Perennials and Annuals – Page 6 – The Garden Professors™

Weird Plant Wednesday – II

Okay, so it’s actually Thursday morning. We’re doing a "staycation" this week and my farm work to-do list dwarfs my usual work week. Not exactly relaxing. One of the daily duties is dragging the hose around trying to keep some favorite plants alive. We’re in a drought, though not near of the awful and epic proportions of some parts of the country. When our Floriculture Forum was held at the Dallas Arboretum this spring, horticulturist Jimmy Turner welcomed us to "Gardening Hell." Huh? Everything was lovely, verdant, and smothered in tulips. But that was February. Bless all your gardening hearts out there (and everywhere else that is so damned dry).

I do get to drag the hose right past one of my favorite garden additions of the last few years. Bulbine frutescens is a South African native that thrives in dry, dry, dry. USDA Zone 9 or thereabouts on the ol’ hardiness scale. We’ve planted it in our tiny scree garden, where several succulents get to spend the warm season stretching their roots before getting scooped back into a pot to overwinter in a chilly greenhouse. (And pardon if Bulbine is as common as mud in your part of the world/continent, it’s just not that well known in the eastern part of the U.S.)

Bulbine frutescens ‘Hallmark’. Looks a bit like my hair this morning. Yes, it would benefit from some deadheading (the plant, that is).

Bulbine foliage looks a lot like the "grassy" species of aloe, and the juice from the leaves is supposed to have some of the same properties when applied to burns and scrapes. It has a fairly neat habit, but within the mound of foliage forms lots of rhizomatous clumps. These are perfect for dividing and sharing (despite the genus name, no bulbs are involved). It flowers non-stop, even throughout most of the winter in the 50 F greenhouse. Our plant is the orange cultivar ‘Hallmark’. The straight species has yellow flowers and can reseed a bit; but I’ve never seen a seedling.

Lovely flowers. No extra water needed – yay!

Grass, sedge, or weapon?

What is it?

Why, that’s a “Mace Sedge” – thus a medieval weapon AND a sedge. Actually…not very menacing. But very cute. Carex grayi is a wonderful clumping sedge, native to Eastern North America. Mine is situated at the edge of a home-made bog, and is at least 2.5′ tall with an upright habit.

More common in the trade are the cascading Asian sedges such as Carex dlichostachy ‘Kaga Nishiki’, C. oshimensis ‘Evergold’, and C. morrowii ‘Variagta’, all fabulous plants for the part-shade garden. My hair has been likened to New Zealand native C. buchananii, the coppery leatherleaf sedge (I took this as a compliment).

The genus is chock full of garden-worthy species, of which the North American natives are finally getting some attention. Folks like grass guru Rick Darke and meadow man John Greenlee have been promoting the heck out of native sedges for both the east and west coasts, respectively. I can’t even remember where I put my mitts on this one, but have been enjoying the heck out of it for the past two years.

Tuesday Quiz!

I think I’ll stay on the invasive species track. And in honor of finals week, here’s a wee quiz for you.

1) What do we have here?*

hint – it’s a naughty plant

2) Why can’t federal/state designations be somewhat uniform?**

Exempli gratia:

“[This plant] is listed by the U.S. federal government or a state…" – USDA Plants Database

Connecticut: Invasive, banned

Massachusetts: Prohibited

Montana: Category 3 noxious weed

New Hampshire: Prohibited invasive Species

Oregon: "B" designated weed; Quarantine

Washington: Class C noxious weed

*scroll down for answers…

[scroll]

[a bit more]

* Iris pseudacorus. Yellow flag iris. Loves wetlands. Spreads like crazy via rhizomes and seeds. Possible inspiration for the fleur-de-lis.

** I don’t know. It’s very confusing. "Banned" seems more alarming than "prohibited", I suppose. Is "B designated" less a concern than "Class C"? Feel free to weigh in.

It’s Spring-o’clock Somewhere…

We’re supposed to get an inch or two of snow tomorrow. It was 75 degrees last week. Typical schizophrenic spring weather. But spring was already in full bloom a few weeks ago in Dallas, Texas. Our group of Virginia Tech floriculture faculty and grad students visited for the National Floriculture Forum, a meeting of researchers and educators. It was organized by Texas A&M and hosted by the Dallas Arboretum, home of uber-horticulturist Jimmy Turner.

The Arb was right in the middle of their “Dallas Blooms” festival – they plant half a million spring bulbs each year for the most amazing show this side of Keukenhof. I’ve never been a huge tulip fan, but somehow came back with a gazillion photos. You just couldn’t help it. It’s a beautiful display garden; don’t miss it if in the area.

Imagine 60+ acres of this. My retinas were burning. But in a good way.

A cute Fosteriana-type tulip, oddly named ‘Zombie’.
Note the use of pecan hulls as mulch. Results in the biggest, fattest squirrels you’ve ever seen.

I’ve seen some interesting art in public gardens, but this is a new fave.
Probably there’s a deeper meaning behind it, but basically it’s a man and woman snogging in the tulips.

Big squirting toads, with list of safety rules on what one shouldn’t do to/with the toad.

Jimmy said the place would be crawling with brides and babies by afternoon, and he was right. That’s what he gets for creating such a photogenic garden. Couldn’t swing a fat squirrel without hitting one or the other.

Mouse Tombstones

Doing this…

I must identify each and every Wave petunia!

leads to this…

and this…

Unfortunately, the second and third photo are from a college teaching and display garden. There are a lot of inexpensive yet more attractive ways to relate plant identification to your visitors.

We all do this, of course, to some extent in our home gardens. Walk around with weird plant in hand, dig hole, stick it in, say to self "I’ll come back and get that label to add to my (pick one) Excel garden database/bag of random tags/photographic memory."

Typically, most of mine end up on top of the washing machine from cleaning out pants pockets. Not exactly a good record-keeping system.

Tags as tombstones: during spring mulching, I’ll typically find a few half-buried, printed with, oh, Maybehardii maybenotus – Plant Delights Nursery $25. Said plant is nowhere to be seen. Dang.

Lasso those grasses!

While Jeff and Bert were swilling beers and eating burgers last weekend (dang, wish I was there to commiserate!) I was whacking back the last of the perennials and grasses in our home garden. Tarp after tarp were filled with winter’s debris for compost pile as we fought 25 mph gusts the entire time. Not ideal conditions. However, a neat trick I learned years ago came in handy with the grasses. I’m assuming many of you utilize this technique also – so forgive me if this is a “nothing new” post Here’s Paul and Dabney, our Hahn Horticulture Garden horticulturists, demonstrating said technique:

Just cut below the web strap or rope with your favorite implement of destruction, and toss the whole bundle on the tarp to get it to the pile. Note that they both have on safety glasses, and Dabney has on gloves. I can’t stress enough the importance of gloves (and long-sleeved shirts) when handling dried grasses. One of our student workers sliced his finger open to the tune of three stitches last week. He was cutting down Arundo donax, Paul asked him to put some gloves on, but since 22 year-old guys are indestructible, he blew off the advice. Just saw him working out in the garden today with gloves on, yay!

Weigh in with YOUR garden clean-up tips – ’tis the season (for most of us north of USDA Zone 7 in the northern hemisphere).

Garden Professor Trivia #2: Who’s the tallest GP?

[This could get interesting…Oldest! Weirdest! Heaviest drinker! Most traffic tickets! Most cats! Most obsessed with slugs! etc.]

It’s Poinsettia Time…

Love ’em or hate ’em, poinsettias are the number two potted flowering plant produced and sold in the U.S., only (very recently) surpassed by orchids. Especially amazing when you consider the five-week market window. Commercial growers go at poinsettia (“points”) production usually one of two ways: 1) smaller pot, high volume, low margin for mass markets; or 2) larger pot, florist-quality, unusual varieties, for independent garden centers, florists, and other specialty retailers. If you shopped any big box store this past weekend (bless your heart), you saw rolling racks of “doorbuster” deals such a 4.5″ points priced $1.25 or even less. Interestingly, wholesale prices for even the small, high volume product range from $2.05 to $2.88.

Poinsettias from transplant to finish take from 12 to 15 weeks on a greenhouse bench; often require special lighting (or blackout technology), plant growth regulators, and often extra labor to pinch once to encourage branching. Much more expense/inputs than your average 6-pack of petunias, hence the very slim margin for growers of mass market plants. That’s why many growers have taken route “2” – the dee-luxe, gift-type point that appeals to pickier consumers. Big, beefy plants in 8″ to 12″ pots, unusual colors such as pink, plum, and “marbled”, well-pinched to produce lots of showy bracts, wrapped in tastefully decorative pot covers all can command a much higher price point, both by the grower and the retailer. (I don’t have it in me to speak of the bizarre painting/glitter trend at the moment. Maybe I’ll save it for next week.)

Poinsettia breeders are always looking for color breaks, and one of the most “interesting” is this new introduction by Ecke called ‘Polar Bear’:

Pic taken at OFA, the big floriculture trade show, this past July.

There are a couple unusual things about this introduction. One, it comes with a “cause” – Polar Bears International. Ecke’s donating 5% of the sales price (that would be the sale of their rooted liners to finishing growers) to the non-profit conservation society. There’s a whole slew of point-of-purchase tags, pot covers, bows, and signage that goes with, not to mention an informational web site. The other unusual thing is that they insist on calling it “white”. Or at least “creamy”. It’s…not. A lovely lemon-curd yellow, or perhaps off-off-off-off cream. But most polar bears (except for the exceedingly pristine one in their tag photo) aren’t exactly white either. Anyhoo, it’s certainly a good cause, and if “lemon curd” goes with your holiday decor, consider picking up a ‘Polar Bear’!

No point here, really…

Just go back and watch the video that Bert the Incensed posted Monday. I can’t top that.

Hope he’s had a beer and calmed down since. Now I need one.

My first reaction was more like slack-jawed disbelief over the nonsense contained within. A second viewing brought my blood pressure up a notch. For instance, I swear he says “Calcium nitrate” softly and then quickly rephrases it to “vitamins and minerals.” There’s more crap in this video than a dairy retention pond. Kudos to whomever put the “Garden Professors” comment on the site.

If the content is reasonable, I can overlook questionable video production values, such as the host also serving as the director (“Over here…there ya go!”) and the bug crawling across the lens. But for this train-wreck of misinformation, it was doubly irritating.

Deep breath. Let’s part on a positive note, shall we?

Here’s the little-known, summer and fall-blooming Salvia involucrata (Rosebud Sage). Alas, it is not hardy for me, but is for Zone 7 and up. Took this last week before the hard frost (I really do think of y’all when I’m running around with my cocktail and camera at sunset…)

Fresh, light green foliage to about 4′, nice branching habit, pinkish petioles and stems, topped with a fabulous, fuzzy, flower explosion. In HOT PINK no less.

Glorious. And perfect for getting your Garden Tart TM on!
Thank you so much, Linda – I believe you’ve coined the perfect description of my gardening style. Hee, hee.

Pssst…over here…trees got nothing on us…

We usually look up to the trees for the spectacle of fall foliage color but there’s plenty happening down low. Ornamental grasses in autumn are, of course, amazing – I think I’ll give them a post of their own. But there are a few perennials that consistently deliver good fall color instead of turning to brown, crunchy paper.

For the shade to part-shade garden, Polygonatum odoratumthen ‘Variegatum’ is a plant for three seasons. Arching stems
spring forth in, well, Spring, with fresh green and white variegated
foliage. Pairs of little creamy bell-like flowers dangle from each leaf
node. The foliage looks terrific all summer long, and you get a shot of golden yellow for fall.

More reliable than a tulip poplar! Newport, VA, October 10.

I know I’ve mentioned Amsonia hubrichtii in some past posts, but I just can’t help it. Finally, finally named “Perennial Plant of the Year ” for 2011 by the Perennial Plant Association. Not sure what took so long. Exhibits the best boofy habit of all perennials (somewhat like “floofy”, but rounder). Native to southern/central U.S. and totally drought tolerant. The pale blue star-shaped flowers in late Spring are fairly underwhelming, especially given all the other stuff going on at the time. The fine, needle-like foliage adds a wonderful soft texture throughout the summer. As the days shorten and the nights cool down, it begins to glow…first a soft gold, and then adds bronze and apricot to the mix – basically a color twin of Sporobolis heterolepis (Prairie Dropseed, previously described in a GP post).

The first flush of gold, just getting going in our garden last week…

In full glory. Late fall at Chanticleer (Radnor, PA).

Some cultivars of Hosta, such as ‘Sum & Substance’, reliably produce gold fall color, as do some ferns. Any others you’d like to add to list?

Quiz Plant Revealed

Ha ha hahahaha
*mad scientist-type cackling*

Purslane? Nyet! (but good guess).

It’s an Impatien! Specifically, Impatien repens, common names variously Ceylon Jewelweed, Golden Dragon Impatien, etc. Ours is actually pretty small – can form huge clumps and cascading torrents in warmer zones.

Flower is typical of many members of the genus, and they ALL have the little spur in the rear.

For more weird, wild species impatiens, visit the Cistus Nursery website (I’m pretty sure they used to sell this, but I don’t see it listed currently). We got ours from local plantswoman, gardener, and mail-order-addict Elissa Steeves.

Thanks for playing, all!</d