What’s that bit of green poking through the fallen leaves and forest duff? You’ll have to crouch down to get a good look at Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens). A mere 3-5″ tall, this teensy shrublet from the Ericaceae family (blueberry, azalea) has little oval leathery leaves, often mottled with purple or brown. A few urn-shaped pink to white flowers appear in early summer are followed by bright red berries. The berries persist well into the winter and help to distinguish it from similar-looking seedlings of mountain laurel or deerberry.… Continue reading this article “A Little Woodland Wonder”
Category: Interesting Plants
Autumn joy…
No, not Sedum…Cardoon! (Cynara cardunculus). Just a TGIF photo. I love autumn’s many shades of brown – kind of underrated with the fixation on blazing foliage.
Now’s the time to collect and save seeds for next year. Though it seems these are trying to escape…
We’re baaaaaaack…scary plants and all!
Just a quick post to try out the new system. Very exciting
Here’s a Halloween-week treat: Solanum pyracanthum – porcupine tomato. Not hardy, very poke-y. Deer don’t mess with it. Native to Madagascar and available through Annie’s Annuals or by seed from several sources. Photo taken in my friend Elissa’s fabulous garden, right before frost last week.
Neon continued!
I’ll follow Bert’s highly informative, thought-inducing post with something not statistically significant. Hey, it’s summer.
My last post on ultra-bright “neon” plants had a comment from Sarah…
“I saw some iresine in a local garden center the other day, sun coming
through it at just the right angle, and the shade of blazing pink that
came through was basically every Barbie accessory I ever had. It just
seemed wrong somehow. Took a picture of it with my phone.” … Continue reading this article “Neon continued!”
Neon for your garden
Was wandering through Target on Monday for the first time in months.
Helloooo!? The 80’s called and wants its neon crap back.
Didn’t care for it then and certainly don’t care for it now. Though there is the increased safety factor of being highly visible at all times, whether in sunglasses or underwear.
But never mind my lack of style.
It made me think about a few plants that, if the light is right, certainly display that glowing, saturated color, found in the “Astro-Brite” pack of copy paper usually reserved for yard sales and such.… Continue reading this article “Neon for your garden”
Sheep-eating flowers?!
I was planning to follow up on Jeff’s phosphorus post with a bit more “phun with phosphorous.” However, I was completely derailed by Ray Eckhart’s message and link left for me on our GP facebook page with this headline:
RHS ‘sheep-eating’ plant about to bloom in Surrey
“The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) at Wisley said the Puya
chilensis, a native of Chile, would bloom in the next few days and last
about a week.
In the Andes it uses its sharp spines to snare and trap sheep and other animals, which slowly starve to death.”… Continue reading this article “Sheep-eating flowers?!”
Moss-tacular!
Mosses are soft, green, and tough as nails, as shown in a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (prestigious, high impact journal with a rather unfortunate acronym).
Dr. Catherine La Farge and associates, from the University of Alberta, visited a remote glacier on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut while studying the wild, wide world of arctic bryophyte systematics. Bryophytes are ancient, non-vascular, non-flowering plants – mosses and liverworts, mostly.
Long story short, they harvested bits of moss that had been trapped in ice for about 400 years and were now exposed.… Continue reading this article “Moss-tacular!”
Valentine’s in May
Lamprocapnos spectabilis (the species formally known as Dicentra
spectabilis) is an easy, tough, arctic-hardy, spring-blooming perennial
that always makes me happy. I’ve posted previously about the wonders of
‘Gold Heart’ – all the screaming yellow foliage you can stand, topped
with magenta flowers.
Last fall, I’d finally gotten my mitts on a hard-to-find one named ‘Valentine’. Already dormant in the pot, I planted it with hopes that it would somewhat resemble the tag photo (and hype) as I’d not seen it in person.… Continue reading this article “Valentine’s in May”
A Real, Live, Learning Experience
What a crazy spring! But it finally, finally came here to the Blue Ridge Mountains (Linda Chalker-Scott refers to them “speed bumps”).
My Ornamental Plants Production & Marketing class has been at work since early February, growing plants and marketing them at the Hort Club Plant Sale as part of their lab experience. Of course, they are completely at my mercy as to what they get to grow (bwuhh ha ha *evil hand wringing*). … Continue reading this article “A Real, Live, Learning Experience”
Scientists Put the Dog in Dogwood
(special guest post by/with permission of good friend Mr. John Friel, marketing manager for Emerald Coast Growers – Holly Scoggins)
How do you recognize a dogwood? By its bark.
That old joke might not be a joke anymore, if the innovative folks at Metamorphic Agriculture Developers (MAD) get USDA approval for a new line of ornamental and functional shrubs that blur the line between the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
MAD scientists claim to have successfully introduced genes from Canis familiaris into a cultivar of Cornus canadensis.… Continue reading this article “Scientists Put the Dog in Dogwood”