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Silver Mountain Gum

Silver mountain gum is remarkably glaucous.

The strikingly glaucous juvenile foliage of silver mountain gum, Eucalyptus pulverulenta, is likely more familiar within floral design than in home gardens. Actually, it is uncommon within home gardens, although quite popular as cut foliage among florists. Its paired and sessile leaves are oval or bluntly cordate (‘heart shaped’), and about an inch or two long.

Adult growth is rare, even among established trees. However, small white flowers bloom from the axils of juvenile leaves that are a year old. (Juvenile growth of most species can not bloom.) Bloom might continue from spring until autumn, as blooming stems sag from the weight of younger distal growth. The aromatic and evergreen leaves stiffen with age.

Low and shrubby specimens with a few trunks may not get much higher than fifteen feet. They have potential to get twice as tall though, particularly if pruned up onto bare trunks. Lignotubers expand below the trunks. Strips of old bark shed to reveal fresh matte brown bark. Incidentally, the Latin name of this species often transposes for Eucalyptus cinerea.

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Blanket Flower

Blanket flower covers a flower bed.

The bright colors and patterns of blanket flower, Gaillardia, resemble those of blankets made by native American Indians. The daisy flowers are typically two different shades of red, orange, yellow, brown or yellowish white. Not many varieties bloom with single colors. Taller varieties can get almost two feet tall, with slender but sturdy stems that are good for cutting. The narrow leaves are mostly basal, so do not crowd bloom.

The more popular varieties of blanket flower are perennial. Healthy plants can slowly get quite broad, and can self sow their seed to spread a bit farther. Annual varieties can not get as broad, but often self sow more efficiently than perennial types do. Once it gets growing, blanket flower does not need much water. However, regularly watered plants are already blooming. Modestly watered plants wait until summer.

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Japanese Boxwood

Small leaves adapt well to hedging.

Strictly formal boxwood hedges are traditional components of old formal rose gardens. In California, Japanese boxwood, Buxus microphylla, had always been more popular than English boxwood, which may be more common where winter is cooler. Although it grows too slowly for high hedges, it gets high enough to obscure gnarled lower growth of roses.

Mature plants are generally less than three feet tall and wide, although they can get a bit larger if they get a chance. The oval and glossy evergreen leaves are only about half an inch or an inch long, but relatively thick, so are very conducive to formal shearing. Foliar texture is nicely dense but not too congested. Gray or pale brown bark is seldom visible.

Old fashioned Japanese boxwood, which remains the most common in old gardens, has a somewhat light or yellowish green color. Modern cultivars are darker green. A common problem with old formal hedges is the addition of modern cultivars or even other species to fill gaps. The darker foliage will not conform to the lighter foliage, so ruins the formality.

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Pittosporum eugenioides

Pittosporum eugenioides leaves have distinctively wavy margins.

Large shorn hedges or informal screens are the more popular functions of Pittosporum eugenioides. It works like a modern and more relaxed option to privet. What few garden enthusiasts know is that it can alternatively be allowed grow into a small tree, either as a standard (on a single trunk) or with multiple trunks. It grows rather efficiently to more than twenty feet tall and about half as broad while young, and as it matures, can eventually get about thirty feet tall and broad.

The glossy leaves have appealingly wavy margins and distinctively pale midribs. The slightly fragrant flowers are only pale yellow, and are not abundant among young trees. Big old trees often bloom enough in autumn to be pleasantly fragrant. Stems and foliage are lemony fragrant when pruned or shorn. However, the common name of ‘lemonwood’ (or tarata) is not so common locally for Pittosporum eugenioides.

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Red Willow

Red willow is a riparian native.

Of the few native species that share the same designation of ‘red willow’, Salix lasiandra, is likely the most common locally. However, it has a few other common names, including shining willow and Pacific willow. For those acquainted with it, recognition is easier than nomenclature. It is not a problem though, since red willow is rarely an intentional choice.

Red willows, including less common species, grow wild in local riparian situations. They sometimes sneak into home gardens, particularly if irrigation is generous. Their rampant growth is susceptible to spontaneous limb failure. Pruning can compensate for structural deficiency of young trees. However, trunks typically succumb to decay within thirty years.

Mature trees are mostly less than thirty feet tall, typically with low branches, and possibly with a few elegant trunks. The gray or light brown bark is finely furrowed. The deciduous foliage has a slight sheen, and then turns brownish yellow prior to autumn defoliation. Its narrow leaves are about three inches long. Twigs are yellowish or green rather than red, as it implies.

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Red Passion Flower Vine

Red passion flower seems quite exotic.

Compared to the common passion flower, the three inch wide red passion flower, Passiflora manicata, is more colorful with cherry red flowers, but does not so prominently display the weirdly distended floral parts that passion flowers are known for. Bloom is not as profuse either, particularly among vigorous vines.

However, red passion flower vine has the advantages of somewhat more resilient and greener foliage, and sturdier vines that can climb almost to thirty feet high. It grows so vigorously that it can be surprisingly overwhelming, even if pruned severely or cut to the ground at the end of each winter. It is not so rampant in light shade.

Copies (new vines) are easy to propagate by layering, which involves merely burying a section of vine while still attached to the parent vine until it develops enough roots to be separated. The buried section should be at least a few inches long. At least a few inches of the tip of the vine should extend beyond the buried section.

The fruit of red passion flower vine is considered to be toxic, but often gets eaten anyway. Fortunately, fruit rarely develops.

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Hopbush

Hopbush makes a nice small tree.

Johnny jump up and jumping cholla have no more than amusing names in common with hopbush, Dodonea viscosa. Neither a dangerous cactus nor a docile annual, hopbush is an elegantly upright and evergreen shrub. It is very popular for both informal and formally shorn hedging. With pruning, it can become a small tree with handsomely furrowed bark.

Hopbush has potential to get about as tall as a two story house, particularly with pruning for tree form. Conversely, with only occasional pruning for hedge form, it is just as happy to stay just six feet tall. Trees with single and straight trunks fit nicely into narrow spaces. Trees with a few irregular trunks that lean outwardly are more sculptural for larger areas.

The narrow evergreen leaves are about two or three inches long, with light bronzy color. ‘Purpurea’ has purplish bronze color, but does not grow as vigorously. Most hopbush are female, and generate interestingly papery seed. Bloom and seed production are variable though, and some specimens become male. Roots should be complaisant with concrete.

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African Daisy

Modern African daisies are surprisingly colorful.

Only a few decades ago, the only familiar African daisies, Osteospermum spp., were the sprawling and often sparsely branched ‘freeway daisies’ with blue-eyed white or rarely light purple flowers. They made nice blooming ground cover that could be planted in drifts for a bit of color among the deep green of Algerian ivy on expansive freeway embankments.

Modern varieties are shrubbier perennials with more profuse bloom of white, cream, pink, purple, pale yellow or pale orange flowers, mostly with blue or purple centers. Some yellow flowers have yellow or cream centers. Some of the fancy types have spooned petals like some types of cosmos or chrysanthemums. After the primary bloom phase in spring, a few sporadic flowers may continue to bloom through summer until the secondary light bloom phase late in summer. However, the old fashioned ‘freeway daisy’ types do not always display a second bloom phase. Varieties with variegated foliage are still rather rare.

Even though African daisies can survive in inferior soil with minimal watering, they perform best with good soil and regular watering. Plants in containers can not disperse their roots like they want to, so are are more dependent on regular watering. Fertilizer prolongs bloom.

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Tanoak

Tanoak is rare within refined landscapes.

Its plump and inch-long acorns are misleading. Tanoak, Notholithocarpus densiflorus, is not actually an oak. Otherwise, it would be a species of Quercus. Regardless, its wood is potentially as practical for furniture and flooring as wood of other oaks. It also works very well as firewood. Historically, tanoak bark was useful for tanning leather, hence its name.

Although native and somewhat common in some coastal forests, tanoak is almost never a choice for intentional planting. Those that inhabit home gardens likely either grew from acorns, or were there prior to development of the landscapes. Young trees can grow fast to more than forty feet tall, typically with conical form. Mature trees might get twice as tall.

Tall trunks of tanoak are elegantly upright, and eventually develop lofty branch structure. Their gray or brownish bark is handsomely furrowed. The somewhat leathery evergreen foliage produces potentially objectionable tomentum. The dentate leaves are two to four inches long. Sadly, tanoak is very susceptible to Sudden Oak Death Syndrome (SODS).

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Calla

Few flowers are as elegant as callas.

If only it did not like such regular watering, the common white calla, Zantedeschia aethiopica, would be quite a sustainable perennial. Once established, it can be difficult to get rid of, particularly in well watered gardens. Even unwatered plants that die to the ground through dry summer weather are merely dormant and waiting for rain to regenerate and bloom.

The remarkably elegant blooms stand about two or three feet tall, each with a single spathe loosely wrapped as a flaring cone around a spadix that supports the indistinguishable diminutive flowers. The bright white spathe is often more than four inches wide, and can be twice as wide in shade. The spadix is only about three or four inches long, and as yellow as Big Bird. The spongy dark green leaves are about a foot or two tall.

‘Green Goddess’ blooms with a longer and recurved spathe with a green tip and margins. Colorful callas are actually different specie. All parts of all types of callas are incidentally toxic.