Posted on by tonytomeo · 5 Comments

Transvaal Daisy

80307There is some controversy about the identity of the flowers that Micky Mouse picks at the porch to present to Minnie Mouse when she answers the door. Some insist that they are Transvaal daisy, Gerbera hybrida. When they are not in black and white, the substantial daisy flowers are cartoon hues of yellow, orange, red, pink and white, sometimes with chocolatey brown or black centers.

Transvaal daisies are always available as cut flowers, but bloom best in cool spring and autumn weather in home gardens. Most garden varieties have single flowers on bare stems. Most cut flowers are semi-double. Double flowers that resemble zinnias, and spider flowers that resemble spider mums, are rare. Coarse basal foliage gets almost a foot high and a foot and a half wide.

Because the foliage is so vulnerable to snails, Transvaal daisy is usually grown in pots rather than in the ground or immobile planters. Besides, potted plants can be brought into the home or put in prominent spots while blooming, and then put out of sight between bloom. Transvaal daisy wants partial shade, regular watering and occasional feeding. It can take full sun exposure if not too hot.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Plants Are Masters Of Deception

80307thumbMany of us already understand that daisies, sunflowers, asters and all related flowers are composite flowers, which bloom as many tiny flowers clustered tightly together to form what appears to be significantly larger single flowers. Distended ‘ray’ florets around the edges imitate petals that other types of flowers are equipped with. It is like one stop shopping for pollinators craving nectar.

Many other plants have developed comparably ingenious techniques for facilitating what they need to do. Flowers are the more common beneficiaries of their creativity. Fruits, leaves, stems and roots have also been modified out of necessity. For example, the colorful bracts around tiny poinsettia and bougainvillea flowers are modified leaves that pretend to be petals to attract pollinators.

We think of strawberries, pineapples and figs as fruit. Strawberry fruits are actually the small specks on the outside that resemble seeds. The sweet and juicy part that suspends these fruits is a modified stem. Each ‘eye’ of a pineapple is a swollen flower, that is fused with flowers around it. Tiny fig flowers bloom and produce seed all within the fleshy floral structure that is eaten like fruit.

Some types of acacia trees have no real leaves. Their foliage is comprised of distended petioles (leaf stems) known as ‘phyllodes’, but without the leaves that petioles normally support. Juvenile leaves that actually look like lacy acacia leaves do not last long. Makrut lime has big phyllodes too, but in conjunction with leaves, which is why they seem to have double leaves joined end to end.

Cacti and the euphorbs (poinsettia relatives) that resemble them are among the most deceptive of plants. Euphorbs that have both recognizable leaves and thorns provide hints about how they work, since some tufts of thorns and spines also have leaves. Each tuft is a node. Small bristly spines are modified leaves. Larger and stouter thorns are modified axillary stems. A few stems develop into limbs or segments. Without leaves, the fleshy green stems do all the work of photosynthesis.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 27 Comments

Foliar Tapestries

P80224Succulent foliage is remarkably variable, even without bloom. There are so many unusual colors, textures and patterns to choose from. Many are complimentary to others. Many contrast exquisitely. What better way to display some of the favorites than to assemble them into a succulent foliar tapestry!?

This is actually old technology that started to become a fad again only somewhat recently, after these foiar tapestries were installed on a retaining wall in North Hollywood a few years ago by GreenArt Landscape Design. Small cuttings of succulent plants were plugged into rigid mesh panels that hold growing medium vertically against another flat panel of the same size. The whole contraption was suspended against the concrete wall, with a bit of space in between to limit staining and bleeding onto the wall.

With the fountain, potted plants and other features, the limited space was insufficient for a hedge to obscure the retaining wall. Besides, the uniform foliage of a hedge or clinging vines climbing upward, or cascading plants hanging downward, would have been rather boring. These foliar tapestries look like artwork that might hang on walls inside the home, except that they are outside, visually extending the interior living space out onto the patio.

Foliar tapestries certainly are not for everyone. There is nothing ‘low maintenance’ about them. The small plants must be groomed regularly, and trimmed to stay flat. Flowers will need to be snipped off before or after bloom. The heavy planters must only be installed onto concrete walls or walls that are able to support the weight, and must be installed properly to avoid staining and bleeding. Wooden walls would be likely to rot so close to so much moist growing medium. However, as you can see, in the right situation, such tapestries are worth the effort.P80224+P80224++

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

P80110It is certainly not as cold as it is in other regions at or north of this latitude. Nor is it unusually cold for this time of year. It is not stormy. We got only a few heavy but brief rain showers with a bit of small hail. A slight bit of snow fell only on the Summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains

The problem is that the weather had been so mild earlier, and at times, downright warm. Many plants were coerced into premature bloom. Some started to generate new spring growth. When the weather suddenly became more seasonably cool, many of the flowers and new growth got frosted and ruined.

Fortunately, most of the deciduous fruiting trees seemed to know what they were being set up for, and abstained from bloom. So far, even the early blooming apricots, cherries, almonds prunes and plums are safe. The wild American plums bloomed, but not many of us use their fruit anyway. (I want some – both amber and red – for jelly, but there will be plenty of other fruit.)

Saucer magnolias were just beginning to bloom when the cool weather moved in. Now, some of the big pink flowers are spotting and melting before they open completely. Many of the camellias are succumbing to blight, and falling to the ground shortly after they open.

Weather is always risky, even in mild climates. Actually, our mild climate allows us to grow more of the plants that are sensitive to anomalies of the weather. Perhaps such anomalies would be less of a problem in harsher climates where the weather is naturally more variable. If so, it is probably a fair compromise. The problems with such a mild climate are still less significantly less than the advantages.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 34 Comments

Six on Saturday: My Favorite Color

 

WHITE!

These are a few of the flowers I get to work with. I do not know any of the cultivars. Some are blooming a bit early because of the prior warm weather.

If you are easily offended, you should not read this article I wrote earlier about my favorite color: https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/white-supremacy/

1. American plumP80224
2. rhododendronP80224+
3. azaleaP80224++
4. camelliaP80224+++
5. zonal geraniumP80224++++
6. callaP80224+++++
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 · 11 Comments

Rocky Mountain Juniper

70222It is no coincidence that many plants with gray foliage are from mountains or deserts. Gray foliage is ‘glaucous’, which, like glaucoma, diffuses light. This helps to protect it from desiccation and scald when sunny weather is also hot, windy or arid. The glaucous foliage of Rocky Mountain juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, is what distinguishes it most from related North American junipers.

Garden varieties of Rocky Mountain juniper are even grayer than wild plants. Some are even silvery. Also, they tend to maintain a somewhat symmetrical form. Most are compact, with dense evergreen foliage. Some loosen up with age. All want full sun, and seem to enjoy warmth. They lean away from shade. Color seems to be better if plants get watered occasionally through summer.

‘Skyrocket’ is very narrow while young, like a small silvery Italian cypress that gets only about fifteen feet tall. ‘Blue Arrow’ is similar, and becoming more popular because it is more resistant to disease. ‘Medora’ and ‘Cologreen’ are more bluish green. All get plump with age. ‘Wichita Blue’ and ‘Moonglow’ are more conical. ‘Wichita Blue’ is more bluish. ‘Moonglow’ is more silvery gray.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 7 Comments

Pots And Pans Need Cleaning

30918thumbThis is getting to be cliché. “While they are dormant through winter”, plants tolerate all sorts of abuse that would offend them at any other time of year. It applies to planting bulbs and bare root plants. It also works for pruning deciduous fruit trees and roses. It is a predictable seasonal pattern. Most winter gardening is contingent on dormancy. Processing potted plants is no exception.

Plants that have gotten too big for their pots should be replanted into larger pots. Any circling roots should be severed, just as if the plants were going into the ground. Unlike planting into the ground, potted plants require artificial media, known simply as ‘potting soil’. If larger pots are not an option, overgrown plants must at least be pruned to stay proportionate to their confined roots.

A plant that has been in a pot long enough for the media to decompose and settle might benefit from being ‘stuffed’. This involves removing the root mass from the pot, adding just enough media to the pot to support the root mass at the desired level, replacing the root mass on top, and then adding more media around the root mass to fill the pot. Exposed surface roots can be buried too.

Many overgrown succulents (not including cacti) can be replanted lower instead of higher. If settled, more media can be added on top. If all the foliage is clustered on top of bare stems, the stems can be cut and ‘plugged’ as new plants into pots of media, while the old roots and basal stems can be left to generate new stems and foliage. Newly plugged stems will generate roots by spring.

In the processes of potting, stuffing and plugging, while pots are empty, it would be a good time to scrub away mineral deposits from the bases and inner rims of pots. These deposits tend to accumulate just above the surface of the potting media, and where pots sit in water that drains from them. The pans or saucers that contain drainage water also accumulate mineral deposits. While plants are being processed, they can be groomed of deteriorating foliage and other debris.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 7 Comments

Two Heads Are Better Than One

P80221Three or four might be better than two. Perhaps that is what this queen palm was thinking when it decided to get extras.

This is not a good picture, and the tree is a bit too shaggy with old foliage to see what is going on inside clearly. To the left, a secondary limb is curving downward and away from the main trunk, before curving back upward as a secondary canopy. Another limb is developing immediately above this secondary canopy, and another is visible to the right of the main trunk. It is hard to say how many individual canopies are within the collective canopy of this single specimen.

What is weird about this development is that the popularly available palms do not form branches. Think of it. When was the last time you saw a palm tree with a limb or branches? Before you answer that, yuccas (such as Joshua trees) and dracaenas are not palms. Also, clumping palms like Mediterranean fan palm do not form limbs from their main trunks. They merely develop multiple trunks from basal pups.

The very few specie of palm that develop branches regularly are very rare and live very far away. Date palms, either grown for dates or recycled into landscapes from displaced date orchards, have the potential to develop pups higher on their trunks, but rarely do so.

Palms are only trees because they have trunks. Otherwise, they are merely really big perennials, with single terminal buds from which all their foliage, flowers and fruit develop. If deprived of the terminal bud, a palm can not generate a new one, which is why a palm will die if topped.

So why does this queen palm have more than one terminal bud? It is impossible to say.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Oregon Grape

80228Oregon has good taste. Douglas fir, one of the most useful of timber trees in America, was selected as the state tree. Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium, was designated as the state flower. Although the tight clusters of tiny bright yellow flowers that bloom about now may not be as flashy as other state flowers, they contrast handsomely against the glossy and deep dark green foliage.

The pinnately compound evergreen leaves are larger than they seem to be. The smaller individual leaflets that resemble holly get noticed first. They are are not quite as wavy, spiny or thick as leaves of English holly are, so can work well where spiny foliage would be objectionable. Dark grayish blue berries are not abundant, but happen to make good jelly for those who hunt for them.

Mature plants get about five feet tall and broad, and can spread wider like Heavenly bamboo does. Foliage might be a richer shade of deep green, with a slightly more relaxed texture, in partial shade. A few garden varieties are available, including some that are more compact, and some with more rounded leaflets. Old canes should be pruned out as they get replaced by newer canes.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 6 Comments

Exceptions To The Pruning Rules

80228thumbWinter is the best time for major pruning of most plants. They do not mind it so much while they are dormant. However, there are exceptions. Winter pruning might be a bit too early for a few plants that are grown for their late winter or early spring bloom. It is best to wait until immediately after bloom to prune or trim flowering cherry, flowering plum, flowering crabapple and flowering quince.

Because these trees will be in the process of coming out of dormancy, it is best to prune them just after the blossoms finish, as new foliage is emerging. Some of the new buds will likely be ruined in the process, but there should be plenty to spare. If a few extra stems were left on deciduous fruit trees when they were pruned earlier, they can be taken as cut flowers prior to or while blooming.

Forsythia and Oregon grape should also be pruned after bloom, but with different technique. Oregon grape certainly does not need to be pruned annually, and may only need to be occasionally groomed of deteriorating stems. If and when it gets pruned, the oldest canes should be cut to the ground to favor newer canes. Forsythia canes should be cut to the ground after their second year.

Red twig dogwood and small willows that are grown for the color of their twigs must be pruned aggressively to produce new twigs for next winter; but there is no point in pruning their colorful twigs off while they are at their best. It is better to wait until just before new foliage is about to come out and obscure the twigs. They can be pollarded or coppiced. This applies to pussy willows as well.

Clumping grasses will start to grow soon, so can be shorn of their old foliage from last year that likely started to look rather tired by the end of winter. If left unshorn, new foliage and flower stalks will do just fine, but will come up through the old growth from last year, as the old growth lays down next to it and continue to decay. Once new growth develops, it will be more difficult to remove the old without damaging the new. Clumped grasses will look silly longer if shorn too early.