Category: Diversions

Being Wrong

The thing about being a horticulturist and a professor is that you’re always supposed to have the right answer.  Which is to say, when I tell people not to use beer as a fertilizer, to avoid planting trees too deeply, and to reduce pesticide use, people take it for granted that I know what I’m talking about and that, if they don’t do what I say, there could very well be problems.  But, as most of you know, growing plants is an art and a science, and sometimes plants decide to do things that are unexpected — plants are individuals after all, just like we are.  Anyway, I was reminded of this today by this image of trees being planted on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota in 1909.

How many things can you find wrong with the practices in this picture?  And yet this ended up being a successful planting.  I like to think we, as horticulturists and researchers, do a decent job of figuring out the best practices for planting and caring for plants, but the truth is that each plant is an individual and every situation is different and so often our predictions end up being wrong.  And I think that’s a good thing.  

Friday’s puzzle solved

Here’s Friday’s photo without my edits:

As you can see, there are tell-tale globs of hot glue around the base of the bud on the right.  Hap was correct – it’s yet another “cactus strawflower” whose cactus portion had disintegrated, leaving only the strawflower graft behind.  But out of context it could easily be mistaken for a bulb of some sort.  Let the buyer beware!

Friday fun, part 2

OK, enough tormenting of my fellow GP.  On to today’s photo challenge.

Is it a miracle?  Is it a resurrection plant?  How do you explain these large buds emerging from the soil?

A disclaimer: a portion of this photo has been Photoshopped.  I promise the altered area was not of plant material.  Monday’s answer will include the untouched photo in bigger context

Friday fun, part 1

This posting is for Holly, who I am sure is desperately trying to finish her annual review.  I feel your pain!  And I’m going to add to it today.

 

The poinsettia in these photos is not from this Christmas, but from 2008.  You can see it thriving happily in its office environment.  I’m told by its caretaker Nick (a nongardener) that it has no bugs or other problems, and seems very happy.  And it’s blooming, without the benefit of the extended night period.  (The post-it notes are instructions to its care when Nick is away.)

Apparently SOME people can easily grow poinsettias well past their expected holiday life span.

The Garden Professors Take a Holiday Break

Linda, Jeff, Bert, and Holly are taking a break.  We shall return full-force January 4th. Note that there MAY be sporadic, interim postings if one of us gets significantly riled up. Subscribers to our RSS feed will be duly alerted.

My “greeting card” below was inspired by Jeff’s post on the insulating powers of snow.  We here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virgina have about 14″ of insulation at the moment!

Finally, thank you to all our wonderful Garden Professors readers and commenters – you made our first six months so fun and rewarding!

Foliage fun flaunted!

Not much activity on the Friday quiz!  It was a tricky one.  Take a look at our photos in total:

As you can see, these aren’t plant “problems” in the strictest sense.  (The “landscape” in question is a retail nursery.)  They are cultivated anomalies – little mutations that have been discovered and propagated.  There are several points to this exercise:

1)  Be sure you know your plant material!  Many peope mistakenly assume that plants such as these are diseased, pest-ridden, or lacking some nutrient and need to be “fixed.”  Personally, I don’t care for yellow cultivars; like Lisa B and Deb, I think they look chlorotic.  Without identifying tags, though , it would be hard to know these are not deficient in nitrogen or some other macronutrient.  I guess I would wait until leaves emerge in the spring:  if they were yellow then and stayed yellow, I would presume the plant was a yellow cultivar.

2)  Many of these cultivars are not particularly vigorous.  A plant that’s missing much of its foliar chlorophyll does not photosynthesize efficiently and would probably not survive in nature.  In our managed landscapes, however, we can nurture these oddities so they aren’t out-competed by other plants.

3)  Cultivars such as these often revert to the wild form (remember Bert’s quiz last week?).  The natural form (green vs. yellow leaves, or normal vs. dwarf stature, for example) is nearly always more vigrous than the mutation, and given the opportunity plants will outgrow these limitations.  Thus, many cultivars require careful maintenance to remove “sports” before they overtake the plant.

Friday Foliage Fun!

Take a look at these three closeups of foliage from three different plants in a landscape in Washington state:

 

You’ve been asked to diagnose what’s going on in this landscape that would cause these foliar abnormalities.  (I get photos emailed to me all the time asking these kinds of questions.)  Bugs?  Disease?  Nutrient deficiencies? Environmental conditions?  All of the above?

More photos and answers on Monday!

Is It Worth Anything?

Plant aficionados everywhere are constantly looking for something which they can patent and make a million bucks on — something like ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea which captured the public’s attention — and their wallets.  Many of the new plants we see today came from something called “branch sports” which are basically segments of a tree — like a branch — which has somehow mutated so that it offers something a little different than what the original tree did.  If you’re familiar with ‘Delicious’ apples you may be interested to know that the ‘Delicious’ apples which you eat today are actually a branch sport of another ‘Delicious’ apple which wasn’t as attractive.  Likewise, ‘Connell Red’ is actually a branch sport of ‘Fireside’ — they’re basically the same, but ‘Connell Red’ is considered more aesthetically attractive.

But some of those mutations are heart-breakers, Here’s an example.

This raspberry, which I found in my daughter’s raspberry dish last night (she was very upset that I stole it) has a really cool stripe running down it’s side.  If someone found this in a raspberry patch they might be tempted to try to propagate the branch from which it came hoping to get striped fruit.  Unfortunately that isn’t likely.  This is an example of a sectorial chimera — where just a strip of tissue has been mutated.  These types of mutations are notoriously difficult to propagate and so it’s unlikely that this mutation will last after propagating the branch from which this raspberry came.  Still, it is kind of cool, isn’t it?