Posted on by tonytomeo

High Fashion

This tree, that I wrote about three years ago, has been gone long enough that it is difficult to imagine it crowding the newly landscaped area.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80404This exquisite yet elegantly simple persimmon orange cravat is to die for! See how distinguishing it is for the Umbellularia californica sporting it! The brilliant color is so appropriate for a tree that needs to stand out in a crowd! How else would the arborists coming to cut it down find it? Yes, it is to die for!

This sort of high fashion is not normally so high. Trees that are tagged by surveyors are typically more discretely tagged with spray paint down near the ground. We just used this orange tape because we were only hastily marking a few or our own trees for removal, and nothing else.

The problem with tape in other situations is that it can be removed and applied to another tree. One of my colleagues sent his crew to cut down a street tree downtown that had been marked with orange tape, only to…

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Six on Saturday: Rhody Walks Away

The first four of my Six on Saturday are somewhat dated since they are not really from last week. It did not seem right to simply waste them. Actually, my pictures for the next two Saturdays were taken yesterday, so will also be more than a week old when they post. Perhaps I should not mention such violations. What is more important is the sixth picture here and now. It is not of particularly good quality, but it is what everyone really wants to see.

1. Laurustinus never got my attention before I noticed others sharing pictures of it. Still, I do not quite understand the allure. It is somewhat naturalized here. This one is whiter than others.

2. Fake lilac fails to impress those of us who know what real common lilac is. This runty little scrub is a trip hazard that happens to smell pretty. Its fragrance makes me crave common lilac.

3. This is the first bald cypress that I ever got to work with, after meeting the species for the first time in Oklahoma in the autumn of 2012. Sadly, this is its last picture before it got cut down.

4. ‘In A Vase On Monday’ (IAVOM) is a meme that I almost participated in for the first time three weeks ago or so. I just could not get a good picture. There is quite a bit to write about here.

5. What must I say about this one? I encounter all sorts of weird situations at work. Part of this black cherry tree is getting milled. Part of it is firewood. The process was rather ‘complicated’.

6. Rhody says the first three pictures are mundane, the fourth is too dark, and the fifth is just VERY weird. The sixth picture could have been the best, if only Rhody would have cooperated.

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/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 6 Comments

Bearded Iris

Pastels are perfected by bearded iris.

When there is not an app for that, there is probably a bearded iris that will work just fine. Really, there is just about every shade of yellow, blue, purple, orange, pink and almost-red imaginable, ranging from wildly bright to subdued pastel. There are actually several shades of white, and a few rare flavors of dark purplish black.

It seems that the most popular of the bearded iris bloom with two or more colors. The standards may be very different from the falls. Any part of the flower may be striped, spotted, blotched or bordered with another color. Flowers may be relatively simple or garishly ruffled. Many are fragrant.

Bearded Iris bloom between March and May. Some of the modern varieties bloom again in autumn. Flower stems can be as short as a few inches, or as tall as four feet, with only a few to several flowers. The rubbery and somewhat bluish leaves form flat fans that look neater if groomed of deteriorating older leaves. Each fan dies back after bloom, but is efficiently replaced by about two more new fans. Colonies of fans should be divided over summer every few years, or as they get too crowded to bloom well. Bearded iris likes well drained soil and at least six hours of direct sun exposure daily.

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Iris Blooms Almost Any Color

Such cheerful colors are too easy.

Iris got its name from the Greek word for rainbow, because all the colors are included. There are thousands of varieties of bearded iris alone, to display every color except only true red, true black, and perhaps true green. (However, some are convincingly red, black or green.) Then there are as many as three hundred other specie of iris to provide whatever colors that bearded iris lack.

Bearded iris are still the most popular for home gardening because they are so reliably and impressively colorful, and because they are so easy to grow and propagate by division of their spreading rhizomes. Siberian, Japanese and xiphium iris are less common types that spread slower with similar rhizomes. Japanese iris wants quite a bit of water, and is sometimes grown in garden ponds. The others, like most other rhizomatous iris, do not need much water once established. Dutch iris grows from bulbs that do not multiply, and may not even bloom after the first year.

Iris flowers are so distinctive because of their unique symmetry of six paired and fused ‘halves’ that form a triad  of ‘falls’ and ‘standards’. The ‘falls’ are the parts that hang downward. The ‘standards’ that stand upright above are the true flower petals. As if the range of colors were not enough, the falls and standards are very often colored very differently from each other, and adorned with stripes, margins, spots or blotches. Many specie have fragrant flowers. Each flower stalk supports multiple flowers. Some carry quite a few flowers!

Some types of iris are so resilient to neglect that they naturalize and grow wild in abandoned gardens. Bearded iris are more appealing and bloom better with somewhat regular watering, but can survive with only very minimal watering once established. Some iris multiply so freely that they get divided after bloom, and shared with any of the neighbors who will take them. Newly divided rhizomes should be planted laying flat, with the upper surfaces at the surface of the soil.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Mower

Again, this old article does not conform to the ‘horridculture’ meme for Wednesday. It is not so much about bad horticulture as it is about ‘distinctive’ taste and landscape design.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80411After all the years it was out there, someone, somewhere must have gotten good pictures of it. I never did. Nor did anyone I know. It was something of a famous landmark in Santa Clara.

First, I should explain these pictures that my niece sent from here Mid City Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles. As you can see, this is a well kept middle aged home with minimal setback from the sidewalk. It is in a delightfully tree shaded neighborhood of comparable homes.

What are those black and white silhouettes of city skylines on those two plastic panels in front, you ask? They are a fence. Seriously. There are several similar panels around the perimeter of the front yard, at the edge of the sidewalk, and up the sides. They depict a variety of familiar landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Space Needle, the Eiffel Tower, the Tower…

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Lithodora

Lithodora has more names than colors.

Both the common and botanical names of lithodora are variable. Many know it as purple gromwell. The botanical name can be either Lithodora diffusa or Glandora diffusa. Many of the cultivars lack their species name after one of these two genus names. There might be less variety with the cultivars than with the names! Floral color is the primary variable. 

White blooming ‘Alba’ is uncommon. After all, lithodora is popular for its rich blue bloom, which ranges from light sky blue to indigo. As the name implies, ‘Blue Star’ flowers have a white edge around a blue center. ‘White Star’ flowers have blue around white. Flowers are tiny but profuse in sunny situations. The dense evergreen leaves are likewise small.

Mature plants are generally only a few inches deep and perhaps two feet wide. They can eventually get more than six feet wide by rooting as they migrate. Although they grow too slowly for large scale ground cover, they work nicely in a sunny atrium, around boulders, or with mixed perennials. Lithodora is susceptible to rot in pots or if watered to frequently.

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Nomenclature Was Designed For Simplicity

Simple standardized nomenclature is getting rusty.

Buick Electra used to mean something. Chrysler Imperial and Lincoln Town Car did also. That was at a time when cars were still distinguishable. Instead of random numbers with a few letters, they had distinctive names. These names, although distinct, conformed to a standardized pattern. This pattern of naming was comparable to botanical nomenclature. 

According to botanical nomenclature, plants are identifiable by genus and species. Their ‘gen’us is a more ‘gen’eral designation than their ‘speci’fic ‘speci’es designation. A family is a larger and more general classification than genus, and in turn, fits into another more general group. Most of us are not concerned with the many classifications beyond family. 

For example, the botanical name of silver maple is Acer saccharinum. Acer is the genus. saccharinum is the species. Acer saccharinum is in the Sapindaceae family. (For botany, genus and species names are italicized, and species names are not capitalized.) Buick Electra is similarly in the General Motors family. Buick is its genus. Electra is its species.

Varieties and cultivars are even more specific designations within species. Some are the products of breeding. Some are naturally occurring. A cultivar is a ‘cultivated variety’ that does not perpetuate naturally like other varieties do. Most cultivars propagate by cloning. (Variety and cultivar names are capitalized and enclosed within single quotation marks.)

For example, Acer rubrum ‘October Glory’ is a cultivar of red maple. It exhibits a distinctly rounded canopy and foliar color in autumn that is superior to that of the simple species in the wild. It might compare to a Buick Skylark Gran Sport, which is essentially a cultivar of Skylark with a stronger engine. Botanical and automotive nomenclature are quite similar. 

Such similarities of nomenclature are no advantage. While cars forfeited their distinctive titles for mundane numeric designations, plants forfeited their species names for cultivar names. Such abbreviation of nomenclature interferes with accurate identification. Those unfamiliar with it may not know if Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’ is an Eastern or Western redbud, or something else.

Posted on by tonytomeo

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Three years later, this ‘garden’ is getting more sunlight now that another large portion of the canopy of the associated tree collapsed, and more of what was structurally compromised got pruned away.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80328The ivy in this sycamore did not just climb up from the ground to hang over this big limb. If you look closely, you will see no vine coming up from the ground. This small patch of ivy as well as a small pyracantha, are growing in a decayed cavity on top of the big limb. The ivy may have climbed up a long time ago, and then rooted into the cavity before the original vine was somehow removed. Alternatively, the ivy might have grown from a seed that was dropped by a bird or ivy vines that are higher up in nearby box elder trees. It is impossible to say now.P80328+It is also difficult to say why there is such a large cavity on top of the limb. It could have originated as a large scar incurred from the impact of another large limb that fell from above…

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Fertilizer

Horses are not my favorite neighbors, but they (sort of) serve a purpose.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80325‘Fertilizer’ is a polite term for ‘recycled vegetation’.

‘Recycled vegetation’ is a polite term for something else.

This is not a synthetic type of fertilizer that gets tossed about or poured on. It gets added to compost and allowed to compost some more before being spread out as a mulch over the surface of the soil, just before chipped vegetation gets dispersed over the top. Alternatively, it sometimes gets mixed into the soil. It is quite useful. You can’t beat the price.

It is recycled differently from the compost or chipped vegetation (from a brush chipper). It is recycled through a horse, or more specifically, two horses. As the picture above suggests, it begins at the front of the horse, and ends at the rear of the horse, which is not pictured.

The horses happen to be quite efficient at recycling vegetation. They do it all the time. They are…

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Six on Saturday: Godzilla vs. Kong!

There are plenty of pictures, but not six to conform to a single topic. Only half here are horticulturally oriented. The other half are merely relevant to dysfunctional wildlife of the landscapes. Lily of the Nile was not such a major project as the removal of the carpet roses that occupied the site previously. We wanted to relocate them prior to spring, but that did not go as planned.

1. Lily of the Nile is rad! I have been digging and splitting it since the seventh grade. I do not care if it is cheap and common. This replaces carpet roses that should not have been at the walk.

2. Angel’s trumpet needed to be removed from another landscape, so was relocated here. It is now in the process of replacing the foliage that it shed in the process. It is happier than it looks.

3. Angel’s trumpet wastes no time getting ready to bloom as quickly as it generates new foliage. The flowers are double white, and very fragrant. This particular specimen has a lot of history.

4. Godzilla hitched a ride in the work pickup on Friday afternoon. Well actually, it merely tried to, but got nowhere with me. I do not know how it got in, but I do know how it ‘safely’ got out.

5. King Kong was here earlier in the week. He (or she) fled long before Godzilla arrived. He also got a bit of help on his way, since I do not want him in the garden, or the trash, or anywhere!

6. King Kong does not look so scary in this coon trap. He did not get relocated so far away that he cannot return if he wants to; but if he does, will likely avoid the area where he was trapped.

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/