bloom day: natives at home and in the wild

This is why I enjoy grow­ing native plants: On a quick hike through my nearby Tecolote Canyon Nat­ural Park there were a few plants bloom­ing away, hardly aware it’s mid­sum­mer and three months since the last real rain. And when I came home some of the same species were bloom­ing just as exu­ber­antly in my gar­den. That’s a great sense of con­nec­tion with the wild, and I get a sense that parts of my gar­den are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ti­nu­ity of nature.

The com­mon Cal­i­for­nia flat-top buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum:

In the wilds (actu­ally a reveg park­ing strip) with sea­side daisy (Encelia Californica)

At home, one the eas­ment slope gar­den, doing bat­tle with the neighbor’s sacred iceplant


Blad­der­pod, Iso­meris arborea, with its bee-magnet yel­low flowers.

Trail-side

At home, in a mixed plant­ing of natives and exotics


The totally awe­some sacred datura, Datura wrightii.

In the wilds, the form with a pale laven­der edging

Also in the wilds, the all-white form

…at home, also on the slope garden


Amaryl­lis bel­ladonna (“naked ladies”) is native to South Africa, but there were two lit­tle clus­ters in the canyon. They don’t really col­o­nize the canyons and gen­er­ally aren’t con­sid­ered inva­sive. They were a sur­prise and I won­der if some­one planted them here. And at home I also hap­pened to have the first of them bloom­ing in the garden.

One of the ‘wild’ amaryllis

…another of the ‘wild’ amaryllis

…and the amaryl­lis back home, in the garden


In the canyon there were a few other things going at it:

Blue elder­berry blooms and fruit (Sam­bu­cus nigra ssp. cerulea, for­merly Sam­bu­cus mex­i­cana)

Oenothera elata, a prim­rose that blooms on tall spires

Lau­rel sumac, Mal­osma laurinia

Coy­ote melon (Cucur­bita palmata). It’s gen­er­ally con­sid­ered ined­i­ble. I tried one once. I agree.

Nes­tled in the dead stems of the inva­sive fen­nel is this other non-native. It looks like some sort of gar­den nicotiana

Your basic Rosa cal­i­for­nica flower…

…and pods

The very cool fiber optic grass, Isolep­sis cernua


And at home were some Cal­i­for­nia plants that either weren’t bloom­ing in the canyon or aren’t native to this area:

Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astra­galus nut­talii, with its noisy rattle-like pods

Cal­i­for­nia sealaven­der (Limo­nium cal­i­for­nicum) the only sta­t­ice native to California

Cleve­land sage at the end of its sum­mer bloom­ing, with the gor­geous grass, pur­ple three awn (Aris­tida pur­purea)

San Diego sun­flower (Bahiop­sis lacini­ata), not look­ing great, but con­sid­er­ing it’s bat­tling ice­plant on the slope gar­den and hasn’t been rained on or watered in over three months, it’s not doing that badly

The desert mal­low (Sphaer­al­cea ambigua) could prob­a­bly stand being cut back a bit, but it still has a small few blooms on its almost leaf­less stems. I’m really com­ing to enjoy the light green, slightly yel­low color of the plant, a great con­trast against sil­ver or dark green foliage


If the naked lady amaryl­lis weren’t porno­graphic enough, here are some of the non-natives bloom­ing in the gar­den right now. It’s August, and the flower count isn’t what it was three months ago.

Salvia Hot Lips and a big pink bougainvillea

Closer view of Salvia Hot Lips. As the weather warms, this one of three plants is show­ing more red with the white in the flow­ers. The other two plants are still mostly white

A really fra­grant gin­ger, Hedy­chium coc­cineum ‘Tara’

Soci­ety gar­lic (Tul­baghia vio­lacea) is a com­mon xeriscape plant, but it’s so adapt­able that it’ll grow with its roots stand­ing in water, as you see here in the pond. It has as much of an aroma as the gin­ger, but I wouldn’t exactly call it fragrant…

But­ter­fly bush, Clero­den­drum myri­coides. The flow­ers are nice, but peo­ple don’t talk enough about how pleas­ant the plant smells when you touch it

…and under­neath the but­ter­fly bush, this tidy lit­tle lead wort or dwarf plumbago (Cer­atostigma plumbagi­noides). It does fine in dap­pled sun­light with very lit­tle added water

A cac­tus and some suc­cu­lents drap­ing over a wall. Bloom­ing is Cras­sula fal­cata, in the same big fam­ily as all the Cal­i­for­nia Dud­leya species

…and a closeup of the Cras­sula flow­ers, show­ing the red petals and lit­tle gold shocks of the sta­mens. This one’s worth look­ing at up close


These last plants def­i­nitely aren’t Cal­i­for­nia natives, but they’re native to some­where. If I lived in those places, I’d prob­a­bly want them in my garden.

Check out the other gar­den­ers around the world par­tic­i­pat­ing in this month’s Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day. Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing this event.

August 14 2010 08:49 pm | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: • • •

16 Responses to “bloom day: natives at home and in the wild”

  1. Blackswampgirl Kim on 14 Aug 2010 at 9:29 pm #

    I feel like I just vis­ited an exotic for­eign country’s GBBD! (Although, Cal­i­for­nia has enough var­ied cli­mate for a few dif­fer­ent coun­tries of its own, really, right?)

    I’m glad you pointed out that laven­der edge on the first datura pic­ture. It’s so sub­tle that I think I would have missed it on my own. But what I’m really drool­ing over is the cras­sula fal­cata. I’ve seen that funky foliage at the botan­i­cal gar­den here, and occa­sion­ally in a local gar­den center’s house­plant sec­tion. Had I known it looked so cool in flower, too, I would def­i­nitely have picked it up!

  2. Town Mouse on 15 Aug 2010 at 7:31 am #

    Too much fun! I can’t wait to return to my own gar­den, finally, next week, but in the mean­time, I’m so glad to see your blooms.

  3. Donna on 15 Aug 2010 at 9:07 am #

    The native plants are sooo inter­est­ing at this time of year. Being on oppo­site side of the coun­try, I am unfa­mil­iar with much of what you have shown.I enjoyed the tour.

  4. lostlandscape on 15 Aug 2010 at 1:13 pm #

    Kim, some of the plants def­i­nitely come from pretty dis­tant lands. I hope you have luck bloom­ing the cras­sula if you add it to your col­lec­tion. It prob­a­bly would bloom for you if you were to grow it out­doors dur­ing your warmer parts of the year.

    TM, I’m sure it’ll be great to be home, but it looks like Boul­der is treat­ing you really well!

    Donna, I’m glad you could come along on my lit­tle hike and then the trip around the gar­den. We’re lucky to be able to grow so many things, though many of them require more water than our lim­ited resources allow.

  5. ricki - sprig to twig on 15 Aug 2010 at 3:13 pm #

    What fun to see things in the wild and then in your gar­den. It rein­forces the ‘right plant, right place’ mantra. Food for thought, as well as a delight­ful tour. Thanks!

  6. Jean on 15 Aug 2010 at 5:00 pm #

    James, I really enjoyed see­ing the same plants in the wild and in your gar­den. Do you know what the range of Oenothera elata is? I had what I assumed was Oenothera bien­nis (which are very com­mon here) pop up in the gravel out­side my base­ment door. It started bloom­ing at about 6′ tall and fell over under its own weight when it got to about 8′. Maybe it was O. elata.

  7. ryan on 15 Aug 2010 at 5:46 pm #

    Very cool to see the same plants hik­ing and in your gar­den. I wish I could get datura to grow like I see it when I go down south. I’ve been want­ing to try the native limo­nium. It looks nice.

  8. Gayle Madwin on 15 Aug 2010 at 6:57 pm #

    I also love see­ing my gar­den plants in the wild. I took one of our dogs for a walk last week and saw two of my gar­den plants in the wild — Cal­i­for­nia grape and nar­rowleaf milk­weed — and con­sid­ered post­ing side-by-side com­par­isons sim­i­lar to yours. Maybe I’ll get around to mak­ing a sep­a­rate post about the walk.

    Your native Datura is gor­geous! Some­thing is wrong with mine. It resprouted after the win­ter, but it’s just stay­ing about six inches tall and wide, and not bloom­ing. I guess it must be get­ting too much water, but it’s in the front yard where there’s a slight slope, so plants nor­mally sur­vive there that would drown any­where else.

  9. Wendy on 15 Aug 2010 at 8:01 pm #

    every­thing is really nice. I love the nat­ural beauty of it all. REally inter­est­ing. Actu­ally, it’s mak­ing my gar­den feel really gaudy with it’s col­ors and non-nativeness. Love that fiber optic grass.

    I’d love to see more of your slope — maybe on a slow blog­ging week?

  10. Denise on 15 Aug 2010 at 8:30 pm #

    Won­der­ful tour. I love your mix of CA natives and exotics, which trans­lates into a beau­ti­ful and engross­ing gar­den for August, not an easy thing to accom­plish! That coy­ote melon is gorgeous.

  11. Bernie on 15 Aug 2010 at 8:56 pm #

    So many great blooms … gor­geous Cras­sula, won­der­ful Gin­ger and the Clero­den­drum is beau­ti­ful. You showed a ter­rific col­lec­tion of natives … in the canyon and in your gar­den … loved the Sea Laven­der. A great post.

  12. Brad on 15 Aug 2010 at 10:16 pm #

    Wow. You’ve got a lot bloom­ing, both at home and nearby. Thanks for the but­ter­fly bush pic. My neigh­bor has it and I walk by it all the time and admire it, but didn’t know what it was. I also didn’t real­ize it had a nice smell if touched. I’ll make sure to brush up against it next time I pass by. It’s a beau­ti­ful plant.

  13. kate/high altitude gardening on 16 Aug 2010 at 6:16 am #

    What a fan­tas­tic assort­ment of native flow­ers. I’m green with envy over your kind cli­mate and grow­ing zone. :) I tried to pur­chase that amaryl­lis bel­ladonna for my gar­den this year, sold out. Now I’m won­der­ing if it will be inva­sive since you have it grow­ing wild? Any­hoo, every­thing is just gor­geous. Happy bloom day!

  14. Barbara E on 16 Aug 2010 at 11:29 am #

    Well put, James. I too really enjoy the con­nec­tion between my “wild” gar­den and local open space. Love your datura. I don’t have any but think I ought to grow it! Happy August.

  15. Susan Krzywicki on 17 Aug 2010 at 11:07 am #

    Is that Datura the same that Geor­gia O’Keefe painted?

  16. lostlandscape on 17 Aug 2010 at 6:05 pm #

    Wow! Thanks, every­one for stop­ping by this post!And thanks for all your great com­ments. For those of you that left a question:

    Wendy, I’ve been mean­ing to post some­thing on the slope one of these days. I’ll try to move it higher on the list.

    Kate, I’m 100% cer­tain this plant wouldn’t be inva­sive where you are, and I really haven’t heard of it being a prob­lem here. Nor have I ever seen it in the wild until now. This canyon is sur­rounded by sub­ur­bia on 3 sides.

    Susan, I’m not sure if it’s the same species, but def­i­nitely the same genus as the one Geor­gia O’Keefe painted. I left my detailed botan­i­cal book some­where out in the back­coun­try, so I can’t key out her plant ver­sus mine. I know you can count the num­ber of tips to the petals to tell some dat­uras apart. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if what she painted was jim­son weed, D. stromo­nium, a more wide­spread but smaller-flowered version.

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