I was looking at my blooming Agave attenuata and noticed something for the first time. The flowers on its spike have been opening asymmetrically, with the south-facing buds opening a few days earlier than the ones on the shaded side. I guess it’s the agave equivalent of moss growing on the shaded north side of a tree trunk. As I looked at all the agaves in the neighborhood, I was noticing the same thing: All the south-facing buds open first. It makes sense, I guess, with the sun-warmed buds developing sooner than the ones growing in the shade. There must be a botanical term for this—I’ll see if I can’t look it up sometime.
Something else I noticed the other week was that two of the little rosettes growing underneath the growth producing the big spike are also blooming. They’re nice, but the blooms get pretty lost in the foliage.
And compared to the big main spike, which must be something like twelve or more feet from base to tip, you can see how it’d be easy to overlook the little pups…
In the photo above you can make out this big red aloe in the background, Aloe arborescens. The clump began as a one-gallon plant in the early nineties. Now it’s probably six feet tall and twelve across.
February in Southern California is a busy month for flowering plants. Here’s a selection of what else is blooming in the garden.
This raised planter of Oxalis purpurea is the first part of the garden that visitors encounter as they head up the front steps. Dozens of white flowers and a lone pink one in the front. Oops.
Verbena lilacina, greened up from the rains, beginning to hit its stride.
One of several plants of Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astragalus nuttallii, that I raised from seed last summer.
Snapdragon-relative Galvezia speciosa ‘Firecracker,’ never a prolific bloomer for me, though mine’s a young plant.
The pink-flowered, purple-leaved form of Oxalis purpurea.
Carpenteria californica, a California plant that reminds me a lot of sasanqua camellias in its simple contrast of stamens against broad petals.
First flowers on Phlomis monocephala.
February flowers on a yellow crassula that I’ve forgotten the name of…
The final blooms of the season on another crassula, your basic jade plant, Crassula ovata…
The fragrant Solanum parishii, a widespread California native, doing battle on the slope garden against iceplant, Algerian ivy and Bermuda buttercup.
Freeway daisies (Osteospermun) below, with black sage (Salvia mellifera, prostrate form) above.
Keeping up the daisy theme, Arctotis acaulis hybrid…
Another actotis, ‘Big Magneta’…
…and a final photo, a final arctotis, shown against a piece of garden art made from glass, steel, and concrete.
As always, my thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Even with snow on the ground many places up north, there’s still plenty in bloom today in warmer, more southern locations, and on windowsills and greenhouses around the world. Check them out [ here ].
February 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Agave attenuata • flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • native plants | 32 Comments »
White Oxalis purpurea closing up for the evening.
Detail of white Oxalis purpurea thinking about some shut-eye.
Purple-leaved Oxalis purpurea closing up in the late afternoon shade.
A lot of the flowering plants in the garden don’t bother opening their petals until the sun’s up and then shut their flowers as soon as the light begins to fade and temperatures drop in the afternoon. Over the weekend I was noticing this going on with my oxalis plants and, less dramatically, with my arctotis.
There must be a name for this behavior, I thought, and so off I went looking for an answer. Before long up pop three interesting words: photonasty, thermonasty and nyctinasty.
According to one of the sources, the Textbook of Botany by Chhatwal and Singh, photonasty happens when a plant senses light and reacts to it by opening or closing its flowers. Because of this, morning glories open in the…well, morning. Then there’s thermonasty, where flowers react primarily to temperature. Tulips will open with a rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius, while a crocus will zip open when the temperature rises just a half degree.
And then there’s the more complex phenomenon of nyctinasty, which “is influenced by the intensity of light and also temperature differentials, the former stimulus being more powerful and effective. The foliage leaves and also the floral leaves in many species of plants…attain different positions at day time and at night viz during the day, the leaflets remain open or spread up in case of Oxalis, clever beans, alfalfa, etc., while by the onset of darkness they close down. This is also known as sleep movement.”
Yesterday afternoon was pretty bright, but cool. The oxalis barely opened before shutting back up. So it requires both heat and warmth to open fully. So nyctinasty makes sense. The arctotis seemed to open more fully, earlier in the day. My guess is that they respond more simply, mainly to light, which would mean that they exhibit photonasty. (What’s truly going on could be lots more complex than this and really might only be solved by experimentation, a point made in an article, “Flower opening and closure: a review” by Wouter G. van Doorn and Uulke van Meeteren in the Journal of Experimental Botany. Read the interesting text [ here ].)
Next I need to find out what “clever beans” are.
In my web trawl it turns out I’m not the only garden blogger looking at this phenomenon this week. Tilthy Rich took a quick spin around nyctinasty [ here ]. Maybe he has the same plants blooming, making him ask the same questions…
Flowers of Arctotis acaulis ‘Big Magenta’ beginning to fold up for the night.
Another clone of Artotis acaulis closing up in the afternoon: Photonasty? Thermonasty? Nyctinasty?
February 08 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: arctotis • flowers • nyctinasty • oxalis • photonasty • thermonasty | 12 Comments »
Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’ would be in every month’s bloom day posting because it never has stopped blooming for me since it went into the ground two years ago. The plants are getting huge and taking more than their share of the garden, and I’ll have to admit that they’re on my list of flowers that I’m almost tired of seeing. But because of these plants, the hummingbirds are a constant presence in the back yard. I’d hate to do anything rash like remove their favorite year-round source of nectar.
A while back I had to find out what it was about these plants that was so appealing. I took one of the flowers and popped it into my mouth. A tiny hit of flavor, faint but sweet, registered on my tongue. Pretty tasty if you’re a bird addicted to nectar. But I wondered if I was pimping my neighborhood birds with sugar water in the way a busy suburban parent might keep their kids supplied with gallons of soda.
Some other plants that are in the “I’m almost sick and tire of seeing them all the time” category: Salvia nemerosa ‘Snow Hills,’ Gaillardia pulchella, and Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost.’ They’re all in the gallery of flowers below.
The season also brings some new blooms to the fall garden: Oxalis bowiei, Protea Pink Ice, Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra,’ lemongrass, and the plant formerly known as Lessingia filanginifolia var. californica (now relabeled as Corethrogyne filaginifolia var. californica). And then there are the sporadic bloomers. You can’t set your calendar by them, but they’re nice to have around. Hover over any image below for their name.
Happy Bloom Day, and thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting this monthly online garden party.
November 14 2009 | Categories: my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day | 14 Comments »
For this month’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day I have some closeup photos of some of what’s blooming in the garden. I’ve done a couple posts on using backgrounds behind plants (Background check / One way to photogrpah a tree). Inspired, all but one of these shots uses a white sheet of matboard placed behind the plants. Each color of background presents a different end result. Using white accentuates dark flowers and stems, and some of these photos are a busy network of dark lines against the light background.
There are some newcomers just coming into bloom, but many plants have been in bloom for several months. When life gives you more of the same flowers…well, I was thinking I’d try to photograph them a little differently.
I suspect the neighbors think I’m odd enough taking pictures of everything in the garden, and I thought it’d be extra-distressing if I were to be walking around the garden with a big white board as well as the camera. As a result all of these are from the quiet privacy of the back yard, with the exception of the one plant without a white background.
Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea.
Lion’s tail, Leonotis leonorus; Desert mallow, Sphaeralcea
ambigua.
Peruvian daffodil, Hymenocallis festalis; Freeway daisy, Osteospermum sp.
Verbena bonariensis; Juncus patens (with fallen leaf caught in the plant).
Some salvias:
Salvia nemerosa ‘Snow Hills’; Ivy-leaved sage (Salvia cacaliaefolia).
On the left is Andean sage (Salvia discolor with its almost black flowers set in light green calyces; on the right is Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips.’
Some California buckwheats:
Flat-topped buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum)
San Miguel Island buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens)
St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum)
Butterfly bush (Clero- dendrum ugan- dense); seed pod of whitetop pitcher plant (Sarracenia leucophylla).
Pink and white double bougainvillea (unknown variety); Agastache aurantiaca ‘Apricot Sprite.’
Pink double bougainvillea (another unknown variety); toloache (Datura wrightii).
Thanks again the Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. It’s a terrific way to build community among garden bloggers wanting to share the flowers in their gardens. Check out this month’s offerings!
July 14 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: buckwheats • Eriogonum • flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • sages • salvias | 16 Comments »
The spring orgy of flowers is winding down. Some spring bulbs flashed for just a few days and were gone. But it didn’t really matter because they were replaced by something else interesting.
Summer’s flowers seem to come at a more measured pace. But for me it’s a different sort of pleasure, letting me focus on more subtle things like plant forms, leaf colors and textures.
Here’s some of what’s still blooming from spring, along with the beginnings of plants that will accompany me through the summer months.
The flowers above, left to right, top to bottom:
1: Blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella).
2: Lavender cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus—I have to look up the spelling of this species every time).
3: Deerweed (Lotus scoparius) You might confuse this California native for one of the invasive brooms. It’ll drop most of its leaves to survive the summer drought, but the delicate wands of branches stay attractive—at least to my eyes.
4. St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum)—a buckwheat from the California Channel Islands and coastal regions. This is a young plant, but its umbels are already huge—the largest in this photo is two feet across.
5. Santa Cruz Island buckwheat (Eriogonum arborescens)—another California buckwheat.
6. This is a Crinum that came with the house. It might be C. powellii.
7. Verbena bonariensis—a flower that’s exactly the same color as the verbena in the final picture in this post, though their plant and flower forms are totally different.
8. Clarkia williamsonii.
9. Same as 6.
10. Brodiaea species, one that I lost my records for—maybe B. elegans (anybody know this one?).
11. Butterfly bush (Clerodendrum myricoides ‘Ugandense’)—In the same family as mints and sages, this has square stems and a delicate scent to the leaves and stems. It enjoys water but doesn’t get much of it and still looks presentable.
12. Verbena lilacina, a tough species from the Isla de Cedros, off the coast of Baja. At first glance it looks like the lavender lantana many people around here grow, but the leaves are totally different. Here it’s planted alongside some succulents with red and blue-gray leaves.
Thanks again to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!
June 14 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • spring • summer | 14 Comments »
It’s spring, all right. The garden continues to bloom away manically, but the outdoor places around town have been no slouch, either, when it comes to flowers.
This Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gardens, features a gallery of some blooms from the garden mixed in with blooms from Mission Trails Regional Park in San Diego.
In the top photo from Mission Trails you can see that the yellow-flowered deerweed, Lotus scoparius, has colonized many of the sunny areas that burned four and a half years ago. As the landscape recovers, other plants will come in and stake their claims. The second image from near the top of Fortuna Peak shows that other areas are also recovering from the fires, though slower than farther downslope.
You can hover over each image below for its name, or click it to see a larger photo. While you can probably tell what’s a wild plant and what’s in the garden, there’s an answer key at the end if you’re into quizzing yourself. (A few of thee are tricky in that they’re local native plants that have been incorporated into the garden.)
Answers:
Wild, garden, garden;
garden, wild, wild;
wild, garden wild;
garden, garden, garden;
garden, wild, garden;
wild, garden, wild;
wild, wild, wild.
April 15 2009 | Categories: gardening • landscape | Tags: Add new tag • fire • fire ecology • flowers • gbbd • in bloom • Mission Trails Regional Park | 5 Comments »
May Dreams Gardens has been hosting the Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day for a while now. This is my first go at it, with a big sampling of what’s blooming in the back yard garden right now. Several of the shots are of the same plant, so it might seem like there’s more in bloom than might first appear: When life gives you fewer flowers, you look at each one closer!
In the photos above are:
- Ranunculus Tecolote (white)
- Oxalis purpurea (white form)
- Oxalis, random self-sown hybrid
- Salvia nemerosa ‘Snow Hills’
- Alysum that has self-sown from a planting 15 or more years ago. The originals were white and purple. The new ones come all-white, or mixtures of white and purple
- African daisy (arctotis hybrids)
- Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium bellum)
- Solanum pyracanthum
- Cestrum fasciculatum ‘Newellii’
- Mother of thousands (Kalanchoe daigremontiana)
- Protea Pink Ice
- Melampodium Derby
- Aeonium species
- Your basic calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica)
- Euphorbia lambii, in bud
- Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii
- Mizuna, escaped from a vegetable garden planting 10+ years ago
- Alpine strawberry
- Hopi red dye amaranth
- Heliotrope
- Bird of paradise
- Epidendrum orchids (red, orange)
I have a few cool California natives beginning to flower in the front yard, and I’ll post more of them soon.
February 15 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • in bloom | 15 Comments »
Here’s a little helping of some of what was blooming in the garden today.
I wanted to have a little more fun with the pictures than showing you a slideshow of the garden. Only the first one, Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra’ with an attendant ant, is a basic straightforward shot. The rest are cropped and then collaged together. See if you can guess what everything is.
There’s an answer key at the end.
Camellia sasanqua
Monday florals 2
Monday florals 1
Monday Florals 3
Monday Florals 4
The answers (top to bottom, left to right):
Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra’
Paperwhite narcissus
Alyssum
Plectranthus verticillatus (Creeping Charlie) flowers
Epidendrum hybrid, red
Solanum pyracanthum
Thai basil blooms
Strawberry blossom
Melampodium Derby (volunteer from last season)
Epidendrum hybrid, orange
Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’
Cestrum elegans
Gaillardia pulchella (Blanket flower)
Salvia nemorosa ‘Snow Hills’
Rotheca myricoides ‘Ugandense’ (Butterfly bush)
Heliotrope
Zinnia volunteer from 2007 season, finally showing itself
Salvia cacaliaefolia (Ivy-leaved sage) with caterpillar
Strelitzia reginae (Bird of paradise) from below
Salvia sagittata (Arrow-leaved sage)
Oxalis purpurea
November 10 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • photography | Tags: flowers • in bloom • quizzes | 1 Comment »
