Two gardens

PBS seed 1/12

2012-01-18T13:15:00.002-05:00

Cyclamen coum, silver leaf, mixed hederifolium, silver leaf, pink (ex PH, PBS 289) Cyclamen graecum, mixed leaf forms (ex EH, PBS 300?) Cyclamen hederifolium, silver leaf, white (ex PH, PBS 289) Lilium bolanderi (wc CD, PBS 298) Lilium candidum (wc AR, PBS 295) Moraea villosa (?)

Another List

2011-11-13T23:20:00.004-05:00

Seed started this year:

Allium haematochiton NN

Aquilegia eximia G

Aquilegia formosa G

Calochortus argillosus BW

Calochortus plummerae BW

Calochortus superbus G

Calochortus umbellatus G

Calochortus vestae BW

Calochortus weedii var. weedii BW

Coming up (PBX 294 via NN; I've pasted in Ron's original descriptions from old NNS lists):

Calochortus bruneaunis [NNS 05-122] Sweetwater Mtns., Mono Co., CA. 8350' (Y) This, like many populations at higher elevations, has pale purple and tan shadings on the outer surface of the pertals. Coarse granitic soils. Mountain mahogany/pinyon pine/antelope brush community.

Calochortus striatus [NNS 05-157] Antelope Valley, Los Angeles Co., CA. 2300' (N) Mojave Desert, Los Angeles Co., CA. 2300'. 40 seeds $4.00. 75 seeds $7.00. A mariposa lily closely related to CC. palmeri and splendens. Here the conditions may be moist in late winter/early spring, but by flowering the alkaline clay flats have become dried and impenetrable. The 1&1/2", broadly bowl-shaped, bright rose-violet perianths have fine, red-violet striations, extending almost to the petals edge, and white, wispy hairs, that appear to hover over the inner surface. The large, fat anthers are a bright red-purple. Growing under the protection of small, spiny saltbush shrubs that provide some relief from dessication and grazing.

Calochortus venustus [NNS 04-82] Central Sierra Nevada, Fresno Co., CA. 5640' (Y)

Calochortus venustus [NNS 05-171] San Emigdio Mtns., Kern Co., CA. 6000' (Y) Flowers here are a stunning dark red to dark reddish purple with a velvety plush texture to the petals. Several have yellow streaking around the gland and at the edges. The outside is pearly white with red-violet markings/striations varying in degree from flower to flower. So far this is the only site where I have found this red-colored form. Edges of Jeffrey pine woodland with sparse grasses and sagebrush. Fine gritty granitic soil.

Fritillaria affinis - wild collected, Ukiah, CA - (W)

Another List

2011-11-05T22:19:00.007-05:00

Bulbs from seed sown 2007-2008 that survived long enough to get repotted this year.

*=already rooting out before first rain on 9/23

Allium amplectens*

Babiana ringens AA

Babiana villosa

Calochortus catalinae

Calochortus dunnii*

Calochortus kennedyi

Calochortus umbellatus

3 mystery Calochortus spp.

Freesia refracta

Freesia laxa

Freesia hybrid

Fritillaria eastwoodiae (1)

Fritillaria recurva (1)

Geissorhiza radians AA

Geissorhiza splendidissima

Lachenalia orchioides var. orchioides*

Romulea monadelpha

Romulea sabulosa

Romulea unifolia

Triteleia hyacinthina*

Whoa

2011-11-04T22:05:00.005-05:00

Wow, I have actually forgotten how to use blogger. I can't believe they still don't have a table tool! Anyway, I got way too many bulbs this year:

JUNE

Boophone disticha KB

xBoopharyllis (!) KB

Brunsvigia litoralis KB

Cyrtanthus falcatus KB

C. falcatus x (elatus x montanus) KB

JULY

Boophone haemanthoides T

Brunsvigia marginata T

Erythronium oregonum T

Tropaeolum tricolor T

SEPTEMBER

Brunsvigia Gregaria UCBG

NOVEMBER

Ammocharis coranica PBS(JS)

Calochortus venustus BB

Cyclamen peloponnesiacum RH

Cyrtanthus obliquus PBS (JS)

Erythronium 'white beauty' BB

Tecophilaea cyanocrocus BB

Trillium kuryabayashii RH

Maybe someday I'll motivate to list the seeds I started too.

Mission accomplished

2010-03-25T22:39:00.002-05:00

Not exactly lush, is it? I may break down and buy some annuals just to have something to look at; not sure I can wait until fall to start them from seed. Still, it's pretty exciting to actually plant something: 6 Penstemons, 6 lavenders, 2 Salvia apiana, 1 Baccharis, 1 Calycanthus occidentalis, 1 Carpenteria californica,1 Ceanothus hearstiorum, and 1 olive. And considering that my whole idea for this yard started with Eriogonums, there's something to look forward to. Annie's should have them in a month or so. And in the back: 1 Hydrangea transplanted from the front, 3 Acquilegia, 3 asiatic lilies that appeared in an abandoned pot, 2 Dahlias, 2 Aloes*, a sweetpea, Satureja mimuloides, Linaria, Beschorneria rigida*, Bomarea sp., (the plant formerly known as) Furcraea roeszlii (into a bigger pot, to go in front), Penstemon palmeri, and a Restio (Apodasmia similis, formerly Leptocarpus similis).

* transplants That's 38 plants, not too bad for 2 days work.

Plan B

2010-03-20T09:57:00.001-05:00

Behold, a plan for the front. It's getting planted next week, so get your tips in now!

help

2010-02-02T00:12:00.008-05:00

NOTE: I will probably have to update this entry to make it coherent or something. Believe it or not, I took this picture with a flash in the middle of the night to attenuate the squalor. This is my front yard. It has suffered for many years while I directed my attentions to the back yard, and then to my children. But the time has come to fix it, and I need your help.

For various reasons, an olive tree is going to be the main feature. I might even be crazy enough to plant a fruiting variety, and make my kids cure olives for me when they get older. Four is good age to start working with lye, right?

Around this olive I wish to plant a kind of mini-garrigue, mostly of subshrubs and annuals. The plantings will be artificially dense in a vain attempt to suppress the weeds, and require no summer water. Thus: mediterranean-climate plants. It would be nice if it looked "good" in a front yard kind of way year-round.

I want a limited color palette of blues, whites and yellows, though lavender will be involved, by decree from on high (my wife) -- I will probably stick with L. x intermedia cvv. I'm also into Eriogonum latifolium and E. umbellatum; Penstemon heterophyllus and maybe palmeri. Sisyrinchiums. Salvia chamaedryoides, open to suggestions for California natives. For annuals, I'm looking at the usual suspects from Larner Seeds.

A spiky Phormium would be so sweet in here! Sorry, no: mediterranean only, dude. I'm considering (Hespero)Yucca whipplei or various Aloes or even Watsonias. Nothing too sharp: I don't want my kids to lose an eye (I've got a Puya out back for that purpose). However, anything to discourage the cats from shitting therein is a plus.

So what should I plant? Something I HAVE TO TRY? Something I listed a boondoggle? Crowdsource my yard!* Before you jump in, consider these limitations:

approx. 17x15"
north-facing: FULL sun all summer, total shade all winter
soil is clay, but with decent drainage
this is Oakland, CA coastal sage scrub, zone 10A (alleged)/Sunset 17

*ironic. but srsly., please help!

Oh, alright, here's a picture

2009-02-04T14:57:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

2009-01-20T13:28:00.004-05:00

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

2008-09-04T00:07:00.006-05:00

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

2008-05-21T02:09:00.005-05:00

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

2008-05-08T17:33:00.005-05:00

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

2008-05-07T12:13:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-01T23:29:00.004-05:00

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

2008-04-17T13:58:00.003-05:00

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

Update

2008-04-10T15:17:00.001-05:00

Travel

2008-04-02T21:46:00.006-05:00

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

2008-03-25T22:57:00.003-05:00

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

2008-03-14T17:24:00.002-05:00

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

2008-03-09T02:39:00.006-05:00

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

2008-03-06T18:29:00.005-05:00

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

2008-03-04T02:27:00.002-05:00

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

2008-02-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

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

2008-02-20T00:19:00.004-05:00

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

2008-02-06T18:05:00.002-05:00

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

2008-01-17T01:10:00.000-05:00

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

2008-01-07T18:53:00.004-05:00

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.

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

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

[potted up 1/20 because of apparent mold on elaisosomes]

Castilleja applegatei var. pinetorum**

NNS 06-120

1/7

1/8-3/8

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?

F. eastwoodiae

NNS 07-250

1/7

1/8-3/8

Ipomopsis aggregata var. aggregata

NNS 07-277

1/7

1/8-3/8

Lilium rubescens x L. bolanderi

NNS 06-338

1/7

1/8-

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

2007-12-21T13:38:00.001-05:00

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

2007-12-12T19:09:00.001-05:00

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

2007-11-15T17:40:00.001-05:00

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

* Zero Dollars.

The march of progress

2007-11-05T19:02:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-25T01:13:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-15T16:08:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-12T11:26:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-10T22:04:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-09T17:12:00.001-05:00

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

2007-10-03T01:40:00.001-05:00

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

2007-09-26T00:31:00.000-05:00

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.

Calochortus

2007-09-11T23:00:00.001-05:00

I imagine that anyone who knows that they are interested in Calochortus has already ordered the new Calochortus book. Information on this genus has been hard to come by, with the exception of Frank Callahan's excellent review in Bulbs of North America. If you have held back for some reason, don't: this is a superb example of the genre I call the lay monograph, with a detailed description of the morphology, habitat, cultural information (rather limited for many of these rare plants), and publication history of all 73 species. There is a discussion of the first phylogenetic analyses of the genus, and even biographical sketches of the men (and a few women) who discovered and described these plants, which forms a short history of the botany of Western North America.

But will it interest those of you who don't already know you want to grow Calochortus? The book is worth it for Ron Parsons's 175 outstanding photographs, largely in situ. The only reasonable complaint is that these are mostly printed too small. Of course, pretty pictures of plants we can't grow don't normally top the list of the gardener's expenditures.

So why not try them?* The authors admit: "plants of this genus are much more challenging than common bulbs." For the majority of species, this is an understatement, especially in areas with summer rainfall. But the biggest problem is the difficulty of procuring most of these plants, even from seed.

The briefest glance at this book is going to make you throw caution to the wind and give it shot. These are crazy flowers, incredibly intricate and variable and beautiful (usually -- some species are frankly hideous). For obvious reasons, the easier species are easier to come by; anyone who can keep a pot dry in summer should try C. superbus or C. venustus. Get them at Brent and Becky's or Telos -- which has the best selection of species available anywhere.

And while you're waiting for your book, the flickr Calochortus group will give you an idea of what you're in for.

*The title of Kline's Calochortus article in the 1990 NARGS Bulletin. I stole it because it reminded me of America.

Aloe cooperi

2007-08-31T13:56:00.001-05:00

For whatever reason, this is the most exciting flower to me since, I don't know, the Beschorneria. I guess I have a problem with small and obscure succulents -- as long as they'll grow in the open garden.

Anyway, the grass Aloes (I think there are something like 6-10 species) are from eastern (i.e. summer-rainfall) South Africa. They both look like grass (kind of), and they grow among grasses. Here's an excellent blog post, and a predictably depressing discussion of their conservation status. At least some of them are winter deciduous, although mine hung onto its leaves last year. Are you paying attention yet? Summer rain + winter deciduous means you can grow them away from the west coast. Tony Avent says A. cooperi is hardy to Zone 7b. You can also order it from Annie's, sometimes.

Help

2007-08-23T15:13:00.001-05:00

Finally, after eighteen months, I got my first "butterfly ginger" (Hedychium coronarium) flower. The smell is amazing, very like gardenia. But I suspect it will never be terribly free-flowering here, so we are talking about a lot of water for a paltry return, however beautiful.

[Furthermore, this flower turns out not to be the mysterious "mariposa" that I was looking for, although it is also fragrant and white and called a mariposa in Mexico.]

So the jury is still out... H. gardnerianum flowers better here, I think, but the color is a little dreary... Maybe 'Tara' has more going on.

Which brings us to a small dilemma. The ginger is currently in a large pot (fear the rhizome) next to a small bed of Casablanca lilies. The first one opened this morning, 1 day after the ginger. (If they all get going at the same time I will probably just keel over from aromatic overload). There is some room around the lilies for companion plants, but the question is what. I try to make sure they're (relatively) dry in winter and (more or less) well-watered in summer, i.e., the opposite of my climate. It would be nice to have something to look at when the lilies die back.

Intoxicated gardener (and lily freak) Elizabeth and Saskatchewanian (?) Kate have kindly offered some interesting suggestions, but the more the merrier! [Also -- I say this as gently as possible -- their ideas of winter interest are perhaps obscured by a bit more snow than the average Californian's].

Recovery

2007-08-22T13:06:00.001-05:00

The latest Curtis's Botanical Magazine features an extraordinary illustration of the long-extinct Norfolk Island endemic Solanum bauerianum, reconstructed from Ferdinand Bauer's original drawings by Marion Westmacott:

As with all his expedition field drawings, those of Solanum bauerianum are marked with numbers referring to a colour-code, each number referring to a different shade. Bauer used simple codes when working in Europe, that with 150 shades being preserved in the Real Jardín Botánico in Madrid, though a more elaborate one with 250 shades used for drawings to become Sibthorp’s Flora Graeca, has never been found (Lack & Ibáñez 1997, Lack 1999). For his Pacific work, Bauer devised a system with a thousand shades [emphasis mine]. Although it is also lost (if it ever existed in full), it has been possible (Pignatti-Wikus et al. 2000), by comparing the real colours of living plants in Western Australia with the numbers (2–994) used in extant Bauer sketches of the same species there, to reconstruct it.

There were a hundred different shades each of red, purple to pink, pink to mauve, and lilac and violet to blue, two hundred shades of green, a hundred each of yellow, orange, brown and white through grey to black. He also used cryptic abbreviated German and English words to designate texture and shininess. Bauer prepared a field sketch from living material before it faded, adding the numbers to indicate the colour shades to be used later to work up the finished drawing in watercolour. Such an elaborate code seems never to have been used by any other artist. Unwieldy as it seems, it allows the most sensitive depiction of colours of the living plant.

David Mabberley, Erika Pignatti-Wikus, and Christa Riedl-Dorn, "An Extinct Tree 'Revived'," Curtis's Botanical Magazine 24 (3) (2007), 190–195. At Blackwell-Synergy.

Note that the article is copyrighted by everyone, including Kew and Blackwell, and the illustration presumably by Marion Westmacott as well. Certainly Curtis's deserves credit for their work, which is not cheap for obvious reasons, but the danger is that such a rare publication will remain unknown to its audience. Anyway, the above is meant as a fair use indication of the interest of the article, the skill of the illustrator, and the excellence of the magazine, and why one might want to subscribe.

Although it isn't Bauer's sexiest work, his illustrations for Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius's Historia naturalis palmarum, scanned by MOBOT, give a sense at least of his incredible precision.

Satiety

2007-08-15T22:25:00.001-05:00

All of a sudden, the garden seems full. My strategy all along has just been to buy interesting plants, stick them in somewhere, and see how they did -- and how I liked them. "Design" was something that would work itself out eventually (much to my long-suffering wife's chagrin).

Well, the first of the fall bulbs arrived today, and they (mostly) have to go into the bulb bed -- which you may be able to discern under the California fucshia to the right -- and I'm pretty much out of room.

Sure, I can stick a few more things in a few more borders, particularly if I ever tackle that thuggish pelargonium, but the die is cast. Now I have to start moving things around.

The bulbs:

~~Calochortus simulans~~*
Calochortus umbellatus
Corydalis solida 'G. P. Baker'*
Colchicum ~~cilicicum~~ 'Glory of Heemstede'*
Crocus cartwrightianus
Crocus gargaricus
Crocus pulchellus 'Zephyr'
Crocus sativus 'Cashmerianus'
Cyrtanthus elatus x montanus
Fritillaria affinis 'Wayne Roderick'
Fritillaria ~~purdyi~~ striata*
Gladiolus debilis
Lachenalia aloides var. quadricolor
Lachenalia liliflora
Nerine sarniensis var. corusca major
Tulipa clusiana

* D'oh! Just because you order 'em, doesn't mean you get 'em.

Status report

2007-08-03T14:51:00.001-05:00

I guess I've dropped the ball on the point of this blog, which was to act as my garden journal. The demand for my pontifications on topics such as natural selection was just overwhelming. It's to the point where I've even considered using the oft-maligned (in my head) twitter to chronicle more prosaic events, like the year's first tomatoes, which I think happened two weeks ago.

Anyway, I've always resisted the siren call of tomatoes, because thousands of farmers in a 100 mile radius have vastly superior tomato conditions than I, but this year I tried the 'Maglia rossa', bred by Baia Nicchia specifically for our heat-starved microclimates. They are beautiful, prolific, and early, and the flavor so far is good, if not earth-shattering. Might be a keeper.

In other diaristic news, a rapidly-looming vacation forced some last-minute irrigation improvization with 150 feet of soaker hose, which, barring catastrophe will work better than last year's foreign housesitter.

The miracle of life

2007-07-31T23:57:00.001-05:00

Honestly, I'm ambivalent at best on the arums, but as long as we're on the topic...

Everyday I see a "bed" of "landscaping" that consists of Ivy and trash (if that's not redundant). The Ivy is cut back maybe 3 times a year. But this hideous wasteland in fact harbors surprising biodiversity, not even counting the rats. Some kind of nightshady weed occasionally pokes its menacing berries through the groundcover, along with some brave, i.e. terrifyingly weedy, bindweed. But the interesting part is a stand of Arum italicum that has happily naturalized in this harsh environment. I can't tell if they were planted intentionally or not.

Last week I was staring at these ridiculous berries and contemplating the miracle of evolution: not only that such appealing things are produced from such a sinister plant, but the complicated and bizarre flowering apparatus that produced them (see the Dranunculus above [below]).

Anyway, I was wondering whether these berries are really appealing, or just bizarre, when some slack-jawed kid walked by and snapped off a stalk. Whether he carried it off as a gift for an unfortunate paramour, or simply as a distraction from his habitual stupefaction, no one can say. But is was a humbling example of natural selection in action.

And that is why I don't know if these arums were planted on purpose or not.

The Curate of Selbourne

2007-07-26T12:06:00.001-05:00

My new favorite blogger may be
Gilbert White:

July 24, 1791 – The foreign Arum in the vicarage court, called by my Grandmother Dragons, & by Linnaeus Arum Dracunculus, has lately blown. It is an Italian plant, & yet has subsisted there thro’ all the severe frosts of 80 or 90 years; & has escaped all the diggings, & alterations that have befallen the borders of that garden. It thrives best under a N. wall, but how it is propagated does not appear. The spatha, & spadix are very long.

Speaking of Arums, the UCBG's seed propagated Amorphophallus titanum is about to bloom.

The gods must be crazy

2007-07-18T15:59:00.001-05:00

Last night water fell from the sky. This might not sound very exciting to you, but such things are simply not done here.

I may never see raindrops on these passionflowers again.

It will be ten weeks before I can reasonably start to expect a meaningful amount of rain, so even .01 inch is a welcome diversion.

Dry

2007-07-03T12:09:00.001-05:00

I read a lot of plant books, as you might have guessed. Approximately 90% of the ones that are worth reading are published by Timber Press. So I was eagerly anticipating their release of Martyn Rix's Subtropical and Dry Climate Plants. Rix is the editor of the best magazine ever.

Despite the unfortunate subtitle, there is nothing definitive about this book. It is rather an whirlwind tour of plants from around the world (many from not particularly dry climates). It makes no sense to yoke subtropicalness (both wet and dry) indiscriminately to dryness (both mediterranean- and monsoon-climate) like this unless the organizing principle is really: things Brits fantasize about growing in Cornwall or Chiantishire (or maybe after a few more years of global warming...)

This approach is both innocuously and insidiously shallow: UC Botanical Garden is called the "Berkeley Botanic Garden", and its "African Hill" the "Cape Rock Garden"; Brugmansia x candida certainly does not require "ample water" in summer in my subtropical garden. This problem is compounded by poor editing, in what I hope is not a sign of declining standards in the wake of Workman's acquisition of Timber last year. (I don't suppose I can blame the editors for spelling Rix's name wrong on their web page).

The organization is stupefying, with plants lumped into sections with names like "Acanthus, Monkey Flower and Related Shrubs" whose only principle is that they fit into a single spread. Thankfully there is a full index.

This organization makes it hard to assess the selection, but the list of both species and genera is idiosyncratic. This is actually the book's great strength: it is odd, for example, to ignore Penstemon completely (because the cvv. common in England are hybrids adapted to more temperate climes?), but the compensation is, say, two species of Bomarea (bizarrely located under "Chilean climbers"). Interesting taxa of common genera like Clematis cirrhosa and Dianthus 'Old Spice' are singled out at the expense of the "usual suspects" to be found in many such books.

But the main reason to buy this book is the photographs, something like 800 of them, almost all taken by Rix himself. Of course some of them are merely pedestrian, and the quality control on the printing leaves something to be desired, but the cumulative effect is a treasure trove of (mostly) subtropical plant porn. The text attached to them, notwithstanding the problems enumerated above, is a valuable bonus.

Solstice

2007-06-25T23:31:00.000-05:00

I celebrated the solstice by ignoring a variety of garden chores and buying more plants. The object of the trip was a rare species Impatiens: I ended with 3 Impatiens and 10 or so other plants, including a 12' shrub that I seriously have no room for. The Impatiens were a reasonable purchase, however, as the little space I do have is in the shade. If you doubt my "taste" (or at least my taste for the exotic), I urge you to check out the species on Mr. Impatiens's website: there's a lot more going on in this genus than you'll find at Home Depot.

The plant that "spurred" me to get off my ass is called I. niamniamensis, the species name derived from a derogatory term for the Azande people of central Africa that (onomatopoeically) refers to their alleged (and totally undocumented) cannibalism.

Some people undoubtedly deplore the survival of epithets like this, but I think their retention is a fitting memorial to colonialism and the taxonomy that accompanied it. Seriously, check out the 1911 Brittanica.

On failure

2007-06-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

My last discussion of seeds was prematurely triumphalist. The seeds I care most about -- the Calochortus and Fritillaria -- worked out fine (or seemed to: if I wanted to I could torture myself wondering whether they gone dormant or just died). But my assumption that the Allium and Erythronium would work out fine was of course unwarranted. Though I'm not giving up hope yet: assuming I failed to germinate seed that remains viable, nature, in the form of fall rains and diurnal temperature variation, will probably succeed where I failed.

But no sooner had I retired that batch for the season than my panicky order from Silverhill arrived: something like 20 more species from South Africa. Most of these can be sown in the fall, but a few demanded immediate attention, particularly the Haemanthus sanguineus, one of which had germinated en route. I have no idea why I stupidly ordered only 3 seeds, but you can imagine my reaction today when I discovered that the only one that sprouted had been mown down at soil level. Even if I knew the perp, the rage would remain self-directed for ordering so few.

On the other hand, I'm finally getting some action from Cyrtanthus obliquus, so I need to concentrate on not fucking that up, instead of wallowing in self-pity and/or -hatred. Onward and upward!

Amateur hour

2007-06-12T21:25:00.001-05:00

The mystery Penstemon is blooming again. I went out and abused it with the macro lens in another attempt to ID it. I also enlisted the magnifying glass (OED), metric ruler (Keroppi), and even the fancy pencils my mom gave me (Faber Castell 4B) in an -- ultimately vain -- attempt to understand what was going on with the thyrse , among other things.

It's amazing how hard it is to look at a plant and really see it: I was surprised that my previous flailings in this area were relatively accurate.

Now, in addition to the apparatus just enumerated, I own both the best book about Penstemons and the definitive articles on the Mexican species published by Richard Straw in the Boletin de la Sociedad Botanica De Mexico in the '60s, and I still can't figure it out. After many travails I managed to key it out (sort of) to P. skutchii, a species Straw named but never saw, and which is now apparently regarded as an invalid synonym of P. gentianoides. Fine, you say, leave it at that. Believe me, I'd love to. But P. gentianoides has blue flowers.

Losing my mind

2007-06-08T14:58:00.001-05:00

When a perhaps unhealthy obsession with plants collides with an incontrovertibly unhealthy* obsession with lolcats, the results are not pretty. Avert your gaze.

Anyway.... The point is that this poppy thinks it can avoid its rendezvous with destiny, i.e. the compost, by continuing to flower like a maniac. What it fails to understand is that its flowers mean nothing to me unless I can see them. Which I can't because we don't have enough winter chill hours to induce sufficient internode elongation.

*Seriously, I almost crashed the car when I saw the UHAUL lolrus this morning:

Media sickness

2007-05-31T22:35:00.001-05:00

My garden photos are starting to get repetitive, a situation that will only get worse as the space available for new plants vanishes, and I cover all of last year's bases with the new camera.

I am not a very visual person, and I have a hard time focusing on details in real life. For instance, it was only when I was cropping the photo of the first Passiflora manicata flower that I noticed something was wrong. I'm banking on the powers of macro to help me ID the unknown Penstemon species when it blooms.

And the other day, I intentionally took yet another Monardella picture because I couldn't figure out where the stigma is. It reminds me of a superbowl probably 15 years ago when John Madden noticed that a receiver was watching himself on the jumbotron (as we used to call it) in order to elude tacklers and started screaming "media sickness!" Trust me, it was very entertaining.

However, for every innovative use of technology in gardening, there are at least as many plants I will never tire of photographing over and over, like Passiflora caerulea:

A cautionary tale

2007-05-23T13:48:00.001-05:00

Orlaya grandiflora (the white one) is kind of like the bastard child of Queen Anne's Lace and a lacecap hydrangea (though obviously unrelated to the latter).

I didn't have a plan for it, so I just strewed (past tense?) the seeds somewhat randomly and kind of forgot about them since they never seemed to come up. Only after I got too lazy to weed did the coarse carrot-y things I'd been pulling all over the place (except of course where I remember strewing the Orlaya seeds) turn out to be the plants that I wanted in the first place.

It's not a spectacular plant, but it's a good filler, and the bugs love it of course.

Update: it was driving me crazy, so I had to look it up: strewed is right.

Furthermore

2007-05-11T11:46:00.001-05:00

If we extend the period to one week, then almost every single plant that I can reasonably expect to flower this year that isn't done already has done so. Like this kangaroo paw, which I expect to BLOW THE MINDS of people who haven't seen them before. It's a pretty unique flower.

There's more at flickr. Turns out that Passiflora is a mutant, btw.

Not raining, and pouring

2007-05-09T13:07:00.001-05:00

It's kind of insane how practically everything blooms at the exact same time. New appearances this morning included the Passiflora manicata to the right, Monardella, Arum italicum, Calochortus superbus, Nigella and volunteer poppies. These plants are native to 4 different continents* (5 if you count the aforementioned Ixia -- now in focus! -- that opened 2 days ago), all from different families, and all raring to go at the same time.

I guess they're all from more or less mediterranean climates, and judging by the number of bugs flying around these days, now is a good time to get pollinated.

* Assuming that Asia Minor is part of Asia and not Europe.

"Turquoise"

2007-05-08T17:15:00.001-05:00

Ironic that my Ixia viridiflora bloomed right after I went to take pictures of the Puya berteroniana: there are very few flowers in this color range.

Seen here clashing rather dramatically with Dichelostemma ida-maiae. Admittedly, I bought mine more as a novelty than anything else. But I was surprised that -- at least in isolation -- the color is quite beautiful, even soothing. But there's no way I can keep it away from the reds.

Pretty

2007-05-04T12:51:00.001-05:00

Like bizarre flowers? I took some pictures at the Botanic Garden the other day.

Some of my favorite things

2007-05-01T12:19:00.001-05:00

The timeline was like this: I read Atul Gawande's article on geriatrics on Saturday, gardened all day Sunday, and woke up immobilized with neck pain on Monday (this may have been caused by sleeping in a bad position and not programmed cell death, but still: shaving the other day I could practically see the collagen disintegrating before my eyes, and especially around them). I should also be in a foul mood because my favorite plant sale was so crowded on Friday that I had to bail completely.

But it turns out that I have enough plants at the moment to keep me busy, and more importantly, entertained. The beschorneria flowers, of course, started to open as soon as I took my mom to the airport, but at least she got to enjoy the spike (or more likely, stare at it and wonder why anyone would plant such a thing next to a Euphorbia).

The kangaroo paw hasn't opened yet, but I'm sure it was still weird enough to freak her out. I took advantage of the visiting labor to get the new Agave planted in the exact spot where I killed the old one; it wasn't root bound, thank god, but (speaking of paws) it still managed to inflict a kind of Oedipal stigmata on me (not that, you freak, the foot wounds).

Although I still call this the Protea bed, that plant is now outnumbered by all the other stuff I've put in, including, on the day of neck armageddon, this "buckwheat" in the middle, which is intended to spread out between the more statuesque plants. It is, as far as I know, a real Eriogonum grande var. rubescens -- unless it's the E. latifolium I bought at the same time... now I'm confusing myself. The leaves are really cool looking right now, but I can see how they might cross the line without sufficient water. It will be interesting to see how these plants do in the absence of phosphorus, which is poisonous to the Proteas. I expect the Anigozanthos will be fine, but I'm a little concerned about the others.

Meanwhile, in the bulb bed, it's becoming clear that the California fuchsia [Epilobium/Zauschneria 'catalina'] I had wanted to serve a similar function to the buckwheat is not going to work. I wanted something to look at after the bulbs die down, but this plant finally decided that it is going to get big -- only after I moved it of course. I got a 'Select Mattole' from the penultimate plant sale, which might stay low enough to do the trick, although I'm not sure how it will like summers completely devoid of supplemental water.

One thing I've finally figured out is that Monardella macrantha does like a fair amount of water. I also put one of these on the edge of the bulb bed last fall, hoping it would play well with the bulbs. The jury is still out on that, but I don't care -- I'm going to put it everywhere, I love it so much.

Christ it takes a long time to write this crap and I just reminded myself I have to get out of jury duty. If I have time I'll have to tell you about the tomatoes and Asteraceae later.

Fauna

2007-04-13T15:00:00.001-05:00

Purple is the only color I really dislike, so it's unfortunate that the previous owners were so PATHOLOGICALLY obsessed with it. This Bougainvillea is so massive and happy that I can't really get rid of it. And now that is trained on the south-facing wall, it flowers constantly and abundantly. God I wish it were red. Still I have to admire its floriferousness. The frost slowed it down for about a week. And the hummingbird will actually visit it periodically.

Speaking of Skippy (as we've named him), I've recently observed him sampling some flowers he'd been ignoring to punish me for destroying his favorite salvia, including Echevaria and "Sacred flower of the Incas," my current favorite common name (= Cantua buxifolia). I'm still on the fence about this plant, but it was quite amusing to watch him trying to figure out the flower. It's definitely designed for hummingbird pollination, but Skippy's southern cousins appear to be... better endowed (cf. Ensifera ensifera and Calypte anna).

It seems odd to see hummingbirds in the nondescript white flowers of the bougainvillea (the ~~hideous purple~~ showy parts are bracts not flowers), but I saw one the other day checking out Pittosporum tobira, which is obviously designed for moths.

I was hanging up some coats in the hallway the other night when I was suddenly surrounded by an almost-too-sweet hyacinthish scent. "But there aren't even any plants in here," I thought before seeing the lowly Sansevieria. Pretty amazing (obvs. moth-pollinated) flowers, which I'd never seen before. Not bad for a houseplant. They only lasted a day or two.

Anyone know what possum shit looks like? Pardon the abrupt transition, but it appears the evidence for my war on cats may not in fact have been a "slam dunk." I was out killing slugs by flashlight a few nights ago when I observed said marsupial rustling around behind the compost. What do possums eat? Worse, said slugs were observed munching some poppies and ratibia (of all things) in a pattern suspiciously similar to what befell the tulip.

Gardening and debauchery

2007-04-09T12:45:00.000-05:00

Washington Post obit of Lord Lambton (1/2/07):

Lord Lambton, 84, a former British junior defense minister who resigned after he was photographed smoking cannabis in bed with two prostitutes, died Dec. 30 at his Italian home.

His death was announced in a notice placed in the Tuscan regional newspaper La Nazione on Sunday. The cause of his death was not immediately clear.

Anthony Lambton served as undersecretary for defense for the Royal Air Force from 1970 until 1973.

He was one of two ministers who resigned from Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath's government because of scandals involving prostitutes. The other was Lord Jellicoe, leader of the House of Lords.

Lord Lambton's sex-and-drugs scandal in 1973 shocked the government. He was brought down after photos of him in bed with the call girls were passed to the Sunday tabloid newspaper News of the World.

After an investigation, he was denied access to secret material out of fear that he could be blackmailed.

He resigned and moved to Tuscany, where he bought Villa Cetinale, a 400-year-old estate.

After he was exposed, Lambton told an intelligence officer that he had thrown himself into a "frenzied" round of "gardening and debauchery" to get over the fact that he had lost a three-year battle over the use of his father's title.

He inherited the Earldom of Durham after his father died in 1970, but Lord Lambton renounced it so he could continue as a member of Parliament. However, he continued to insist on being addressed as Lord Lambton.

Five years after he left the House of Commons, Lord Lambton published a novel in which various real political figures were recognizable in some of the characters.

He was married to Belinda Blew Jones, who died three years ago, and they had five children.

[Choice bits were quoted in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, but I just got around to tracking the whole thing down.]

Stroll

2007-04-06T13:29:00.001-05:00

It was so nice yesterday I decided to walk home from work and see what's flowering now. My tour has less ambiance than Chuck's, but I did get a few interesting plants. When I got home it was still light out, so I repaired to the patio with the new Pacific Horticulture, a cocktail, and the baseball game on the radio. Yay spring! Actually, I just said that to torment everyone who lives in the (re-) frozen wastes of the rest of the country -- by the time the game started it was too chilly to sit outside in shortsleeves.

I'm going to spare you another list until the month of plant sales is over, but I did want to mention my latest folly, allegedly a Furcraea roezlii, although that name is invalid, I'm hoping it will turn out to be this. Of course, I have nowhere to put such a thing...

Patience again

2007-04-03T12:25:00.001-05:00

So much of learning to garden consists of learning patience. For various reasons, I had a certain level of anxiety about the return of two winter-dormant plants: the "oriental" lilies and the stream orchid, Epipactis gigantea. This weekend the latter finally poked up through the camellia flower carpet-bombing campaign, as seen to the right, and the first lily was spotted as well (not as picturesque as this L. regale).

Just as last year, though, seeds generate the most anxiety. So for (my own, I know you couldn't care less) future reference, the germination update:

(All seeds stratified in ziplocs of moist peat in the vegetable crisper the penultimate weekend of January, except the Alliums, which went in a week later. Bulb seeds in 4" plastic, everything else in flats. Timing info came mostly from Alplains.)

Aquilegia eximia	Two seedlings in the same cell immediately after germination, 3rd just appeared (in same cell).
Allium amplectens	Sown after one month, without sign of germination, back into fridge after about a month to try to get something started.
Allium bisceptrum var. bisceptrum	Sown after c. 2 months, without sign of germination, no action yet.
Calochortus catalinae	germinated quickly and thoroughly, looking good.
Calochortus kennedyi var. kennedyi	Same as above, a week or two later.
Erythronium helenae	Same as Allium amplectens.
Erythronium tuolumnense	Recommended stratification not finished.
Fritillaria recurva (4 populations)	All germinated, planted out 10 days ago, sending up cotyledons now.
Lilium bolanderi	Nothing yet.
Lilium pardalinum ssp. pardalinum	Germinated after c. two months, planted out, presumably getting hypogeal.
Penstemon eatonii var. eatonii	Germinated, sending up cotyledons now.
Penstemon grahamii	Nothing yet.
Silene californica	Secondary leaves going up now.
Triteleia hyacintha	A single cotyledon appeared after planting out, up to 5 now (maybe I let it dry out too much?)

Overall, I'm pretty happy about these results, assuming that the Alliums and Erythroniums will work out eventually.

Miscellaneous madness

2007-04-02T17:31:00.001-05:00

1. I actually managed some restraint at the year's first plant sale, but I could not resist Boophone distichta. It will probably take decades to flower, but the leaves are very cool.

2. The new Fatsia leaves are crazy looking.

3. Eat steel, cat.

Or perhaps you'd like to nibble on the Boophone instead?

License to kill gophers

2007-03-29T11:56:00.001-05:00

Cat people,* avert your gaze.

One of the feral cats was spotted in flagrante this morning, weighing its breakfast options in the bulb bed. This is the same cat that nearly took out the wisteria trying to scale an eight-foot fence, and presumably dropped a large branch off one of the camellias doing something equally stupid.

Oh yeah, it's on.

Prepare yourselves for an epic Tom and Jerry arms race. Or more likely, Spackler and the gophers.

*Hey, you never know what kind of riffraff you'll run into on the internets.

Ninja lolcat via icanhascheesburger.

Furious

2007-03-23T12:45:00.000-05:00

Things are really moving now. I was out contemplating the idea of blackness yesterday:

when I turned around and noticed a huge spike on the Beschorneria rigida, out of nowhere.

You are just going to take my word for how stupendously exciting this is. Until it blooms. Then you will see. And then I turned around again and the first Fritillaria meleagris appeared.

Complete with aphid, of course. Anyway, I'm starting to get excited.

Equinox

2007-03-21T13:59:00.001-05:00

Things are really hectic, as you'd expect this time of year. The Wisteria and Cantua are busting out, and lots of other stuff too, but I've been too busy to get much done, or write about it. After a whirlwind trip to Annie's (Brunsvigia josephinae, holla) I managed to get 18 plants in the ground in an hour before returning grudgingly to other chores. Dahlia, Ratibia, Scabiosa, Nasturtium, Passiflora, Aloe... some other stuff.

Penstemon eatoni, two of the four Fritillaria recurva populations, and maybe something else? have germinated in the fridge, and are awaiting my ministrations. Oh yeah, I need to go to the dry cleaners. Of the plants I've taken out of the fridge, no sign of life from Allium amplectens and only a single Triteleia hyacinthina so far.

So yeah, I'm busy. And plant sale season is right around the corner.

This unknown Freesia hybrid is very striking -- if anything it's more contrast-y than the picture. There is only a single one of these in the nice, mostly white drift we inherited. If anyone knows the name of the cultivar, let me know.

Street trees

2007-03-15T12:55:00.000-05:00

So the city wants to put a Ginko in front of the neighbors' house. It's not my favorite, but considering the options and limitations (power lines), I can live with it (we've been assured it's will be male). But I know very little about this category of plant, so I wanted to see what Chuck and Trey have to say. And you!

Cercis canadensis	Eastern Redbud
Lagerstroemia indica x L. fauriei	Crape Myrtle
Photinia fraseri	Photinia
Prunus cerasifera ‘Thundercloud’	Purple Leaf Plum
Pyrus kawakamii	Evergreen Pear
Rhus lancea	African Sumac
Tristania laurina ‘Elegant’	Water Gum
Acer buergeranum	Trident Maple
Aesculus carnea ‘Briotii’	Red Horsechestnut
Alnus cordata	Italian Alder
Eriobotrya deflexa	Bronze Loquat
Geijera parviflora	Australian Willow
Ginkgo biloba ‘Saratoga’ or ‘Autumn Gold’	Maidenhair Tree
Koelreuteria bipinnata	Chinese Flame Tree
Koelreuteria paniculata	Golden Rain Tree
Laurus nobilis ‘Saratoga’	Saratoga Laurel
Magnolia grandiflora ‘Saint Mary’	Saint Mary Magnolia
Maytenus boaria ‘Green Showers’	Mayten Tree
Metrosideros excelsus	New Zealand Christmas Tree
Pyrus calleryana ‘Aristocrat’	Aristocrat Pear
Sapium sebiferum	Chinese Tallow Tree
Eucalyptus microtheca	Coolibah Tree
Fraxinus oxycarpa ‘Raywood’	Raywood Ash
Gliditsia [sic] triacanthos inermis ‘Shademaster’	Thornless Honey Locust
Nyssa sylvatica	Sour Gum or Tupelo
Pistacia chinensis‘Keith Davey’ or ‘Pearl Street’	Chinese Pistache
Platanus acerifolia‘Yarwood’	London Plane
Podocarpus gracilior	African Fern Pine
Quercus rubra	Red Oak
Quercus shumardii	Shumard Red Oak

Note: not a single native, and no habitat trees (as far as I can tell). Habitat = "messy" of course. Some of these are pretty disease prone. Some good resources for street trees, especially in California, are Cal Poly's selectree and the Palo Alto "urban" Canopy. This is zone 9/17.

Fun with flickr

2007-03-13T17:49:00.001-05:00

Beware flickr maps. It's easy to go a little crazy on the exotic flora. If you stare at the original size of this photograph taken near Nieuwoudtville ZA , you will eventually see hundreds of young Aloe dichotoma trees dotting the hillside. [The yellow-flowered succulents in the foreground might be a Hoodia or Euphorbia, and I have no idea about the purple (Ericas?)]. Poke around fjordaan's photostream for more shots of this wonderful tree.

Unless it's A. pillansii, but I think it's too far south.

PSA: compost

2007-03-12T14:46:00.000-05:00

Beautiful weather, the miracle of March and daylight savings have combined to allow me to enjoy the garden after work earlier in the year. But today I am dreading it, because I should really turn the compost, and I'm feeling lazy.

Doesn't matter: I did a little research because I was worried about composting some big box store paperwhites, and this is what I found out from a recent review of the literature [Noble and Roberts, "Eradication of plant pathogens and nematodes during composting: a review," Plant Pathology 53 (2004), 548–568.]

For 27 out of 32 pathogenic fungi, all six oomycetes, seven bacterial pathogens and nine nematodes, and three out of nine plant viruses, a peak temperature of 64–70°C and duration of 21 days were sufficient to reduce numbers to below, or very close to, the detection limits of the tests used.
Several plant viruses were temperature-tolerant. These were CGMMV, /Pepper mild mottle virus/, /Tobacco rattle virus/, ToMV and TMV. TMV requires a peak compost temperature in excess of 68°C and a composting period longer than 20 days for eradication. However, TMV is degraded in compost over time, and can be eradicated after a composting period of 26 weeks, even at low temperature (31°C). ToMV in infected seeds can withstand over 70°C in an incubator for over 20 days. [TMV= tobacco mosaic, TomMV= Tomato mosaic; 31 C= 87.8 F; 70 C = 158 F]
It is clear that the detection limits in most studies were quite poor, with infection levels of up to 5% likely to be undetected regularly.

My compost will never get hot enough no matter how much I turn it.

Annals of service journalism

2007-03-07T14:27:00.000-05:00

Or, pedantry invades the garden

Two weeks ago, the Chron claimed (in an article about Linnaeus!) that Amaryllis belladonna isn't in the Amaryllis family. Today, they suggest that South African plants are flowering in California now because it's summer in South Africa.

More color

2007-03-06T14:26:00.001-05:00

The new growth on the pomegranate is also an eye opener when you really force yourself to look at it, however familiar the red-edged bronze register. But it's not quite on the level of that rose. Or of Zamia splendens:

Red, I'm seeing red

2007-03-02T15:04:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the color of plants you think you know well can be shocking.

New growth on this old hybrid tea rose is particularly striking, especially in contrast with the bleached old canes, but the stems and scleropyllous leaf margins on the Protea cynaroides aren't bad either.

By the way I finally caved and paid flickr to become a "pro," which won't make me a good photographer, but will allow you to see more detail in the mediocre photographs I've taken with the new camera. This Bilbergia's worth looking at larger than life.

Pacific Rim

2007-03-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

Nooooo.

Goodbye Paeonia cambessedesii.

Should have listened to Tony Avent when Heronswood shut down.

What's the lesson here? If you have a favorite nursery, patronize it. Are you one of those sitting there wishing you had sent in your Heronswood order earlier? Lesson learned...if you see a special plant at a mail-order nursery, don't wait because tomorrow may be too late.

Update: Heronswood postscript.

The science of potting

2007-02-26T13:27:00.000-05:00

A woman named Sue Bergeron in Ontario did a little experiment on drainage:

Therefore, in these two experiments, coarse 'drainage' material in the bottom of the pot resulted in the potting mix above it staying wetter per cup of medium than in a container of potting mix alone.

This is so frequently misunderstood that you need to read the whole thing. Also see Paul Cumbleton's reply [Feb. 23 entry in Jim Shields's unpermalinked blog]:

As we learned earlier, small pores hang on to water more strongly than large ones. Because of this, when you have a medium with smaller pores above one with larger pores, the water has difficulty crossing the boundary. There is insufficient "strength" in the larger pores to pull the water out of the smaller ones above where they are held more strongly by capillary action. So instead of the water draining evenly from the pot, it drains to the interface between the two layers then slows down or may even be stopped altogether until a sufficiently large hydraulic head has built up again to force it across the boundary. This of course means when the compost above is completely saturated! Since the stated goal for using a layer of coarse material is to improve drainage", it is ironic that this practise actually causes the very state it is intended to prevent!

Help translating the latter (and, indeed, all UK garden writers) is to be found in this entry from Ian Young, who explains, among other things, the various meanings of compost, and what exactly grit is.

Greener grass and other monocots

2007-02-22T19:27:00.001-05:00

Last year, I was trying to describe gardening in California to my mom, and she said, "Oh, I bet you can grow Agapanthus too" in a tone normally reserved for something like Vanilla planifolia. I had to pause to make sure I was thinking of the right plant, because it is literally a parking lot median plant here.

Christopher C. reminded me of this the other day, which in turn reminded me of an overused Agapanthus relative blooming now, also likely to be exciting to people who can't grow it: Chasmanthe:

Here it is planted on the sidewalk with, yes, Agapanthus, Juniper, and something else...

Even I'm still impressed that we can grow Clivia outside.

Links

2007-02-21T19:29:00.001-05:00

I've never followed Ian Young's SGRC Bulb Log because of its annoying lack of an RSS feed, but Daniel Mosquin reminded me to check it today, and it's worth the effort to remember to check it every week. This time of year it's a little heavy on the Narcissus for my taste, but the Crocus more than make up for it.

Also see Ian's article on Bulbs from seed, which seems, thankfully, very similar to what I'm doing this year.

Daniel's other link, to Paul Spracklin's Adventures in Mexico, is also interesting if you're into Agavaceae.

Update: Paul sent me the links to his first two Mexican excursions, which I was incapable of finding myself. And if you're a serious Agave nut, you're no doubt already aware of the crazy swiss/austrian agavaceae people already.

Sprung

2007-02-20T13:47:00.001-05:00

If not actually sprung, Spring is at least gathering itself here, thanks to unusually warm temperatures after the last rains. All of the bulbs that I can think of are up now, including Tulipa linifolia, which I have been quite dubious about. Blooming is another matter, I suppose. Come to think of it, there is one straggler: Fritillaria meleagris.

The Bilbergia that was threatening to bloom sometime in December was definitely slowed by the frost, but seems no worse for the wear. The pomegranate has leafed out, there are nascent buds on the Distictis buccinatoria and the Brugmansia has almost recovered all of the leaves lost in the frost. All we need is a little more rain.

The seeds are starting too: Calochortus catalinae germinated in about 18 days in the fridge, C. kennedyi 10 days later. The crunch is going to come in two weeks, when I'll have to plant out the first batch en masse.

Away from the garden it was a horticulturally eventful weekend, with the Pacific Orchid Exposition (not really my thing) and a CalHort talk on Calochortus (great slides, not so much info). I learned of an amazing plant that I had to have, which, thankfully, turned out to be a myco-heterotroph. Cross that one off the list.

Crack Kills

2007-02-12T12:21:00.001-05:00

I was waking from my nap on Friday, contemplating a delightful evening of my patented "moroccan chicken" and Ribiera del Duero, and listening to my wife wash something in the sink. I heard her turn off the water -- and I heard the water continue to flow.

Did you know FUCK can be a six syllable word?

The water, we discovered 17 hours and several hundred dollars later, was gushing from this tiny pinhole in an elbow between floors [the crack noted above refers to what people were smoking when they decided that galvanized steel was a suitable material to deliver your water supply.]

Since Saturday was devoted to plumbing, Sunday was spent on the painting we were supposed to do Saturday, and gardening did not happen, despite an auspicious break in the rain yesterday.

I did have time to note a few developments, primarily monocotyledonous:

Calochortus catalinae has started to germinate in its ziploc in the fridge. I should probably start checking these things at the beginning of the weekend.
The rains persuaded Dichelostemma ida-maia to finally send up some leaves. Possibly Erythronium californicum too. Keep your fingers crossed: it lives almost directly under the site of the unfortunate PVC cement incident of September '06.
Speaking of shame, the asphodel is shooting up virtually from the grave of the Deppea splendens, because I was totally unable to locate the former when I planted the latter in a location it obviously wanted nothing to do with.
Other excitements include the emergence of some hybrid tulips; various flowering succulents -- including one that is going to BLOW YOUR MIND, as soon as I figure out what it is; and approximately 100 gazillion Nigella seedlings in the lawn. Maybe they'll slow down the bermuda grass.

Winter

2007-01-31T14:08:00.001-05:00

There's not much flowering these days, but the rosemary was utterly unconcerned with the frost. Oh, and: behold the new camera. Suddenly I seem like a semi-competent photographer. In fact, I am realizing that I need more winter flowers. For starters, the Agave attenuata I failed to protect from the frost is going to be replaced with an aloe -- I'm thinking A. cryptopoda but taking suggestions: think compact and floriferous.

Actually, I went to the botanic garden this wekend to check out aloes, brought the new camera, and forgot to photograph anything. Sorry.

The only other flowers in the back right now are the camellias and the Double Delight rose, which I'd much prefer dormant so I can cut it back. The other rose got pruned hard, went dormant, and awaits its dormant spray which I haven't got around to because I dread the smell so. I'm also procrastinating on putting in some Dahlias.

The madness

2007-01-22T18:23:00.000-05:00

Every single seed I ordered this year requires stratification (except potentially for the alliums, which I can't figure out), so this weekend I painstakingly assembled a drawer full of dime bags in the fridge:

Aquilegia eximia
Allium amplectens
Allium bisceptrum var. bisceptrum
Calochortus catalinae
Calochortus kennedyi var. kennedyi
Erythronium helenae
Erythronium tuolumnense
Fritillaria recurva (4 populations)
Lilium bolanderi
Lilium pardalinum ssp. pardalinum
Penstemon eatonii var. eatonii
Penstemon grahamii
Silene californica
Triteleia hyacintha

Hopefully I'll have time so say something more substantial soon.

Horticultural therapy

2007-01-09T17:46:00.000-05:00

Winter may have been mild so far, but don't try to tell that to my Agave attenuata, which looks about as vibrant as The Ohio State University's offensive line right now. Sorry, had to sneak a little football in there. Anyway, the agave will probably survive if I can manage to cover it before it gets really cold later this week, but it's not long for the open garden. I'm accepting suggestions for a hardier agave or aloe to replace it. Moderate spines only please.

Winter is a garden season here like any other, and though I'm pretty short on winter-flowering plants in my own garden, I went for a little walk the other day to see what's blooming. Most dramatic are the deciduous magnolias, of many varieties, with their huge, purple-flushed flowers on naked branches. There's some kind of rhododendron (I think) that I see all over the place). Camellias, of course, and aloes, particularly Aloe arborescens which seems to love it here. As far as traditional "winter interest" (i.e., not flowers) goes, there's the classic red-twig dogwood (Cornus sericea), one of which I noticed in the same yard with a "Sango kaku" Japanese maple, in a bizarre pigmented-branch smackdown.

Then my walk took a sinister turn. Whole lots carpeted with the monotonous pale yellow of Oxalis pes-caprae. This is the scariest weed I have ever dealt with. It goes to seed in days, and produces an apparently infinite number of corms ("bulblets"?) which instantly separate from the root if you try to pull it. Basically, any attempt to remove it succeeds only in spreading it. I have two weedy Oxalises: a dull yellow that I think is O. stricta, and a fleshy purple thing whose name I forget. The latter is particularly irritating, but it's nothing compared to the dreaded goat's foot. I'm fully prepared to nuke my neighbor's yard if it shows up there.

Anyway, despite the possibility of gardening, it's catalog time here just like the rest of the northern hemisphere. I thought I did pretty good to resist the blandishments of the (web-) famous Meliodendron xylocarpum (rare! beautiful! difficult! ... no room), until I moved on to the seed catalogs. Let's just say I bought an endangered penstemon endemic to Utah oil shales at 6000' [scroll down to P. grahamii]. That's going to love my yard. But the beauty of seed is that your failures set you back $3, not $30. And I'm hoping the endangeredness will inspire me to try a bit harder with the seeds this year. I need all the help I can get with seeds. (Of course, my source is cultivated plants, not the dwindling wild population. I'm not an animal.)

Mr. frostee

2006-12-19T13:54:00.000-05:00

Originally uploaded by akiruna.

That's not really what you want to see in the morning. The words "record lows," also not ideal. Although I'm pretty sure we did not get below around 35 (the coldest spot I could find was 38 when I went out around 7:30 with my meat thermometer -- yes, I need to get a better measuring device), the path was definitely crunchy. Or rather, part of it was: there appear to be about 15 different nano-climates in my tiny yard.

Thankfully, the crunchiest area is mostly plant-free, and no actual crystals were visible on leaves, but I have a feeling the Hedychium was not amused. Certainly I will have to lower my already diminished expectations for those flower spikes, which haven't budged since I noticed them a month ago. There is also some question about the Agave attenuata, which, though "hardy to 28," cannot be too happy either.

Although there's been a fair amount of gardening activity, I haven't had time to write about it, so I'll see you next year, which will commence with rose pruning, barring catastrophe.

Advisory

2006-11-30T18:14:00.000-05:00

So cold. There was actually a frost advisory last night. What the fuck is a frost advisory? Are you Californians so weak you need the nanny state to hold your hand every time water might leave the liquid phase?

Well, yeah, we are. I've been pretty preoccupied with how cold I am for a few days. Wondering incredulously how I lived without central heat. The old days, when I was a kid in NE, and temperatures like this were cause to wear t-shirts and shorts, those don't really register anymore.

But now there's a garden: it's not about me anymore. I have responsibilities, which I fulfilled by covering my tenderest plants last night: Passiflora manicata and Deppea splendens. There were plenty more things I could have worried about, but I knew we weren't going to get a real frost: the nearest weather station (on the internet) didn't even fall below forty.

Still, it's an odd feeling, the sudden possibility that you could lose some plants overnight.

The only thing I'm really worried about are the nascent flower spikes on the Hedychium (we're up to 3 now), which I'm pretty sure are feeling considerably more petulant about producing actual flowers than last week.

Report

2006-11-20T14:57:00.000-05:00

Despite rain and fog, we've moved from the "second spring" into a kind of second summer. The lapageria has two flowers on it, and shockingly, I found a flower spike in the Hedychium I'd given up on. The neighbors' cannas were also sending up new spikes before being hacked senselessly to the ground.

On the other hand, we know winter's coming because the first Camellia flower appeared a week ago. And many precocious Aloe arborescens spikes are starting to flower around town. Interestingly, the massive, floriferous specimen with a south exposure that I pass every day hasn't done anything yet, while the spikes I've noticed have been on east- and north-facing plants. Hmmm, I wonder if I should put one in the front.

Harvested the pomegranates yesterday. One of them had split open so thoroughly that I decided, probably stupidly, to toss it, but I tried a few arils first. The flavor was good, although the sugar was too low, as feared. But that's a problem that can be corrected. With tequila.

The Order of Things

2006-11-14T14:27:00.000-05:00

I'll spare you my more esoteric ruminations on systematics in favor of the following concise-ish points:

It is amazing how accurately the Linnean system has been able to predict the actual genetic relationship between taxa.
Its failures in this regard are increasingly apparent, however, as in the decimation of the family formerly known as Scrophulariaceae by molecular phylogeny, noted above.
This is a failure not of the Linnean system per se, but of the attempt to conflate one system of representation (flower morphology) with another (phylogeny).
But both systems are "true." The latter maps its categories onto the empirically verifiable genetic relationship between plants, so is perhaps more useful, or more revealing of the underlying processes of evolution. But the morphological similarity between, say Antirrhinum (moved to Plantaginaceae) and Verbascum (still in Scrophulariaceae) is still absolutely "true" (as long as it is stripped of its phylogenetic pretensions).
Horticulturally, of course, this is neither here nor there. The categories relevant to gardeners more closely resemble Borges's (fictional) Chinese encyclopedia than either of the above: o. plants that remind me of something pleasant when grouped in a certain corner that I often neglect to water.
This explains the historical reluctance of gardeners to deal with taxonomy. It's not just laziness, it's also because leaf serration, or water requirements, or, especially, flower color, all more or less excluded from the Linnean system, are vastly more important to them (us) than, say, the relative glabrousness of the peduncles.

That's all. Go read Borges again.

What is a Species?

2006-11-09T13:29:00.000-05:00

Borges:

These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into a. belonging to the Emperor b. embalmed c. trained d. pigs e. sirens f. fabulous g. stray dogs h. included in this classification i. trembling like crazy j. innumerable k. drawn with a very fine camelhair brush l. et cetera m. just broke the vase n. from a distance look like flies

Albach et al., "Piecing together the 'new' Plantaginaceae," American Journal of Botany 92 (2005): 297-315:

More later.

Now lie in it

2006-11-06T13:14:00.000-05:00

The bed is made. Although planting things in it made me happy, I mostly found myself consumed with the kind of self-doubt that plagues the gardener -- or at least this gardener. Too much organic matter for the Calochortus? Gan the Agave attentuata and Leucospermum live together? And why did I buy that agave anyway? It would probably look better in a pot. Why do I so stubbornly refuse to chill the Tulipa linifolia? Ad naus.

Bulbs by their nature inspire these doubts, a leap of faith buried 6 inches under ground (of possibly incorrect composition), although I should probably worry more about seeds. I'll deal with that problem some other day.

[Not to burden with too much information, but the bed is divided into an acidic/sandy half, for the Proteaceae, and a neutral clayey half, for bulbs.

I also was able to remove the last patch of grass, grade out the lawn area, and -- against everyone's better judgment -- reseed it with fescue. It's probably too late to germinate, and even if it does the fear is that it will be overrun with bermuda, but I just didn't have the energy to deal with sod. Especially after an Orwellian trip to the stone yard, where I was informed that it was impossible to buy the pavers that I already bought for the path, and that therefore I can't buy any more of them to finish it.

I don't know what it says about me, but I was almost more excited to realize, when reading a book, that the agavaceous plant below, which I have long admired, is probably a Furcraea roezlii (= F. bedinghausii?). The internets make me less sure, though, so if there are any Agavaceae experts out there I'd appreciate confirmation/conjectures. The leaves are distinctly ensiform and minutely toothed, and this one is maybe 12' tall. It gets almost no direct sun.

Sleep like a champion today

2006-11-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

The beauty of flickr is that even if you are a shitty photographer you can just find someone else's picture of a Fatsia japonica flower that doesn't suck. Thanks jam343!

These are the kind of flowers that garden books call insignificant, but that's wrong: the inflorescence, which may have dozens of these Nelson-clock umbels, is quite striking (even if the individual flowers are indeed insignificant). What they mean is that the point of the plant is the foliage, which is true in the case of F. japonica only insofar as one does not fancy Nelson clocks -- which I don't particularly. But I do like the leaves.

Anyway, I haven't had much to say mostly because of the endless construction projects, which exhaust me. (I am weak). The other day, a yard and a half of various fill was finally delivered, and I nearly killed myself getting it from the driveway into the raised bed. Miraculously, I felt only moderately crapulent the next day, an outcome I can only attribute to my rigorous sleeping schedule, leavened with a high dosage of non-pharmaceutical grade resveratrol, of course.

I actually get to plant things this weekend. I'm starting to get excited.

The Waste Land

2006-10-18T15:40:00.000-05:00

I was working on a long post about California's "second spring" [we were laughing the other day about recent immigrants and their sad, predictable complaints about "seasons"], as well as the various failures this year [this list will have to be updated], but I don't have the energy. I spent the weekend excavating and building the raised bed, which gave me ample time to gauge the progress of my physical decrepitude, and also turn most of the yard into a desolate mud pit (punctuated with bermuda grass stolons). The end is finally near, but it hardly seems like it right now.

These flowers would have encouraged me, if there were more than two of them, and if the color had actually been "blood red" (The alleged "common" name of Distictis buccinatoria is blood red trumpet vine). A bit finer, perhaps, than common trumpet vine, and supposedly less "vigorous" (= weedy), but not long for the garden if it remains so stingy with the flowering.

Death Comes to the Salvia

2006-10-12T18:12:00.000-05:00

Ironic that these salvias are looking their best on the week they are to be sacrificed. But they must die that the raised bed may live.

The hideous purple is Salvia ~~leucophylla~~ leucantha. I'm not entirely sure the hummingbirds won't peck my eyes out when I destroy it. They've taken exception to pruning attempts in the past.

I'm going to try to save the red S. elegans twining through the fuchsia in the foreground and move it to the front, but I have low expectations.

Rain!

2006-10-04T18:01:00.000-05:00

C'mon feel the negative ions.

Gardening with the Eagles (and subsequent solo spin-offs)

2006-10-03T12:56:00.000-05:00

1. The heat is on

The weather is of course the most proverbially boring topic there is. And yet it is necessarily of surpassing interest to the gardener. I've never noticed summer turn so quickly into "fall" before, but of course I've never paid attention. I do believe that our traditional late-September heat wave was uncharacteristically abbreviated this year. We resorted to central heat for the first time a few days ago.

The days are abbreviating fast too. No use trying to get anything done after 7 now.

But the garden likes to remind me I'm not in Kansas anymore: one of the sweet peas is still blooming.

2. Take it to the limit

It's good to know your limitations. My limit, I just discovered, is six bags of concrete. Which means I'm a pathetic weakling. Nevertheless, I managed to get the slab poured last weekend, notwithstanding the disgusting wound left behind when the concrete float ripped off a callus. It didn't even hurt that much, but the next day it felt like my hands belonged to someone else. That's an inscrutable picture of the slab curing under plastic above, by the way.

I should also note that if you plant to run your own conduit, test it for leaks before you cover it up again.

Now you have Glen Frye in your head too, sucker. Just be thankful I spared you Don Henley.

Trenchant

2006-09-25T14:17:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Ayse's excavations and ~~compulsive~~ documentation thereof, I created a little photoset documenting the saga of the conduit. Totally plant-free...

Ok, fine here's your plant. Someone may have acquired one of these at a plant sale yesterday.

Houseplants

2006-09-21T15:37:00.000-05:00

Houseplants aren't that exciting, but this may be the happiest Phalaenopsis I've ever seen. Not, of course, because of anything I've done for it.

Anyway, despite my inattention, the garden is hanging in there, waiting for the rain with variable impatience, or none at all in the case of the "California fuschia" below. The plant form is a little sloppy, but you can't complain about the abundant flowering this time of year.

(Surrounded by dead Nigella, red Pelargonium, Alyssum, and Yarrow).

The madness

2006-09-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

Even-half crippled from my various excavations, I can't stop thinking about Paeonia cambessedesii. But what about Paeonia mascula subsp. arietina? [Descriptions here].

(The former, native to Mallorca, would constantly remind me of mayonnaise; the latter of chickpeas. I guess that doesn't really affect the decision).

Probably I will do nothing about my peony problem this year.

September in the garden

2006-09-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

If I have been remiss in describing what's going on in my garden, it's because I've been distracted by backbreaking labor. I'm now about halfway done with Operation Conduit '06, and then I have to excavate and build a raised bed before the rains come. Needless to say, I'm ready to be done with this bullshit.

But the garden is pretty interesting this time of year. Despite having looked dead for over a month, this heroic little sweetpea is still flowering. In the background is calamint, the binomial of which is much disputed, but we'll call it Nepetella something or other. It's been churning out a profusion of insignificant blueish flowers for months. I can't say I've cooked with it much yet.

The most exciting development in recent weeks was undoubtedly the arrival of my order from Telos rare bulbs. I've already planted a little drift of Erythronium californicum (Erythronium bulbs do not like to dry out), and a single Crinum bulbispermum. Other bulbs whose identity I'll withold for now await the raised bed.

I've recently solved the mystery of why the inherited Arum italicum doesn't set fruit: it does, but it's obscured by the rampant pelargonium. I don't think I love the Arum (someone once decribed it as "sinister", and whether because of the dark, pointed leaves or the creepy fruit spikes, which normally appear after the leaves have gone dormant, I tend to agree). But I'm happy to leave it undisturbed, at least until I pull the pelargonium.

Of course, the most beautiful flower right now is the Lapageria, and the first one finally disintegrated 3 weeks after opening. But this caused me to finally notice (you can see I'm a master of precise observation) that the style as well as the tepals are marked by the charactertistic pink mottling of this type, which is called "picotee".

The word picotee was borrowed from French in the eighteenth century specifically to describe a type of carnation, by the way. According to the OED it was not transferred to similarly marked flowers of other types until 1899. I suspect an enterprising Englishman could revise this chronology.

The style on the second flower is more strongly marked:

Immigration debate

2006-09-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

It's a native plant linkstravagana: a California biologist is facing hard time for hacking down Eucalyptus on public lands. Meanwhile, particularly delicate wild habitat in Point Reyes is threatened by massive pot plantations. In Placer County, fifty percent of new landscaping must be "native" by law. And Garden rant links to the inimitable Tony Avent's take on the subject.

I will just say that diversity means different things in different contexts. Agriculture is the greatest threat to biodiversity, but were going to have to accept the existence of the human race as a precondition to pondering these important issues. In terms of biodiversity, we should maintain as much "wild" land as possible and protect it from invasive species:* a project that does not have to conflict with the cultivation of horticultural diversity in the garden. Most of the angst is easily avoided by observing the seemingly obvious distinction between "wild" and cultivated land.

By the way, those of you who grow plants native to North America should check out the Native Plant Network propagation protocol database (via BPoD).

*Invaders can work in non-obvious ways. Some of the australian species colonizing South African fynbos grow so much faster than the natives that their fuel load accelerates the "normal" cycle of the fire regime, meaning that many of the natives do not have time to sufficiently restore their seed bank before they are burnt to a crisp. Conversely, some of the natives have adapted to the fire regime in such a way that they may be increasing "unnaturally" from this development. I'm sure there are similar dynamics in California chaparral.

Problem solved

2006-09-01T16:19:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Pam Pierce, the fuchsia has been miraculously ID'd as "Cardinal", from 1937/8. If you're trying to identify a fuchsia, this is a good place to start.

"Exotic"

2006-08-31T14:35:00.000-05:00

Here you can see the same Lapageria flower 12 days after it opened, without any signs of getting tired. I did notice stigmatic fluid (pardon my French) for the first time today; I wonder what it's been waiting for. You'll also notice two new shoots on the left that are now 2 feet tall without any sign of true (or at least adult) leaves. I'm starting to see why it's in Liliales. The... uh... brown spots date to some substandard gardening in early summer, which I can't blame on housesitters, unfortunately.

Hedychium update: In addition to the PBS discussion I found the other day, I did some actual research, with books:

Flowers July-September... Some growers have found [Hedychium coronarium] reluctant to flower, which may be due to the source of the plant material or the fact that the plants in question are not the true species. For other growers this ginger is among the earliest and most reliable flowerers in the genus. Plants thrive in full sun (although some leaf scorch may occur unless humidity levels are high), to bright shade, but flowering is most prolific when the plants are positioned to obtain at least some direct sun.

T. M. E. Branney, Hardy Gingers including Hedychium, Roscoea, and Zingiber (Timber Press, 2005).

I've already moved mine into morning sun. It may be too late.

This excellent book, by the way, reveals that many ginger species are hardy down to 5 degrees F. People think they're "exotic" because of how they look, but many are native to the high Himalayas. It was only in 1970 that someone finally noticed this at Kew, and planted out some H. densiflorum they'd been growing under glass for 100 years. So maybe you too can grow ginger.