P90713KThese are two pictures that did not make the grade for my ‘Six on Saturday‘ post this morning. That post featured bronze and gold foliage. Actually, of the six, only two were bronze, and only one was truly gold. One that I passed off as bronze was more purplish. Two that I thought were gold were just variegated with yellowish green and white.

I am none too keen on bronze or gold foliage anyway. The only exception that I can think of is the old fashioned bronzed ‘Schwedleri’ Norway maple. It was planted as a street trees on a few streets in the Santa Clara Valley in the 1950s.

Bronzed cultivars are less vigorous than their greener counterpart.

Gold cultivars are even less vigorous, and susceptible to scorch.

The best quality about bronze and gold is that they make silver look so good.

Olympic medal designations really should be reconsidered.

I only featured bronze and gold foliage earlier because I liked the contrasts between two different cultivars of each of the three species that were featured. Ironically, none of the three pairs compared bronze to gold directly. One compared purple to gold. The other two compared bronze to variegation that was barely yellow. Oh well.

There are neither bronze nor gold cultivars to compare to the silver foliage of the two species shown here.

I do not know what species of agave this is. There are not many distinguishable features visible in the picture above. The color and texture of the foliar surface might be identifiable to an expert. The little snail does not seem to be at all concerned.

The Eucalyptus cinerea in the picture below was pruned aggressively last autumn, both to contain the disfigured canopy, and also to stimulate more vigorous new juvenile growth. It is now strikingly silver.P90713K+

20 thoughts on “Silver”

    1. So do I! Well, best of all the colored foliage. Green is still my favorite. It would be nice if there wre more silver plants that tolerated the shade. Blue spruce looks so good with dark green redwood, but needs to keep its distance, since it does not like the shade.

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      2. Both of those happen to survive out in the landscape, but barely. They do not do well here, probably because of the minimal humidity. Even down in the damp riparian spots, they are not very happy. Besides, they stay rather small. The pulmonaria is mostly dark green with just a bit of silver. I sort of want something big, like a century plant. Most of the silvery foliage is silvery to reflect sunlight, because most plants with silvery foliage live at high elevations or where they are very exposed.

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      5. Haha — yes! I love the 4th shot, where he’s smiling at you! I don’t do portrait shots for almost exactly the same reasons, yet some of my favorites were candid people shots!

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  4. Several of my neighbours have silver cineraria. Bit ‘city park formal flower bed’ for me.
    My Dad had a silver santolina – his soil was a mix of chalk, flint – and odd bits of broken glass (house was built on part of an old nursery)!

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