The Nile River Valley is a region of extremes. It floods at times, but is hot and dry at other times. Lily of the Nile, Agapanthus orientalis, naturally survives it all. It can easily survive here. However, it survives arid heat by shedding a bit of foliage. Therefore, it is generally healthier here with at least occasional watering through the warmest weather of summer.
The almost spherical floral umbels of lily of the Nile explode into bloom like blue or white fireworks, just in time for Independence Day. They are about six to eight inches wide, on elegantly bare and slightly leaning stalks that stand about four feet tall. Individual flowers are only about an inch or two long. Flowers bloom only once annually, but last for weeks.
With or without bloom, the dense and evergreen foliage of lily of Nile is always lush. The soft and strap shaped leaves are about a foot and a half long, and flare outward from low basal rosettes. New foliage obscures deteriorated old foliage. Fleshy roots firmly secure plump rhizomes. Division relieves crowded rhizomes, and contains their slow migration.
Cats prefer catnip. It makes better tea too. Catmint, Nepeta X faassenii, is prettier though. It sprawls over the ground to get about three feet wide, without getting more than two feet deep. Where well exposed, it may not get much deeper than one foot. The aromatic gray foliage is denser than that of related catnip. Its individual leaves are small and furrowed.
Bloom begins with warming spring weather, and continues until cooling autumn weather. Individual flowers are tiny, and suspended on small floral stems. They just happen to be very abundant. Warmth stimulates phases of exceptionally profuse bloom. Floral color is light or pale blue, like faded denim. Shearing to deadhead enhances profusion of bloom.
Catmint works well as a rustic border or a ground cover for small areas. Alternatively, the blue bloom can be a delightful component of mixed perennials, in beds, planters or pots. Deer generally ignore catmint. Bees most definitely do not. They swarm it! ‘Walker’s Low’ is the most popular cultivar. It may be all that is available in some regions. Catmint is sterile, so generates no seedlings.
Blue must be unpopular with the more common of pollinators. After all, colorful flowers are designed to attract some sort of vector to exchange pollen. It seems that most pollinators like yellow. Red and pink (which is actually a tint of red) seem to be more appealing to hummingbirds. Butterflies seem to really like pink and orange. Many flowers that seem to be white actually use infrared to attract bees, or ultraviolet to attract nocturnal moths. Other white flowers rely on wind, which is not discriminating about color.
Of the primary (red, yellow and blue) and secondary (orange, green and purple) colors, the only color that is more uncommon than true blue is green. That is probably only because green flowers do not contrast much against green foliage, so would be harder to find. Many blue flowers, like thyme, lavender, blue potato bush and jacaranda, are closer to purple. Some blue and purple color is probably only incidental, and in conjunction with invisible (to humans) ultraviolet coloration or patterns.
Except for purplish blue jacaranda, there are no substantial trees to bloom blue. Empress tree is flashy, but is even more purplish. However, most ceanothus, including a few that can grow as small trees, are famous for their clear blue bloom. Plumbago, blue hibiscus, echium and rosemary are blue blooming shrubbery. Creeping rosemary is a nice groundcover. Hydrangea has the potential to bloom blue, but often turns purplish or pink because of soil alkalinity. Lilac and wisteria vine can be lavender, pink or white, as well as ice blue.
There are several perennial and annual salvias and lupines that bloom blue. Russian sage, catmint, carpet bugle, campanula, perennial statice and lily-of-the-Nile are some of the other familiar perennials for blue flowers. Delphinium should probably be more familiar. Grape hyacinth and various iris bloom briefly but spectacularly with some of the richest shades of blue. Even though there are not many blue flowers to choose from, there is quite a bit of variety.
Annual statice, aster, zinnia, bachelor button, nierembergia, nigella, pincushion flower, forget-me-not and cineraria are uncommon annuals that are enjoyed by those who crave blue. Petunia happens to be one of the most popular of warm season annuals that also happens to produce some excellent blues. Later, brightly colored pansy and primrose can be just as flashy as popular cool season annuals.
Dwarf periwinkle, which is a vigorous but manageable ground-cover here, is an invasive weed in other regions. Locally, common periwinkle, Vinca major, is the more aggressive sort. It naturalizes in riparian situations and damp parts of unrefined landscapes. Stolons can be difficult to pull completely from the soil. Seed disperses secretively but efficiently.
Periwinkle is almost never available in nurseries nowadays. It tends to infest gardens by sneaking in. Then, the foliage and bloom can be too appealing to eradicate. More plants are easy to divide from established colonies. Growth is tidier if mown at the end of winter. As it regenerates, it gets more relaxed, and finally gets floppy. It looks shabby if trampled.
Periwinkle blooms with sporadic but delightfully clear blue bloom. Individual flowers are about an inch and a half wide. The evergreen leaves are an inch or two long. Wiry stems get a foot or two deep. Cultivars with white or purplish blue bloom were available before
periwinkle naturalized. Periwinkle with foliar variegation still inhabits some old gardens. It is slightly more complaisant.
Its narrow native range stays near to the North and Central Coast of California, including Carmel. However, its nomenclature is all over the map. The genus is Ceanothus. After that, the species name might be any combination of thyrsiflorus, griseus or horizontalis, or omitted. ‘Carmel Creeper’ is its cultivar name, with or without the species designation. It is certainly no horror movie starring Clint Eastwood. Carmel Creeper is one of the more practical ceanothus. It spreads out laterally as a deep and densely foliated groundcover. With room to sprawl, it can stay less than three feet tall. Shiny evergreen foliage remains after the fuzzy denim blue bloom of early spring. Individual leaves are distinctly rounded. Like all native ceanothus, or California lilac, California creeper ceanothus does not want much water once established. It dislikes major pruning too, so prefers areas where it can sprawl freely. Partial shade inhibits bloom and foliar density. Birds enjoy the cover. Bees enjoy the bloom. Unfortunately, even happy plants may not live longer than fifteen years.
Many of us who already grow sea lavender, Limonium perezii, might wonder why it is a topic for August. In the mildest spots, it gets more credit for blooming in winter while most other plants are dormant. Yet, it is actually classified as a summer blooming perennial because it blooms more reliably though summer in most places.
Bluish purple blooms stand more than two feet tall, just above coarse mounds of evergreen basal foliage that gets more than two feet wide. Each billowed bloom contains many tiny flowers. Larger blooms are too heavy to stand upright, so they lay down on the foliage. The weirdly wavy leaves are on such long petioles (leaf stalks) that they may lay down too.
Established plants do not need much attention or water. Faded bloom should be pruned away. It is not practical to remove all of the faded foliage. Every few years or so, old plants can be reinvigorated by getting divided. Newly divided rhizomes will need to be watered regularly until they disperse their roots. Sea foam statice likes full sun exposure.
There are not many flowers as blue as those of plumbago, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides. Individual flowers are not much more than half an inch long, but can be quite abundant until autumn. Each of the many terminal flower clusters is on a rather reliable schedule, so that new flowers begin to open as older flowers begin to fade.
Thin stems stand only about half a foot to a foot above underground rhizomes. Individual plants get about 3-feet wide, but realistically, will slowly spread farther if conditions are right. They do not spread fast enough to be invasive, but can get into some unexpected spots if not controlled. The simple leaves are about two inches long.
The main problem with plumbago is that it is deciduous, so it dies back to the ground in autumn. The weather is too mild here to produce the good fall color seen where autumns are cooler. Plumbago is a popular bulb cover because new growth, although slow to develop, emerges just in time to obscure fading foliage of early spring bulbs like daffodil and tulip.
Plumbago also works well with stone, since the stone is still appealing without the foliage through winter. The wiry stems weave nicely through otherwise bare cobbles, or spill slightly over low stone walls. Even though shade inhibits bloom, plumbago makes a nice informal ground cover under open shrubbery.
Lily of the Nile are floral Fourth of July fireworks.
Fireworks, Fourth of July parades, and the associated crowds are of course canceled for this year.
Lily of the Nile does not mind. It blooms in time for the Fourth of July regardless of what the rest of us are doing, or not doing. That is one of the two reasons why some of us know it as the ‘Fourth of July flower’. The other reason is that the nearly spherical floral trusses resemble exploding skyrocket fireworks. They are mostly blue, with some white. All that is missing is red.
The bloom in this picture is not exactly exemplary. It would have been larger, rounder, and likely more advanced in bloom if it had developed in a sunnier location. There are enough of them that we do not notice that most are somewhat diminutive. In autumn, many of the overgrown plants will be relocated to a sunnier situation where they can bloom as they would prefer too.
Lily of the Nile was the first perennial that I grew a significant quantity of. While in junior high school, a neighbor instructed me to remove a healthy colony of lily of the Nile that had grown obtrusively large in only twenty years. I could not just discard it, so chopped it into more than sixty pups, and planted it all over the neighborhood. Much of it is still there. A bit of it is here.
Back then, it was known as Agapanthus orientalis. In school, I learned it as Agapanthus africanus. I still do not know if they are two different species, or if one is just a variety of the other. I do know that mine are distinctly different from common sorts, with bigger and rounder floral trusses. The others have straighter stems that support their blooms batter, and finer foliage.
Bloom is sporadic, but the delightful purplish blue color is worth it.
If the Latin name of dwarf periwinkle is Vinca minor, it is logical that large periwinkle should be Vinca major. Large periwinkle is more commonly known simply as periwinkle or common periwinkle, although it is not as common as dwarf periwinkle is, at least in landscapes. In some regions, it has naturalized as an invasive weed.
Some might accurately say that periwinkle is shabbier than the relatively neat and dense dwarf periwinkle. Others might say that it is just rustic or informal. The wiry stems stand less than a foot tall before they bend over from their own weight. Fallen stems can root where they touch the ground, and grow into new plants over winter.
The evergreen foliage is rich green, and a bit darker than the top of a billiard table. The simple paired leaves are about an inch and a half to two inches long. The slightly purplish blue flowers are about an inch and a half wide, with five petals each. Bloom is sporadic, but almost continuous, except for a lapse through winter.
Not to be confused with closely related catnip, catmint is a resilient perennial for sunny and warm spots. Nepeta faassenii had always been the more familiar catmint. Modern varieties include a few other specie and hybrids. The various catmints work like the various lavenders or trailing rosemary, without getting so shrubby.
Unless they lean on something or climb through shrubbery, stems do not often get any higher than a foot as they spread to two or three feet wide. A few stems around the edges can grow roots through winter, to spread more the following year. New plants are easy to propagate by division of some of the rooted stems before spring.
The diagonal flower spikes that bloom most profusely as weather warms in spring are the color of faded blue denim. Some catmints bloom white or pink. The finely textured foliage is grayish green, although some varieties of catmint have chartreuse or greener foliage. Spent bloom can get shorn off to keep new foliage neat.
Tony Tomeo 