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”:
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.
Here’s a look at a new groundcover I’m trying out. The plant, Nuttall’s milkvetch (Astragalus nuttallii) is native to coastal Central California, and seems to be adapting easily to my coastal San Diego location–maybe a little too well!
Las Pilitas Nursery, who seems to be the only firm propagating the species, estimates its height to be 3–18 inches and 18 to 36 inches wide. The plant went into the ground October 12, and has topped out at a foot or so high–so far so good. But its spread, now at over six feet, has easily hit more than double the estimated maximum plant size. And that’s with no supplemental watering after the first couple of months in the ground. We’ll see if it slows down as the weather warms and the ground dries out.
The milkvetch bore some of these small, ivory-white flowers on it in October, and it’s never been without them in the intervening six months. Now that the weather is warming, the plant is getting even more interested in flowering.
As much as I enjoy its flowers, my favorite thing about this milkvetch is its delicate foliage. It’s fern-like, and so far has maintained its clean, green-to-grayish green coloration. I have the plant at front edge of the retaining wall next to the front sidewalk, so it’s easy to get face to face with the flowers and leaves. A front of the bed location would also let people enjoy this delicately textured plant.
So, if you’d like a distinctive, delicate, low, mounding groundcover for a dry spot in a zone 9 or 10 landscape, this might be just the ticket, even if the plant might get a little wide and need to be cut back.
PS: I should also mention that one of this milkvetch’s common names is “locoweed,” and the plant is supposedly poisonous. I have no idea whether it’s in the category of nightshade or no more dangerous than tomato plants. Since I have no small children around or pets that get into anything other than catnip, I’ve never let an interesting plant’s supposed toxicity stop me from growing it. But you might consider that before planting a couple acres of it.
I was in the front yard this morning, watering in some new native plants that I’d planted a couple weekends ago. It was a few minutes of quality time, me with the plants, crouched down, the hose on a slow trickle, the water puddling slowly into the little basins I’d built around each plant.
It also ended being some interesting quality time with the neighbors. Olinda from next door pulled up in her car from having dropped her grandson off at school. Usually she waves and goes up her steps, but this time she came over to where I was watering.
Seems like something weird had happened overnight. When she got into her car this morning her grandson had smelled something. Olinda looked down into the car’s ashtray and saw a cigarette butt. “And we don’t smoke,” she emphasized.
Yes, she’d left the car unlocked overnight, and one of the windows had been rolled down. But she thought it was extra-strange. The whole family hears things in and around the house all the time, she reported. “I think our house is huanted.” And a grandson had seen a bruja, a witch, inside the house not long ago.
I am such a skeptic with all things paranormal. But Olinda’s comments got me thinking.
Astragalus nuttallii, photographed by Beatrice F. Howitt [ source ]
Last weekend I’d put into the ground a gallon plant of rattle-weed or Nuttall’s milkvetch (Astragalus nuttallii), a low little groundcover with delicate, blue-gray foliage, cream colored flowers and some outrageously overscaled seed pods. It’s a plant native to the coastal counties from Los Angeles to north of San Francisco, and not one you often see see in gardens.
Within two days of my planting it, John came to me with a puzzled expression. “You planted a new plant by the front walkway the other day, didn’t you?”
“It’s gone.”
I went out to look, but it was after dark. I felt around with my hands a bit but couldn’t feel anything where the plant had been. Checking back during daylight all I saw was dirt. No nubs, no hole where the plant had been dug out. Nothing. The only signs of struggle were a few oxalis bulbs strewn on the surface, bulbs that I’d unearthed and then replanted in the course of planting the milkvetch.
Of course a critter of some sort was probably responsible for the disappearance. But it was odd that one of the plants I’d been watering this morning was another milkvetch plant that I’d set into the ground a week before the one that had vanished. Sited less than twenty feet away, it looked happy and completely untouched.
So is the neighborhood haunted by a witch with a taste for milkvetch plants and cigarettes? Or just voles or possums? Or maybe a phantom gardener who’s raiding the street for interesting little plants? Now that last one would be really scary…
