[ Lost in the Landscape ]

a new weed

This past winter I was noticing a weed popping up all around the yard that I hadn’t noticed before. I was mentioning it to John, and added, “I’m not sure what it is, though think it could be some sort of euphorbia.”

Then in the gently tactful way spouses have of correcting you and pointing out your blind spots he quietly cleared his throat and pointed to one of the four young potted plants we have around the garden of Euphorbia lambii, one of my dry garden-adapted plants from the Canary Islands. “Maybe it’s that?”

Uh, like duh. What else would it be?

Last year was the first that these plants bloomed, and this spring they bloomed with a vengeance. During sunny weather over the last few weeks I’ve heard little popping noises from the direction of the plants, and have come to the conclusion that the sounds were that of seed pods exploding and jettisoning the dust-like seed everywhere.

I may come to regret the day I introduced these to the garden, which according to my records is March 9, 2008.

Speaking of weedy plants, here’s another surprise seedling from the garden, a little baby red fountain grass, one of three seedlings I noticed this year. In recent years the related green fountain grass, Pennisetum setaceum has become a noxious (though stunningly beautiful) weed and has landed high on virtually every thou-shalt-not-plant list issued for California. But many people gave a by to this related red plant. It was often pushed as being sterile and incapable of reproducing by seed, a piece of misinformation even I relayed in this blog. (I’ve corrected that earlier oops in case anyone reads that earlier post.) As you can see here it can reproduce by seed, though this form doesn’t spawn the same way regular fountain grass does. Nor is it immediately the same monster pest that feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) can be.

Poking around the web I found an updated plant description at San Marcos Growers that includes some interesting background on this plant:

Recent work in preparation for the grass sections of the Flora of North America, which will include naturalized and cultivated grasses, indicates that the name chosen for this plant will be Pennisetum advena or perhaps P. x advena. Dr. Joseph K. Wipff, previously with Texas A&M and now a turfgrass breeder, wrote the section on Pennisetum and has indicated that Red Fountain Grass is most likely a cross between P. setaceum and P. macrostachys (AKA ‘Burgundy Giant’). As a hybrid the name would most appropriately be Pennisetum x advena ‘Rubrum’. The latin word advena means “newly arrived” or “stranger.”

So is it safe to plant this form of fountain grass? Here’s my thinking: Hybrids between species are often sterile. (Think of mules, the offspring of a horse and a donkey.) But every now and then something happens that allows the hybrid to reproduce. Sometimes the seedlings will be just as nearly sterile as the immediate parent, but other times a mutation could render the seedling entirely fertile. In that latter scenario the nearly-sterile fountain grass could turn into something with the ugly invasive potential of its Pennisetum setaceum ancestor.

In other words, today I would be cautious and not plant it. Unfortunately, almost twenty years ago, we designed the front yard around a big mound of the stuff. The plants look stunning and move graciously in response to the breezes. Their size is perfect for the spot, and their red color is unmatched among other grasses. Every now and then I look at other options, like those recommended in the Don’t Plant a Pest brochure put out by the California Invasive Plant Council. But these lists often fall short in the alternatives they offer and end up reading like, “Cheesecake is bad for you. Would you like to eat this delicious raw rutabaga instead?” So…I’m still looking for the perfect replacement plant—hopefully some sort of native, but in the meantime I’m pulling the occasional seedlings.

June 20 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Euphorbia lambii • Fountain grass • invasive plants • Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' • weeds | 10 Comments »

deformity or biological wonder?

There are some things I just don’t get. Waffles topped with fried chicken and syrup, for one thing. Crested succulents, another.

A trip to a cactus show or nursery site for succulents will likely turn up a section devoted to plants with crested (or “cristate”) and monstrose growths. Generally I find that the shapes of plants are interesting enough, and I usually don’t go gaga over some genetic oddball.

But the oddball cresting behavior found its way to the garden anyway. This is a young Euphorbia lambii in the back yard, one of four I have growing in pots.

Here’s a closeup…

And here’s a view from the top…

The typical habit for this plant is to produce branches that are distributed around its growing tip, something that you can see in this normal lambii nearby. With the crested mutation, the apical meristem, the point where new growth emerges, has changed from a point to a line. So instead of a cylindrical stem with branches all around, you get a stem that grows flat, like a cobra’s hood, with new growths distributed along that line.

From what research I’ve done it isn’t apparent what causes this particular mutation. The genus Euphorbia, however, is one of those where you could encounter it fairly commonly. (If there’s anything in the plant’s environment that caused it, I wonder if might be drought stress. Of the four plants, this one received the least amount of water. A couple times it came close to defoliating. All the others are growing normally.)

I’ll admit that the crested growth interesting. Maybe I’ll learn to love it. But I’m not there yet…

June 22 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: crested succulents • cristation • Euphorbia lambii • mutations | 2 Comments »

steel cube planters, part 1

This is the result of one of my weekend projects:

It’s one of four steel cubes that I assembled to put in the new raised bed. The sides of the bed are made of sheet steel that’s already weathered to a rich, warm, rusty patina, so I wanted some pots to put in it that were of the same material.

John vetoed my first avant-garde conceptual ideas for arrangements, arrangements that worked with competing systems of geometrical hierarchies, one of them based in part on some of the ideas behind Bernard Tschumi’s postmodernist and highly conceptual Parc de la Villette in Paris. But below is one that I finally came up with that makes us both happy. It has some of the geometrical tensions that I wanted to work with. At the same time, the arrangement of the elements is a little chaotic and whimsical—to the point that none of them sit flat on the ground—a quality that appealed to John.

Each pot is planted with the identical plant material. Euphorbia lambii is placed in the center, pointing as perfectly upright and away from the earth’s core as I could manage without getting out the level, an effect that I’m hoping will point out how crookedly each planter is placed. Creeping thyme will eventually protect the top of the slanted top plane of potting mix.

This is an overview of two of the other containers in the garden space, here in the middle- and background, with part of the new stepping stone pathway:

If you have basic of welding chops and a supplier that will pre-cut pieces fairly accurately, you can make them yourself in an afternoon. You could also make similar containers by screwing the steel plate to little pieces of angle iron. Part 2 of this post provides some basic instructions for the welded version shown here.

March 24 2008 | Categories: landscape design • my garden | Tags: Bernard Tschumi • Euphorbia lambii • Parc de la Villette • planters | 5 Comments »