Flowers have a bigger and better agenda than coloring our gardens and homes. They bloom to get pollinated. Their color and fragrance are designed merely to attract pollinators. Less vain but more abundant blooms take advantage of the wind to disperse their pollen. Once pollinated, flowers fade and deteriorate as resources get diverted to the production of seed and fruit to contain it.
Some flowers are on a tight schedule. They bloom in a single brief season. Others have a bloom season that last significantly longer than the individual flowers do. They might bloom continually for a few months, replacing fading older flowers with new flowers; or they might bloom in phases, with each phase blooming simultaneously, and then getting replaced with a subsequent phase.
Fruit trees and many fruiting vegetable plants bloom once annually, and then produce fruit. Tomato, summer squash and bean plants bloom and produce fruit continually. Tomato fruits are best if allowed to ripen on the vine. Beans and summer squash like zucchini are better if harvested while young and tender. Also, the plants are more productive if regularly deprived of premature fruit.
The priority of these plants is to produce seed. Production of seed requires significant resources. Plants that are busy producing seed within maturing beans and zucchini do not put much effort into producing subsequent bloom and fruit. However, if deprived of maturing seed and fruit, these sorts of plants are compelled to divert resources into new bloom, and seed and fruit production.
The same applies to many flowering plants, particularly perennials and flowering annuals. ‘Deadheading’ is the removal of deteriorating flowers to promote continued bloom. It is not practical for plants with profuse small flower, such as sweet alyssum and lobelia. Nor is it necessary for some sterile or nearly sterile plants that do not produce much seed anyway, like busy Lizzy (impatiens).
French marigold, petunia, zinnia, floss flower and cockscomb all bloom better if deadheaded. Rhododendrons do not benefit directly from deadheading, but look better without old floral trusses. Conversely, the potentially picturesque dead flowers of sea holly might be left intact.
Before I continue, I should mention that I have worked for some of the BEST horticultural professionals in the entire Universe! Seriously! I have worked for the single most excellent nurseryman EVER, and not one, but a FEW of the most excellent arborists EVER! YES, I am bragging! I can write about some of them another time.
It was probably a good idea when it was introduced to California, but fountain grass, Pennisetum setaceum, became too much of a good thing for a few temperate regions in which it naturalizes and displaces native vegetation. Although it now works to inhibit erosion where it grows wild on the embankments of highway interchanges, it must sometime be mown because it is combustible.
Plants are quite ingenious with their technology of exploitation of animals and people. Many get insects, birds, bats, spiders and anyone who is animated within their environment to disperse the plants’ pollen for them. Plants who prefer to not rely on wind, water or gravity to disperse their seed exploit a different range of animals to do so. They know how to compensate for their immobility.
This really is the best climate here. Winters are just cool enough for many plants that require a bit of a chill, but not unpleasantly cold. Summers are just warm enough for most plants that need warmth, but the weather does not stay too unpleasantly hot for too long. Warm weather here typically lasts no more than a week, and is accompanied by light evening breezes and cooler nights. Minimal humidity typically makes the worst of the heat a bit more tolerable.
This sort of weather pattern does not happen very often. Late spring is normally pleasantly warm, and the weather gets progressively warmer through summer, which typically includes a few unpleasantly warm days. It rarely gets too hot here, and when it does, it does not last for more than a few days, and tends to cool off at least somewhat at night. The air is normally arid. Humidity is uncommon in a chaparral climate.
2. These two bigger stumps are just a short distance uphill and across the small creek. Old stumps are more often single, but surrounded by multiple trunks that emerged from the roots. Because almost all of the trees here had been harvested about a century ago, there are now many more secondary trunks per area than there would naturally be. It is not much of a problem yet, but these trunks will likely become more crowded as they mature.
3. These are the same two stumps from the other side. This trunk coming up from within is likely from the same original root system. All trunks that develop from the same root system are genetically identical, so they look very similar from a distance. Some genetically identical groves can be quite broad, and include many trunks.
4. This small coastal redwood trunk is not happy about the fence that is nailed to it.
5. This is more what you expect coastal redwoods to look like. It is impossible to determine from this picture if these trunks are genetically identical secondary trees that emerged from the same root system, but their proximity to each other suggests that they likely are.
6. This epiphyllum is the flower that I promised to those who expressed a concern than my Six on Saturday lacked adequate bloom. I shared a picture of this same epiphyllum earlier, but it has continued to bloom.
The delightfully clear sky blue flowers of blue plumbago, Plumbago auriculata, seem like they belong with colorful annuals or in a tailored border of colorfully blooming perennials. However, the rampant canes of mature plants are really best in the background where they have room to grow wild. The canes do not climb like vines, but can flop over other shrubbery as high as fifteen feet.
Saint Francis is actually the patron saint of animals. Saint Fiacre is the real patron saint of gardening. However, statues of Saint Francis, usually accompanied by birds, and sometimes by a deer, are popular in home gardens. Has anyone ever seen even a single statue of Saint Fiacre? Statues of Snow White are more common; but her only experience with horticulture was one bad apple.
Tony Tomeo 