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Epiphyte

P71108A plant that clings to another plant for support without parasitizing it is an epiphyte. Some do it to get a bit more sunlight closer to the ceiling of a dense forest. Others do it to get up off of the forest floor to avoid competition with conventionally terrestrial plants. Maybe some just want to avoid grazing animals. It is often difficult to determine why plants do what they do.

Spider plants, ephiphyllums and many types of orchids, bromeliads and ferns are some of the more familiar epiphytes. Most do not actually cling to trees. They instead live in the crotches of limbs where debris from the foliar canopy above accumulates. Either way, they do not need much organic matter in which to disperse their roots, and some need none at all. Many collect what they need from the air and precipitation.

This is not about an epiphyte.

It is about a Mexican fan palm that thought it was epiphyte.

You might have though that the picture above depicts a common Mexican fan palm next to a surly London planetree. With closer inspection, you will notice that the palm lacks a trunk at ground level. The utility pole visible below the palm is not attached to it, and does not support it. Yet, the palm does not just hover there. It grew from a cavity in the London planetree.

Most of us know how many plants self sow in weird places. Sometimes they appear where they are welcome. Usually, they end up in pots with other plants, too close to pavement, or in rain gutters that have not been cleaned out enough. Of course, big trees commonly appear under utility cables. Once in a while something self sows in a decaying cavity of a tree.

Most of us have enough sense to remove self sown trees and plants that appears where they can not live for long without causing problems. Those of us who hire gardeners tend to trust and hope that the gardeners would exhibit the same sort of common sense. After all, that is part of what they are payed significant money for.

Unfortunately, Mexican fan palms are not epiphytic. They are just too heavy, even when young.

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Posted on by tonytomeo · 7 Comments

GREEN

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GREEN – Greening Residential Environments Empowering Neighborhoods – allocates resources, procured from both municipal funding and private donations, to the installation, maintenance and protection of trees in public spaces within the collective urban forest of Los Angeles, and to the enforcement of environmental justice.

How is that for a mission statement?

It is no coincidence that GREEN is also Brent’s last name. He is quite vain. Really though, it works.

Brent has been planting street trees since we were in school in the 1980s, and did his first big project of thirty trees in the median of San Vicente Boulevard on his thirtieth birthday in 1998. This January, twenty years later, he will be planting fifty more trees.

Here and there, I will be writing more articles about these projects. They are too involved to write just one article about. For now, I would like to mention the Facebook page for GREEN, at https://www.facebook.com/GREEN-1518459741733375/. I am sorry that I can not devote more attention to it. I really should be writing more articles about what GREEN does.

There is more to it than just planting. Trees also require staking. Street trees need pruning for clearance above the roadways that they shade. Some trees needed to be injected with systemic insecticide for homopteran insect infestation. When mature Canary Island date palms were being stolen from the embankment of the Santa Monica Freeway and sold into other neighborhoods, GREEN was there to stop it, and to get at least one of the trees returned (although the neighborhood is still waiting for other reparations). GREEN has organized neighborhood clean-ups and graffiti abatement.

GREEN is in Los Angeles, but could be duplicated in other municipalities that could use more trees, or that already have trees that need maintenance. So many trees in America have tree preservation ordinances, but some of the biggest cities need to enforce their ordinances more diligently.

If you continue to read my blog, you will be reading more about GREEN. Again, the Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/GREEN-1518459741733375/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Arachnophobia

70927lthumbsparePerhaps I should see this movie. I hear that it is pretty lame. I sort of wanted to see it because it was filmed in Cambria, about thirty miles to the northwest of where Brent and I were in our last year of studying horticulture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo at the time. Yet, I never select movies. I always leave that up to whomever I am seeing the particular movie with. None of my friends ever wanted to see Arachnophobia. The one friend who you would think would want to see it because of where and when it was filmed wanted nothing to do with it. You see, Brent, the famous horticulturist and landscape designer who works outside where spiders live, is afflicted with Arachnophobia.

About a year before the filming of Arachnophobia began, in early 1988, Brent lived in Sequoia Hall at Cal Poly to the north of San Luis Obispo, and I lived south of town, about twenty minutes away. Brent called me up early one morning as I was getting ready to leave for school to tell me about a spider in his dorm room. Perhaps “tell” is not the best word to describe his frantic panic. I mean, he was totally freaked out!

I told him to wake up Jerry, his roommate who usually slept in a bit later, and have him remove the spider. He got even more frantic and told me that Jerry was up in the room. Well, . . . if Jerry was up in the room, and Brent was not with Jerry, I just had to ask, “Where are you?!” “I’m calling from the payphone in the lobby!”, Brent explained frantically. (Telephones were hardwired in 1988.) Okay, so this complicated things a bit. He actually ran from the room and down from the third floor before stopping long enough to use a telephone? I told Brent that he should go back up to his room and have Jerry remove the spider. He really freaked out, and exclaimed, “Are you not listening?! THERE IS A SPIDER UP THERE!!”

Somehow, after explaining that Jerry did not answer the telephone when he had tried to call a few time before calling me, Brent convinced me to rush over and stop by before class to remove the spider for him. Brent was in his pajamas without slippers when I met him in the lobby and proceeded up to his room, where Jerry had just woken up to find Brent gone and the door wide open. We both went to the lower left sill of the window where Brent had seen the terrifying spider, and found it, dead. Yes. . . dead. I rushed over there, parked in a red zone, rushed upstairs, all to kill . . . a dead spider.

Well, it was not exactly a dead spider. It was the molted exoskeleton of a spider. In retrospect, I should have told Brent either that it was a dead spider, or that we had found and killed it. You see, Brent and I studied entomology together, so we knew how this molting process worked for certain insects. Arachnids like mites and spiders use a similar technique. As they grow too large for their external skeletal structure, they shed it, and then hide out somewhere while their new exterior hardens into a new exoskeleton. So when I told Brent that we found the molted exoskeleton, he freaked out all over again knowing that the spider was still hiding in his room, and that it was BIGGER!

I do not remember how Jerry and I got Brent to go home the following evening. Perhaps his second best option was to come to my house, where spiders were quite common. We never actually saw the spider.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 7 Comments

Contact

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It worked before, so I thought that I would try it again. This picture of Rhody is no more relevant to what I need to say than is to horticulture. It is just here to get you to stop and read what I need to say. Apparently, it worked.

This blog is new to me, and I am learning how it operates as I go. I started writing this blog as a place to put all of the gardening articles that I write for various newspapers on the Central and South Coasts of California, as well as other ‘elaborative’ articles. I also thought that it would make it easier for anyone who reads my articles to contact me with gardening questions or concerns, or suggestions for the gardening articles. All I had before was my e-mail, and for those in Santa Clara County, my telephone number. It was somewhat awkward because different newspapers allow different taglines to display the contact information, and some have none at all. Anyway, I thought that the ‘contact’ option on the blog would simplify all of that.

The problem is that I did not know how it all worked. I knew that my e-mail was getting clogged with messages informing me about every sort of activity on the blog. I got a message every time someone liked an article, liked a comment, made a comment, replied to a comment, liked a like, or whatever. Anything and everything came across as a message to my e-mail. I deleted almost all of it. I still can not figure out how to stop it from doing that.

Unfortunately, in the process, I deleted ALL of the messages telling me that I had messages since the beginning of September! I was wondering where they were going. I seriously did not intend to be so negligent about my correspondence.

I am very sorry for the inconvenience. Anyone who sent me a message can certainly resend it. I will be more careful about responding.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Seriously?!

P71104Gardening is not for everyone. If you are reading this, you probably enjoy gardening. There are many more people who simply are not interested in it. Some tend to their own gardens in a basic manner just to keep their homes looking good. Most hire gardeners to maintain their landscapes for them.

I use the term ‘maintain’ very lightly. What they really do is keep the lawn from getting too deep, and other plants from getting too overgrown. Very few really care how they accomplish these basic requirements.

I could go into the detail about how they brag about saving water while wasting enough to drown trees, or how they shear everything within reach into nondescript . . . whatever they get shorn into, or how most problems that arborists encounter in their work are caused by gardeners. Instead, I am just gong to talk briefly about two examples of the lack of expertise or concern or both exhibited by gardeners who maintain the landscape at a small office building in my neighborhood.

There are a few healthy ‘Prairie Fire’ flowering crabapple trees in this landscape. A few years ago, they bloomed spectacularly! The following year, they were about to do the same thing. They were quite healthy, with plump buds that were swelling nicely as winter became spring. Just as the buds were about to pop, and the bright pink of the flowers within was becoming visible between the bud scales, the gardeners arrived and pollarded all the trees. Yes, they pruned away ALL of the blooming stems, cut them up, and disposed of them, leaving bare trunks and limbs. There was not bloom.

The trees recovered through the year, and produced plenty of stems to bloom the following spring. Again, the buds swelled at the end of winter, only to be completely removed when the trees were pollarded just before bloom. The trees were not even pollarded correctly. It was quite a hack job. This happens every year now. The trees never bloom.

A stone retaining wall below this landscape was well landscaped with rosemary hanging down from the top, and Boston ivy climbing up from below. The two will eventually be redundant to each other as the rosemary grows enough to cover the wall without the help of the Boston ivy, but for now, they work well together.

The Boston ivy was just beginning to show autumn color. It happens to be one of the few plants that colors reliably in our mild climate, with bright yellow, orange, red and burgundy. It would have been spectacular, but, like the budded stems of the flowering crabapples, all the Boston ivy was cut down to the ground. All the foliage that was just about to do what it does best was completely removed and disposed of.

There is certainly nothing wrong with exposing parts of the handsome stone wall. The rosemary still cascades from above to break up the expansiveness of the wall. The problem is the untimely removal of something that should have been an asset for the landscape, rather than just a liability. The Boston Ivy could have been cut back in winter, after displaying its spectacular autumn foliar color. Professionals should know how to accomplish this.

The property manager pays a lot of money for this sort of nonsense. Hey, we all know mistakes happen; but this is inexcusable. Seriously, people who know nothing about gardening could do better than these so called professionals.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 34 Comments

My Tiny Downtown Garden

P71105Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue are the two main streets of downtown Los Gatos. They are the main shopping district, and the part of town that everyone sees. As much as things have changed, a bit of the familiar remains. Gilley’s Coffee Shoppe is still next door to the (rebuilt) Los Gatos Cinema. The brick La Canada Building miraculously survived the Earthquake. The simple deco Park Vista Building across the street is just as elegant now as it was a century ago. There are still concerts in the Town Plaza in summertime, shaded by the Town Christmas Tree that gets lit up in December.

Both Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue are outfitted with big planter boxes that give the downtown a more relaxed and colorful ambiance. Each planter is elevated about a foot and a half, and contains one or two Indian hawthorn trees. A low wrought iron railing protects the contents of the planter boxes. Irrigation s automated. That is about all that the planters have in common.

Each planter box is ‘adopted’ by a member of the community, or a community group, each with different styles and different ideas of what we should plant in our boxes. Some like things neat and trim. Others believe that bigger is better. Some like plenty of foliage. Others like lots of colorful flowers. Some planter boxes even get adorned with seasonal decorations.

My little planter box is on the northwest corner of Nicholson Avenue and North Santa Cruz Avenue. It has a brass plaque with my name on it. It is my little garden space downtown, where I get to express my simple gardening style for everyone to see, even though I grow a few flowery things there that I would not actually waste space on in my own garden.

The trailing rosemary that cascades over the wall so nicely was there when I got the planter. So were the montbretia and liriope, which I did not want to remove because someone else had gone through the effort of planting them. When there was more space available, I planted a few inexpensive flowering annuals, like pansies and calendulas. As things grew, there was less space for annuals. Besides, I wanted to make a point of doing this planter nicely with sustainable plants that I propagated myself.

The two largest features are common aeoniums. The two original cuttings were on the dashboard in the car for weeks before I finally stuck them in the planter. They came from the home of a friend’s mother in Monterey. We emptied the home out after she passed away. It was gratifying that they found a home in my planter box, and even more gratifying that they grew so well and provided countless cuttings for copies all over town, including in other planter boxes. Between the two big aeoniums, there is a small bronze aeonium. It is the same age as the two big ones, but grows slower, and is regularly set back by people breaking off and taking the stems as fast as they grow.

These three aeoniums were not alone on the dashboard. They arrived with another related succulent, which I believe to be an old fashioned echeveria, and some sort of compact aloe. The echeveria has spread out over much of the area between the big aeoniums. The aloe is still confined to one corner.

To contrast with all the pale green foliage, I added two bronze ‘Australia’ cannas. They cost only a few dollars, and were probably my biggest expense in this entire project.

The most impressive feature of the planter box are the nasturtiums. Yes, common, simple and cheap nasturtiums. I wanted to get straight yellow nasturtiums for compatibility with the signs of the neighboring bicycle shop, but could not find any at the time. I instead started with the common ‘Jewels’ mix, which is still my favorite. After self sowing, the subsequent feral nasturtiums are only orange and yellow, with only one or two red blooming plants. What made them so excellent is how they grew! They overwhelmed the trailing rosemary (which is fine since they die back in summer when the rosemary takes over), and cascaded onto the walkway and curb. They filled the space between the railing and an adjacent bench, and even started growing through the bench. There was so much bright orange and yellow that no one seemed to mind that it was nasturtium.

After a long and warm summer, the aeoniums need serious grooming, and the nasturtium need to be replaced. I really hope that the planter box will be as impressive as it was last winter. The picture here is not very good. Perhaps I will get a better picture in a few months.

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Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

Change of Format

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This blog is now two months old; so it is about time that I start to recycle old articles instead of writing so many ‘elaborations’. The articles are probably more interesting and relevant anyway. They will be from the same time last year, or previous years. Like I have been doing with new articles, the old articles will be split into two separate postings. One will be the main topic. The other will be the ‘plant’ of the week. So, one new article and one old article split into two postings each week leaves only three days for ‘elaborations’. Redundant articles will be omitted. Eventually, I will refrain from daily postings. Also, I will try to keep my ‘elaborations’ brief. I know I tend to get carried away with this. Alternatively, I may recycle another article each week, leaving only one day for ‘elaborations’. I will figure this out as I go along.

While I am taking the time to post something that has nothing to do with gardening, I should also mention that one of my main objections to writing a blog is that so much of what I write about is specifically for the climate in which I live, and not necessarily applicable to other regions. My articles are written for newspapers between San Francisco and Beverly Hills (in Los Angeles County). However, since starting this blog, I have found that not only do the newspapers that I write for already share my articles with newspapers in other regions, but that people who read my articles in other regions are already as aware of regional differences as I am. People in Australia seem to be as interested in reading about autumn during their spring as I am interested in reading about their spring during autumn. People seem to know how much of the information that I present is actually useful to them, and can distinguish information that is not accurate for their respective applications. Now, I feel much better about posting my articles, as well as writing about whatever I want to write about.

If you are wondering how the picture of Rhody above is relevant to the posting, it has no relevance. He just had a way of getting you to read my blog earlier, so I tried it again, and it worked.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 8 Comments

Colors

P71029+Remember the movie from 1988? I don’t either. I never saw it. Gang violence is not my idea of a good time. The title ‘Colors’ refers to the use of distinguishing colors by the gangs of Los Angeles. Gang members wear colors that correspond to their respective gang affiliation.

As autumn progresses, some of us get to gloat about our colors. New England gets the most and best colors, with a full range of reds, oranges and yellows, as well as browns and burgundies. The Appalachian Mountains to the south seem to go lighter on the reds and burgundies, concentrating more on oranges. The upper Midwest around Minnesota excels at the rich reds, with yellows confined to groves of cottonwoods. The lower Midwest does well with clear browns alternating with yellows, and even some oranges. The Rocky Mountains have a good range of color, with more gold than the Appalachians Mountains, but it is not as spectacularly concentrated. The bright colors contrast more with evergreens.

Here on the West Coast, we have yellow. . . . and redwoods . . . and palm trees. The bright yellow cottonwoods are quite flashy farther inland and in Nevada, where they grow along creeks and rivers that flow through the southern deserts. The only orange and rusty red we get from native specie here is from poison oak. Cottonwoods, willows, sycamores, box elders and even the bigleaf maples all turn yellow; and only when the weather is just so. Box elder foliage is more likely to shrivel and turn tan. Sycamore and willow foliage usually gets rather shabby.

To get the bright oranges and reds that everyone else in American enjoys, we plant exotic (non-native) trees; and there are not many choices that color reliably in our mild climate. Sweetgum is probably the most reliable, and the most variable with its color. Pistache and flowering pear are the second best choices, although flowering pear has a serious problem with fireblight here. Gingko colors very nicely, but is limited to yellow, which we already have a bit of.

While everyone else is posting pictures of their autumn color online and bragging to Californians about it, our color is only beginning to develop here. The most reliably colorful of the exotic trees seem to be doing well; but the natives and some of the exotics are defoliating prematurely, without much color at all. Honeylocusts have dropped most of their foliage while it is still lemon-lime green. Box elders just look sickly. Cottonwoods drop leaves as soon as they turn yellow, leaving only green leaves up in their canopies. The English walnut in the picture is the best color I could find.

It happens this way sometimes. This year, it might be a result of the unusually warm weather so late in summer, after the weather had already started to turn milder. It is impossible to say for certain. We take what we can get. We are not known for autumn color here.

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Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Planned Obsolescence

P71028For my exquisite 1979 Electra, planned obsolescence did not work out so well. It was probably a grand Buick for that time, and one of the last with tail fins! It was elegant. It was big. It was steel. It was made to last ten years or 100,000 miles . . . and that was it. Seriously, as much as I enjoyed that car, it did not want go to much farther than it was designed to go. It limped along for almost 20,000 miles more, but was not happy about it, and was really tired and worn out by the time it went to Buick Heaven.

Planned obsolescence used to mean something completely different in landscaping. Yes, we all know what it means now; that many of the so called ‘sustainable’ modern cultivars last only a few years so that they need to be replaced sooner than older cultivars. What it used to mean is that fast growing plants were used to get a landscape established quickly, while more desirable but slower plants took their time growing. As the more desirable plants matured, the fast growing plants could be removed.

For example, a large condominium complex was landscaped primarily with Norway maples and flowering pears. These trees would eventually grow to be proportionate to the buildings and the spaces that they shade. To provide shade sooner, and to help the landscape look established by the second summer, common cottonwoods were incorporated into larger areas. Their placement was not as important as it was to the maples and pears, but was strategic enough to avoid the other trees and buildings as long as possible. The intention was to allow the cottonwoods to be the prominent trees in the landscape only temporarily, but to remove them as the maples and pears matured. It was a practical technique used by landscape designers for as long as anyone can remember.

Sadly, few modern ‘gardeners’ understand this concept. The cottonwoods did not get removed when they should have been. They overwhelmed and crowded the other trees, and caused them to be disfigured as they grew. The cottonwood roots broke pavement and ruined lawns. Then, after all the damage and destruction, . . . the cottonwoods died, like cottonwoods do. Now the landscape is shaded by healthy but distorted maples and pears. The plan did not work very well.

Now, such planned obsolescence is simply impractical for trees. Even if those maintaining landscapes were reliable enough to follow through with such plans, modern tree preservation ordinances would prevent them from getting permits to remove temporary trees. Planned obsolescence can work with smaller shrubbery and perennials in home gardens, but those of us who use the technique must follow through with our plans so that things do not get too crowded.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 3 Comments

Firewood

P71027Heating homes has certainly changed. It has gotten much more efficient and less polluting. Homes are much better insulated than they were only a few decades ago. Heating systems use much less fuel, and produce much cleaner exhaust. That is partly how more than a million people who live in San Jose now make less smog than when there were half as many.

The unfortunate part of that efficiency is the decline in popularity of traditional fireplaces and stoves. Burning wood is now politically incorrect, and at times, even illegal. ‘Spare the air’ days are strictly enforced when air quality gets unpleasant.

In San Jose, building codes do not allow fireplaces to be build into new homes. Only homes that were build with fireplaces or stoves prior to the ordinance are outfitted with them. Fireplaces that are damaged by earthquakes are often removed instead of repaired.

Tending a fire does not fit into modern lifestyles very well anyway. If someone stays home long enough to do so, he or she is too busy with other work. Tending a fire simply is not considered a common household chore anymore. Fireplaces do not have thermostats, so do not maintain the sort of consistency in temperature that so many of us have become accustomed to.

Those of us who still use our fireplaces (when permitted) must procure firewood. There are no more deteriorating orchards to supply it. We can not grow our own because permits are needed to cut down trees that are big enough to make firewood. Permits are only granted for trees that must be cut down for other reasons. The need for fuel is not good enough.

Consequently, it becomes necessary to purchase expensive firewood. To some of us, it is still worth it. We can either purchase mixed firewood from a tree service, or get it from a firewood cutter in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There always seem to be more trees that need to be cut down than are needed for firewood.