This picture of a yellow Pacific Coast iris probably should have been incorporated into the Six on Saturday post earlier today. I omitted it because I was not so impressed with how the color showed up. It is really more yellow than it looks. In this picture, it looks more like a discolored version of the white Pacific Coast iris. This sort of variation, that might have been normal for old fashioned photography, is not expected of digital imagery.
It sort of reminds me of how some insects and other pollinators see flowers so differently with infrared or ultraviolet. Are infrared or ultraviolet faded in digital imagery as well? It would make sense, since there is no need for normal cameras to record colors that we can not see. Nor is there need for computer monitors to display such invisible colors. Ironically, modern technology can modify color to make that which in invisible to us visible.
Modern technology is always improving the quality of stored data, and the presentation of such stored data. Perhaps there really are ways to take pictures that record infrared and ultraviolet, although I can not imagine why there would be a use for such technology. Video is good about recording and presenting motion. Audio records and presents sound. Regardless, none of it is good enough to keep us from actually enjoying our real gardens.
Pacific Coast iris blooms in all sorts of weirdly bright colors now. Modern technology has certainly had its way with them as well. The flowers are bigger and bolder than they naturally were. The foliage is greener and fluffier. Yet, to me, the best are still those that grow wild and bloom on the coast of San Mateo County, with unassuming flowers in subdued shades of greyish blue, like faded denim.
Six on Saturday: Azaleas
As the flowering cherry trees fade, the azaleas get their turn. Like the flowering cherry trees, the azaleas are not as spectacular as they were last year. I know it is relevant to the weather, although I do not know what the weather did to inhibit so much bloom with so many of the early spring bloomers. I know there was a lot of rain, but that should not have been a major problem. There was not much chill, but there should have been enough.
I do not know if this will be the most subdued bloom ever witnessed here, but the limited color might be more apparent because the azaleas and rhododendrons were more spectacular last year than they had ever been. According to their bud set, the rhododendrons will be even less impressive than the azaleas. The dogwoods might have had the potential to be as spectacular as last year, but some were disadvantaged by structural pruning.
These six azaleas were the best of what was blooming here this year. The pictures were taken about a week ago. I should know the names of all the cultivars, but I don’t. They do not look the same in landscape as they do on the farm where they grow. I could guess on a few. The only one that there is no mistake about is #4, which is ‘Coral Bells’. Color is a bit off in this picture. #5 looks like ‘Hino Crimson’, but without bronzed new foliage.
Rhododendrons are coming along slowly but surely. They will not be ready for next week. Fortunately, as wimpy as our bloom is this spring, there is plenty to get more pictures of for next week.
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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/
See Anemone
This really is something that I did not expect to see. It may not look like much. It is just a raspy anemone with bites taken out of it, blooming later than it should. What is so impressive about it is that it was not planted here last year. It was planted during the previous year, then bloomed on time last year, and then died back like anemones normally do. I did not plant it, of course. It is in a planter where volunteers contribute whatever they like.
In case you are wondering why I am writing about it as if I did not expect it to bloom again, I didn’t. For whatever reason, anemones typically bloom well only once here, in their first season after they get planted. They may produce foliage for the following season, or maybe even several seasons, but very rarely bloom again. It annoys me that they are even sold locally. Nurseries should know better than to sell bulbs that do not perform well here.
I have always believed that anemones, like a few other types of bulbs, do not get enough chill in winter to bloom again. This is a rather mild climate. There are certain cultivars of apple that do well where winters are cooler that would be dissatisfied with the minimal chill they would get here. (Incidentally, this last winter was not unusually cold.)
There is also the possibility that anemones can not maintain their foliage long enough through the arid spring and summer weather to sufficiently regenerate their resources to bloom again. The foliage begins to appear in conjunction with bloom, then grows more as bloom finishes, but then dies back as the weather gets warm in spring and summer. The weather is not hot here, but it is rather arid.
Charles Grimaldi Brugmansia (not a bio)
When spelled like that, the whole thing looks like someone’s long name. ‘Charles Grimaldi’ really is someone’s name, and the particular cultivar of brugmansia happens to be named after him. Because no one knows who the parents of this hybrid cultivar are, the species name is omitted. It is therefore described by just the genus name followed by the cultivar name, as Brugmansia ‘Charles Grimaldi’; or simply ‘Charles Grimaldi brugmansia’.
After all that, some of us know it, as well as all other cultivars, even more simply as ‘angel’s trumpet’. They are more likely to be distinguished by floral color and form than by cultivar name. For example, Brugmansia ‘Charles Grimaldi’ might be described as a single yellow angel’s trumpet. There is also a single white, a double white, a single pink, a single pink with variegated foliage, and so on. Most are fragrant at least to some degree.
This particular specimen was not planned. As I mentioned in my ‘Six on Saturday’ posts earlier today, my colleague, Brent Green, planted it out in the back garden as a wimpy #1 (1 gallon) specimen many years ago. It grew like a weed and displaced a few other perennials that were too close to it. Brent coppiced it to the ground annually for a few years. It grew back and bloomed spectacularly and very fragrantly through each summer.
A few years ago, rather than coppice it back to the ground, Brent had me pollard it on a few tall trunks. Rather than regenerate as a big fluffy and obtrusive shrub that occupied too much of the limited space, it was able to spread out up and above the garden, while the tall and lanky trunks were pruned bare. The abundant and very fragrant flowers naturally hang downward from the upper growth.
Another Bad Picture
This is why one should not ask someone else who is very vain to take a picture of something important. The vain only take good selfies. Others subjects are too unimportant to them to bother getting a good picture of.
Fortunately, I did not ask for this picture. Brent, my colleague in Southern California, sent it to me with all those other pictures that I shared this morning, and the rest of the pictures that I intend to share next Saturday. I think he wanted to show off his magnolia. I do not remember what cultivar it is, or even what species. I though there was a Magnolia soulangeana in this spot, but these flowers do not look right for that.
I think this picture shows off the plumerias better. Brent probably did not think of that because he does not understand how impressive these specimens are to those of who can not grow them, even while these specimens are bare. I would like to grow some here, but it gets a bit too cool for them in winter. They are very sensitive to even mild frost.
Some of us know plumeria as frangipani. There are quite a few different cultivars that are indistinguishable while bare in this picture. Some stay quite small. My favorite white flowered cultivar is very tall but lanky, with only a few branches. The biggest specimen is the most common, with large trusses of small but very fragrant white flowers with yellow centers. Most bloom with a few colors swirled together. A few are more uniform hues of light pink, bright pink, red, pastel orange and buttery yellow.
I have pruned these specimens a few times. The pruning debris gets plugged as cuttings of various sizes. They grow into copies of the originals that get used in landscapes that Brent designs.
Brent’s other pictures, as well as a brief explanation of the severity of his extreme vanity, can be found at: https://tonytomeo.com/2019/03/30/six-on-saturday-vanity/ and https://tonytomeo.com/2019/03/30/six-on-saturday-vanity-ii/ .
Six on Saturday: Vanity II
As I mentioned in the immediately previous post, this is the sequel to that same previous post, and the second ‘Six on Saturday’ for today. These five bad pictures of good camellias, and the sixth . . . picture, would make sense only after reading the previous post: https://tonytomeo.com/2019/03/30/six-on-saturday-vanity/
These pictures are somewhat better than the previous six, . . . although black vinyl nursery cans and the gravel on the ground below are a bit too prominent in the first four. The flowers are centered better within the pictures, . . . although the first three are not facing the camera.
1. R. L. Wheeler
2. Variegated Guilio Nuccio
3. Nuccio’s Gem
4. Valentine’s Day
5. Unidentified camellia in the home garden
6. ME! As mentioned above, the previous post makes a bit more sense about these pictures.
Now, in case you do not read the previous post or know who Brent is, I will explain briefly that he is a renowned but extremely vain landscape designer in the Los Angeles region, and has been my colleague since we were college roommates in 1986. I posted my selfie here for comparison with Brent’s selfie in the previous post. Together they demonstrate that, although I am not nearly as proficient with taking good selfies as Brent is, I look much better in my selfies. Ironically, Brent Green, the renowned landscape designer, got his selfie in a nursery; and I am a nurseryman, but got my selfie in a landscape.
There are some more pictures of Brent’s home garden that I will likely share next week. They are much more interesting than the sorts of landscapes that I work in.
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/
Six on Saturday: Vanity
These are five of the pictures of camellias from Nuccio’s Nursery in Altadena that I said last week I would share this week. I will share five more immediately afterward in a second ‘Six on Saturday’ post. I am not certain if there is a rule against doing so, but no one seemed to mind when I did the same to share an over abundance of autumn foliar color last autumn. You can find the second post here: https://tonytomeo.com/2019/03/30/six-on-saturday-vanity-ii/
Brent Green, my colleague who I sometimes mention within the context of my articles, typically in a rather unflattering manner, took these pictures nearly two weeks ago. He lives and works nearby, in the Los Angeles region.
Brent takes horrible pictures. He always has. He was wasting my film on bad pictures such as these in 1986. I told him just before he took these pictures that I really wanted GOOD pictures. These are what I got.
Also, Brent is VERY vain. Back in 1986, when we were roommates in Fremont Hall at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, he often had me go get the car to meet him at the bottom of the stairs because he was in that much of a hurry to do whatever he happened to be doing at the time. It might have been getting close to a week since he last got his Grace Jones flat top do done. Perhaps his clothes were getting close to three months old, so he needed a new batch. It was always a rush. The problem was that there was a mirror in our dorm room. I would wait in the red zone at the bottom of the stairs with the engine running for several minutes before going back up to the top floor and most of the way down the long hall to our room to find him staring at himself in that mirror. When I told him that we needed to leave NOW before the car got ticketed, he would still need to add some more Sta-Sof-Fro to his do . . . and stare some more. He had hair back then.
Yes, this is relevant here. Anyway, these are the camellias:
1. Chandleri Elegans or Francine – What do they see off to the right? Why is one cowering behind the other? This picture should have been centered, and wider than tall, or horizontal rather than vertical.
2. Rosette – What is so interesting off to the left that the flower can not look at the camera? Is this supposed to be a picture of the flower low in the picture, or the gravel beyond it?
3. Red Devil – There are a lot of distracted flowers here. What is this one looking at on the ground? Is the gravel that interesting? Perhaps the vinyl cans are. This one should be centered too.
4. Demure – This one looks like an album cover from the 1970s; pale, distracted, and off center against an industrial background. It could be a bad picture, or it could be artistic.
5. Tata – This one looks like a teenager with bad acne looking down before jumping off the high dive.
6. Brent Green – The only good picture of the bunch.
Now . . . how did Brent take such bad pictures of flowers that he could so easily aim the camera at properly, AND take such a perfect selfie without being able to see the picture as he took it? Could it be VANITY?!?
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/
Annuals Should Match The Weather
Pulling out cool season annuals that are still somewhat colorful is never easy, even if they are already deteriorating. There is always the desire to stretch their season as late as possible until they succumb to warmer weather. Only a few can perform all year, or get cut back to hide below other taller plants until the weather gets cool enough in autumn for them to regenerate and bloom again.
Regardless of all the resistance, removing the annuals of a previous season relinquishes space for annuals that are appropriate to the next season, whether cool to warm season, or warm to cool season. Even if new annuals are initially wimpy relative to the older annuals that were removed, they should proliferate and bloom better than lingering unseasonable annuals would if not removed.
Timing is somewhat important. There is no point in removing cool season annuals too early if the weather is still too cool for warm season annuals. However, there is no point in planting too late either. Delayed planting only delays growth and bloom. Some warm season annuals, especially those grown from seed sown late in winter, prefer to get established while the weather is still cool.
French marigold is probably the most traditional warm season annual for bright yellow, orange and bronze. Lobelia contrasts excellently with rich blue and purple, and can also be purplish rose or white. Petunia can do even more with brighter and more variable colors. Cosmos provides pastel pinks and white on taller plants. Cockscomb colors rival those of marigold, and can also be red.
Pincushion flower, annual statice and zinnia are popularly enjoyed as bedding plants, and also work well individually, behind lower bedding plants, or in planters of mixed annuals or perennials. Verbena and moss rose cascade nicely from such mixed planters. Sadly, brightly colored and formerly popular busy Lizzie (impatiens) are either rare or unavailable because of a mold disease.
Nasturtium and alyssum are warm season annuals that are often grown through winter as well. Where they are allowed to naturalize and bloom throughout the year, deteriorating old plants might need to be groomed out as they get replaced by self sown plants. New nasturtium should be sown as seed, instead of planted as seedlings from cell packs. Alyssum grows well by either means.
Six on Saturday: Right Here – Right Now
There are certainly more impressive flowers at work. I suppose I should have gotten pictures of them. Instead, I just took these six pictures within minimal proximity to a where I happened to be working on Wednesday. I thought they would be more interesting than they are. I wanted to get a picture of the laurustinus #4 because others have been posting pictures of the same as if it is something important. Flowering quince #6 is my favorite here, and the only one that was not planted into the landscape. It grew from the roots of an old specimen that was in front of an old home that was demolished to redevelop the site. Because of it’s resiliency, we want to pull up some of the layered stems (that rooted where they lay on the soil) to plant in elsewhere.
1. Garrya elliptica – silktassel bloomed with very pendulous light beige blooms quite some time ago. These lasted longer than others in partial shade, but are now turning tan and getting dry. Silktassel is native here.
2. Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Prostratus’ – trailing rosemary seems to bloom continually. I do not remember it without bloom here. Bees, which are active in all but the coolest of weather, like how it always here for them.
3. Arctostaphylos densiflora ‘Howard McMinn’ – Howard McMinn manzanita is a garden variety or cultivar of a species that is native not far north of here. I sort of think these waxy white flowers are too tiny to impress.
4. Vibrunum tinus ‘Spring Bouquet’ – laurustinus is actually blooming later here than where winters are colder. It naturalizes here. I suppose that those that grow from seed would not be of the same cultivar as the originals.
5. Prunus cerasifera – flowering plum is rather sparse here because of the partial shade of larger trees. I do not know what cultivar this one is. I am not even sure if it is Prunus cerasifera. It does not look familiar to me.
6. Chaenomeles speciosa – flowering quince is another one that I can not identify, although it seems to be the most common sort that I see about town.. I guessed the species, but will not even bother to guess a cultivar.
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/
African Daisy
It seems like not so long ago when the only African daisy that was commonly available was the trailing African daisy that makes such a nice relaxed ground cover for small spaces. The simple white flowers have navy blue centers, and are occasionally joined by mutant light purple flowers. The cultivar that blooms only in light purple was not as popular. Things have certainly changed!
African daisies, Osteospermum, have been bred and hybridized so extensively that most of the modern cultivars are not categorized by specie, so are known by their cultivar names. Most are likely related to Osteospermum ecklonis, which was the first of the shrubby specie to become popular. Although often grown as cool season annuals, African daisies are short term perennials.
Flowers can be various pastel hues of purple, pink, orange, yellow or white. Bloom can be profuse in random phases, and sporadic bloom is almost continuous between early spring and late autumn. It is only postponed by the coolest winter weather and the warmest summer weather. Mature plants can get a bit more than two feet high and wide. They want full sun and regular watering.
