milkvetch update

astragalus-nuttallii-late-season

I wrote ear­lier about a lit­tle patch of Nuttall’s milkvetch (Astra­galus nut­tal­lii), a new Cal­i­for­nia native ground­cover I’m try­ing out. Last time, I was pretty enthu­si­as­tic. Now, after eight weeks with less than a quar­ter inch of nat­ural rain­fall, I’m a lit­tle less excited.

At this point, at the end of April/beginning of May, the plant con­tin­ues to be inter­est­ing up close: a mix of red­den­ing stems, small green-gray leaves and dra­matic red-tinged cream-colored pods.

When the seeds have ripened inside the pods, they rat­tle in a really inter­est­ing way. You can see why many Astra­galus are called “rattlepod”:


astragalus-nuttallii-late-season-installation-shot

But the down-side about this plant, I’m find­ing out, is how it looks from a dis­tance. The red stems, whitish pods and green leaves all give the impres­sion of a brown, dying plant. Just squint while look­ing at the next image and you can begin to see that it’s not the most kempt look­ing selec­tion for one of the first things you encounter.

This intro­duc­tion might work well in an infor­mal area, mixed in with big plants that will take up the slack when this one takes a vaca­tion. A spot that gets occa­sional gar­den water also might keep this plant look­ing nicer, longer. But since I planted it at eye-level, right at the front side­walk in a spot that gets no sup­ple­men­tal water all sum­mer, I’ve decided it’s prob­a­bly not the right plant for this spot.

So…I’ve cut it back pretty heav­ily, and it may be out of this spot if it doesn’t look a lot bet­ter quickly. That’s the fate of a lot of Cal­i­for­nia natives: They look great dur­ing the cool, wet grow­ing sea­son, but look less won­der­ful dur­ing when it dries out and get hot­ter, which unfor­tu­nately also hap­pens to be the sea­son when peo­ple want to be out­doors, enjoy­ing their gardens.

Don’t let that dis­cour­age you from plant­ing natives, how­ever. Some of the buck­wheats I’ve planted next to the milkvetch are still green all over and are about to begin their long sea­son of flow­ers and dra­matic dried seed heads. And there are many other options for plants that look good through­out the year. It’s just a mat­ter of find­ing the right plant for the right spot in the garden.

May 02 2009 05:11 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • •

4 Responses to “milkvetch update”

  1. Gayle Madwin on 02 May 2009 at 12:28 pm #

    I wish I could keep buck­wheats alive! I’ve tried three or four times with Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum, but it never lives more than about two weeks for me.

  2. Town Mouse on 02 May 2009 at 7:48 pm #

    Yes, story of my life. But as we all know, good gar­den­ers com­post their mis­takes ;-> As for the buck­wheats, I’m find­ing fas­ci­c­u­la­tum tem­pera­men­tal as well, but I’m doing very well with arbores­cence, grande rubescense, and gigan­teum. Same thing really, gotta find the right spot, and the plants often don’t know what the book says…

  3. lostlandscape on 03 May 2009 at 4:43 pm #

    Gayle and Town Mouse, I thought I was doing just great with E. fas­ci­c­u­la­tum, and then all of a sud­den one of my three plants (the pros­trate ‘Dana Point’ form) just plain died. Strange, because they make up a big por­tion of the local wild plant com­mu­nity. The two sur­vivors are of ssp. folio­sum, which is more of the inte­rior sub­species. I have no idea why they’re hap­pier here nearer the coast…

    I also have the three other buck­wheats TM has, and they seem to be pretty reli­able so far. I’ll keep my fin­gers crossed.

  4. ryan on 03 May 2009 at 8:29 pm #

    I’d never heard of this plant, good to know. On the bright side, it’s been fix­ing nitrogen.

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