[ Lost in the Landscape ]

bloom day: natives at home and in the wild

This is why I enjoy grow­ing native plants: On a quick hike through my nearby Tecolote Canyon Nat­ural Park there were a few plants bloom­ing away, hardly aware it’s mid­sum­mer and three months since the last real rain. And when I came home some of the same species were bloom­ing just as exu­ber­antly in my gar­den. That’s a great sense of con­nec­tion with the wild, and I get a sense that parts of my gar­den are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the con­ti­nu­ity of nature.

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.

August 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape • places | Tags: Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • hiking • native plants | 16 Comments »

blue and orange (gbbd)

The color com­bi­na­tion of blue and orange reminds me of noisy kid­die toys, of hard molded plas­tic wait­ing room chairs, of harshly lit 1970s fast-food restau­rants try­ing unsuc­cess­fully to look mod­ern and friendly, or of jer­seys for some high school foot­ball team. With two col­ors scream­ing at each other from oppo­site sides of a color wheel, it’s not a com­bi­na­tion that brings me a lot of joy or peace.

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!

April 14 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: baby blue eyes • blue • blue flowers • California poppy • color combinations • Escholzia californica • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • Nemophilia menziesii • orange • orange flowers • seasons • spring | 19 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 »

bloom day–in 3d!

Get out your 3D glasses! Part of this Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day post­ing comes to you in glo­ri­ous 3D, inspired by the news that 3D tele­vi­sion was the big news at the recent Las Vegas Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show, and by past, cur­rent and future 3D movies (Avatar, The Crea­ture from the Black Lagoon, Alice in Wonderland).

This is one of my clones of Arc­to­tis acaulis, which is just com­ing into bloom.

To view the 3D effect you’ll need a pair of glasses or a viewer that has a red lens over the left eye and a cyan (green works too) lens over the right. This image, what’s called an anaglyph, is pretty low-tech, more Black Lagoon than Avatar, but it works. I won’t detail all the steps for mak­ing it, but there are lots of expla­na­tions out on the web for how to do it in Pho­to­shop. [ Here’s one. ] You can also use a good photo edi­tor like Pho­to­shop Ele­ments that will let you adjust the indi­vid­ual color chan­nels of the image.

You don’t need a proper 3D cam­era to pho­to­graph slow-moving sub­jects like flow­ers, but you’ll need two sep­a­rate images, one for the left eye, and another for the right. Just take two images of the same sub­ject, mov­ing slightly left-to-right before you click the sec­ond image. If you have a cam­era with man­ual con­trols, you’ll get the best results if you focus and set the expo­sure manually.

This is the image pair I started with for the anaglyph above. You might even be able to view this raw pair in 3D. Some peo­ple are able to prac­tice what’s called “free-viewing,” where the left eye focuses on the left image and the right eye on the right-hand one. You’ll even­tu­ally see three images, and the cen­tral one will sud­denly pop into 3D.

This last pair shows the next-to-last step big step, before you layer the cyan image over the red one to cre­ate the final 3D image.

The rest of this post returns to stodgy old 2D. Sorry.

Win­ter is the big bloom sea­son for many of the native plants, as well as for many plants adapted to South­ern California’s mediter­ranean cli­mate. Here are many of the plants flow­er­ing right now.

Here’s the agave I fea­tured promi­nently in last month’s post­ing. It’s near­ing its half-way point on the spike.

First blooms of the sea­son on Ver­bena lilacina.

First blooms of the sea­son on Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astra­galus nut­tal­lii.

The very first, brave bloom on another Arc­to­tis acaulis clone, ‘Big Magenta.’

First flow­er­ing on another plant, likely Cras­sula mul­ti­cava. The bed where this plant is will soon be cov­ered with a dense mist of flow­ers for sev­eral months.

Another flow­er­ing cras­sula, Cras­sula ovata, your basic jade plant.

Black sage, Salvia mel­lif­era, com­ing into bloom.

Santa Cruz Island buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum arborescens, still blooming–the Ener­gizer Bunny of buckwheats.

…some weird bromeliad. I have a likely name some­where, but not stored in my brain’s RAM right now…

I was tak­ing some pic­tures of this desert mal­low, Sphaer­al­cea ambigua, but was more cap­ti­vated by the inter­est­ing dam­age pat­terns cre­ated by a leaf-mining insect.

And last but not least: What I’m cer­tain will be the last paper­white nar­cis­sus of the sea­son. I keep think­ing that, but another clump pushes up through the earth and starts to flower. I’m not complaining.

As usual, my thanks Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day! Check out what’s in bloom in other gar­dens around the world [ here ].

If you haven’t had enough of the 3D pho­tos, check out a much ear­lier 3D gar­den blog post [ here ].

Now enough of this 2D indoors non­sense. Open the door, and go out­side and enjoy your gar­den in the grand glo­ri­ous 3D it comes in naturally.

January 15 2010 | Categories: gardening • photography | Tags: 3-d photography • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • mediterranean plants • native plants | 14 Comments »

one agave, eight ways (december bloom day)

For Decem­ber 15’s Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day I’m try­ing some­thing new. Instead of show­ing you all the almost ever-blooming things in the gar­den I’m high­light­ing a sin­gle plant, the fox­tail agave (Agave atten­u­ata) that’s finally bloom­ing after a decade and a half in the ground. I posted before on how the mon­ster bloom spike has col­lided with some some nearby plants. Over the week­end the thou­sands of buds on the spike began to open.

In homage to artists who take one sub­ject and try to make it inter­est­ing in mul­ti­ple ways, here are some of the first pho­tos of the plant in bloom. I’m not sure which is my favorite photo so far. Maybe the fourth? Maybe the fifth?

Still, it’s hard to begin to do jus­tice to an awe­some plant.

A few other things are bloom­ing, but it’s Decem­ber and the pick­ings are slim: a cou­ple of Cal­i­for­nia natives, some late-season blooms on Santa Cruz Island buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum arborescens) and first-of-the-season blooms on the desert mal­low (Sphaer­al­cea ambigua).

Oxalis pur­purea, early in the morn­ing, before it’s fully expanded…

Leono­tis leonorus com­ing back into bloom…

When so lit­tle is in flower, you might pay atten­tion to some of the less sig­nif­i­cant flow­ers on plants that are grown pri­mar­ily for their foliage and struc­ture. These three senecio species would only win “nice per­son­al­ity” in a flo­ral beauty pageant (Senecio cylin­dri­cus, S. artic­u­la­tus, S. man­dralis­cae).

In fact, the agave I showed ear­lier is a plant that’s most often used for its ter­rific archi­tec­tural struc­ture, in part because it flow­ers so infre­quently. But when that one blooms, there’s no ignor­ing it.

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Bloom Day!

December 14 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Agave attenuata • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd | 23 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 »

some bloom day blooms from seed

Today’s Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day post fea­tures five plants I’ve raised from seed. I’d con­sider most of these in the “pretty easy” to “really easy” cat­e­gories, both to ger­mi­nate and to grow.

Three of these came up from seed that I sowed directly in the ground last Octo­ber. I basi­cally made lit­tle fur­rows a quar­ter to half an inch deep, sprin­kled in some seed, and watered them in. I pro­vided some sup­ple­men­tal water­ing the give them a head start, and then let the occa­sional rains take care of get­ting the plants estab­lished. Now that the rains are prob­a­bly over for the year, I give them occa­sional sprin­klings to keep them greener and flow­er­ing longer.

This first flower is Clarkia williamsonii, which is an annual native to inland Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia and Orange County. The Seed­hunt list­ing described the flow­ers as being “gaudy.” A flower that’s gaudy? Sold!

The next images are of another clarkia, Clarkia rubi­cunda ssp. blas­dalei, native to coastal Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia and El Dorado County. The first is a freshly opened flower, the sec­ond a flower that’s on it’s sec­ond day.

Until this morn­ing I’d never noticed with these that the fresh flow­ers have the sta­mens all bun­dled up, and that they don’t extend until the flower is older, after the anthers bear­ing the pollen are start­ing to dry up. You can see the sta­mens as the white four-pronged appendage in the cen­ter of the sec­ond flower. It’s a clever way to pre­vent self-pollination and keep the gene pool diverse.

Another easy annual is baby blue eyes, Nemezia men­ziesii. What you see here is pretty scrappy and well could be the last flower of the sea­son. Although this is an easy plant, I’ve decided that it’s bet­ter suited to a gar­den spot that might get more than bi-weekly sup­ple­men­tal water.

I’ve been show­ing lots of Cal­i­for­nia pop­pies this spring. This will prob­a­bly be the last of the gar­den pic­tures of the com­mon orange form. The flow­ers this time of year are start­ing to get smaller as the plant’s water sup­plies dwin­dle. Also, here near the coast, the plants start to mildew heav­ily, leav­ing them crip­pled. (You can see some of that as the whitish back­ground foliage.)

Bet­ter suited to coastal areas is this yel­low coastal form of the species, Escholzia cal­i­for­nica mar­itima. The strain I’ve got starts to flower later in the year than the typ­i­cal orange form, but the plants show much bet­ter resis­tance to pow­dery mildew and will con­tinue flow­er­ing later into the year.

Unlike the first three plants I showed, the pop­pies are peren­nial, so the same plants will con­tinue to come back one year to the next. But one nice thing with all these species is that they’ll come back from seed as well.

Check out all the other Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day pho­tos by check­ing out the list­ing at May Dreams Gar­dens.

May 15 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Clarkia rubicunda ssp blasdalei • Clarkia williamsonii • clarkias • Escholzia californica • Escholzia californica maritima • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • native plants • poppies • reseeding • seed-grown plants | 6 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 »