[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the kindness of strangers

I love big, splashy plants as much as the next per­son, but there’s a plant that I’ve got a spe­cial attach­ment to that’s nei­ther big nor splashy.

The green rose, Rosa chi­nen­sis virid­i­flora, lives up to its name. When the “flow­ers” open, what’s inside the pro­tec­tive sepals is cer­tainly green. But there are no rose petals in sight. The blos­som just keeps on open­ing, reveal­ing more and more sepals, all of them green in color, some­times tinged with a red­dish cin­na­mon color. Inside a typ­i­cal rose, once the sepals unfurl and the petals open, you finally get to the pis­tils and sta­mens, the repro­duc­tive parts that enable sex­ual repro­duc­tion and per­pet­u­a­tion of the species. But this plant lacks them too, just like it lacks petals. If this plant were to turn up in nature, it’d go extinct once the sin­gle plant passed on.

Its his­tory is a lit­tle fuzzy, though it was for sure intro­duced to the rose-growing world in 1856 by Bem­bridge and Har­ri­son in Eng­land. In The his­tory of the rose by Roy E. Shep­perd, the author notes that the plant has been in cul­ti­va­tion since 1743, which for a plant with no hopes of repro­duc­tion by seeds is quite a feat. Through the years, peo­ple have found some­thing about this plant inter­est­ing enough to start cut­tings or make grafts onto root­stock or whole­sale dig up the plant and take it along with them when they move.

I was a rose geek in my early teen years, grow­ing and exhibit­ing roses around the Los Ange­les area. At one point I had some­thing over a hun­dred roses, includ­ing this one. I moved down to San Diego, and by the later 1980s finally had a house with room for plants. My par­ents were mov­ing out of the home­stead, and for some rea­son I felt the need to res­cue this one rose from an uncer­tain future. Of all the roses, I dug up this one and moved only this one. Read­ing through some of the posts on this rose at davesgarden.com–includ­ing some­one who moved her great grandmother’s plant–I’m not the only with an attach­ment to it.

And some­how, through the kind­ness of strangers smit­ten with this won­der­fully weird plant, the green rose has stayed in cul­ti­va­tion for some­thing like 264 years.

December 10 2007 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles • rambles | Tags: green rose • oddities | 3 Comments »

free at last

Some­one John knew had a big Aus­tralian tree fern in a pot in his front entry. The plant got too big and we adopted it. At some point we repot­ted it into a fairly huge pot, some­thing like two feet across. The fern seemed happy enough and kept grow­ing. That was three or four years ago, and by Octo­ber the fern was about to grow into the eight foot tall patio cover.

When we com­pleted the new raised bed hav­ing a giant tree fern in the mid­dle of it wasn’t in the plan. But look­ing at the fern, set­ting it free into the ground seemed like the right thing to do.

Mov­ing the 200 pounder through the soft new dirt wasn’t easy. Nei­ther was dig­ging a hole deep enough to accom­mo­date it. (Thanks, John!) But the beast is in the ground, and from all appear­ances, pretty happy with its new spot in the gar­den. In fact, it cel­e­brated by unfurl­ing new frond after new frond, more than dou­bling the num­ber it had while in a pot. See­ing that, it seemed like the fern had been in sus­pended ani­ma­tion all the while it was in the pot, and now it was finally tast­ing life. Nature in a pot may be con­ve­nient for the humans, but nature might not be so thrilled…

The new home for the fern…

Some new fronds…

December 02 2007 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Australian tree ferns • potted plants | No Comments »

coda: John Pfahl

A few posts ago I wrote about the gar­den pho­tog­ra­phy of John Pfahl. Four of the works from this series are in the exhi­bi­tion, Pic­tur­ing Eden, at San Diego’s Museum of Pho­to­graphic Arts. The show runs through Jan­u­ary 13, 2008.

The show has a lot of work in it on the gen­eral theme of par­adises, whether they be gained, lost, regained or cre­ated. The show is curated by Deb­o­rah Klochko, and had its ori­gins at George East­man House Inter­na­tional Museum of Pho­tog­ra­phy and Film. I had almost no time to look at the work, but there were def­i­nitely some great images. I’ll try to write up some­thing a lit­tle more exten­sive later…

December 01 2007 | Categories: art • photography | Tags: eden • george eastman house • John Pfahl • museum of photographic arts • paradise • picturing | No Comments »