[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the prodigal ceanothus

The ori­gin of Cean­othus ‘Tuxedo’ reads a bit like a hor­ti­cul­tural soap opera: A Cal­i­for­nia native species, Cean­othus thyr­si­florus, crosses the Atlantic for Europe, where it meets up with another cean­othus, this one from the East Coast of the US, Cean­othus amer­i­canus, or New Jer­sey tea. Loose on for­eign soil the two get roman­ti­cally involved, with Cean­othus ‘Autum­nal Blue’ being one of the chil­dren. One of the plants of Autum­nal Blue moves to Ire­land, where its tol­er­ance for moister gar­den con­di­tions and good cold tol­er­ance makes it quite popular.

(Edit, March 4, 2010: A quick trawl through David Fross and Dieter Wilken’s ter­rific resource, Cean­othus, reminded me that the story is even more twisted than this. The par­ents of ‘Autum­nal Blue’ include the two species men­tioned above, but also the Mex­i­can and Guatemalan species, C. caeruleus. The plot thickens…)

There, in Ire­land, grow­ing on the grounds of Fitzger­ald Nurs­eries, one of the branches sud­denly throws a muta­tion, where the nor­mally green leaves are instead a dra­matic dark color, some­thing between dark choco­late, inky black and maybe just a lit­tle grape thrown in. Pat FitzGer­ald notices the strik­ingly dif­fer­ent branch, and begins a prop­a­ga­tion pro­gram in earnest. His nurs­ery lists sev­eral other near-black plants, includ­ing the dra­matic Phormium cookianum ‘Black Adder.’ Even­tu­ally the plant crosses back to the other side of the Atlantic, for Cal­i­for­nia, where it was released in lim­ited dis­tri­b­u­tion last year.

That’s when I met this totally unique look­ing cean­othus and decided I wanted it for my gar­den. I brought a lit­tle gal­lon plant and located it where I wanted a dra­matic six-foot shrub, expect­ing that it would be a quick-growing screen plant. Almost a year later, though, the lit­tle plant remains a lit­tle plant, and hasn’t really grown. Even though I watered it all last year as you would most new plants in the gar­den, my guess is that I failed to give it enough water through the 146 con­sec­u­tive days with­out mea­sur­able pre­cip­i­ta­tion that San Diego expe­ri­enced, the third-driest rain­less time in our record books.

To the plant’s credit, it didn’t die. And now the rains have sat­u­rated the soil, it’s show­ing some inter­est in putting out some new growth. But I felt like I needed some guid­ance in doing a bet­ter job grow­ing this plant. Who bet­ter to ask than the per­son who prob­a­bly has the most expe­ri­ence with this plant? Why not con­tact Pat FitzGer­ald, its originator?

Thank­fully, Pat was gen­er­ous with his time in respond­ing to my ques­tions. Here are some excerpts from the advice he sent my way.

Regard­ing dry con­di­tions yes I would expect slow growth. Have you prunded your plant. I noticed from the pic­ture on your blog it had very long un-pruned branches. Like a lot of shrubs in dry con­di­tions I think thought needs to be put into help­ing the plants in the first year get depth of root pen­e­tra­tion so that dur­ing dry spells its tak­ing mois­ture from a depth. I sus­pect if you can give mois­ture to Tuxedo dur­ing the first year of estab­lish­ment to help it along and prune next spring you will see dense growth establish…

I high­light mois­ture reten­tion as a lot of peo­ple harp on about using water and drought but often for­get you can con­di­tion your soil to retain more of that valu­able mois­ture. There are so many recy­cled com­posts to be pur­chased or that the house­holder can make now that you can work into the soil to make pock­ets 3 X 3 feet around newly planted shrubs or even mulch to give them that start in life. The cure to drought and slow growth in dry areas is more often what you do before you plant than after as I am sure you well know but it needs repeat­ing and repeat­ing to the public…

Tuxedo will behave dif­fer­ently depend­ing on soil den­sity so in heavy soil I have seen plants exhibit­ing a shorter more com­pact nature to their growth. If planted in shade and espe­cially in a lighter soil Tuxedo will cer­tainly stretch as it seems to much pre­fer full sun for sake of both colour and flow­er­ing. In our more moist cli­mate I think the plant can get to 8 feet as can many many shrubs here in our tem­per­ate climate…

I think the one com­ment I would have is that sim­ply Tuxedo is for me more than a Cean­othus with deep dark foliage. Tuxedo is an ever­green foliage plant and once estab­lished in the gar­den hardy to minus 12 cel­cius in our expe­ri­ence but pos­si­bly minus 15 cel­cius. This is an achieve­ment for me as I can­not rec­om­mend hardly any ever­green with such dark foliage with such win­ter hardiness.

Tuxedo is also a good plant for train­ing on a trel­lis or wall in our cli­mate at least. There is no doubt in my mind that Tuxedo will ben­e­fit from occa­sional prun­ing but no more than once per year.

I just hope in time Tuxedo con­tributes some way pos­i­tively to Cal­i­forn­ian gar­dens. While only part native its still is a nice feel­ing as a plant breeder to have a plant go back to its home­land and be accepted into people’s gardens.

After review­ing Pat’s advice I’ve decided to not only give the plant more water and mulch around them for added water reten­tion through the crit­i­cal first year or two after a plant is freed into the soil. If I use an organic mulch it will break down over time and enrich the soil.

A com­mon thread you read with many Cal­i­for­nia native plants is that they detest rich soil. In fact Greg Rubin of California’s Own Native Land­scape Design spoke to the local native plant soci­ety of plant­ing large num­bers of short-lived col­or­ful plants between the large struc­tural species so that the tem­po­rary plants could “burn up” the excess nutri­ents in the soil, par­tic­u­larly in a sit­u­a­tion where the soil was for­merly a heavily-fertilized lawn. But ‘Tuxedo,’ with par­ents from moister parts of Cal­i­for­nia and the East Coast, sounds like it would ben­e­fit from being treated differently.

For me, grow­ing Cean­othus ‘Tuxedo’ will be a lit­tle more work and water than grow­ing many other cean­othus would be. But I think it should be worth it. In fact, I saw more of them in the nurs­ery again and picked up a sec­ond gal­lon plant. Here you see it planted as a back­ground for the sil­very foliage and even­tual orange flow­ers of chalk-leaf dud­leya, Dud­leya pul­veru­lenta, and Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, Zauschne­ria cal­i­for­nica ‘Route 66.’

Wish me and the plants luck. Not every plant is per­fectly adapted to your grow­ing con­di­tions, but a lit­tle effort can help make them thrive. And the rea­sons that make ‘Tuxedo’ a lit­tle trick­ier in the dri­est parts of Cal­i­for­nia might make it a good can­di­date for moister parts of the state, or other parts of the coun­try where cean­othus might be mar­ginal. This year the plant is in wide cir­cu­la­tion and should be widely available.

Cean­othus in New York or Lit­tle Rock? This might be the one.

March 04 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: black • Ceanothus Tuxedo

18 Responses to “the prodigal ceanothus”

1. Gayle Madwin on 04 Mar 2010 at 9:42 am #

   Good luck with ‘Tuxedo’! Sounds like it might have a bet­ter chance of surv­ing in my soggy clay soil than most other Cean­othus species. I’ve been reluc­tant to try any of them because they need such good drainage, though I did rec­ntly plant a ‘Joyce Coul­ter’ that seems okay so far.

   I wish I had more luck with Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sias, too. So far, none of mine have sur­vived long enough to flower. I’m try­ing again with two more of them this year.

2. Brent on 04 Mar 2010 at 10:14 am #

   Nice his­tory and beau­ti­ful plant!

   I did notice that your pic­tures don’t show mulch around the plants. Have you been try­ing to get by with­out any mulch to this point?

3. Loree on 04 Mar 2010 at 10:26 am #

   Inter­est­ing tim­ing as I just saw one of these at a nurs­ery yes­ter­day! Thank you for the addi­tional info.

4. Daffodil Planter on 04 Mar 2010 at 2:26 pm #

   Help­ful info from you and Pat–much appre­ci­ated as I will be plant­ing this dash­ing fel­low soon.

5. susan morrison (garden-chick) on 04 Mar 2010 at 3:33 pm #

   Pat’s one of my friends on Twit­ter and kindly arranged for me and a few other plant geeks to receive some one gal­lons of Tuxedo — also the Phormium ‘Black Adder’ you men­tioned. I don’t have the space or sun for the Tuxedo but hap­pily planted it in one of my client’s gar­dens. She has a ton of lambs ears and they trans­plant eas­ily, so we used that as an accent (looks as fab­u­lous with the black as does your dud­leya) then threw in some pale pink car­pet roses to tie it in with the rest of the gar­den. I’ll be there on Sat­ur­day and am look­ing for­ward to see how its com­ing along.

   I’ve had a chance since then to see some that are larger, and the habit is more upright than sprawl­ing — sim­i­lar to C. Dark Star. Pat’s sug­ges­tion to espalier is an inter­est­ing one and some­thing I wouldn’t mind trying.

6. Pat FitzGerald on 04 Mar 2010 at 4:15 pm #

   Love this post! I have to add I am really hon­oured that you took the time you have both in plant­ing Tuxedo car­ing enough to give it a try and doc­u­ment your efforts. I hope you are going to be happy with the results. I was near SanDiego in April 2008 and can only imag­ine from the land­scape there that it can get quite hot. I am hope­ful that Tuxedo will work for you there. It’s going to be excit­ing for me to see how you get on with it through sum­mer. Thank you for this it’s fan­tas­tic that Tuxedo is in such good hands!

   Pat.

7. Noelle/azplantlady on 04 Mar 2010 at 7:37 pm #

   Cean­othus are just beau­ti­ful and I have always admired them. Their story reads like a soap opera ;^)

8. Brad B on 04 Mar 2010 at 9:43 pm #

   I’ve seen the black tuxedo and thought it was a really fas­ci­nat­ing plant. I just had no idea its ori­gins were so tawdry. Funny I always think of cean­othus and per­fectly suited to our cli­mate, but an Irish/English/EastCoast/California cean­othus would prob­a­bly need a lit­tle help find­ing its roots, so to speak.

9. Country Mouse on 04 Mar 2010 at 10:58 pm #

   Very absorb­ing read — I’ve heard that Cal­i­for­nia natives were more used in the British Isles than here, his­tor­i­cally. Gar­rya ellip­tica is another that I gather grows well there, and I saw lovely Ribes san­guineum hap­pily grow­ing in the parks of Lon­don. I can see some sim­i­lar­ity between our fog­gier coastal cli­mate up here and Ire­land. How nice that you made a con­nec­tion with Pat the propagator!

10. Christine on 05 Mar 2010 at 5:56 pm #

    I sec­ond Brad’s com­ment. But also can I just say that I love the gen­eros­ity and thirst for knowl­edge that makes our plant com­mu­nity what it is?!

11. Wendy on 05 Mar 2010 at 8:38 pm #

    well, good luck to you and your plants! I love how the plant looks truly black — I don’t think I’ve seen a blacker plant. Very cool.

12. lostlandscape on 06 Mar 2010 at 4:10 pm #

    Gayle, I know your yard can get a lit­tle soggy, so I can see the Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia not lik­ing your con­di­tions. But if can suc­ceed with the Joyce Coul­ter cean­othus, I think you’d stand a good chance with this one.

    Brent, good eyes with the mulch. I have seedlings, some of the actu­ally desir­able and not just weeds, com­ing up in the bed. Once they’re up, down goes the mulch.

    Loree, I can just see one of these as a dark, soft back­ground for some spikey plants in your garden.

    DP, I hope you post on your progress with this plant. It’d be great to swap grow­ing tips.

    Susan, it’d be inter­est­ing to see how well you do with this plant up there, since its genet­ics seem bet­ter suited for cooler, moister places. But at least we’re guar­an­teed the deep­est, dark­est foliage col­ors with out bright days.

    Pat, thanks for your com­ments here, and for all the great infor­ma­tion you sent my way! Some plants I put in the ground and don’t get too con­cerned if they don’t do well, writ­ing off any fail­ures as adding to my expe­ri­ence. But this one I def­i­nitely want to suc­ceed at.

    Noelle, I’ll have to admit that I’ve been a late bloomer as far as appre­ci­at­ing cean­othus. But now that I’m there, I’m pretty rabid!

    Brad, I’m used to look­ing at cli­mate infor­ma­tion on where plants come from to try to bet­ter under­stand their needs, but with a really mixed hybrid like this, it’s def­i­nitely more of a challenge.

    CM, I was thrilled with Pat’s help­ful­ness. So often plants seem like indus­trial prod­ucts that appear in the nurs­ery, so it’s great to have a con­nec­tion with the per­son who made the plant pos­si­ble. I think that most gar­den­ers have a love with the exotic, myself included. I can see how plants from myth­i­cal Cal­i­for­nia might have some cachet. Case in point is Robin Middleton’s great site ded­i­cated to the genus salvia, where he swoons over plants like white sage while com­plain­ing that it’s almost impos­si­ble to grow under his conditions.

    Chris­tine, I love plants with sto­ries, and this one is one of the bet­ter ones. I’m glad to share sto­ries, and to run in to peo­ple who are so gen­er­ous in shar­ing their enthu­si­asm and knowledge.

    Wendy, this is prob­a­bly the second-blackest plant I’ve ever encoun­tered. The only darker one I can think of is black mondo grass, Ophio­pogon planis­ca­pus ‘Nigrescens.’ But that one’s an itty bitty thing com­pared to this big dra­matic selection.

13. Pat FitzGerald on 06 Mar 2010 at 4:35 pm #

    I meat to men­tion did you know there is a Zauch­ne­ria cal­i­for­nicum called Dublin. Its a very pretty thing grows well here maybe too well at expense of flower but it does flower very well also. Have you heard of it out there?

    Pat.

14. lostlandscape on 06 Mar 2010 at 5:35 pm #

    Pat, no, I’m not aware of that vari­ety. It sounds per­fectly suited for a moister gar­den like Gayle’s, my first com­menter here. Out here the vari­eties seem selected for showyness under drought stress, whereas Dublin might be selected for doing well with more mois­ture. It might behoove us to exper­i­ment with sev­eral vari­eties to find one that works, and not write off an entire species because of one failure.

15. tina on 07 Mar 2010 at 4:29 am #

    Good luck grow­ing it James. It looks great con­trasted with that white chalk plant. I hope it does well. So nice of Pat to respond to your inquiries.

16. Pomona Belvedere on 12 Mar 2010 at 10:06 am #

    I hadn’t heard of this cean­othus hybrid. Since I love cean­othus and black-leaved plants, I’m very inter­ested to see how this does for you — it is inter­est­ing deal­ing with these mis­cege­nous plants. Try­ing to peren­ni­al­ize hybrid tulip bulbs is sim­i­lar: they orig­i­nated in a cli­mate like mine, but the exten­sive breed­ing work in the wet climes of the Nether­lands has changed them.

    The advice about pulling off leaves and trail­ing branches is just the kind of thing I was taught in hor­ti­cul­ture class and so often for­get myself. Makes sense, though, if you want the plant to con­cen­trate on root development.

17. Pat FitzGerald on 12 Sep 2010 at 2:07 pm #

    I was reminded of your post James as I read other stuff tonight. How did your Tuxedo since? (says he ask­ing with fear:) ). I hope it did well there although your area seems a tough test for it but one lives in hope?

    Pat.

18. lostlandscape on 12 Sep 2010 at 4:50 pm #

    Hi Pat,
    Thanks for check­ing back. So far so good. It’s been a record cool year–so cool I think the plant prob­a­bly feels it never left home! Mulch, extra water, all seem to have con­tributed to the plants enjoy­ing them­selves in the gar­den a lit­tle more than before.

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