california-friendly phlomis

Phlomis monocephala yellow leaves closeup

It’s not quite plant­ing sea­son, but for the last few trips to the local nurs­ery I’d been eying a plant I hadn’t noticed before, Phlomis mono­cephala, a sis­ter species to the more com­mon Jerusalem sage, P. fru­ti­cosa.

This strongly drought-tolerant species from Turkey has leaves that are highly tex­tured like those of sev­eral native Cal­i­for­nia sages. What sets it apart from the Cal­i­for­nia sages is what it does in the sum­mer, when the leaves turn this strong yellow-green color. In the spring to early sum­mer it will have a mod­est dis­play of yel­low flow­ers, but this a plant that you use for its cool foliage, pro­vid­ing a point of inter­est when a lot of the natives have shut down.

My front yard is a mixed Mediterranean-climate plant­ing with a num­ber of Cal­i­for­nia natives, and I thought this plant would com­ple­ment them nicely. It so hap­pens that there are some plants that peaked five years ago and would bet­ter replaced. Three phlomis would fit in their spot perfectly.

Phlomis monocephala potted plant with yellow leaves

It so hap­pened that the nurs­ery had exactly three plants. Plant shop­ping can be a com­pet­i­tive sport. If you see some­thing, that might be the last chance you’ll have at it. So you can prob­a­bly guess that I’m now the owner of three lit­tle Phlomis mono­cephala plants. I won’t do any seri­ous gar­den rework­ing for another month or so, but I should be able to keep the plants happy and watered for that long.

The plant will top out at about four by four feet, is con­sid­ered hardy to zone 9, and requires excel­lent drainage.

Phlomis lanata nursery plant

While at the nurs­ery I noticed this other California-friendly phlomis, P. lanata. This species grows lower, to maybe two feet tall by three to four wide. The size and shape of the plant actu­ally would have been a bet­ter choice for the spot I have, but this isn’t one of the phlomis species that devel­ops the gor­geous yel­low sum­mer coloration.

What it does have, though, are these really cool, fuzzy gray­ish leaves and stems. How can you resist touch­ing it? Like the much larger Jerusalem sage, it’ll put on a good show of bright yel­low flowers.

Nursery trio of phlomis and wooly bush and coyote bush

One thing I do at nurs­eries is to move plants into lit­tle com­bi­na­tions to see how they’d look together. The first time the staff sees me doing it it might raise some eye­brows, but the staff at Wal­ter Ander­son Nurs­ery is used to me by now. (As you might expect some­one who works in a library, I make sure to put every­thing back in its proper place.)

Here’s a play in scale and tex­ture, a lit­tle ensem­ble of yellowish-green to pale green col­ored leaves that I liked: the Phlomis mono­cephala that I bought, in com­bi­na­tion with what would be the low-growing form of coy­ote bush brush (Bac­cha­ris pilu­laris pilu­laris ‘Pigeon Point’) and the really del­i­cate Aus­tralian woolly bush (Adenan­thos sericeus).

Often, when you do an exer­cise like this, the plants will have wildly dif­fer­ent cul­tural require­ments or would be grossly incom­pat­i­ble size-wise. But in this case all three could coex­ist together in a nice plant­ing, with maybe only the woolly bush need­ing just a bit more sum­mer water­ing. The woolly bush would grow up into a large shrub, the phlomis into a dense medium-sized one, and the coy­ote bush brush would sprawl attrac­tively around the base of the other two.

August 29 2009 08:50 am | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: • • • • • • • •

9 Responses to “california-friendly phlomis”

  1. tina on 29 Aug 2009 at 12:06 pm #

    I’ve not seen this before though I’ve heard of phlomis. It looks like a nice plant and I think it great you are so aware of the drought con­di­tions out there in Cal­i­for­nia and plan for work­ing with that instead of against it in your garden.

  2. Alice Joyce on 29 Aug 2009 at 7:05 pm #

    James,
    It’s offi­cial: I’ve tagged you for a Meme Award … do drop by to pick it up!
    Cheers,
    Alice

  3. Karen - An Artist's Garden on 30 Aug 2009 at 7:00 am #

    Nice plants you have picked out there James. I also get all the plants out that I am think­ing of buy­ing and try the var­i­ous combination’s its a really help­ful thing to do.
    K

  4. Susie on 31 Aug 2009 at 7:23 am #

    I love the com­bi­na­tion & have had much luck with Adenanthos.

  5. Greg on 31 Aug 2009 at 9:25 am #

    Mmmmm, I do like the sage foliage. Rec­og­nized it right off. Thanks for remind­ing me I need more of that.

    Ha ha…I love you rear­rang­ing pots at the nurs­ery. Cool idea. I can see where the staff might be wor­ried at first, though.

  6. lostlandscape on 31 Aug 2009 at 6:45 pm #

    Tina, at this point all the front yard plants should get by with very lit­tle sum­mer water–It lim­its the choices when shop­ping, but nurs­eries around here are step­ping up with lots of inter­est­ing options.

    Alice, gosh I’m flat­tered! Thank you thank you.

    Karen, there are peo­ple who can pre-imagine com­bi­na­tions that look per­fect together, but I really enjoy mov­ing plants around and play­ing with relationships.

    Susie, glad to hear you’ve done well with adenan­thos. I sus­pect that one of these years I’ll make room for it!

    Greg, up close this phlomis looks like a dead ringer for culi­nary sage, same shape and size and tex­ture, though the color is a lit­tle tweaked. Too bad, though, that it’s not fra­grant like the sages.

  7. BeWaterWise Rep on 09 Sep 2009 at 1:50 am #

    Thanks for the infor­ma­tion! Cal­i­for­nia is fac­ing a water short­age and California-friendly plants add beauty to the gar­den while they also help in effi­cient water use. Visit http://bit.ly/n8Okj for water-wise gar­den­ing tips.

  8. Cynthia on 23 Dec 2010 at 3:54 pm #

    Hi, fel­low San Diego gar­dener — I dis­cov­ered your great site while research­ing Adenan­thos Sericeus. Our recent mon­soon has my 6 foot tall Wooly Bush flop­ping over. I’ve staked it up, and was won­der­ing if it was safe to prune it a lit­tle. The only thing I’ve been able to find on the web is that “tip prun­ing” is OK, but that it is not happy with much prun­ing. It is noto­ri­ously shal­low rooted, and I’m con­cerned that it will fall com­pletely over. I love this shrub and don’t want to lose it. Any expe­ri­ence or suggestions?

  9. lostlandscape on 23 Dec 2010 at 8:07 pm #

    Hi Cyn­thia, I’ve cov­eted this plant but never grown it, so my knowl­edge of it is some­what lim­ited. Sec­ond hand infor­ma­tion does talk about the shal­low root sys­tem you men­tion, but I only encoun­tered one report of the plant top­pling. They’re rou­tinely used for hedges and for florist foliage, so my guess is that they can stand at least a gen­tle to mod­er­ate prun­ing. (I can’t imag­ine any hedge plant that couldn’t stand up to a lit­tle lopping.)

    I know that one of my fel­low Cal­i­for­nia blog­gers has dis­cussed a plant she has, and I’ll see if I can’t find who that is. In the mean­time, it might be inter­ested to inquire of some of the many Aus­tralian blog­gers who grow it. Ockam’s Razor is one (http://ockhamsrazor.wordpress.com/).

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