perfoliata var. minor, a name that’s rarely used. This photo of the entire plant is from SMG’s website.

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Non Stop Bhangra

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Denise

I was emailed this clip by guest photographer MB Maher this morning.
It gave me such a smile, I had to share it here.

Non Stop Bhangra have been haunting the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco
for well over five years now, but this is their first appearance in
Los Angeles, first at the Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena and then this past
Saturday at Grand Performances in downtown Los Angeles. Their
willingness to hold Bhangra dance lessons before each show makes their
performance particularly generous. I’m a little concerned for MB Maher,
who seems to skid into every shot, somehow pulling off
single-camera coverage of a 5,000 seat amphitheater as if he had a
five-man crew.

(I had to find out the name of those fabulous “skorts” the dancers were wearing. I think it’s called a salwar kammez.)

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Dasylirion wheeleri

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Denise

I moved this fairly large dasylirion out of its 22-inch clay pot and into the ground. A job for long sleeves and heavy gloves, as well as alerting those in the house to be on standby for a possible shout for help in case I needed it. Turns out I did need the help and shouted and shouted for it. And then shouted some more. (Curse their Ipods and earplugs!) Only the corgi came running to my aid, bless his furry little hide.

The only way I’ve found to get a large, unwieldy plant out of a big, heavy pot is to get gravity on your side. Help finally did arrive (of the opposable thumb variety), and the two of us lifted the pot onto a porch. I tipped the pot on its side over the edge of the porch, and started working it out with a small shovel, teetering the pot over the edge, letting gravity join in. When the rootball was freed up, I eased it out of the pot, using the height of the porch to keep from damaging the leaves, and my assistant held the pot while I gently tugged the sotol out. The pot was pulled away, a trash can lid was moved in place, and the root ball lifted onto the trash can lid for transport to its new home. Trash can lids are invaluable for these kinds of tasks.

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A dark-leaved coprosma, an evergreen New Zealand shrub, was growing too large for this spot and was sacrificed to make way for the sotol.
The dudleyas, the whitish succulents to the left, were also in the pot with the sotol, as was a small Agave potatorum that was stuck in as a pup at some forgotten time, and a big plant of Kalanchoe pumila, which has now been moved into its own pot. I’ve been wanting to take this large pot of very mature plants apart for a while, but the right moment (and nerve) never presented themselves.

I’m documenting this minor disturbance because the dasylirion rootball, despite taking special care, was still slightly manhandled in the move and may not survive the transfer from pot to garden, and mid-summer is not the optimal planting time anyway. But I’ve always subscribed to the when-the-mood-strikes planting timetable, and yesterday’s schedule was wide open, the weather still mild and overcast, and I at last found the nerve. It took a while to grow the dasylirion to this size, and it looks wonderful in its new home, a much improved see-through effect over the chunky coprosma, which was becoming a martyr to pruning to keep in bounds. The big greyish shrub behind it is Senecio amaniensis, an unnamed succulent I bought several years ago at the California Cactus Center for which I just recently got an ID. I had no idea the senecio would grow this large, 4X5 with light pruning, and the 6-foot tall coprosma was making life too difficult here for all concerned. Fingers crossed, and with careful watering (not too much), the sotol will survive the move.

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Fungus Humongous

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Denise

I found this neon-yellow eruption on a eucalyptus stump this morning. I swear it wasn’t there yesterday, but that doesn’t seem possible.  I always stand on this stump, in the southeast corner of the back garden, to cut back the neighbor’s wisteria that wants to throttle the smoke tree ‘Grace,’ who replaced the crashing eucalyptus, one of two closely planted gum trees we inherited with the house. Both gum trees eventually were brought down by strong winds. It is always a shock to see a tree down. There is an unbelievable amount of wood that makes up a tree, and to find a 30-foot gum tree sprawled across your garden, a wreckage of boughs and branches instead of its former graceful, upright self, is a memorable sight, to say the least. The only analogy that seems even close for sheer volume of material would be stripping and disposing of a whale carcass that inexplicably dropped from the skies.

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This particular fungus, judging by photos, appears to be Laetiporus gilbertsonii, a bracket fungus, a fungus that grows on trees. In L. gilbertsonii’s case, particularly eucalyptus trees. This stump is what’s left of the last eucalypt to blow down several years ago, taking the newly built pergola with it before the pergola was weeks’ old. But the pergola did save the house from the brunt of the impact. It would seem the tree really picked its moment to fall.

Mine doesn’t have the distinctive shelf-like shape, but in all other areas it seems to fit the ID. And, don’t laugh, it’s also called chicken-of-the woods. Yep, it supposedly tastes like squawk. Supposedly. That’s something I doubt I’ll ever know first-hand.

Those old eucalypts just keep on giving.

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Limonium peregrinum

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Denise

The shrubby statice, also goes by Limonium roseum, from South Africa. I just uncovered its true identity this morning using a Google Image search.

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The one and only time I’ve seen it offered at a nursery, I bought it, and that was long, long ago. This is the first year it’s flowered. It spent years in the back garden, didn’t do much other than cling to a weak semblance of plant life, then was moved to the front gravel garden, often a death sentence for non-performers. In the sun-baked gravel, watered only by 15 inches of winter rain (in a good year), it not only held on, but increased in size. I always assumed it was a California native, possibly from some dim memory of having grabbed the original gallon from the natives section of a now-closed nursery. Now that I know its name, I find its native soil is sandy. I would never have planted it in the clay of the gravel garden had I known that. A native buckwheat, Eriogonum grande rubescens, at the limonium’s feet enjoys the same growing conditions.

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The statice has extremely tough, leathery leaves.

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Hortus Third has this to say: “Shrub, to 3 ft., brs. leafy, covered below by persistent lf. bases; lvs. obovate, to 3 in. long, tapering to a clasping base, scabrous on 1 or both surfaces with pitted glands; fl. scapes scabrous infl. dichotomously branched, spikelets 1-fld., few to many, close-set in spikes; calyx to 1/2 in. long, funnelform, limb 5-ribbed, pink, corolla pink, longer than calyx. S. Afr.”

Say what?

Lambley Nursery & Gardens in the UK has this to say:

“One of the finest dwarf shrubs for a dry climate. This statice, to quote E.E. Lord, ‘….. will endure dry conditions and inland frosts alike.’ Limonium peregrinum forms a low rounded evergreen shrub with leathery bright leaves. For much of the year it has flat topped sprays of bright rose pink flowers held well above the leaves. These are good cut flowers and a delightful addition to posies. Difficult plant to propagate.”

And I’d add extremely slow to grow. It’s taken it close to a decade to produce flowers for me. It’s also apparently notoriously difficult to start from seed. No idea who E.E. Lord is, quoted above, and a quick search was fruitless.

So what’s to be learned from this botanical mishegoss?

a) If you neglect a plant long enough, it may surprise you and not die;
b) If you don’t grab that unfamiliar plant at the nursery, you may never see it offered again.
c) Sometimes having no information at all on a plant works out OK.
d) The dumb occasionally get lucky.

I’m going with (b).

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