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Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day May 15 – My Second (Yes, Another Sequel)

 

Just like in April, there is too much blooming here in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos to easily select only a few pictures. Again, these pictures are from work instead of my home garden. We are in USDA Zone 9, on the coastal side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, which is significantly less arid than the chaparral climate of the Santa Clara Valley below the inland side.

In the process of selecting pictures, I omitted most of any flowers that I have used or will use for other articles, as well as the new warm season annuals that will be more prolific later in the season. However, I might feature chamomile soon, and will post several pictures of rhododendrons on Saturday morning.

Mock orange, Philadelphus lewisii, is finished blooming. I wanted to get this picture of it before it was completely gone. These flowers were in a shaded spot, so lasted a bit later than the others. They are extremely fragrant, and extremely white. They contrast nicely with their rich green foliage and the surrounding evergreens. This mock orange is the state flower of Idaho.5bd1Mock orange of a different flavor blooms sporadically and later. This one is Pittosporum tobira, or something like it. It happens to be a very old shrub, so might predate the modern garden variety, or might be a slightly different species. It does not look quite right, but I can not explain it in any manner that would interest anyone. It is fragrant too, but with heavier fragrance.5bd2Roses are finishing their first phase, but are already starting their next phase. Most of these are floribundas, which are not my favorite, but work very well here were they are so visible. Quantity is more important than quality here in this prominent spot. We want them to bloom more regularly than to make flowers for cutting, although some do happen to make nice stems.5bd3Clematis is still in the can because it was only recently purchased from a nursery to be added where others are not filling in on their trellis adequately. Vines are such a bother. Most are too aggressive and crush their trellises. Those that are not so aggressive do not fill in well enough. Clematis blooms nicely this time of year, but rarely does much more once summer gets warm.5bd4Peruvian lily or alstoemeria do quite well here, and are certainly happier than in the Santa Clara Valley a few miles away. There are three here. A pink one can be seen in the background. There is also a salmon pink one. All three are the sort that used to be grown for cut flowers, but are difficult to obtain now. Most garden varieties are lower and mounding with shorter stems.5bd5Chamomile can naturalize here, but this garden variety does not seem to seed so profusely. Actually, it does not seem to seed at all. I have not yet seen any feral chamomile. The foliage of this variety was bright yellowish chartreuse when it was new, and is now fading to light green. It blooms most of the time. By the time it gets too green, it can get cut back and start all over.5bd6Rhododendron is blooming all over. I took pictures of only this one flower because, as I mentioned earlier, I will post six more pictures of other rhododendrons on Saturday morning. I chose this particular flower because I also wanted to show how big the plant that produced it is. Other colors can be seen nearby. They are really happy here, even with minimal maintenance.5bd7This picture does not show off flowers as well as the rest of the pictures do, but shows how big the rhododendron tree is. Although it is not as broad as some of the others are, it is likely the tallest here. It is situated at least twelve feet below the bridge, and stands about twelve feet above it, so is at least twenty five feet tall! Even by my standards, it is a big rhododendron!5bd8Garden Bloggers all over America and in other countries can share what is blooming in their gardens on the fifteenth of each month on “Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day”, hosted by Carol Micheal’s May Dreams Garden at http://www.maydreamsgardens.com

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San Francisco Iris II – the Expected Sequel

P80512KIt is not as if the previous article about it was inadequate. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/san-francisco-iris/ I really did not want to get into the habit of writing so many sequels. However, something happened to necessitate this update.

I found what seems to be a REAL San Francisco Iris, right here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Except for being somewhat etiolated from the shade of the surrounding redwoods, it looks very similar to the San Francisco iris I picked on the Montara Peaks when I was in high school! This one happens to be a bit lighter blue than most, but is certainly well within the color range of the flowers that I remember. Most were probably a bit darker blue, but many were lighter, and some were very pale blue.

It is impossible to know if it was planted in this spot that had been landscaped in the distant past, or merely grew wild. It is right down the road from the more colorful cultivars that I got pictures of earlier. It only recently bloomed on rather grassy foliage that was easy to miss.

I know it does not look like much, but I prefer it to the fancier garden cultivars of the same specie, Iris douglasiana. (It is not the ‘San Francisco’ cultivar of bearded iris.) It is what I am familiar with, and exemplifies the species. Besides Montara, I remember it from San Bruno Mountain, Angel Island and Alcatraz. I might have seen it in the Oakland Hills and on Point Reyes too, but I am not certain if they really were the same.

The bearded iris from my great grandmother’s garden will always be my favorite. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/roots/ However, these San Francisco iris and I have too much history together to ignore.P80512K+

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Mirror Plant

70510As the old fashioned larger mirror plant, Coprosma repens, fell out of favor through the 1990s, several more colorful varieties of a more compact species of mirror plant, Coprosma X kirkii, became popular. (The ‘X’ in the name indicates that it is actually a hybrid of two specie.) Without getting much more than two feet deep, it spreads out laterally like dense evergreen groundcover.

The color is not from bloom, but from the very glossy foliage. It can be variegated with white, gold, red, pink or bronze, or completely brownish bronze. Some varieties stay very shallow. Others can be shorn into low hedges like Japanese boxwood, only shorter. Although mirror plant does not mind partial shade, foliar density and color is best with full sun exposure and occasional watering.

Most modern varieties are known by their cultivar names, without their specie names. For example, Coprosma ‘Tequila Sunrise’ lacks the species name of ‘X kirkii‘. Such omissions might be the result of confusing hybridization with Coprosma repens, for rounder leaves. In other words, some cultivars may be of ‘questionable parentage’. Some are just dwarf cultivars of coprosma repens.

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Deciduous Rhododendrons

P80509They are not a myth. They are quite real. So are the related and similar deciduous azaleas. There are certainly not as popular or as diverse as the familiar evergreen cultivars, but they have their place.

Like the popular evergreen cultivars, deciduous rhododendrons and azaleas have been extensively bred so that they are more spectacular than their ancestors in the wild. They lack the purples and blues of the evergreens, but they compensate with bright oranges and yellows that are uncommon among the evergreen cultivars, as well as reds, pinks and whites. Some of their colors are bright and fiery, while some are more relaxed. Compared to evergreen rhododendrons, the flowers of the deciduous rhododendrons are smaller, thinner, and suspended in smaller trusses. However, these smaller trusses are often significantly more abundant, and are flashier as they bloom before new foliage develops in spring.

Deciduous rhododendrons and azaleas are not grown for the foliar color in autumn, but where autumn weather is cold enough, their foliage can color somewhat well. It is mostly clear yellow, but can sometimes turn orange before falling away cleanly, leaving neatly bare stems through winter.

What deciduous rhododendrons and azaleas excel at that their evergreen counterparts can not compete with is their fragrance. Many are moderately fragrant. Some are VERY fragrant. It is rare that such showy flowers are also so fragrant. (Most flowers rely on one technique or another to attract pollinators.)

Now that the evergreen rhododendrons are blooming, our few deciduous rhododendrons are just about finishing. Visitors often ask about the fragrance, since they do not expect fragrance from rhododendron or azalea flowers, even though they can see little else blooming in same area. These flowers are so popular that we would like to plant more near windows of meeting rooms.P80509+(The article from my weekly gardening column that is typically posted on Thursday was posted yesterday, which is why this article, which is more appropriate for Wednesday is posted today.)

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‘Emerald Green’ Arborvitae

80516The many cultivars of arborvitaes of home gardening have been so extensively bred and selected that only the foliar texture resembles that of their ancestors. ‘Emerald Green’ which is also known by its Danish name ‘Smaragd’, is a cultivar of arborvitae that was developed from the white cedar, Thuja occidentalis,which grows wild from Minnesota to New Brunswick, as a forty foot tall tree!

‘Emerald Green’ grows quite fast while young, but should get no taller than about fifteen feet, and no wider than about four feet. It is one of the best columnar arborvitaes for tall hedging. Although they can be shorn, they are so dense and uniform that they are at their best if only occasionally trimmed of stray stems, or to keep taller specimens from getting too much taller than shorter ones.

The tiny evergreen scale leaves are tightly arranged on vertically arranged flat foliar sprays. Foliage is quite dense, and softer than that of most other conifers. A bit of shade is tolerable, but too much compromises foliar density. Bloom is barely noticeable, and seeded cones are not much to look at. The shaggy ruddy brown bark is handsome but seldom seen on well foliated specimens.

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San Francisco iris

P80505KThere really is a bearded iris that happens to be named ‘San Francisco’. It is related to ‘Los Angeles’, but not ‘San Jose’. (I really want to find a copy of ‘San Jose’ for my own garden!) Both ‘San Francisco’ and ‘Los Angeles’ are white with a slight blue highlight, and an even slighter reddish edge that is easy to miss. I can not remember which one of the two is whiter than the other, but the whiter one may lack the reddish edge altogether.

The San Francisco iris I remember is something completely different. It is a native west coast iris, Iris douglasiana (or douglasii or any other variation of ‘douglas‘ that any particular botanist happen to prefer) that happens to be endemic to the coastal region of San Mateo County south of San Francisco, and was probably endemic to San Francisco County as well. It would be difficult to identify the entire range, because San Francisco iris is merely a variety, rather than a species. The species has a much larger range. Some might say that the same species in Sonoma or Monterey Counties is also San Francisco iris, just because it happens to bloom with a similar color range.

Well, then there is the issue of the color range. Most varieties of other specie are a particular color. Those that have a range of color at least exhibit a distinct color range that is somehow special and different from everything else. The San Francisco iris does not. It is always blue, but might be any shade or hue between very pale blue and rather dark new denim blue. Not only is that a broad range of color, but it is not very distinctive from the same species hundreds of miles away.

So why do we know it as ‘San Francisco iris’? I really do not know. Perhaps it is just something for us to brag about.

Over the years, west coast iris has been bred to bloom with larger flowers with more of a color range. I am sorry that I did not get more pictures while they were blooming. Besides the more common shades and hues of simple blue, they can bloom in various shades and hues of purple, violet, yellow, gold and white. They are still as undemanding as their ancestors are, and once established, do not need much attention at all.P80505K+

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Six on Saturday: Azaleas

 

There is just too much blooming this time of year to fit it all into one Saturday. These azaleas were blooming quite some time ago, and these pictures are at least a week old. Some might be almost two weeks old. I just could not use them last week because there were still camellias to show off.

1. What this one lacks in profusion, it compensates for with large flower size. We used to grow one that looked like this but perhaps with slightly richer color. It was known as ‘Phoenicia’. It was a bit too garish for my taste.P80505
2. These flowers are smaller, but seriously more profuse. In fact, they are so profuse that, like #4, #5 and #6, the foliage is barely visible behind so many flowers. It is garish too, but I rather like this particular flavor of color.P80505+
3. Okay, so they are not as profuse, but they are such an excellently bright red. It looks like ‘Ward’s Ruby’ to be, but I can not be certain. All these azaleas look so different in this landscape than in production on the farm.P80505++
4. Not much foliage could be seen through these glowing flowers. They are more profuse than they look. They just do not seem so profuse because they are not dense. I do not know which cultivar to compare this one to.P80505+++
5. ‘Coral Bells’ has very profuse and very densely arranged tiny flowers. They form a layer over the exterior of the plant. Although I would say that these are more pink than coral, this cultivar is unmistakably ‘Coral Bells’.P80505++++
6. ‘Fielders White’ is the best that I saved for last. They are perfectly white medium sized flowers that are profuse enough to almost obscure the foliage, but not so profuse that the perfect form of the flowers is obscured.P80505+++++
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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Periwinkle

70503Like so many of the easiest to grow plants, periwinkle, Vinca major, is too easy to grow. It has become an invasive exotic (nonnative) weed in many moist riparian environments. It can get rather weedy in home gardens as well. This can be an advantage if it happens to fill in for bald spots in areas of other ground cover. It is a disadvantage if it overwhelms or competes with other plants.

It is hard to believe that such a seemingly innocent plant with sporadic but delightful light blue flowers amongst rich green foliage has such unpleasant potential. The radial flowers are about an inch or maybe two wide, and bloom almost all year except for winter. The simple evergreen leaves are likewise an inch or two long. The wiry stems stand a foot or two high before flopping over.

Once stems lay down, they develop roots where they touch the ground, and form new plants that repeat the process of producing upright stems that flop over. Without confinement, there is no limit to the trouble they can get into. Fortunately, it is not a fast process. Cultivars with white or purple flowers, or variegated foliage are more complaisant. Periwinkle is neater if mown as winter ends.

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Avens

80509Wow, this is quite old school. Is it making a comeback? That would be nice. Avens, which is also known as Chilean avens, Geum quellyon, is an old fashioned perennial relative of the strawberry. Instead of producing fruit, it provides handsome yellow, red or coppery orange flowers that look something like small single, semi-double or double anemones, but can bloom through most of May.

Although perennial, avens do not last forever without some degree of help. After the first season, most of the slightly ruffled and hairy foliage dies down during the colder part of winter. New foliage and bloom develop in spring. After the second or third year, and every few years afterward, mature plants should be divided before or after bloom. Pups are more vigorous than the parent plants.

Happy avens gets as high and wide as a foot and a half. Much of the height is in the branched floral stems, which might need to be staked if they get too heavy with bloom, or are in a breezy spot. Most of the mounding foliage is basal. A bit of shade is tolerable and actually preferred to hot situations. Soil should be rich and well drained. Avens plays well with others in mixed perennial beds.

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Wisteria

70426The popular wisterias that bloom so profusely before their new foliage appears in spring are Chinese wisteria, Wisteria sinensis. Others specie are rare. The impressively longer floral trusses of Japanese wisteria are not as abundant, and bloom late amongst developing foliage. American and Kentucky wisteria are more docile small vines, but their floral trusses are both short and late.

Chinese wisteria is also the most fragrant and the most colorful of the wisterias. Lavender is still the most popular and traditional color. White, pink, sky blue and darker almost purplish lavender are also available. The floral trusses, known as racemes, get from half a foot to two feet long. Double flowered cultivars never became too popular because the fluffier blooms are not as elegant. The aggressive vines can reach the tops of tall trees. They rarely strangle limbs or young tree trunks, but have the potential to do so. They are more likely to crush fences and lattice. Wisteria really needs sturdy trellises and specialized pruning for confinement. Vines that grow from seed may take many years to bloom. The pinnately compound leaves turn pale yellow before falling in autumn.