some local yellow daisies

As the big spring bloom winds down I’ve been struck by how many of the native plants have yel­low flow­ers. It clearly offers the plants an evo­lu­tion­ary advan­tage since bees love yel­low and bees are some of the major pol­li­na­tors. This is a lit­tle roundup of the three yel­low daisy-flowered shrubs and sub-shrubs that I grow.

Coast sun­flower as you find it…at the coast.

Encelia cal­i­for­nica hails from the more coastal edges of South­ern and Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia, hence its com­mon name of “coast sun­flower.” A dark cen­tral but­ton anchors golden yel­low rays that shoot out in an infor­mal cir­cle. It’s a pop­u­lar choice for both gar­dens flow­er­ing road­side wild­flower mixes.

The green, green leaves of this encelia.

With so many other natives bear­ing gray­ish leaves, the bright green leaves of this plant really stand out. I’ve seen it used locally, where an occa­sional drink dur­ing the sum­mer can help keep it green and flow­er­ing through the sum­mer. In my gar­den the plants have a mostly unir­ri­gated spot behind a fence, so they exer­cise their nat­ural ten­dency to defo­li­ate and stop bloom­ing when the weather warms.

Giant core­op­sis, Core­op­sis gigan­tea, earns its name more from the tall plant size rather than the size of its flow­ers. The weird plant will even­tu­ally form what looks like a trunk from three to six feet tall that sprout finely-cut leaves. This takes a few years–My two year old seedlings are in the two to two and a half foot tall range. Blooms are perky yel­low daisies about three inches across. I planted a lit­tle grove of these in a back cor­ner of the gar­den, but the grove has dwin­dled to just a few plants thanks to a gopher that found the lit­tle tree trunks too deli­cious to pass up. Grrrr. Times like this I hate hate the full cir­cle of nature.

This last one’s San Diego County sun­flower. The cur­rent botan­i­cal name is Bahiop­sis lacini­ata though I and every­one else I know around here learned its name as Vigu­iera lacinata. Its flow­ers come in at about an inch and a half across, so it’s smaller than the pre­vi­ous two. But a bloom­ing bush of it makes a low, neat mound in the gar­den or in the local wilds. Of these three, the flow­ers have the most “refined” look to them–if you con­sider French marigolds and yel­low cos­mos to be refined plants. Because of it being a local plant it’s a fairly com­mon denizen of local native plant gar­dens. Also, a lot of coastal-zone road­side restora­tion projects around here seem to have this plant in the mix.

Although I’ve call all of these “daisies,” each has its own spe­cial char­ac­ter and use in the gar­den. The encelia is a great pick for its long bloom when watered. The core­op­sis is a perky mass of flow­ers when it’s in bloom, but few Cal­i­for­nia natives stand up to it in weird­ness dur­ing its leaf­less state in the sum­mer and fall. The San Diego County sun­flower is a nice tidy mound with so many flow­ers you might con­fuse it for an an annual. But it’s best to plant some decoy plants around it for the dry parts of year when it dies back.

Give them a try. The bees will thank you.

May 26 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • | 7 Comments »

live, from california…

A plant’s name can often help give you a sense of place as to where the plant orig­i­nated. I’ve been notic­ing recently that a lot of plants in the gar­den have species names that are either “cal­i­for­nica” or “cal­i­for­ni­cus.” I guess you can’t get much more Cal­i­for­nia than that.

california-poppy-closeup

First is our ever-popular state flower, the Cal­i­for­nia poppy, Escholzia cal­i­for­nica. Most of you are famil­iar with this form, the bright orange one that comes in Cal­i­for­nia wild­flower mixes. I planted some seed a decade ago, and these come back every year, some where they did the pre­vi­ous year, some a few feet away. But for me they’re not the wan­der­ing world trav­eler that they are for some peo­ple. (They’ve nat­u­ral­ized in parts of Chile and are on the pest (but not inva­sive) species list for Ten­nessee.)

escholzia-californica-maritima

escholzia-californica-maritima-in-situ

This year I’m also grow­ing from seed the form of the species that you actu­ally find in this part of the state, Escholzia cal­i­for­nica mar­itima. The flow­ers are about a third of the size of the orange ver­sion, and are gold shad­ing to a yellow-orange. My pam­pered plants are tak­ing their time flow­er­ing, so these are images of plants in the winds, on the bluffs over­look­ing the ocean south of Del Mar. Once these start bloom­ing, I’ll prob­a­bly cut back the orange ones so the two strains don’t hybridize.

artemesia-and-escholzia

And here’s the clas­sic orange poppy in the gar­den grow­ing in the mid­dle of a pros­trate form of Cal­i­for­nia sage­brush, Artemisia cal­i­for­nica ‘Canyon Gray.’ While most of the forms of sage­brush are, well, brushy and upright, this selec­tion from the Chan­nel Islands off the coast of Ven­tura grows near the ground and sprawls a bit. The plant can get a lit­tle leggy in the mid­dle, so a well-placed vol­un­teer poppy seedling can be the best way to con­ceal that fact.

ranunculus-californicus

I wrote last year about this wild ranun­cu­lus, Ranun­cu­lus cal­i­for­ni­cus, or Cal­i­for­nia but­ter­cup. It dis­ap­pears not long after flow­er­ing, but it’s a nice pres­ence dur­ing early spring.

encelia-californica

The coast sun­flower, Encelia cal­i­for­nica, con­tin­ues the yellow-to-orange theme. My plants were planted only recently and aren’t bloom­ing yet. This is a stand of it at Tor­rey Pines Pre­serve this past Mon­day, doing just fine with nat­ural rain­fall. (It won’t be quite so orna­men­tal once the mois­ture gives out, however.)

carpenteria-californica

The last one I’ll share today has got to be one of the more spec­tac­u­lar Cal­i­for­ni­ans, the bush anenome, Car­pen­te­ria cal­i­for­nica. The flow­ers began to open just this week. This species hails from the Sierra foothills where it can become quite the large shrub. My plant has tripled in size in one year, though it’s still not more than three feet tall. It can triple in size again, and then I’m get­ting the prun­ing shears. Pretty flow­ers, though, no?

March 27 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • • • • • • • • | 5 Comments »