Oh, alright, here's a picture

Happy New Year!

This is the space where one apologizes for not blogging, based on the pathetic fallacy that you care (technically, the fallacy is that the addressee, "you", even exists; the imputation that "you" care is just an icing of presumption on the fallacious cupcake). But I'm kind of over that, and the point is to alert "you" that Bob Nold has a blog, which will be infinitely more interesting than anything I write.

Everyone probably knows this already (sorry, I don't have time to read "your" blog either), he's been writing it for six months now. I'm so out of it I didn't even figure it out when he commented here in June.

Thanks Timber Press! Now how about a copy of that Aquilegia book?

Battlefield

Oh, hello, is it September already? I have more important things to worry about these days than the garden, much less the internets. Miraculously, I appear only to have killed a monkeyflower this summer (so far). Even the Darlingtonia is alive, though maybe not kicking.

In this photograph I managed to capture Agavaceae, Asphodelaceae, Haemodoraceae, Iridaceae, Plantaginaceae (formerly Schrophulariaceae), Polygonaceae, Proteaceae, Ranunculaceae, Rosaceae, Rutaceae, and Themidaceae. Plus some weedy Poaceae. Probably no one else is schizophrenic enough to cram all that into a such a small area.

But that was not the point. Earlier this summer I thought about writing something about Polygonaceae, in the form of Eriogonum grande var. rubescens, the little balls the color of cheap nail polish pictured in the middle ground, and esp. E. latifolium, which I seem not to have photographed. The latter is the color of dirty laundry from afar, but close up reveals subtle whites, grays and roses wonderfully arrayed. The point of these plants isn't the flowers anyway, but beneficial insects who love it, and especially the felty leaves, which shame the hideous "lambs' ears" (Stachys something or other) so beloved of landscapers. I spent at least a few minutes coveting a yard comprised solely of Agaves and Eriogonums, in my first ever minimalist fantasy.

That wasn't the real point either, it was that on my now extremely infrequent trips out back, Skippy the resident Anna's hummingbird is invariably to be found enjoying the orange-trumpeted plant in the foreground, which used to be called Zauschneria californica, but is now Epilobium canum ssp. canum (cv. Catalina pictured). Tonight Skippy was unamused, and really shamefully inhospitable when a Rufous hummingbird stopped by, and some rather spectacular aerial combat unfolded before my eyes and occasionally a few feet from my head. Of course the camera was inside, but Skippy was still there when I came back later. You win zero dollars if you can find him in this picture (go to Flickr for the original size). And don't even try to find all those plant families, half of them appear only as straw.

The Ides of May

This will probably the the last picture I take in the garden for a while. Luckily, Ixia viridiflora bloomed just in time, and I got some decent pictures. With it, as usual, firecracker flower, Dichelostemma ida-maia, which I have not managed to photograph, though you can just see it in the background of this shot.

I looked into the name of D. ida-maia a few years ago, and read somewhere that it was named after a lady named Ida Mae. But I was never totally satisfied with this explanation, because it always blooms on May 15, which is the Ides of May, a date newly significant to me. So with the help of the internets, I tracked down Alphonso Wood's original 1867 description of what he called Brevoortia ida-maia:

This plant was first noticed by Mr. Burke, stage-driver, in his daily route, and by him my own attention was first called to it. He had given it the name of "Ida May, in affection for his little daughter,"—a name quite appropriate, moreover, as on the Ides (i.e., the 15th) of May, the plant begins to flower.

The type locality was on the stage road from Shasta City to Yreka.

Natives

1. My obsession with Calochortus did not really extend to the discreet charm of the fairy lanterns until C. albus var. rubellus started blooming the other day. Now I'm a believer.

Also: fairy lantern!

2: If you liked reading about the Presidio manzanita, you'll love this unnamed species.

My new favorite article title

A. C. Gaskett et al., "Orchid Sexual Deceit Provokes Ejaculation," American Naturalist 171 (2008).

They're talking about pollinators, not orchid collectors.

Go ahead, read it, it's (allegedly) free.

The importance of being earnest

A certain blogger recently recommended buying ladybugs to release in your yard for pest control. I don't want to single out this endearing and admirable person, but this is a perfect example of making things worse by trying to make them better. A little bit of research, not to say common sense, would reveal that kidnapping bugs en masse and selling them to gardeners is not a good idea.

This is what is so dangerous about the current "green" climate in America: it can easily do more harm than good, as with ethanol, which, if you weren't paying attention, is currently responsible for starving the developing world, consuming more energy than it produces, and the rising prices you're paying for gas and food.

So if you're going to do something -- especially if you're going to publicly advocate doing something -- to make the world better, make sure it will actually make the world better.

[Brendan I. Koerner's Green Lantern column at Slate is an interesting attempt to do this.]

News

Surprisingly good article in SF Weekly on Presidio manzanita (Arctostaphylos hookerii ssp. ravenii) and the problems with native plant restoration.

Update

Travel

It was nice to return home to a new Lachenalia after a long long flight. The only thing that saved me from a Naomi Campbell was the absence of checked luggage. Terminal 5 rewarded my forbearance with a parting gift of food poisoning.

The trip was so absurdly whirlwind that the highlight was probably flying over Kew. I was looking out the window wondering whose estate has such an extremely large glasshouse when the pagoda came into view.

We also flew over Elba, Skye, Iceland, and Victoria Island, a lot of interesting islands for a single flight. Except for Elba, they all looked deserted from the air.

On the ground, I did manage to duck into the orto botanico, a pleasant enough oasis, but botanically rather staid in the afternoons, when the greenhouses are closed.

Just in time

As I get ready to leave town, a flurry of activity, of course, including the first bloom of my Leucospermum 'scarlet ribbons'. It hasn't really opened yet, and I was going to wait to photograph it, but I just couldn't resist because it is so AWESOME. The plant is literally covered in flowers.

Don't worry, I've got some more treats in reserve that will probably open when I'm gone.

Further excitement

At this point, Clivias, or at least Clivia miniata cultivars like this, don't seem particularly exotic to me. Even growing by the sidewalk. But I grew up with a Clivia (eventually many, many Clivias) that my mother babied for years and years before blooming. So it's not something that I take for granted, even now. Especially since this bloom is on a potted specimen I just bought last year, not the plant in the ground.

The first Freesias opened recently, I'm not sure exactly when because I've been so preoccupied with the Calochortus that I didn't notice, until I was out hunting snails by flashlight, suddenly blinded by the reflection off these (those LED lights are bright!). F. alba seems to be very happy, as these are a lot bigger than last year.

*

But the most exciting news of the day is the reopening of Pacific Rim Nursery whose demise I lamented only a year ago. Now, if only I hadn't pauperized myself (and the dollar hadn't shit the bed) in the intervening year!

Seriously, though:
Paeonia cambessedesii or Paeonia mascula subsp. arietina?

Sweet box

Spring is in the air in Nor-Cal, most deliciously in the scent of Pittosporum undulatum, an otherwise nice but nondescript tree that smells divine this time of year. The common name, I think, is wavy-leafed box, but I have been calling it sweet box since I figured out what it was, in honor of its wonderful spring smell. There is, needless to say, nothing particularly boxy about it.

This seemingly precocious spring has induced my first flower of Calochortus umbellatus. The Oakland star tulip is the flower that started it all -- if by "it" you mean my madness. I read about this lovely little bulb and decided that I should plant some, mostly because of the name: it is the only plant I know named after my town. Although apparently even the holotype is from somewhere else. There is no there here. At least part of my reasoning was that it would probably grow well here, being native and all.

But it was not easy to come by, oh no, and thus began my odyssey into the world of rare bulbs and mail order seed and various other obsessions, until I finally obtained some bulbs last fall (Thanks Telos and Far West!). And now my first diminutive and truly beautiful flower has opened.

It is much more subtle than the things that usually appeal to me. Also, admittedly, kind of purple: the petals are flushed a -- delicate! -- mauve purple, and the wonderfully contrasting anthers can at best be called blueish. Nevertheless, I will call them "blue steel".

This first bloom is a mutant: 8 tepals, but the normal 6 stamens. I wish I wasn't an idiot as a child and had learned something about science, because the genetics of the MADS box genes that control these things would be very interesting if I understood it.

Excitement

Some very exciting things are about to happen in my yard, which I will dutifully document for you in good time, but I wanted to alert everyone to this. Ellen Hornig of Seneca Hill Perennials just got back from two weeks in the eastern Cape and Lesotho, and wrote it up on her website, one of the best things I have read in a long time. Illustrated with spectacular pictures, including John Manning and Brunsvigia grandiflora in habitat. Still, I think her earlier shot of B. radulosa might be my favorite ever:

Triumph

I have learned that two recent developments about which I was perhaps a little blasé are more exciting than I realized. The Bulbinella latifolia ssp. doleritica you see to the right at the end of its run (at the start it looks like a giant mutant ratibia) is apparently quite difficult to flower. My secret? Do nothing. It is in a raised bed with better drainage than the rest of the yard, but that is all.

I have also managed to germinate Lilium bolanderi. I did at least know that this would be hard, so when I got the seed last winter I stratified half of it for about 8 weeks, and kept the other half in the freezer until I sowed it in October. Leaves appeared for the first time in each pot last week (at the same time as some L. pardalinum I treated the same as the first batch).

Conclusion: let nature take its course. I did probably get lucky with nature this year, as we've had 831 chilling hours so far this year, nearly twice what I take to be average. L. bolanderi lives higher and further north from me and so is probably accustomed to much more winter chill, not to mention snow cover.

Now to try not to kill it this summer.

Seed in the news

Why, amid the self-congratulation suffusing media accounts of the global seed bank in Svalbard, does it require a "radical" NGO to point out the problem? You don't get a prize for destroying the world's crop diversity, then saving a tiny sample in the freezer.

Common

Now that it's started raining again, I can report that while it was sunny, Bulbinella latifolia and this Lachenalia rushed into bloom along with the crocus I mentioned. By the way, I have been castigated for not using common names, but does it really help you to know that the Lachenalia is called a "cape cowslip"? The Bulbinella doesn't even have a common name, as far as I know... When I started this, I didn't know shit about plants, so I made a point of learning their real names to be sure what I was talking about. But so many plants that grow here either have no common name, or a fake common name, or a common name that is meaningless to those of us who live continents away from its habitat, that it wouldn't make sense to use them even if I wanted to.

Anyway, the sun allowed me to inspect my seeds further. No sign of life yet from the Fritillaria recurva, but I haven't quite given up hope yet -- there are a few sign of life in the long-abandoned Penstemon grahamii pot, of all places; probably weeds, but you never know. And much to my surprise, I successfully germinated Castilleja applegatei var. pinetorum: common, nay, vulgar name "indian paintbrush" (and unlike I. niamniamensis, it memorializes nothing but stupidity). The hard part is apparently not germination (not if I can do it), but getting them to grow: it is a hemiparasite. No one knows what the host species is (are?).

All Castillejas are parasites by the way. They've been transferred from the Schrophuliariaceae to Orobanchaceae. Commonly called, as those of you who profess to value such names will be dismayed to learn, "the broom rape family."

Naivete, i.e., stupidity

After 11 or so days of continuous rain, the sun came out the other day, and I remembered I had a garden. I went out to see what happened and found this tiny crocus in the "meadow" (=lawn that I stopped weeding or watering). I thought this one would look cute with the delicate blues and orange stamens of C. sativus / cartwrightianus.

And it would be a cute combination, if Crocus gargaricus bloomed in the fall like the others.

In it's native... Turkey? this Crocus apparently blanket fields in its inimitable gold, creating quite a spectacle. Good thing I bought 3 of them!

Another surprise was a profusion of flowers on an Impatiens nyungwensis that had done nothing since I planted it months ago. Makes up for losing the I. niamniamensis, presumably to cold. It wanted too much water anyway.

The excitement of last year's alliums finally germinating was similarly tempered by the failure of my Fritillaria recurva to do anything. (You'll recall I bought seeds from four different populations last year, and had [vain]glorious visions of breeding the ultimate frit). I haven't completely given up yet, but I'm getting seriously worried. They must have dried out too much over the summer. The prospect of starting over is discouraging.

Conservation

OMTFG, how can you feel so overwhelmed with work when you haven't been in the garden in weeks? I haven't even looked at the new Pacific Horticulture (except to ascertain that I've already killed one of the choicest hellebore hybrids noted therein); the latest Silverhill catalog looms over me threatening financial ruin (only after hours of painstaking research); not to mention a new source (courtesy fin de fichier) for the massive and heretofore neglected category of Ericaceae that I fear may shortly obsess me and the 5 lbs. of elemental sulphur languishing in the garage. Then there are the seeds I've already started, which are germinating as we speak, pots for which I have to locate and clean before I can even plant them out.

I think I last turned the compost in October?

Our last burst of rain brought us to around 10 inches for the year, which is pretty good, but still less than half of the "average" we'd like to get. One of the obvious ways to supplement the water supply is is to capture the runoff from your lot. More than half of the rain that I "get" washes out immediately to the street, storm drains and the bay. It would be nice to divert all of this into a massive cistern under the garage and water the garden with it all summer, but that is very, very far down the list of things I can't afford to do. So instead, I run the garage downspout into this 5 gallon bucket, which I empty into my unmortared brick patio whenever I'm not too lazy. Plus, it's so attractive.

I've been congratulating myself on this homespun groundwater recharge technique for a few years, but I decided to run the numbers (because I don't have enough to do), and every 20x I empty the bucket seems to equal an additional .1608 inches when spread over the whole garden. Revolutionary!

Of course, my math is probably wrong anyway.

Great, that photo just reminded me I need to prune the Fuchsia.

PS: California nativists might want to note the impending closure of Henry W. Coe state park, which displays its impressive collection of flora on an excellent website.

Springtime

It's not really spring yet -- you can tell by the insane raking light in this early afternoon photo. But I celebrated our first real winter rain with a long night of rendering lard, preserving lemons, and starting this year's seed. I'm trying "the paper towel method" for stratification for the first time; it just seemed easier than trying to sterilize peat. Also, I had kind of a lot of seeds.

The "storm" was negligible here, but we got a nice accumulation of ~3.5 inches, which I figured out no thanks to the NWS, which has apparently abandoned its bay area weather stations. I also learned that we've had 400+ chill hours already this year, twice normal, which explains why my @#*! gas bill is so ridiculous, but not why the 'Double Delight' rose is still blooming when I should be doing its dormant pruning.

*

Anyway, although html tables aren't the best place to keep track of my germination rates, I'm too lazy/stupid to use Excel, so you can stop reading now. Unless you too are a huge dork. All from Northwest Native Seed.

sp.	AN	soak	strat.	germ.	Notes
Calochortus bruneaunis	NNS 05-121	1/6	1/7-2/5	2/3
C. dunnii	NNS 04-65	1/6	1/7-2/16	2/15
C. howellii	NNS 05-136	1/6	1/7-3/8	y***
C. invenustus	NNS 05-137	1/6	1/7-3/8	y
C. simulans	NNS 05-155	1/6	1/7-1/27	~1/26
C. striatus	NNS 05-157 (2)	1/6	1/7-1/20	~1/18
C. venustus	NNS 05-171	1/6	1/7-2/5	2/3
Dicentra formosa ssp. oregana D*	NNS 07-159	1/6	1/7-3/8	almost?!	3/8: seed coat split and radicle visible, though not yet emerged
Dicentra formosa ssp. oregana W*	NNS 07-159	n/a	n/a	[potted up 1/20 because of apparent mold on elaisosomes]
Castilleja applegatei var. pinetorum**	NNS 06-120	1/7	1/8-3/8	y
Dodecatheon poeticum**	NNS 07-169	1/7	1/8-3/8	? (too small)
Fritillaria biflora	NNS 05-345 (2)	1/7	1/8-3/8?	1
F. eastwoodiae	NNS 07-250	1/7	1/8-3/8	y
Ipomopsis aggregata var. aggregata	NNS 07-277	1/7	1/8-3/8	y
Lilium rubescens x L. bolanderi	NNS 06-338	1/7	1/8-	n
Lupinus microcarpus var. densiflorus	NNS 03-405	1/7	1/8-1/17	~1/14
Penstmon labrosus	NNS 05-548	1/7	1/8-2/5	2/3

* half the seeds stored dry, the other half moist and refrigerated (W). W moved to wet paper towel on porch for bright indirect light & diurnal temp var. 1/7

** damp sand in ziplocs; too small for paper towel.

Solstice

Not to be an asshole about it, but I just can't deal with these "blogging" "meme"/chainmail things. I've been doing this for a long time, and if I have something to say, I'll say it. So I have to apologize to Eurica for dropping her ball, but I do want to say this: it is easy to forget that there is anything good about the internet, but I am very thankful for the ability to learn about people on the the other side of the planet, and their amazing plants. Check out Eurica's awesome pictures of Aloe marlothii and her husband Rudi in a Namibian copper mine at the link above.

I also avoid the garden blog bloom day thing because this entire blog is about what's blooming in my garden. I don't need a special day for it.

Anyway, when you live somewhere buried under a couple feet of ice this time of year, you imagine that all you want is a little bit of winter color. And the lemon tree does fulfill that role admirably. But when you live here, you still want flowers, because you're an unsophisticated philistine who can't be content with the timeless grace of foliage when there's shiny sex organs to display. Those of you in colder climes might not be familiar with the flowers of the Jade tree, which looked like this in my neighbor's yard this morning. Yeah, I said tree: it's about 8 feet tall.

Anyway, when I was poking around this morning, I have to admit it suddenly hit me how amazing it is to have so many things blooming on the shortest day of the year: Abutilon, Bougainvillea, Brugmansia x candida, Fatsia japonica, Fuchsia, Gardenia [!!11!], Impatiens niamniamensis (ok, that finally dropped its floweres and looks pretty sad, but I swear it was blooming last week), the lemon tree, Passiflora manicata, a bunch of Salvias and the awesome Satureja mexicana that never stops flowering, Silene, Zinnias (still, though they look like crap now)... How lucky am I?

Not lucky enough, it turns out, to have a Protea flower yet. I got a little carried away by what is actually a bunch of leaves (though in my defense their hirsute emergent leaf margins look a lot more like nascent bracts than the glabrous mature leaves):

Hello world

Oh hi. You're still here?

Have you noticed that it's cold? Hella cold, actually. Not, of course, the oh-shit-I-might-die-if-I-go-outside cold of the rest of the country (much less the the oh-shit-I-might-die-anyway-if-they-don't-turn- the-power-on icestorm cold that I hope you'll survive to waste more time on the internets), but still, lows in the 30s, which is totally uncool. Dude.

If you can't have sun, at least enjoy the palm trees. Here we have Washingtonia filifera, the only palm native to Alta California, which I used to think strikingly ugly, as I am fond of neither palmate leaves nor persistent ones. This one is kind of cute though -- it reminds me of an ice cream cone. Check out palm canyon to enjoy this species in all its splendor, such as it is.

Right around the corner from that tree is its cousin W. robusta, the Mexican fan palm. This one's at least 80 feet tall (behold the power lines in the lower right), growing out of a small cut in the sidewalk. Again, not my favorite, but at least admirable for the sheer height. They can hit 120 feet.

I've been too busy/cold/lazy to do much in the garden except follow the progress of my S. African seed. Freesia refracta was the first to germinate, followed by the Babiana and at least 3 of the Romuleas. I'm still waiting for 4 or 5 species, with a surprising amount of patience: a few weeks ago I pulled an unruly epazote from the herb bed to discover a diminutive oregano that turned out to be the za'atar I'd broadcast and given up on at least a year ago. yay!

Drink the Kool-Aid

ONE MILLION DOLLARS* if you can figure out why this is the most exciting thing EVAR.

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* Zero Dollars.

The march of progress

Instead of composing something intelligent, I've finally caved and harnessed the useless technology of twitter to the stupefying march of time in my garden. You will find updates under "gardening and telecommunication" on the right.

When they come to take me away, I'll be out back texting in today's low temperature.

One notable update is that it has yet to rain again.

And the first crocuses bloomed. The white one is C. pulchellus 'Zephyr', and the purple is either C. sativus 'Cashmerianus' (Russell says it's "freer of flower" than regular old C. sativus) or; its wild ancestor C. cartwrightianus is notably more beautiful. I kind of planted everything together, so it took me a while to sort them out. [updated 11/15].

That is all.

The grass is actually browner

Gardeners always imagine that some other place is better. "One (or ten) zones warmer and I could grow x..." I grew up in zone 6 (in a good year), so I very much understand the impulse, even though I never paid much attention to gardening there.

But even here, there is always a plant that makes you wish you lived somewhere else. Many tropicals make me dream of Hawai'i; more frequently, I hesitate over plants that are a little too marginal here, and think: if only we lived in Santa Barbara, or San Diego... but this last week has reminded us what the drawbacks are.

Of course, we must pay for the "idyllic" climate. We get a bit more rainfall than SD here, and the winds are a little less dramatic, so our burn cycle is every hundred years, not every ten. But make no mistake: what just happened there will happen here; we're overdue. This is not something that can be controlled by human intervention.

This is not photoshopped

South Escondido Boulevard by prgibbs

On a shorter cycle, try to imagine 6 months without rain. In a good year. Last year we got about 12 inches, total, spread over 6 months. Less than average, but not "abnormal." This is not a drought, it's a Mediterranean climate, which also specifies that the rain disappears in summer, when plants need it most. Fly into to SFO -- or any major airport in California -- from May to October, and you will see how brown the grass is on the outher side.

So yes, we can grow many plants here that would not survive in the northeast, either because of our mild winter, or because of our dry summers. We can also grow many of the plants that do well on the east coast if we water the hell out of them all summer. This is just as unnatural (and presumably, equally pleasurable) as growing exotics in a greenhouse, though most people don't realize this yet.

But they will. The latest Pacific Horticulture (they have a shiny new website) brings word of a drought in Adelaide so sever that there is no watering of the yard, period. It won't be long until this happens in San Diego. This news helped me to appreciate the philosophy of one extreme gardener in Colorado who reported heavy losses to an email list recently because he doesn't water his garden:

The only way you can determine what's drought tolerant in your garden is not to water it during drought. I understand that this is a radical statement that makes some people go completely crazy, but I think it's true. In 2002 we had one inch of precipitation in eleven months. I did nothing, and lots of plants died.

I'm not smart enough to garden like this yet, but soon I'll have to.

*

I should mention one decidedly less catastrophic limitation of gardening here that is seldom appreciated by outsiders: chill hours. It does not get cold enough to grow, among other things, lilac, peonies, and many fruit trees. Conversely, at least where I live, thank god, it doesn't really get hot either, which a whole other class of plants find unpleasant... all I can think of right now are tomatoes and gardenia. I know this seems like a small price to pay -- boo hoo, your gardenia is chlorotic! -- but the limitations are exactly analogous to wherever you live. Just, perhaps, less oppressive, until the fire comes.

Hope falls eternal

The first rains mean work, lots of it. I had to make time in a weekend of college football apocalypse to plant the last bulbs, cut back almost everything (or cut down: I put the final monster pelargonium out of my misery), and, especially, to start seeds. Half of these are the things I started last spring, the other half I ordered mostly from Silverhill before realizing how poorly I did with the first batch. Hopefully nature will do a better job than I did.

Sowing these seeds I ordered six months ago, I had to wonder: what the fuck was I thinking? 5 Romuleas? I have no idea. On the other hand, it made sense to order those from Silverhill, since they are unusual and hard to come by, unlike Ornithogalum. It's a mystery.

Babiana villosa	Silverhill
Erythronium californicum 'White beauty'	paintbrush
Freesia alba x purple stripe	paintbrush
Freesia refracta	Silverhill
Geissorhiza splendidissima	Silverhill
Hesperantha coccinea	Silverhill
Lachenalia orchoides var. orchoides	Silverhill
Ornithogalum maculatum	Silverhill
Lilium bolanderi	Alplains
Romulea amoena	Silverhill
Romulea hirsuta var. hirsuta	Silverhill
Romulea monadelpha	Silverhill
Romulea sabulosa	Silverhill
Romulea unifolia	Silverhill

It's the water

It's always a bit of a shock when it really starts to rain again. After a few months of summer the mind rebells at the concept of precipitation. You can tell who's a gardener today: everyone else is frowning.

Anyway, the first rains here mean springtime in the Southern hemisphere. There are many ways to suffer vicariously through the cruelest antipodean month; start with a flickr search for Table Mountain.

Among other things, that search revealed the awesome picture to the right, which finally explains the mythically paradoxical "free-draining and moisture retentive soil" that they always tell us about. Also, the secret of success with Disa among other plants.

News you can't use

1. Today BPOTD featured my Haemanthus albiflos picture, undoubtedly the apex of my photographic career.

2. We got almost an inch of rain last night. This is news you can use, if you are trying to grow California natives elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere: it was our first storm (I don't think that little Sept. squall counts).

Disco lily

Nerine sarniensis, naturalized on the Channel Island of Guernsey, supposedly after a Dutch ship full of bulbs wrecked on the coast, hence commonly called a Guernsey lily. Because of the awesome metallic gold sparkles, my wife has decided it is to be called a disco lily.

Imagine a (sparkly) scarlet-red Agapanthus, but deciduous like Amaryllis. I think I'll be planting more of these next year.

The madness

I took the watchword moderation to the plant sale Sunday, and I mostly succeeded. No $80 vines or 15-foot Agavaceae this time, and I averted my gaze from some very choice Cycads that were fetching $350+.

I did however find myself helpless in an unexpected area full of carnivorous plants, and escaped as any sane man would, with a single pot of Darlingtonia californica, our native carnivore. The cobra lily is interesting for a number of reasons which mostly elude me, as I'm not a big carnivorous plant aficionado. But it undeniably looks cool, the flowers too.

And since it grows in running water, in mountain streams, with winter snow cover, it should be a piece of cake!

Other acquisitions included 2 monkeyflowers, a very nicely mottled Lachenalia hybrid, an unidentified Mexican Silene they've been pushing hard, and Aquilegia formosa in belated admission of my failure to start it from seed.

The Order of Things

The Naming of Names is an amazing book, particularly for Americans. Imagine a journalist analyzing the intellectual milieu of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece -- and then tracing a (relatively) coherent story of a minor science from its birth then to its (supposed) apotheosis in the eighteenth century.

Sadly, it's difficult to imagine an American journalist even reading that last sentence. So I will spare you, dear "general reader" from the details that Pavord lays out with such felicity.

But there are flaws in this miraculously readable prehistory of systematics. Some are minor, like the apparent semantic instability between "Islamic" and "Arab" (a problem one might write off in a book that did not insist on the already anachronistic word "Amerindian").

The serious problem is Pavord's teleology, which presents this history as a series of books written over two millenia in an inevitable, if painful, progression from one single point (Theophrastus) to another (not, perversely, Linnaeus, but the Englishman John Ray). Teleology is fine as a narrative device, but it is too simplistic to have any explanatory power, particularly when the end (telos) is a moving target: at first it's just anyone interested in plants for their own sake, but it shifts to someone capable of positing a system. Eventually even the system is not enough if it seems absurd ex post facto, i.e., if it's not sufficiently Linnean.

Thus Clusius and Lobelius are given short shrift, and (with more justice, but little interest) the middle ages are written off almost entirely. This also explains why a disconcerting first person intrudes into Pavord's heretofore elegant narrative in the middle of the Renaissance: the principle of selection suddenly becomes men who are already "my heroes".

Despite this flaw, the book illuminates an important part of our intellectual heritage that had grown very dim in the last century. Botanists should probably be required to read it (unless there's something better, in which case please tell me immediately). More to the point, it will tell you quite a lot of interesting things about plants, with glorious illustrations. And you should now be able to find it remaindered.