Flowers bloom throughout the year here. I featured bloom this week to avoid the topic of minor frost damage that I should have protected vulnerable foliage from. Frost is minor here, and does not occur every year, but it occurred here prior to some other regions this year. However, this bloom can imply that it is springtime.

1. Osteospermum X hybrida, African daisy should bloom most for spring, but can bloom randomly whenever it chooses, and often blooms most profusely for summer or autumn.

2. Helichrysum bracteatum, strawflower is my favorite of these six because I remember it as the main cut flower crop to the east of my Pa’s home in Montara through the 1980s.

3. Salvia chiapensis, Chiapas sage is a species that I had never met before last year. They grew well through last summer, and even better with more bloom through this summer.

4. Cestrum fasciculatum ‘Newellii’, bastard jasmine has an interesting name. Of course, it is not really jasmine. It recovered slowly from gopher damage, but blooms nicely now.

5. Rosa, carpet rose is my least favorite of these six because it is so cheap and common. I prefer old fashioned and respectable hybrid tea roses that are such excellent cut flowers.

6. Iris X germanica, bearded iris should bloom for spring. Reblooming types also bloom for autumn. I have no idea what this is, but I sort of doubt that it is a reblooming variety. Earlier, it did not bloom much, so now seems to be blooming late for the first phase this year, rather than blooming again for a second phase within the same year. Furthermore, its simple bloom and slim floral stalks suggest that it is not extensively bred. It might be a simple species that is confused about the seasons here, because this climate is so mild.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

35 thoughts on “Six on Saturday: Springtime”

    1. Yes, and it blooms for quite a while also. The other horticulturist here selected it. I did not know what to think of it at first, but have been impressed by its performance.

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    1. Winter chill allows you to grow a few species that do not perform so well here, such as peonies, and many cultivars of apple and pear. I share these pictures because some people like to see flowers while they are out of season within their respective climates. We should appreciate what we can grow though. I am impressed by peonies and blueberries in Oregon, but do not try to grow them here. Instead, I grow what performs well here.

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  4. I do enjoy strawflowers. In the 1950s, I was introduced to them as artificial flowers that decorated everything in sight, including my dolls’ hats. I thought their name was given because they were made of straw. I was astonished to discover they’re also real flowers — that didn’t happen until about five years ago.

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    1. Artificial?! I remember that artificial flowers during the early 1970s were plastic, so were very different from strawflowers. However, ‘strawflowers’ included those dinky dried flowers that were dyed yellow, orange, red, white or sometimes green. They were glued onto all sorts of crafts that were popular at the time. Perhaps I never considered strawflowers to be artificial because I knew where they came from. I still sort of wonder about those dinky sorts though. I have never seen them grow for real.

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    2. Oh my! I looked it up, . . . but still can not find the species! It is gazilda or glixia, but I can not identify it. I can only get pictures of it in all sorts of horrid colors that were not invented by the 1970s.

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    1. That name really does seem rather peculiar. It sounds like something that Brent and I would have come up with while we were in school, but only with justification. ‘Bastard’ is how we described hybrids of Washingtonia robusta and Washingtonia filifera. There was no other terminology for them in the 1980s. They were described simply as one species or the other. Nowadays, they are known as Washingtonia X filibusta.

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    1. Yes, that iris is odd. There are quite a few reblooming bearded iris, but they are fancier hybrids. This one seems to be a simple species, like Iris pallida, which is sort of what I like about it. It was a gift from someone who had too much of it. Although I am not so keen on purple, I am getting to like it because of these particular iris. They are difficult to dislike.

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      2. Is that good or bad? ‘Encore’ is also a modern Buick, but that does not make it good. Some of those modern cultivars are too flashy. Iris can sort of get away with that degree of flashiness somehow.

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    1. I just remember to bring a copy of the Salvia chiapensis. Because I lack experience with it, I do not know if I should cut it back every winter. We did not cut it back last winter, but I suspect that it will eventually get overgrown. The Cestrum has not grown well enough for me to grow copies of it yet. The gophers have damaged it a few times.

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  8. Lovely six, your garden does have a lot of colour in winter! Lovely strawflower, flower carpet rose and iris. I grew Salvia Chiapensis once and think it succumbed to frost! We can grow most of the salias and can overwinter them except for the ones with really soft leaves like Pineapple sage that get zapped in winter. 🌼

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    1. Bloom never completely stops here. Winter is just too mild. However, spring bloom is not as profuse as it is in other climates. Pineapple sage is also blooming. It should be cut back at the end of winter.

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  9. Another beautiful post, Tony. And your SonS are always entertaining, but not always beautiful. The re-blooming iris looks very much like one of the re-blooming varieties that we can grow here, and the one that has historically performed the best for me here in our yard, which is known as ‘Rosalie Figge.’ A new neighbor had her yard worked on by a landscaper this past summer, and come late September she had purple Iris blooming in some new beds under her trees. Not smart to plant Iris under trees, but this landscaper did so, and the Iris bloomed very well this fall and looked just like yours. I asked the neighbor about the varietal name and she had not idea, so I mentioned our I. x germanica ‘Rosalie Figge’ that I purchased years ago from a local grower who specializes in re-blooming Iris. I didn’t get a feeling that knowing the name mattered to her, but those things interest me. We’ll have to see what her Iris do in years to come planted under mature oak trees. I hope they continue to bloom in spring and fall.

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    1. ‘Rosalie Figge’ is what I thought it looked like. However, I dismissed that possibility because I thought that such an extensively bred cultivar would have more substantial floral stalks. That was merely an assumption of course, and I have no idea how extensively bred reblooming bearded iris are. Except for their reblooming, this particular cultivar looks like a simpler breed or even a straight species, like Iris pallida, only shorter and with dark purple bloom. Does ‘Rosalie Figge’ resemble a ‘simpler’ breed?

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      1. Yes, it does. If there is an I. pallida species with such dark coloring, I haven’t seen it, yet. Rosalie has an intense grape fragrance. Since that cultivar has been around for so long now, variations may have crept in through selection of clones- just guessing here. But yes, its form is fairly simple and straightforward, at least in the plants I have with that name. I would guess that cultural conditions would also influence number of buds per stem and length of scape.

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      4. Oh, I have a rule against purchaing iris. Like almost everything in my garden, the iris have history. Besides, I grow too many to acquire any more. The only one that I would purchase if I ever find it is ‘San Jose’.

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  10. The cestrum is pretty and I’m always a fan of anything fragrant, but I’m really curious how it ended up with that common name. I used to call one of my potted trees “the bastard lemon” because of its unknown provenance (seed from an unlabeled bag at a bargain store), but it has grown so well and been so easy to care for that I started feeling bad about it and had to stop. People were also wondering why I was angry at it.

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    1. This particular Cestrum lacks fragrance, . . . which seems weird to me. (The first Cestrum that I ever met was Cestrum nocturnum. To me, it seems that fragrance is the primary attribute of the genus.) It is grown for its distinctly garnet colored bloom. I have no idea how it got its name. I prefer to refer to it simply as ‘Cestrum lewissii’. ‘Bastard’ is how my colleague down south and I describe feral hybrids of Washingtonia robusta and Washingtonia filifera. Nowadays, they are intentionally hybridized as Washingtonia X filibusta.

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