It is known by a few different common names, including ‘Andean pampas grass’, ‘purple pampas grass’, and simply ‘pampas grass’. ‘Andean pampas grass’ sounds almost like an oxymoron, since the Andes Mountains are in a separate region to the west of the pampas region of Uruguay and eastern Argentina. ‘Purple pampas grass’ is even sillier, since it is devoid of any purple.

I know it simply as ‘papas grass’. That is just how I learned it. The problem with this common name is that it is the same common name of Cortaderia selloana and its cultivars, which is a distinct species that is, on rare occasion, planted intentionally in landscapes. Cortaderia jubata is one of the most aggressively invasive of exotic species on the West Coast, so is not planted.

Cortaderia selloana is safe to plant because it is ‘supposedly’ sterile, so can not naturalize. Technically though, it is not…

My plan to collect apples on time this year worked out no better than it did last year. The original article from last year was reblogged to another blog yesterday, along with a brief update to explain the current situation. Hey, I may as well reblog it back here too. These might be the only apples I write about this year. via My Private Heritage Tree

What ever happened to the formerly common white hydrangea? It used to one of the three standard types of hydrangea; and the other two were really variants of the same sorts of ‘pink or blue’ hydrangea that I wrote about in ‘Horridculture – True Colors‘. The few hydrangeas that are white nowadays are lacy, flat-topped, blushed . . . or anything but simple classic white.

This old fashioned simple white hydrangea is just as elegant now as it has always been. It is always white, without pretense of blue or pink. There is no point of giving it something it does not really need just to change its natural color (like those of us in the Santa Clara Valley do to make pink hydrangeas blue; or those of us in the Tualatin Valley do to make blue hydrangeas pink).

The bulky and almost spherically rounded form of this…

Ferns are an odd group. They lack the color or fragrance of flowers, or the branch structure of shrubbery, trees or vines. Very few turn color in autumn. They provide only green foliage. Yet, as simple as this seems, the generally evergreen foliage that ferns provide is some of the most distinctive foliage that can be found in the garden.

With few exceptions, ferns are richly deep green. Only a few are lighter green or almost yellowish. The leaves, which are known as ‘fronds’, can be soft and papery, or coarse and tough. The fronds of most ferns are pinnately divided into neatly arranged leaflets; and many ferns have leaflets that are intricately lobed. Some ferns have leaves with more palmate symmetry. A few ferns actually have undivided leaves.

(Pinnate symmetry involves a central midrib or midvein to each leaf, or a central rachis…

This is not about North and South. It is about a utility pole and a pole that remained from a redwood tree that was too close to it. One is there to support a variety of cables and a streetlamp. The other just wanted to grow into a redwood tree to join the rest of the forest. One has been deceased for many years or decades. The other was alive just recently, but is now only a stump.

The picture above shows how many cables the utility pole supports, as well as the streetlamp. When I did my internship in 1988, the arborists whom I worked with knew what each of the various cables were for; high voltage, lower voltage, cable television, telephone and whatever else was up there. Fiber optic cables have since simplified the telephone and television cables.

The picture above also shows how the unfortunate redwood tree…