fairly cool plants

On my recent trip to the San Diego County Fair the hor­ti­cul­tural dis­plays seemed to divide into two big cat­e­gories: exhibits that fea­tured cool designs (usu­ally entered by a land­scape design firm or indi­vid­ual) and those that fea­ture some pretty cool plants (mostly in exhibits assem­bled by spe­cialty nurseries).

I’ve talked enough about the cool designs. Here are some fairly cool plants. Some have been around for cen­turies, oth­ers are fairly new to our gar­dens. Hope­fully the new intro­duc­tions are fairly tame, oth­er­wise you might be see­ing here the new exotic weed pests that’ll be keep­ing us busy for the next hun­dred years.

Ptilo­tus exal­ta­tus \‘Plat­inum Wal­laby,\’ a plant that has been show­ing up in nurs­eries this past year.

Oh look: Another note­wor­thy plant, another ptilo­tus, Down Under.

Christ­mas in July? The Ecke poin­set­tia ranch folks who sup­ply a huge per­cent­age of the world’s poin­set­tias were show­ing off this new white vari­ety, Polar Bear. My county used to be poin­set­tia cen­tral for the world, but cheaper pro­duc­tion costs have dri­ven a lot of that to Cen­tral America.

Char­treuse, green, white and near-black: Lob­u­laria Snow Princes, two kinds of ipo­moea, with Coleus Col­or­Blaze Alli­ga­tor Tears.

Gera­nium crispum, var­ie­gated form. This is one of many foliage plants that have flow­ers that don’t seem to add much to the foliage.

Gosh, yet another note­wor­thy plant with a ‘Note­wor­thy Plant’ sign next to it. (Kin­duv reminds me of those turnoffs labeled ‘scenic view­point’ on high­ways through spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes, as if you needed the sign to tell you you were look­ing at some­thing scenic or–in this case–noteworthy.) This was labeled a ‘Pine Nee­dle Fern,’ but not with its species name. My quick web trawl didn’t turn up much with that name, only a fact that it’s con­sid­ered one of the more pri­mae­val kinds of fern. Very cool, what­ever it is.

Rice flower, Ozotham­nus dios­mi­folius, a plant drought-tolerant selec­tion that, like the ptilo­tus plants, comes from Aus­tralia. You’d think they’d have run out of their notable plant signs by now.

Men­tion the word suc­cu­lent and peo­ple have visions of a fairly desert-ey land­scape. Here’s a dis­play by Cor­dova Gar­dens that instead comes off as a really lush flower arrangement.

Deute­ro­coh­nia bre­v­i­fo­lia, a fairly amaz­ing suc­cu­lent. (Edit: this is actu­ally a bromeliad!)

Mam­mi­laria parkin­so­ni­ana, a fairly amaz­ing cactus.

A nice mixed plant­ing of cac­tus and suc­cu­lents at the Solana Suc­cu­lents display.

A gor­geous pur­ple prickly pear Opun­tia Santa Rita, part of the Solana Suc­cu­lents exhibit.

Agave victoria-reginae, a nor­mally prim lit­tle bun­dle of green and white botan­i­cal joy. Check out bloom stalk in the next photo, however…

OMG, when that thing blooms, stand back! This lit­tle two-foot plant has prob­a­bly pro­duced a twelve-foot inflo­res­cence. How do you design with this plant? Is it a fore­ground plant? Or some­thing for the back­ground? Not a bad quandary to be in.


July 03 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: •

7 Responses to “fairly cool plants”

  1. Loree / danger garden on 03 Jul 2010 at 8:55 am #

    A great col­lec­tion! I fell hard for the Ptilo­tus exal­ta­tus ‘Plat­inum Wal­laby’ at our Far­West Show last August here in Port­land (how can you not love some­thing that also goes by ‘Pink Mulla Mulla’?), but unfor­tu­nately it will never live through a win­ter in my zone 8 garden.

    Love the Agave victoria-reginae bloom spike! I don’t recall hav­ing seen one of them in bloom before. I bet it was a chal­lenge to transport.

  2. Elephant's Eye on 03 Jul 2010 at 11:32 am #

    Your really lush flower arrange­ment — looks to be mostly South African suc­cu­lents. Except the 3 in the cen­tre? Inspi­ra­tion for gar­den pant­ing there!

  3. Elephant's Eye on 03 Jul 2010 at 11:32 am #

    plant­ing. Sorry.

  4. Town Mouse on 03 Jul 2010 at 3:07 pm #

    Love the suc­cu­lents and cac­tus! That county fair was really some­thing, wasn’t it? Happy 4th.

  5. Pomona Belvedere on 03 Jul 2010 at 11:04 pm #

    Enjoyed the Aus­tralian selec­tions, the lush suc­cu­lent arrange­ment, and your photo of Deute­ro­coh­nia bre­v­i­fo­lia caused instant plant lust.

    Btw, I sym­pa­thize with your “notable plant” sign uneasi­ness. In a related way, my mother always won­dered what how you were sup­posed to react to “falling rock” signs on the road: duck?

  6. Drought Smart Plants on 05 Jul 2010 at 6:23 am #

    Wow, I’ve now got a brand new plant on my want list (I’ll do more research first, I promise!) That Deu­toro­cho­nia bre­v­i­fo­lia is really gorgeous…thanks for all the great pics.

  7. peter on 30 Nov 2010 at 2:31 am #

    hi, stum­bled across your pages when look­ing for Ptilo­tus.… I am the aus­tralian breeder of ‘Plat­inum Wal­laby’ and ‘Dow­nun­der’, hope you like them there will be more in the future. The ‘Pine nee­dle fern’ you have pho­tographed is Huperzia squar­rosa syn:lycopodium squar­ro­sum… stun­ning fern allies! Regards, peter

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