[ Lost in the Landscape ]

february bloom day

I’ve just returned from a week away and haven’t had a chance to inven­tory every­thing that’s bloom­ing this month. Besides, you’ve seen a lot of it already. Here are a few snap­shots from today of what’s new or what’s changed.

Car­pen­te­ria cal­i­for­nia was look­ing great for the last two months. Now, the petals are all drop­ping, and this is as close to any­thing resem­bling a flower left on the plant.

I keep think­ing the nar­cis­sus are fin­ished bloom­ing, but I found this yel­low one bloom­ing beneath the jade plant. Bulbs–you gotta love how they’re these lit­tle sur­prise that pop up where you for­got you planted them…

This ver­bena lila­cena was bloom­ing last month, but it’s look­ing even bet­ter now.

Here’s the pale Paseo Ran­cho clone of the pre­vi­ous verbena.

Sting­ing lupine, Lupi­nus hir­sutis­simus. No, the photo isn’t upside down. For some rea­son the plant is. It started grow­ing up, and then did a U-turn and headed for the ground like an errant mis­sile. I some­how sus­pect gophers had some­thing to do with it.

Here’s an upright spike of the pre­vi­ous lupine…

Spharul­cea ambigua, desert mal­low, start­ing to bloom.

Look­ing very much like the pre­vi­ous mal­low, this is S. munroana. For some rea­son this species is sup­posed to be a bet­ter gar­den plant than the pre­vi­ous spe­ceis. In my gardne the plants are vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal, and if any­thing the basic desert mal­low does bet­ter for me.

A seedling of a Mimu­lus auran­ti­a­cus hybrid. Its color is def­i­nitely lighter than the scar­let ones found locally.

Ranun­cu­lus californicus

Bul­binella frutescens(?)–Edit, Feb­ru­ary 25: Actu­ally, accord­ing to Oscar Clarke, it’s Bul­bine bul­bosa. Thanks for the assis­tance with the ID!

Euphor­bia lambii

Blue dicks, Dich­e­lostemma capitatum

Rose-scented gera­nium (pelargonium)

Among the edi­bles in bloom, this is rhubarb. This is my first attempt at grow­ing this plant that sup­pos­edly doesn’t like any­thing warmer than Zone 8. I’m not sure that I really like rhubarb, but I was curi­ous to see how it would do, par­tic­u­larly since my local trusty nurs­ery was sell­ing it.

Flow­ers on another plant–apricot–that likes colder cli­mates than mine. Unlike rhubarb, I know that I love apri­cots, but I really can’t grow them well. This year, maybe because Novem­ber was so insanely cold, the tree so far has a few dozen flow­ers on it. Still, I won’t count my apri­cots until they’re picked.

Astra­galus nut­tal­lii start­ing to come into its own. Some species are called locoweed, and not much more than two pounds is sup­pos­edly enough to kill an aver­age cow. Don’t think less of me when I tell you that one of the rea­sons I planted this species was to see if it might help me con­trol the gophers. I can’t say it’s done any­thing to reduce their numbers.

Not every­thing is peak­ing, of course. Here’s chalk dud­leya in bud. Check back in a month or two to see it in bloom.

Thanks as usual to Carol at May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing this fun gar­den blog­ger meme. Take a look [ here ] at what else is bloom­ing in other gar­dens around the coun­try, around the world.

My pre­dic­tion: a lot of the colder-climate gar­den­ers will be post­ing on the Valentine’s Day flow­ers they gave or received. I hope you all had a god one. Mid­dle age has struck and I don’t look so hot in my Cupid out­fit any­more. You’ll have to set­tle for flow­ers deliv­ered this way…

February 14 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • in bloom | 24 Comments »

january bloomday

The big aloe, Aloe arborescens, up close

Here goes… Jan­u­ary bloom­day, hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens.

The front gar­den, like the rest of my lot, mixes Cal­i­for­nia natives with exotics from all over. Our local blad­der­pod in the fore­ground, yel­low and perky and vir­tu­ally ever-blooming, with a big clump of aloe that owns January.

Folks in colder cli­mates may be drool­ing a bit, but there’s a price for year-round gar­dens: Year-round weeds! Since this is Bloom­day, let me start off with a few weeds in bloom, doing their best to gen­er­ate even more weeds. There are times when I think that it might be nice to live where you can for­get about weed­ing for three months or more…

Weedy night­shade, right before I pulled it up

Weedy cham­momile rel­a­tive, Pineap­ple Weed

Pure yel­low evil, from the big fam­ily that gives us sunflowers

Weedy grass

Cal­i­for­nia native Corethrog­yne (Lessin­gia) filagini­fo­lia duk­ing it out with weedy alyssum

But through the magic of pho­tog­ra­phy, an artis­tic medium well suited to telling lies and half-truths, here are some blooms for the month. I could tell you there are no weeds around these bloom­ing plants, but then I’d be lying. Big time.

From Cal­i­for­nia, and the Cal­i­for­nia floris­tic province:

Hum­ming­bird sage, Salvia spathacea

A pros­trate form of the local black sage, Salvia mel­lif­era, pick­ing up its flowering

Our local very fra­grant night­shade, Solanum parishii

Win­nifred Gilman sage, with a few scant flow­ers, not quite buy­ing into the fact that spring is coming.

Tree Core­op­sis or Giant Core­op­sis, Core­op­sis gigan­tea, still a ways to go before achiev­ing tree status

San Diego Sun­flower, Bahiop­sis (Vigu­iera) lacinata, bat­tling ice­plant on the slope

One of almost a dozen mon­keyflower seedlings. It is def­i­nitely partly Mimu­lus auran­ti­a­cus, but other species could be involved.

Ver­bena lilacina

A lone Coast Sun­flower, Encelia cal­i­for­nica, with way too many weeds back on the neglected slope garden

Santa Cruz Island Buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum arborescens

Our local chap­ar­ral cur­rant, Ribes indeco­rum, pleas­ant, not spectacular

Arc­tostaphy­los man­zanita Dr. Hurd

Astra­galus nut­tal­lii, from the Cal­i­for­nia Cen­tral Coast

Okay, every­one, say awwwwww. Car­pen­te­ria california

From beyond California:

Your basic pros­trate rosemary

The last of the bicolor nar­cis­sus. I didn’t get the cam­era out while it was look­ing nice.

A kalan­choe species or Edit Jan­u­ary 17 Cotyle­don orbiculata–see first com­ment from Elephant’s Eye

Your basic jade plant

Cras­sula mul­ti­cava, a low ground­cover with vaporous lit­tle jade-plant-like flow­ers float­ing above it

Arc­to­tis Big Magenta

Another Arc­to­tis hybrid

Your basic pros­trate rosemary

Peo­ple gen­er­ally grow aeo­ni­ums for their foliage…

…but they also have a month or so when their flow­ers can upstage the plant.

And humans aren’t the only species that appre­ci­ates the flow­ers. Look closely and you’ll see quite a few ants going to town…

Two forms of Oxalis pur­purea, pur­ple– and green-leaved. It’s pretty, but best con­tained in warmer cli­mates where it can spread.

Sleepy Oxalis pur­purea flower, slowly unfurl­ing as the morn­ing advances, feel­ing blurry until until the sun hits it.

Green rose in bud…

Green rose unfurled…looking a lit­tle less green.

Check­ing out the gar­den, pho­tograph­ing flow­ers, you get to see what’s going on in the gar­den. I’ve men­tioned the weeds already. Now, let’s add gopher holes into the mix shall we?

While I’ve pretty much given up try­ing to con­trol the gophers, I can at least pick away at the weed­ing. Okay, enough blog­ging for now. Time to pull some weeds. But maybe I’ll check out a few more Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day posts first…

January 15 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • weeds | 25 Comments »

white solstice

The year’s first car­pen­te­ria, which opened on Decem­ber 17th, shown here with an appre­cia­tive local crit­ter on the stamens.

Win­ter Sol­stice is a cel­e­bra­tion for opti­mists. Six months of ever-diminishing sun­light leads up to this, the day with the longest, dark­est night. If you weren’t an opti­mist or schooled in the ratio­nal ways of the world you might expect the days to dimin­ish into per­pet­ual darkness–No won­der the Mayan Long Count Cal­en­dar ends on this day in 2012. A pes­simist could see this day as the begin­ning of the end of time.

But I know things are about to change. The dura­tion of the sun­light I find so pre­cious is about to start to increase. The plants that are begin­ning to sprout will take advan­tage of the extra light and grow faster and run head­long into California’s manic late-winter, early-spring sea­son of flow­er­ing and regen­er­a­tion. Call me an opti­mist. It may be tough now, but to appro­pri­ate the words of Dan Sav­age in his cam­paign to fight bul­ly­ing of LGBT young per­sons, It gets bet­ter!

Here’s a brief white-themed gallery in case you’re dream­ing of a white sol­stice. We have no snow to offer you, but instead how about some bright white flow­ers, some white leaves to get you into the mood?

Have a warm and safe hol­i­day, every­one, whether the white stuff around you is snow, foliage or blooms. It’s all about to get bet­ter, soon.

The local chap­ar­ral cur­rant, Ribes indeco­rum, a plant new to the gar­den within the last year, com­ing into bloom for the first time.

Detail of the chap­ar­ral cur­rant flowers.

Decem­ber paper­white narcissus

Early-season blooms of black sage, Salvia mel­lif­era. The over­all color is really more pale vio­let than white.

Flow­ers on a vol­un­teer sta­t­ice plant, Limo­nium perezii. The bracts give the flow­er­ing struc­tures a laven­der look, but you can see that the flow­ers are actu­ally white inside the bracts. The clos­est neighbor’s plant of this is a few hun­dred feet down the street. I had no idea the seeds could travel so far. Enjoy it now. This weed is outta there once the hol­i­days are over.

Details of the leaves of San Miguel Island buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum grande, green on top, white beneath…

The white-ish Dud­leya brit­tonii with Decem­ber pre­cip­i­ta­tion, rain, not snow…

Who could for­get our great local white sage, Salvia api­ana?

…and one of our great local dud­leyas, D. pul­veru­lenta, one of the whitest of the dud­leyas, and it loves life in my gar­den. Joy oh joy!

December 21 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: color • flowers • leaves • native plants • white • white sage | 10 Comments »

high spring (gbbd)

This is it. High spring in San Diego. There are prob­a­bly more things bloom­ing now in the gar­den than there will be at any other time of year.

I start with the cur­rent state of the agave that I’ve been show­ing for the last few months. It’s bloomed its way from the base of the flower stalk to very near the very end. The plant will soon die and you won’t see any more pho­tos of it. For­tu­nately the plant has sev­eral other growths to keep it going into the future.

The spike has arced up and come back to the ground, where its final blooms are resting.

I’ve pro­vided a few cap­tions, but there are too many flow­ers to com­ment on in detail. For the rest of the pho­tos, hover your mouse to view the names or click to enlarge.

Leaves of the unknown Gas­te­ria.

An unknown gas­te­ria. The flow­ers are nice, but I grow it mainly for the foliage.

The weird dou­ble blooms of this pitcher plant, Sar­race­nia leu­co­phyll ‘Tarnok,’ shown with the first pitch­ers of the season.

The bloom of another car­niv­o­rous pitcher plant.

Geum and blue-eyed grass.

Salvia lyrata ‘Pur­ple Vol­cano.’ It’s rather weedy accord­ing to Robin Mid­dle­ton, but it does have its nice gar­den moments.

The not-quite black flow­ers of Salvia discolor.

Flow­ers on the grape­fruit. They smell great. And they bode well for a good crop next year.

Thank you thank you thank you to Carol at May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day. Stuff is begin­ning to bloom every­where. [ Check it out all the bloom­ing gar­dens! ]

March 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • spring | 22 Comments »

plants as compass (february bloom day)

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 »

plants falling asleep

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 | 13 Comments »

november garden bloggers bloom day

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 »

july bloom day

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 »

from spring into summer

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 »

gbbd: the garden and beyond

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 »