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Six on Saturday: Recycling

It can become a bad habit in the garden, and migrate into neighboring gardens and landscapes, and even farther. My ‘Australia’ canna was acquired only a few years ago, so has not gotten too far, yet. The African iris (Morea iridioides) seems voluminous, but took nearly three decades to get like that. Montbretia and white violet really should not be recycled any more than they have been already though. They are just too invasive. Agapanthus and Amaryllis have potential to become habitual, but fortunately for me, have been manageable. Amaryllis are not overwhelming. Agapanthus have been useful since I started recycling them.

1. Canna indica ‘Australia’ is one of the very few plants that I actually purchased. A neighbor of my downtown planter box requested bronzed foliage. After a few years, it needed to be thinned.

2. Morea iridioides was another purchase, back in the 1990s. It was in a #1 (1 gallon) can back then. It got so overgrown than it needed to be removed, so will now get divided into many more.

3. Crocosmia masoniorum is probably the same common montbretia that grows as a weed here, but seems to have much bigger leaves. I found it growing wild at my Pa’s home in about 1980.

4. Agapanthus orientalis has been with me since 1978, when a neighbor had me remove it from her garden. These copies of that original were planted nearby years ago, and recently removed.

5. Viola sororia ‘Albiflora’ came from my Grandmother’s garden in the late 1970s. I still have copies of them, but might discretely allow them to go extinct. They are just too invasive to recycle.

6. Amaryllis belladonna is mundane and naturalized. However, these came from the garden of my great Grandmother in about 1980. I need no more here, but recycle these in my own garden.

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/
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Cyclamen

Autumn is not far behind cyclamen.

The advantage of cyclamen, Cyclamen persicum, is nonconformity. Bloom begins in autumn when there are not many other flowers to provide color, and continues until spring. Cyclamen then defoliate and go dormant through summer while most other plants enjoy the warm weather. Even their red, pink, white, purple or salmon flowers are inside out, with petals flared back. The flowers can stand as high as six inches, just above the somewhat rubbery foliage. The rounded leaves are mostly dark green with silvery or gray marbling

If used as annuals for one season, cyclamen are uniform enough for bedding. However, if later overplanted with warm season annuals and allowed to stay through summer dormancy, regeneration the following season is variable, with larger and smaller plants, and some that do not survive. As perennials, cyclamen therefore work best in mixed plantings, where variety is not a problem. Cyclamen should be planted with their tubers about halfway above the soil level, and should not be mulched. Soil should be rich and drain well.

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New Zealand Flax

New Zealand flax provides bold texture.

Simple old fashioned New Zealand flax, Phormium tenax, has been popular on the West Coast for as long as anyone can remember. Big specimens are prominent in old pictures of Victorian era gardens. The upright and olive drab foliage gets as high as ten feet, and as broad as fifteen feet. Bronzed and variegated cultivars stay somewhat more compact.

Modern cultivars of New Zealand flax might be Phormium colensoi, or hybrids of the two species. They are generally even more compact, with more colorful foliage. Foliage may be olive green, greenish yellow, brownish bronze, rich reddish bronze or striped with like colors. Some bronze sorts are striped with tan or pink. ‘Yellow Wave’ has floppier foliage. 

New Zealand flax is a tough evergreen perennial. Its long and narrow leaves can be too fibrous to cut without scissors. These leaves grow as tall as they do from clumping basal rhizomes. Interestingly rigid floral stalks stand slightly higher than the foliage, with yellow or red bloom. After bloom, these floral stalks can be a delightful and bold dried cut flower, and work well with pampas grass bloom.

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Japanese Aralia

The bold foliage of Japanese aralia is quite striking, whether kept low and dense, or suspended on taller lanky stems.

It may not grow too rapidly, but Japanese aralia eventually gets nearly eight feet high and wide, and commands a bold presence. The deeply and symmetrically lobed leaves can get as broad as a foot and a half, on long petioles (stalks). The foliage of ‘Vairegata’ emerges with a yellow border that turns pale white. ‘Moseri’ stays quite compact.

Plants grown for their foliage can be maintained by cutting the oldest stems to the ground as they begin to deteriorate, so that newer stems can replace them. Alternatively, lower growth can be pruned away as it develops to elevate the canopy and expose interior stems. However, individual stems do not last indefinitely, and will eventually need to be replaced by any convenient watersprouts.

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Giant Chain Fern

Giant chain fern is remarkably resilient.

On the West Coast between British Columbia and Mexico, the largest native fern might be the giant chain fern, Woodwardia fimbriata. In sheltered and damp coastal forests, it can get taller than six feet, although it is typically about three feet tall and wide in home gardens. The lightly colored and almost yellowish green fronds generally stand upright and flare outward from the center. The foliage is doubly lobed and lacy, but quite substantial. The thick rhizomes spread rather slowly. Established plants are remarkably resilient. They can tolerate almost full sun exposure if watered enough. Those in partial shade can tolerate lapses of watering. However, they do not recover too readily from relocation or division.

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Ferns Are For Distinctive Foliage

Rich green ferns provide distinctive texture.

Ferns are an odd group. They lack the color or fragrance of flowers, or the branch structure of shrubbery, trees or vines. Very few turn color in autumn. They provide only green foliage. Yet, as simple as this seems, the generally evergreen foliage that ferns provide is some of the most distinctive foliage that can be found in the garden.

With few exceptions, ferns are richly deep green. Only a few are lighter green or almost yellowish. The leaves, which are known as ‘fronds’, can be soft and papery, or coarse and tough. The fronds of most ferns are pinnately divided into neatly arranged leaflets; and many ferns have leaflets that are intricately lobed. Some ferns have leaves with more palmate symmetry. A few ferns actually have undivided leaves.

(Pinnate symmetry involves a central midrib or midvein to each leaf, or a central rachis that supports lateral leaflets. Radial symmetry involves multiple midveins or rachi that radiate outward from the centers of individual leaves.)

The Australian tree fern is the largest of the common ferns. It develops a broad canopy of long fronds on top of a trunk that can launch it as high as a two story home. Both the fronds and trunk of the Tasmanian tree fern are shorter and stouter. Other tree ferns are rare. The trunks are not really stems, but are thick accumulations of roots dispersed through decomposed stem tissue.

The staghorn fern is an epiphyte that naturally clings (nonparasitically) to trunks and limbs of trees. The flared upper fronds collect foliar litter that falls from the trees above to sustain the roots within. In home gardens, it is popularly grown on wooden plaques or hung like hanging potted plants, but without a pot.

Some ferns can be grown as houseplants like the classic Boston fern, which cascades softly from a hanging pot. Maidenhair fern is popular for intricate foliage on wiry rachi (leaf stems). Squirrel foot fern has lacy foliage and interestingly fuzzy rhizomes that creep over the edge of a pot.

Since almost all ferns are understory plants that naturally live on or near a forest floor below a higher canopy of trees, they are generally quite tolerant of shade. In fact, most prefer at least some sort of partial shade. This is quite an advantage for spots in the garden that are too shady for other plants. Also, many ferns can disperse their roots into soil that is already occupied by more substantial plants, even if the more substantial plants happen to also be making the particular spot too shady for other plants. In other words, they play well with others.

However, many ferns are more demanding than other plants are in regard to soil quality and watering. They perform best with rich and well drained soil, and regular watering. Sickly ferns generally respond well to fertilizer; but too much fertilizer can burn foliage. Old leaves may need to be groomed out if they do not naturally get overwhelmed by new foliage.

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Naked lady

These naked ladies are not shy.

While so many flowers are finishing their bloom and leaving their drying foliage behind, naked lady, Amaryllis belladonna, is just beginning to bloom, naked of any foliage. Clusters of a few to several bright pink flowers stand on bare stems about two feet tall. Individual flowers are about two and a half to three and a half inches long, and resemble lily flowers. Foliage only appears after flowers deteriorate, and lasts only until weather gets warm late in spring. The strap shaped leaves are about a foot to a foot and a half long. Through summer, the two or three inch wide bulbs are dormant and bare, and seem to be dead with their tops visible at the soil surface, but retain fleshy roots below. They should therefore only be dug and divided if they get too crowded or need to be moved.

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Black-Eyed Susan

Black-eyed Susan epitomizes prairie style.

A flower that is so prominent in American culture should have a more appealing name than black-eyed Susan. Even the Latin name, Rudbeckia hirta, sounds bad. Is Becky really so rude? Did she hirt Susan? Well, black-eyed Susan is good enough to be the state flower of Maryland, and is one of the most popular of flowers for prairie style gardens of the Midwest. After all, it naturally grows wild in every state east of Colorado. Here in the West, it is a light-duty perennial that is more often grown as an annual. As a cut flower, it can last more than a week.

In the wild, the three inch wide flowers of black-eyed Susan are rich yellow with dark brown centers, and can stand as high as three feet. The typically smaller but more abundant flowers of modern varieties can be orange, red or brownish orange, on more compact stems. Gloriosa daisies are fancier cultivars, with larger flowers that are often fluffier (double) or patterned with a second color. Individual plants do not get much wider than a foot, with most of their rather raspy foliage close to the ground. All black-eyed Susans bloom late in summer or early in autumn.

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Color Wanes As Summer Ends

Summer blooms will be finishing soon.

Black-eyed Susan, sunflowers and a few of the late warm season annuals and perennials are still blooming, and a few will continue into autumn. By that time, cool season annuals can move in; and some of the deciduous trees, shrubs and vines that turn color for autumn will be doing so. Realistically though, this can be the leanest time of year for color in the garden. Even some of the foliage that is colorful through spring and summer has faded.

There are certainly plenty of flowers in season now. However, not many are colorful. Honeysuckle vine is pleasantly fragrant as it bloom in random phases until the weather gets cooler, but the flowers are only pale yellowish white. Some melaleuca trees bloom profusely enough to make a mess, but are just as pale, and do not even provide fragrance; although some have pretty light pink flowers. Abelia flowers are pink and abundant, but are really not all that flashy against their bronzy foliage.

Some of the more colorful flowers are not quite as reliable. Princess flower, hibiscus, blue hibiscus and mandevilla certainly can bloom in late summer or autumn, but sometimes bloom earlier than expected, so have nothing left for later. The bright red flowers of blood red trumpet vine are quite impressive, but only if they are not obscured by the accompanying foliage. Some roses bloom in phases as late as the weather will allow, but actually, most are done by now.

Fuchsia and angel’s trumpet likewise bloom in a few phases once they get started, but unlike the many cultivars of roses, they are much more reliable for a late bloom phase. Escallonia blooms late with small but colorful flowers, but only if they have not been shorn in the past few months. Shearing deprives them of the blooming stem tips that they had worked most of the year for.

Butterfly bush, tree mallow, cape plumbago, bee balm and several varieties of sage and salvia are among the most reliable plants for late summer or autumn bloom. Even without multiple bloom phases, they just naturally bloom at the end of their growing season, before winter dormancy.

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Four O’Clock

Four o’clock is not obsessively punctual.

Most who enjoy four o’clock, Miribilis jalapa, do not grow it intentionally. It tends to sneak into gardens from outside, and then bloom too delightfully to be unwanted. It naturalizes, but not aggressively enough to be a weed. New seedlings develop tuberous roots during their first year. They regenerate to produce abundant seed as early as their second year.

Flowers are supposed to open at 4 o’clock. They may open earlier during warm or humid weather. They remain open through the night, and perhaps for part of the morning. Floral color ranges through white, yellow, orange, red, and many tints of pink. Flowers might be striped or spotted with the other colors. Individual plants might bloom with various colors. 

Mature four o’clock plants do not get much taller than three feet. They might sprawl twice as broad. Rich light green foliage is quite full, and obscures unexpectedly soft and lanky stems with knobby nodes. Bloom continues through most of summer, but decreases with increased seed development late in summer. All growth above ground succumbs to frost.