Happy January Bloom Day, folks!

Lots of pictures this month.

Okay I cheated, with some multiples of the same plant mixed in. But a big dose of perky orange in the dead of winter seemed morally acceptable.

I guess it’s a typical Southern California January, with some ever-bloomers mixed in with the winter-flowering plants or last of the fall plants. You can hover over an image above to get the name, but here’s a quick rundown on the January backbone plants.

Some plants that say “California” but are from other places:

Aloe arborescens

S. Hot Lips

Protea ‘Pink Ice’

Lavender

Arctotis

Oxalis purpurea

…and the really noxious

Oxalis pes-caprae

California natives:

Coreopsis maritima

Salvia ‘Bee’s Bliss’

Salvia spathacea

There are also a few other things in bloom that didn’t make it into the mix, things like ‘Dr. Hurd’ manzanita, but you get the idea…

Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Check out the January post to see what the rest of the world looks like in the middle of January [ here ]

Probably the most remarkable thing blooming is this, a variegated mutation of Salvia divinorum.

I noticed the variegation a few months ago and will try to propagate the part of the plant with speckled leaves. A sport partially lacking chlorophyll would be at an evolutionary disadvantage out in the wilds, but gardeners–We’re weird–we’ll propagate these runts just because they’re pretty-like.

This is probably the most dramatic of the alligatored leaves. Even though many leaves are variegated, you can see that it hasn’t stopped those parts of the plant from flowering.

Enough of the leaves, this being Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. (Thanks as usual to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting this monthly meme on every fifteenth of the month.) Let’s take a look at the flowers.

The blooms are fuzzy up-close, like some other salvias, including the Mexican bush sage, Salvia leucantha, a dependable low-water plant that’s common in Southern California and beyond. This blossom looks very friendly in a lisping, come-hither, snaggletoothed sort of way.

Unfortunately if you’re a gardener under the age of 18 in California you can’t purchase this plant. In some other states owning a plant can buy you three years in prison. I’m sorry but all this sounds ridiculous. People sometimes complain about a government being a “nanny-state,” but many of the states where you hear that claim being made loudest are ones that are likely to ban this plant. Hey, look at the cool flowers! Look at the the cool leaves! This is obviously a plant with ornamental value, just like Gramma Olive’s opium poppies.

Flowers are scarce all around, but if you look deep enough into many plants you’ll see a few hardy holdouts still in bloom. And with winter on the way, there are a precocious winter bloomers starting to do their thing. This one’s germander sage, Salvia chamaedryoides. As far as I know, this plant the rest of those featured here are perfectly legal to grow everywhere.

Another salvia, the common but cool “Hot Lips”

Oxalis purpurea, white form

Paperwhite narcissus

Galvezia speciosa ‘Firecracker’

Galvezia juncea, a species from near-by in Mexico, a member of the snapdragon family.

And here’s another local with a name change pending. Was: Isomeris arborea; Now is: Peritoma arborea. Gack.

A rare local native, something I’ve known as Coreopsis maritima. But in the new Jepson manual all the California species we knew as coreopsis have been moved to the genus Leptosyne. Leptosyne maritima–that one’s going take a while getting used to. (Sorry for the ragged half-flower. That is all that survived the weekend rains.)

Sphaeralcea ambigua, the first blooms in a while

An orange epidendrum. I think you saw this last month

Gutierrezia californica–a wispy plant with almost no leaves and a delicate cloud of yellow flowers

San Miguel Island buckwheat, Eriogonum grande var. rubescens, definitely not peaking…

Euphorbia Diamond Frost–This hit just a few years ago and everyone was talking about it. Now…almost nothing. Interesting. Gardeners aren’t fickle, are they?

Desperate, flower-starved times call for desparate measures, in this case the macro lens for these tiny creeping thyme flowers…

Gaura lindheimeri

Camellia Cleopatra, yes it was in bloom in October for that month’s Bloom Day

And, finally, a few shots of everyone’s favorite this time of year, Protea Pink Ice. Happy Bloomday!

This santolina sums up the state of the garden pretty well. Peak flowering was in the past or hasn’t started up yet, but I’m enjoying where it’s at right now. This particular plant bloomed four months ago, but I liked the dead flower heads so much that I’ve left them on the plant.

California fuchsia, Epilobium ‘Route 66′ peaked about 6 weeks ago.

We actually had some significant rain–0.4 inches–last week. It was appreciated, but it also knocked off some of the plant’s flowers.

But it still looks pretty good. Here it is giving a little shade and color contrast to a chalk dudleya.

Bladderpod (Isomeris arborea) is a reliable bloomer for the times of year when most of the other natives have stopped blooming. It’s never covered with flowers, but there always seem to be a few on each of the ends on its branches.

Not peak monkeyflower season, either. This is all that’s blooming right now. One flower.

Corethrogyne filaginifolia is another reliable plant for this difficult time of year.

And you can always count on the grasses. This is purple three-awn, Aristida purpurea.

Among the non-natives this stapelia (S. gigantea) pretty much owns the garden with its big floppy flowers that smell of dead meat. Charming, disgusting and weird. I don’t apologize for it anymore.

You know things are slow when you show pictures of rosemary blooming. I’ll apologize for that, however.

But there’s a ltitle bit more…

Oxalis bowiei

Don’t put too much stock in plant names. White flowers, species name of Oxalis purpurea…

Salvia Hot Lips

Clerodendrum myricoides, butterfly bush

A pink Gaura lindheimeri that either volunteered or came up in a spot where I forgot planting it. That happens sometimes…

The ever-blooming orange epidendrum, an orchid that’s definitely not a prima donna assoluta

Camellia Cleopatra, one of the garden’s clear signals: fall is here

And there are a few other things:
Yellow waterlilies
A red aloe I’m forgetting the name of…
Red epidendrum
Gaillardia pulchella
A big magenta bougainvillea
A somewhat pampered orchid: Vanda roeblingiana

Hopefully autumn is bringing great things to all your gardens. Ongoing thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Take a look at who’s got what blooming all around the world: [ link ]

For today’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day I’m doing something a little different. My garden looks a lot like it has in recent posts, so I thought I’d take you along on a tour last weekend of Crestridge Ecological Preserve, in San Diego County, a little over half an hour from the coast. The flowers were out in force.

One of the interesting narratives of this place is how a landscape responds to being burned. This preserve and many of the homes around it burned intensely in the big 2003 Cedar Fire. A lot of the homes nearby with their new tile roofs and crisp, new stucco look like they’ve been rebuilt out of the ashes.

Same goes for the plants. The Engelmann oaks that help define the character of the preserve burned. But many are bouncing back. Really, if it weren’t for the burned snags it’d be hard to guess that this area was cinders seven and a half years ago.

The Preserve features a small visitor kiosk designed by James T. Hubbell, the county’s best known proponent of organic architecture. Wood post-and-beam construction with straw-bale infill makes up the walls of the one-room space. Floors are a mix of flagstone and tile mosaics. Very groovy.

Around the kiosk is a native plant garden funded by a grant by the local CNPS chapter. Unlike the landscape around it, this garden receives some irrigation to keep it looking more garden-like. But today the garden extended seamless into the surrounding landscape.

The floral highlight of the trip is the the preserve’s stand of the rare Lakeside ceanothus, Ceanothus cyaneus. It’s vivid, dark color and big floral heads make it what must be one of the most spectacular of the ceanothus species. It’s not particularly garden tolerant, but given perfect drainage and no water once established, it might hang around for a few years and stop traffic passing by your garden.

On this trip we saw this lilac, as well as late-blooming examples of the much more common but less spectacular Ramona lilac, Ceanothus tomentosus, and some intergrades that look like they’re the love children of these two species.

Below is a little gallery of the visit. Hover on any image for a label of the plant. Click to see the entire image.

Check out what’s happening in gardens around the world in the other Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posts hosted by Carol, of May Dreams Gardens. As always, thanks, Carol!

Sunday I went for a little plant walk out to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. It’s been a good year for desert flowers, but it’s not one of those spectacular seasons when the ground pulsates purple with sand verbena or gold with brittlebush. Some of the ocotillo were in bloom, and the desert agaves like this one (Agave deserti) were sending up their pink and green stalks.

Lots else was in bloom. But as I review the photos from the trips I’m finding that I’m staring at a pile of images of plants I don’t know the names of. I’ll share more of the pictures than this first one once I get them a little better organized and the plants matched up with my list of names.

Since it’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day I’ll share with you some plants from my garden that I do know the names of. Some of these are old friends that have been blooming for a while, and I’ve been sharing over past Bloom Days. But a lot of these are just coming into bloom for the first time this year.

I thought the blooms on this carpenteria were finished a month ago, but the plant has surprised me with a robust bloom spurt, bigger than the first one.

Unlike the carpenteria, this old friend, the tree coreopsis, won’t be blooming again for another nine or ten months.

Many of these plants survive in the garden with minimal added water. The climate in this area is dry in a coastal-influenced sort of way. I might water once or twice a month in the summer, but the frequent morning overcast and occasional fog helps keep the plants hydrated. Additionally the plants in the garden have enjoyed a slighter higher than average rainfall so thoughts of the dry summer ahead aren’t in the minds of these plants. Spring is here.

This Salvia Bee’s Bliss has been in the ground for over two years, but only now is it starting to take off.

Black sage, Salvia mellifera.

The local annual chia, Salvia carduaceae, with the exotic Phlomis monocephala in the background. The chia is one of the coastal plants that also can get to be pretty common in parts of the desert.

Here’s another combination of plants, the lavender pink of the stinging lupine with the strident gold of the crassula relative behind it. The contrast is pretty strident to my taste, but hey, spring isn’t all about subtle plays of one color against another…

Last month I showed this orange mimulus seedling. That time I got it in focus.

From the same parents that lived in this bed comes this other monkeyflower, this one velvety red with almost black detailing.

And here’s another velvety red mimulus seedling. You might confuse it for the previous one, but the flowers are subtly different.

Nuttall’s milkvetch, looking full and flowery, close to its seasonal peak.

Verbena lilacina looks better for me with a little more added water than some of the plants around it. But it survives even when I forget.

The pale Verbena lilacina ‘Paseo Rancho’ was just starting to bloom last month. It’s starting to wake up for the spring.

Some parts of the garden get treated to more frequent watering.

This California buttercup, Ranunculus california, comes up reliably every year in an area of the garden where lawn meets unwatered gravel.

Blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, appreciates a moister spot as well.

Geum Red Wings, a pretty, informal plant.

Hummingbird sage, Salvia spathacea, is a California plant from moister places than my garden. Even in semi-shade it looks best with water two or three times a month.

And these last two of these go about as far from desert plants as you can get without getting aquatic plants. Both of these grow in my bog gardens, with their feet in standing water most of the year.

Sarracenia flava var. maxima is one one of the first plants in the bog to put out flowers. The common description of the scent is ‘cat piss,’ but I think that’s a little too harsh a description. The flowers are nice, but most people grow these for the pitcher-shaped leaves.

A couple more sarracenias, a different S. flava in the back, and a hybrid of S. flava and S. alata up front.

Head over to Carol’s blog, May Dreams Gardens, to check out all the other bloggers celebrating Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day!

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…

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…

The common California flat-top buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum:

In the wilds (actually a reveg parking strip) with seaside daisy (Encelia Californica)

At home, one the easment slope garden, doing battle with the neighbor’s sacred iceplant

Bladderpod, Isomeris arborea, with its bee-magnet yellow flowers.

Trail-side

At home, in a mixed planting of natives and exotics

The totally awesome sacred datura, Datura wrightii.

In the wilds, the form with a pale lavender edging

Also in the wilds, the all-white form

…at home, also on the slope garden

Amaryllis belladonna (“naked ladies”) is native to South Africa, but there were two little clusters in the canyon. They don’t really colonize the canyons and generally aren’t considered invasive. They were a surprise and I wonder if someone planted them here. And at home I also happened to have the first of them blooming in the garden.

One of the ‘wild’ amaryllis

…another of the ‘wild’ amaryllis

…and the amaryllis back home, in the garden

In the canyon there were a few other things going at it:

Blue elderberry blooms and fruit (Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea, formerly Sambucus mexicana)

Oenothera elata, a primrose that blooms on tall spires

Laurel sumac, Malosma laurinia

Coyote melon (Cucurbita palmata). It’s generally considered inedible. I tried one once. I agree.

Nestled in the dead stems of the invasive fennel is this other non-native. It looks like some sort of garden nicotiana

Your basic Rosa californica flower…

…and pods

The very cool fiber optic grass, Isolepsis cernua

And at home were some California plants that either weren’t blooming in the canyon or aren’t native to this area:

Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astragalus nuttalii, with its noisy rattle-like pods

California sealavender (Limonium californicum) the only statice native to California

Cleveland sage at the end of its summer blooming, with the gorgeous grass, purple three awn (Aristida purpurea)

San Diego sunflower (Bahiopsis laciniata), not looking great, but considering it’s battling iceplant on the slope garden and hasn’t been rained on or watered in over three months, it’s not doing that badly

The desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) could probably stand being cut back a bit, but it still has a small few blooms on its almost leafless stems. I’m really coming to enjoy the light green, slightly yellow color of the plant, a great contrast against silver or dark green foliage

If the naked lady amaryllis weren’t pornographic enough, here are some of the non-natives blooming in the garden right now. It’s August, and the flower count isn’t what it was three months ago.

Salvia Hot Lips and a big pink bougainvillea

Closer view of Salvia Hot Lips. As the weather warms, this one of three plants is showing more red with the white in the flowers. The other two plants are still mostly white

A really fragrant ginger, Hedychium coccineum ‘Tara’

Society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) is a common xeriscape plant, but it’s so adaptable that it’ll grow with its roots standing in water, as you see here in the pond. It has as much of an aroma as the ginger, but I wouldn’t exactly call it fragrant…

Butterfly bush, Clerodendrum myricoides. The flowers are nice, but people don’t talk enough about how pleasant the plant smells when you touch it

…and underneath the butterfly bush, this tidy little lead wort or dwarf plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides). It does fine in dappled sunlight with very little added water

A cactus and some succulents draping over a wall. Blooming is Crassula falcata, in the same big family as all the California Dudleya species

…and a closeup of the Crassula flowers, showing the red petals and little gold shocks of the stamens. This one’s worth looking at up close

These last plants definitely aren’t California natives, but they’re native to somewhere. If I lived in those places, I’d probably want them in my garden.

Check out the other gardeners around the world participating in this month’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting this event.

But spring is here, and part of the far back yard has been blooming away. Its main colors are–you guessed it–blue and orange, mainly hot orange California poppies and sky blue flowers of nemophilia, baby blue eyes.

As much as I generally don’t love these colors together, it’s hard for me not to like this little zone of perky chaos.

Even the blue flowers against the brick hardscape reinforces the blue and orange (or blue and orange-red) colors.

But in a garden you hardly every have two strong flower colors alone. The varieties of leaf green serve as peacemakers, separating the warring colors and injecting their own shades into the garden color palette. Other secondary leaf or flower colors help the enrich the palette and keep the peace.

From some angles a softer blue-gray provides a background to the hot orange flowers. Here the foliage is the now-common chalk fingers, Senecio mandraliscae. It’s still a blue and orange theme, but the blue is less emphatic and the orange is permitted to dominate.

Little pockets of cool-colored plants provide areas of visual rest. Here’s baby blue eyes and chalk fingers with a dark purple-black aeonium. Pretend I cut back the dying narcissus foliage…

Some viewpoints let the cool colors predominate, with just a few punctuation marks of poppy orange. New into this photo are whitish-violet flowered black sage (Salvia mellifera), magenta freeway daisy (Osteospermum), with a softer orange-red desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) in the upper left corner.

I’ll have to rethink what the combination of blue and orange means to me, at least in the garden. These flowers may be gone in a couple of months. Maybe this a combination that I should embrace and associate with “spring.”

Spring is bringing lots of other colors combinations and other flowers to gardens around the world. Check them out at May Dreams Gardens, where Carol is hosting yet another Garden Boggers Bloom Day. Thank you, Carol!

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! ]