Sunday, April 30, 2006
Fritillaria involucrata
Fritillaria involucrata is native to southern France, but does nicely here on a slightly dry slope, with its cool, lime green flowers, spotted with chocolate. 
Easy Stars Of The Garden
Many of the shooting stars are alpines, and most are not fond of our hot summers here. Three easy ones, though are Dodecatheon meadia, our native prairie shooting star, which blooms a little later, and the two currently blooming that are pictured here. Above is Dodecatheon pulchellum, the dark throated shooting star, found mainly in the western U.S. (so, often called western shooting star), but it is found in scattered fashion to the eastern U.S. 
Dodecatheon jeffreyi, endemic to high meadows of the northwest U.S., is also called Jeffrey's shooting star, high mountain shooting star, and Sierra shooting star. Trillium Fever
What could be better on a rainy day, than poking around the garden looking at trilliums? This is Trillium vaseyi, the sweet wakerobin, with recurved, maroon red petals. 
Trillium simile is very striking, with sharply cut white flowers with a black center. It is scented, and often called the sweet white wakerobin, or jewelled wakerobin; it's one of my favorites. 
Trillium sulcatum can have flowers ranging from maroon to yellow, to white. 
This is Trillium recurvatum, our beloved prairie trillium, with deep red flowers and spotted leaves. These are scattered through our woods, and the steepest ravine has a good colony of these near a small stream trickling down the bottom, growing with bluebells, jack in the pulpits, and Trillium grandiflorum. 
A seedling Trillium luteum, popping up next to a shooting star. The yellow trillium gets quite large, and is fragrant, with nicely spotted leaves. Saturday, April 29, 2006
Foliage Trio
Fall may be the big season for foliage color, but sunny spring days can be nice, too... this is Heuchera Peach Flambe. 
Friday, April 28, 2006
Fritillaria acmopetala
Fritillaria acmopetala might be the overall most satisfactory fritillary; it is tall, elegant, with waxy, exotic flowers that are long-lasting, and every bulb is surrounded by babies. If you like fritillaries (and who doesn't) this bulb is for you. 
Lepidote Rhododendrons: Blue And Otherwise.
Rhein's Luna, pictured above is a new addition to the garden this spring. It is lavender blue, but my camera seems to like the color blue and has made it look more blue than it really is. It's still beautiful, and I have some hope for its long-term survival, but I don't get too attached to blue rhododendrons until they've at least seen their first Iowa summer and winter. Blue lepidotes apparently mainly get their color from the Rhododendron Subsection lapponica, a group of sub-alpine and sub-arctic small shrubs, that may tolerate winter (or may not, if no snow cover, which is often the case here), and dislike or hate hot weather. R. augustinii gives the best blue, but it turns up its toes here in the midwest, as do most of its direct progeny. Another lapponica, R. russatum, imparts a more purple blue, but is a little hardier parent, and russatum crossed with augustinii (thus russautinii) is half-way in between in both color and hardiness. If russautinii is crossed with a very hardy parent, it has some chance of survival here, and may give lavender blue flowers. Rhein's luna is russautinii X minus Carolinianum, so I have hopes. Bluenose, which I'll show later, when it blooms, is quite hardy here (russautinii X dauricum) but is prone to bark split on the trunk if winter sun hits it. It is a real beauty, a lighter lavender blue, and I love it dearly, and always ooh and ah every spring when it blooms next to a baby pink rhody. 
I recently showed a single truss of Rhododendron Hindsight; this just shows the plant better. It's a lepidote that almost looks like an elepidote, with its larger leaves, that it gets from its minus Carolinianum parent, and larger flower trusses than most lepidotes. The flowers are a nice, light baby pink. 
Rhododendron Shorty has a nice, bright pink color, with subtly deeper colored spots in its throat, and nice trusses for a lepidote. Thursday, April 27, 2006
Primula sieboldii
Primula sieboldii certainly has a lot of pluses for a gardener in the land of corn... not the least of which is its hardiness; by dint of having its foliage die back in the late, hot summer, it tolerates drought and heat better than its alpine brethren, and its foliage remains underground until moderately late in the spring, thus also avoiding winter, and then severe early spring freezes. Sieboldii's foliage therefore always looks very crisp and lettucy, offsetting its delicate flowers nicely. It's never quite been a WOW type of primrose for me, though: it doesn't form tight clumps, preferring to meander about loosely, and its pale pink-lavender flowers are sort of delicate and scattered. I may be changing my mind though; a couple of years ago I picked up a purple form of sieboldii... 
Monday, April 24, 2006
You Can't Have Too Many Daffodils...
You can't have too many daffodils... or can you? I suppose there are ten thousand daffodils in our garden. Now mind you, I didn't set out to have that many, but daffodils are the rabbits of the bulb world; after a few years, you've got them coming out of your ears. That in itself isn't a problem... I never met a daffodil I didn't like. The problem is that I've been living on borrowed time with my daffodils; you plant one bulb, and soon you've got nice clumps everywhere, with flowers uphill and down, their bright little faces shining in the spring sunshine. Eventually though, those clumps become crowded masses of bulbs, and the blooming rapidly goes downhill. I've done some minor redigging the last few years, but other important jobs, like keeping an eye on the local birdlife, and zipping out on the lake in our boat, always seem to come along just when I should be digging daffodil bulbs. This year, though, I've got to bite the bullet, and probably dig up, and split up perhaps two or three thousand bulbs. This is the dirty side of gardening that they never tell you about. 
Saturday, April 22, 2006
It's a beautiful, clear spring day... the garden is bursting with flowers and bright early spring foliage, so it's a good day for a garden walk. 
P.J. the cat will be accompanying us (when she's not trying to jump a bumble bee). 
Podophyllum Pleianthum; an Asian mayapple with shiny bright apple green foliage. 
Hosta Remember Me is quite beautiful... but some critter seems to have taken a liking to it. 
Hosta Fire Island is a looker when it first emerges... next year I want to have bright blue grape hyacinths around it, just for overkill. 
Lots of different species of Asian Arisaemas (jack in the pulpits) are coming up, rapidly thrusting their snake-like sheaths upwards. 
P.J. does slow down our garden walk, since she has to climb a few trees. 
Lepidote Rhododendron Hindsight is unusual in that the foliage is almost as large as an elepidote. 
This is lepidote Rhododendron Lavender Ice; I swear I didn't enhance the color... it's really this shade of blue. 
This is the summer snowflake: I can never decide whether they are worth having in the garden... the flowers themselves are pretty enough, with delicate green tips on the petals, but the foliage is massive for the flower size, and it persists forever, much longer than, say daffodils, then flops all over and smothers anything small planted next to them... I keep threatening to banish them to the deeper woods. 
The other trouble with snowflakes is that you never have just one; they multiply like rabbits. 
Tricyrtis Eco Gold Spangles is just coming up; it's one of those plants that don't need flowers. 
Anemone nemerosa Royal Blue contrasts with hot pink Primula kisoana. 
Fritillaria pallidiflora is tall and husky, with bluish-gray foliage contrasting with its pale lemon flowers... it's pretty foolproof in a sunny, well-drained spot. 
In a recent post, I showed Rhododendron Lavender Frost when it first opened; as it stays open longer, it gets more lavender coloration. 
Kind of a typical flower bed; if we take the path on the right up the hill, we'll see Uboughtwhat at the top. 
This is our resident, seven foot tall gargoyle; called "Uboughtwhat", because that's what my wife said when she found out what I bought (good thing I didn't get the eight foot Zeus statue that I was also looking at).
Well, we've been uphill and down; P.J. is ready for a snooze, so time to head home. Thursday, April 20, 2006
The Hole Story
My bulb is gone, and what's this hole?
I think it was dug by Mr. Mole.
But I think the tenant is now a vole.
____________________________
Then there's the sad story about Podophyllum veitchii... a most beautiful Asian mayapple, it didn't appear and didn't appear this spring, so today I gently dug down into the soil with a plastic spoon to check it out. Suddenly the soil gave away, dropping into a large burrow going straight down into the earth, and no Podophyllum was to be seen... it's obviously a mole burrow, which came right up under my expensive mayapple, and it provided a sort of vole cafeteria line. Sometimes gardening is indeed like dumping your money in a hole!
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
A Walk In The Garden Today
Well, the trilliums are trilling, the primroses are prime, and lots of other things are worth a look with the camera today. 
I have both our native Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf), and the pictured Asian counterpart, Jeffersonia dubia growing in the garden. Apparently one should not grow them close together, as they will hybridize. Jeffersonia is a relative of Epimedium. I've had twinleaf for a long time, and admire it greatly, only adding dubia a couple of years ago. Dubia has the cachet of being one of the plants that elevate the meanest of gardens to lofty status, and it's said to be far superior to our native version. The first year, I wasn't so sure about its superiority (I really like twinleaf), but this spring I'm sold; it was covered with bright lavender flowers, and the foliage is a wowser. Plus, its foliage persists, rather than going dormant like twinleaf. The flowers of dubia also last longer, but not ages longer. 
Bluebells are beautiful in the spring, they are nostalgic; they also will eat your flower beds if you're not ruthless, and try to take over your garden pathways. 
Primula kisoana gets my vote as the single toughest primrose... the plants at the bottom are growing out in the bark chip pathway, which is underlain with weed barrier fabric. I just pull them out and replant them wherever I want. 
Dicentra Gold Heart, with gold green foliage and bright pink flowers is not the most subtle of plants; this picture looks like I altered the colors or sharpness, but I didn't... it may be the only plant that the big nursery catalogues don't have to goose to make its picture stand out. Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Daffodils
If you were idling about the internet, waiting for somebody to post pictures of the daffodils blooming in their garden today, you're in luck... if you were looking for pictures of Britney's new baby, sorry!
Tulip Skullduggery
My wife and I have been ardent University of Iowa Hawkeye football fans, having had season tickets for many years. A few years back some tailgating friends of ours gave me some tulip bulbs; half were to be black and half gold, the Hawkeye colors... this is what they all turned out to be; the colors of our cross-state rivals, the Iowa State Cyclones. Oh, the treachery of some pimple faced nursery clerk who is a dastardly cyclone fan! Monday, April 17, 2006
Misty, Misty Morning
On a quiet, cloudy morning, with a Bell's vireo off in the woods singing his question, then answering himself (cheedle-cheedle chee? cheedle-cheedle chew!), our little valley is filled with mist, dampening all the foliage and flowers, but against this grey background, the colors of the flowers seem even sharper and more saturated. 
One of the more solemn little members of our garden flower chorus is Fritillaria uva-vulpis (syn. assyriaca), a somber grape color (thus sometimes called fox's grape) with a contrasting yellow interior . It is more elegant than spectacular, with its long, lanceolate foliage, its upright stature, and its small flowers that open just enough to give it a yellow lip. I don't remember any garden visitor ever noticing this little beauty unless I pointed it out, but our garden is richer from its presence. Native to the northern part of the Middle East, it is the easiest fritillary for most gardeners to grow, as it is drought-tolerant, liking a well-drained spot which dries during its dormancy, and a bit more sun than many fritillaries. It multiplies easily with these minimal requirements, soon forming colonies of little plants around each mother.
On a larger note, Fritillaria imperialis, the crown imperial, has formed some nice clumps; this is the yellow form.
The brick-red common crown imperial is still my favorite. There are many named selections of this plant, with slightly different shades of orange-red, but I can't imagine having enough sunny space to grow them... plus, the whole place would smell like a skunk factory. 
On this grey day, daffodils spilling down the hillsides vie for attention.
Epimedium yubae is just opening, with its pink flowers reflected in cherry-tinged foliage. 
Rhododendron Lavender Frost is well named, with a slight lavender haze on its white flowers. 
Many early lepidote rhodedendrons are opening; April Rose is always the first, and one of the brightest. 
Old PJM rhododendron can still light up a dark corner of the garden.
A handful of new buds coming up through the leaf litter isn't normally something to merit a picture, but when it's a colony of yellow ladyslippers...
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Life On The Plains
Today was stiflingly hot for mid-April, with a strong wind from the Southwest that continued to increase all day so that the temperature also continued to rise, reaching 88 degrees in late afternoon, with high clouds then rapidly flowing like milk across the horizon from the west, giving the sky a ground glass appearance, with the wind becoming fitful and dusty; never a good sign in spring on the prairies, where the jet stream high overhead can rip into the rapidly rising hot air, pushing mushrooming storms eastward at sixty miles an hour, setting them spinning as they go. The tornado sirens all around us began sounding off all at once, and continued their frantic wailing for the next hour. The first storm on radar showed a heart of purple in a large red blob. Hail began beating on the roof, as continuous lightning backlit low, dark clouds racing along the ridge. Tornadoes tend to form on the southwest corner of these storm clusters, and fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Iowa City just to our south, this was no exception, as a tornado ripped right across the city about four miles from us. The hail became even worse with the downdraft at the back of the storm, then trailed off to just scattered drumbeats, but ominously, lightning continued to flicker, and the temperature had not really dropped with the passage of the storm; it was still warm and humid. The tornado sirens continued, now joined by a multitude of emergency vehicle sirens out there in the darkness. A second storm then raced in from the northwest with the speed of a fast car, bringing quarter sized hail and even worse lightning, and at least two more tornadoes then swept through, following almost the same pathway right across town. Roofs are off, many buildings torn asunder, trees down, cars are flipped, but thankfully no deaths reported, and miraculously, less injuries than you might expect, but damage will be in the millions. I do not know what our garden will look like in the morning; the early magnolias all in full bloom, the soft foliage of thousands of newly emerging plants... but it's a small matter. 
The Exploding Garden
What sound does an exploding garden make? Could it be YIPPEE... or is that the sound the gardener makes? Two warm days have made the garden literally explode with flowers, and all I can say is that it's about time! Our garden, I'll have you know is divided up into rooms (though I must admit, while some of the rooms are like fine parlors, there are a couple of back closets, too). The center room of the garden has been kind of a forgotten room... you'd think it would be the area I'd have developed first and foremost, but logic has not been a driving element in this garden. In fact, for several years I used that space to pile brush and such, since it was of course easily accessible from all the rest of the garden. Of course that sometimes necessitated subtly (or sometimes firmly) steering garden tourers past that opening. Slowly however, I've been developing that spot, though it still seems a little out of focus, or themeless. I might be getting there, though, as today when I wandered into the garden, a sweet, musky perfume wafted up the front path, which I followed into the center room, where a patch of hyacinths was in full bloom. Lots of other flowers, like hellebores are also now open, so a full garden tour was in order.
April, more than anything, is a month of daffodils for us; there are perhaps a thousand open now, and in two weeks there will be five thousand. We've gone from having to scrounge up a picture of the kitten sitting on a fence post to put something on the blog, to having so many different flowers blooming at once that to even put pictures of 10% of them on this blog would freeze up the innocent visitors' computers like a quart of glue.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
The Morning After
Yesterday, the wind blew from the south harder and harder all day, portending a stormy night. About midnight a squall line boiled up out of the southwest, the swirling winds whipping fifty foot tall trees back and forth as if they were saplings; yet this morning there is not a cloud in sight, with a blue sky, emerald green grass, and fat robins sitting on the split rail fence. The bees, having ridden out the storm tucked away in their burrows, are nonchalantly buzzing over the patches of blue squill, as if nothing happened last night.
If there is a finer spring wildflower than the bloodroot, I have yet to see it; its petals are startlingly white, its flowers standing ramrod straight above the still-curled leaves. It is also the most bittersweet of flowers to me; it is more than any other, a flower of my childhood, sought out in many a spring jaunt through the hills and moist valleys of the nearby virgin hardwood (that is now converted to houses and parking lots). It is also the most ephemeral of flowers; it opens in perfection, but after only a few days, you find its white petals shattered to the ground, like pieces of glass, and its gone for another year. Spring is far too short.
Cardamines are sometimes called cuckoo flowers in Europe, where most of the over six hundred species reside. We do also have a few species in this country. Cardamine enneaphylla, seen above, is a good example of this genus, hailing from eastern Europe. It is about six inches tall, forming a nice colony, with small creamy bells for flowers. Dan Hinkley, in his fine book, The Explorer's Garden, calls this the most beautiful of the many species he grows, but to me it's pretty subtle; it's not a plant I seek out every spring, as its flowers are small and somewhat tucked into the leaves, but the combination of its very shiny, crisp foliage, and pretty little flowers is quite pleasing. I mean to dig up a few and plant them under an early rhododendron.
The sharp-lobed hepatica, Hepatica acutiloba, is opening its flowers at the top of its fuzzy stems. 
Some bulbs are very clever at sliding their foliage up out of the hard ground in early spring; eremurus takes a more direct approach, thrusting up its brawny foliage like a clenched fist, so that it fairly explodes out of the soil. Called desert candles (eremurus is from the Greek for "desert tails"), the species pictured is Eremurus robustus, which grows six feet or more tall.Saturday, April 08, 2006
A Walk In The Garden Today
Things are finally coming on well enough that hauling the digital camera along on my evening garden walk is worthwhile. Here is pictured rhododendron Mary Fleming, a small lepidote with very delicately colored flowers, cream in the center, and pink around the edges. It tones down its magenta flowered neighbors. 
Hepatica nobilis is opening more of its batchelor button blue flowers. 
Hepatica yamatutai; an evergreen hepatica native to western China. 
Friday, April 07, 2006
Wake Garden, Wake!
On a gray, chilly, windy day, the geese are having a honkfest up and down the valley; while most of the garden still slumbers, here and there, flowers are just starting to open, like this little wood anemone, which is spreading into quite a patch. 
Rhododendron Mrs. J. A. Withington III; an elegant name for an elegant rhododendron, with silvery-lavender, double flowers. 
Tricyrtis 'Golden Gleam' is just starting to push up its maroon-spotted, chartreuse leaves. Wednesday, April 05, 2006
The Day Of My Discontent
It happens every spring about this time; it seems every early April has a day that's unseasonably warm, with a dry wind, and a blindingly bright sun, and as the leaves are all still snoozing, the garden is like a stage with all the footlights blazing, showing up every little imperfection, with no softening green to hide the flaws and no shade for shelter. It also is a day when the thermometer makes you think the garden should be in lush, glorious flower, but most of the more spectacular blooms are still just homely buds. I always get this momentary feeling of disappontment, that all my efforts in planting have really not amounted to much... the garden just seems so empty. Two weeks from now, when all the daffodils are blooming, and the leaves are starting to emerge in a hundred shades of green, I will again feel silly. The daffodil Bright Wood, above, does cheer me up a little in the meantime.
Hepatica asiatica Japonica, is now fully open... it's hot pink flowers are striking against the brown leaves of winter.Monday, April 03, 2006
A Nicer Day
After yesterday's storms, we were rewarded today with bright sunshine and a delphinium blue sky. The resident critters ambled and flew out of the deeper woods, glad for the warmth, and the respite from rain and wind. The deer frankly look kind of shabby; skinny from the long winter, so they look like they are wearing old clothes a size too big, and in need of spring shedding of their winter coats... they didn't mind, though, posing for a few snapshots, as I headed across the yard to see what I could find in the late afternoon garden. 
Early Sensation daffodil, though a simple yellow, is indeed early, and therefore spiffy, if not quite sensational. It is always the first large daffodil to bloom for me, sometimes blooming as early as mid-March (it's tardy this year). It is so early that it sometimes suffers flower damage from severe cold snaps, and usually has a little, insignifigant browning of the foliage tips.
Hepatica acutiloba, the sharp- lobed hepatica, raises its flower buds, like little fuzzy snakes raising out of the leaf litter. 
A deep maroon-purple hellebore seems to soak up the sunshine by its very darkness.
The small Ranunculus ficaria "Brazen Hussy" looks like a pot of ink has been spilled on its leaves; later it will be covered in dark yellow flowers. 
Primula vulgaris ssp. sibthorpii, is the first primrose to fully open... in a matter of days, even in cold, dark weather, it just seems to race to get its flowers open, vying to be the first primrose to tempt the early bees. This is probably my single favorite primrose; it is bone-hardy, very early, and much more natural looking in a woodland garden, with its smaller, soft lilac flowers. 
As the sun angled down behind the west ridge, the sky turned a deeper blue, setting the stage for the ringed bill gulls. Hundreds of these birds have stopped off here, on their migration to Canada, coming up the Mississipi Valley, and then following the tributary rivers northward. Each evening, for some reason known only to them (but I suspect it's just for fun), they fly in great river-like, undulating flocks up our valley from the lake. When they reach the top of the main valley, they wheel to the east, so that the setting sun lights up their snow-white underparts against the purpling sky. I watched this spectacle for an hour, until the sun was almost behind the ridge.
As the valley fell into evening's shadow, a flock of mallards came winging up off the pond, turned towards the west, and were gone. It was time to walk back up the pathway, headed to our warm house; it was a nice day.Sunday, April 02, 2006
Weather Thrills, Garden Squills, And Other Small Matters
A deep low pressure area rose from the western plains, and today made a beeline for the Great Lakes, dragging a long plume of moisture up from the Gulf of Mexico, which rapidly formed a powerful line of storms, like cracking a whip across the midwest. The sirens in nearby Iowa City wailed as low, dark clouds streamed and billowed across the sky. Our little valley escaped, sliding through a little opening in the squall line, with large hail just over the ridge to the north, and sixty mile an hour winds with a tornado in the flats thirteen miles to the south. Half an hour after the sirens first sounded, the ground haze cleared, and long trains of fluffy white clouds were being drawn across a blueing sky; like gay tails trailing a kite, as the dark storm rapidly rumbled to the northeast.It is a day to consider and appreciate events in the sky, but also small things close to the ground... it is a day to appreciate squills. In front of the fireplace in winter, I don't dream about squills; I'm not even sure I'd miss them if some mischevious garden sprite snuck them out of our garden, but each year, when they bloom, I am grateful for their cheery abandon and sharp colors. They ask nothing more than a tiny bit of neglected soil, and give their all, blooming their little hearts out. Sara Teasdale wrote:
How many million Aprils came before I knew
how white a cherry bough could be, a bed of squills how blue.
Scilla siberica (the Siberian blue squill), above, is a small squill, which has only one to perhaps five flowers at most on each stem, but what flowers they are! An intense Prussian blue, they glow in the sunshine, making a striking background for yellow daffodils. Pusckinia scilloides var. Libanotica (Push-kin-ee-uh), the striped squill, shown in the last picture below, is of course not a squill at all but is squill-like (scilloides). Dicky Graff, in her classic book Flowers in the Winter Garden, disparages Puschkinia, stating "I mention it here only to point up the superiority of Scilla tubergeniana. Bluntly and briefly, the puchkinia is not a good garden subject. Its flowers are bunched at the end of an ungainly scape far above the scant leaves. To make things worse, the stem goes limp in hot sun- a hazard it inevitably suffers in mid-April, so that the symmetry of a patch is lost in a snaggle of drooping, snaky lines." Well, all I've got to say, is that nobody is perfect! Dicky does allow that, paltry though the flowers are, they are a magnet for bees, an observation that I can vouch for (and appreciate greatly... few things are as cheery on a fine spring day, than seeing honeybees bustle over these little flowers, bending the stalks almost to the ground by their numbers). Now, I am as big a fan of Scilla tubergeniana, the white squill, as any gardening lad around, and freely admit that, as shown in the next picture below, that it makes a much finer clump than its demure little country cousin, Puschkinia scilloides, but I have a warm spot for the striped squill; it was the first little bulb I ever grew, and the elfin blue-striped flowers that are dotting the garden now are all children of that first little bag of tiny bulbs that I bought twenty-five years ago.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
April
It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of bird's cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
___________________John Masefield___________________
March is the two year old of the calendar year; playful and sparkling one moment, sullen and contrary the next... this March I'll not miss, as it was mostly on the downside; a month mainly of sunless cold, where even the songbirds got on each other's nerves. When they weren't hunkered down in the arborvitae, they were squabbling with each other, rather than cheerfully singing from the treetops. April can also be tempestuous here in the midwest, where we are wide open to weather fronts from every direction; temperatures can rise or fall sixty degrees in a matter of two or three days, and clear, beaming skys can fill with lowering thunderclouds and twisting tornados in an hour, with sirens blowing, and ominous squiggles of red and yellow on the weather radar. For the most part, though, April is a beauty; perhaps a gawky, coltish beauty compared to spectacular May, but a beauty nevertheless, and it is the month where the garden fairly explodes. The browns and grays of March will give way all at once to green grass, blue sky, and thousands of daffodils in yellows and pristine white, all looking skyward to the warming sun. I am content.
