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 »
The storm was passing, and the afternoon light was perfect. The succulents blooming in the front yard never looked better. I had to get the camera for this one!
In bloom are Aloe arborescens (orange-red) and a crassula species or relative (yellow). To the right, not in bloom but still dramatic, are two clones of a tree aloe (Aloe barberae). The low filler plant to the right is the California native coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis pilularis ‘Pigeon Point’). I don’t normally love the neighbor’s big pointy juniper in the background, but I think it completes this picture nicely.
February 08 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe arborescens • Aloe barberae • aloes • crassula • in bloom • succulents | 6 Comments »
January can be an amazing month for succulents and other desert plants. Many aloes and agaves explode into bloom, and plants with ephemeral foliage are green with leaves in ways you don’t often see them.
San Diego’s Balboa Park houses one of the prime local collection of cacti, succulents and other desert dwellers from around the world. The Desert Garden, the larger of its two succulent gardens, was established in 1976, but many of the plants are senior citizens much older than the age of the garden.
Aloes star in its January landscape, with red and orange torches of flowers that double as hummingbird magnets.
And shown here, lurking in the shadows, is one of the local hummingbirds, staking its territory.
Among the big, mature specimens are several dragon trees, Dracaena draco. In this first photo, on the near trunk, you can see a reddish patch where the plant’s red sap has dried. When cut, these plants ooze a fluid that in some European legends was purported to be dragon’s blood, hence the plant’s name (draco = dragon).
This is a public garden, and so it’s subject to funding glitches and battles over civic priorities. I’d consider the garden to be in great condition considering those limitations.
One thing I would have loved to have seen, though, would be more plant labels. I encountered so many interesting species, but very few of them had name tags. I have this thing about needing to know the name of a plant—Call me compulsive. But the lack of labels drove me crazy. I realize, however, that tags don’t come cheap. And in a wide-open public garden, labels can walk away with pieces of succulents in the hands of evil plant addicts.
One of the plants that was labeled was this Natal Bottlebrush, Greyia sutherlandii. A bit scrappy-looking as a plant, but what great flowers!
Also labeled was the Madagascar ocotillo, Alluaudia procera. I loved the spiral patterning of its spines.
Another problem with this being a public garden is that there are quite a few specimens where people’s temptations to carve their initials in the plant life got the better of them. This euphorbia was scarred many times over. But that wasn’t going to stop it from blooming.
After visiting the garden I was surprised by how many shots I’d racked up in the camera. And for some reason, the majority of them were verticals. Is there something about succulents—particularly the upright-growing kinds that mimic the way a human stands—that scream out for photographing them in an upright orientation?
Some yuccas, I think, with spent bloom stems.
Boojum trees, Fouquieria columnaris, native to Baja California. This plant is in the same genus as the California desert’s spectacular ocotillo, which interestingly isn’t related to the Madascar ocotillo, above.
Aloes and kalanchoes in bloom.
The main garden is a flat, easy stroll over wide decomposed granite pathways. As part of a recent expansion, the garden now also includes this switchback down into Florida Canyon, also part of Balboa Park. The plants along the descent are still young, but should look spectacular in a decade or so.
Not everyone in the world loves cactus and succulents. They might point to the defensive spines many of the plants have, and they might say the sculptural shapes of the plants don’t look soft and cozy like leafy shrubs or fragrant roses. 
Next to the Desert Garden is Balboa Park’s rose garden. During springtime, thirty seconds of walking would take you from the world of cactus and succulents to a garden manic with flowers and heavy with the aroma of roses. But on this bright January day, the adjacent roses were pruned down to naked stems and piercing thorns. It was the cactus and succulents that looked warm and welcoming.
The Desert Garden is located across Park Boulevard from the Natural History Museum on Balboa Park’s museum row. The garden has no walls, no entry fee, and is open 24/7, 365 days of the year.
If the 2.5 acres of the Desert Garden isn’t enough of a cactus and succulent fix, cross Park Boulevard and take a stroll over to the Balboa Park Club, maybe ten minutes on foot, and take in the parks original 1935 cactus garden, which, according to the park’s website, was established “under the direction of [San Diego gardening legend] Kate Sessions for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition.” There you’ll find “some of the largest cactus and succulent specimens in the Park,” along with a nice collection of proteas.
January 11 2009 | Categories: gardening • photography • places • plant profiles | Tags: Balboa Park • Balboa Park Desert Garden • cacti • desert plants • drought-tolerant landscaping • in bloom • succulents | 3 Comments »
If there’s a plant that says New Year’s Day to me, it’s the common jade plant, Crassula ovata. The reason why is a little embarrassing, and I’m trusting you not to tell anyone else.
Growing up, my family would spend the morning of New Year’s Day gathered around the television setting, watching the Rose Parade. Overtaken by misguided jags of inspiration, I’d make my own little parade floats out of little cardboard boxes and whatever flowers were available.
My family lived in the same valley as Pasadena, though inland a few miles. The two locations essentially shared the same climate profile, something around Zone 9B. Don’t believe the propaganda about the Pasadena area having gargantuan fields of roses blooming everywhere in January. Yes, you’ll find roses, but not in the same number as other flowers.
Instead, at my parents’, the plant that was dependably covered with flowers on New Year’s was the jade plant. They had a couple plants in the back yard that were about as tall as I was, and they supplied more than enough little starry white flowers to completely cover my artistic creations.
Now, all grown up, I have a jade in the front yard. This year, with the bizarrely warm fall we had, the plant was confused and started blooming in November. Here’s how it looked yesterday. Not totally covered in flowers, but with plenty of flowers to go around—unless someone needs to build a major float.
So, with that photo, let me wish you a happy New Year’s! May 2009 bring you piles of flowers and interesting plants and good times with people who care deeply for you!
January 01 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Crassula ovata • in bloom • jade plant • New Year's Day • Rose Parade | 7 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 »
Politically I’m fairly far afield from the Republican party, but I’m thinking that one of my plants must be a card-carrying member. Portulacaria afra marked the opening of the Republican National Convention a couple weeks ago by quietly coming into bloom.
Flowers of Portulacaria afra
So what’s the connection between the Republicans and this plant?
Elephants.
In its native habitat this plant can be good forage for elephants. (And I’m sure you know that the elephant is the symbol of the Republican Party.) According to a treatment on this species by Robert J. Baran, 80% of the diet of elephants in South Africa’s Addo National Park consists of this plant. Hence one of its common names, “elephant bush.”
Outdoors in San Diego the plant is ridiculously easy to grow. Full sun, occasional summer water (ca. every 2-4 weeks) and well-drained soil are all it asks. If you want more of the plant, break off a chunk and set it some dirt. Instant new plant.
Its flowerings are rare here, however, and it’s easy to miss the little pink puffs of smoke that hover over the plant for a couple weeks.
Portulacaria plant
The plant in the picture is maybe ten years in the ground in this spot, and is about four feet tall. Some reports say it’ll get three times this size, but you can easily break off any chunks that offend you. So far so good in this location. And in pots it’s much more constrained. (The ugly fence in the background and its transformation into something much more fabulous will be the subject of an upcoming post…)
The plant reportedly also does well indoors in colder climates. Its easy-growing nature has caused a lot of people to call it as a variant of the classic beginner’s jade plant (Crassula ovata). But aside from the cursory similarities the plants are in completely different families. If you’ve been lucky enough to live where it’s warm enough to see them both bloom you’ll definitely believe that their relationship is pretty far apart.
Mealybugs haven’t been an issue with this plant for me outdoors, but they seem to be an occasional problem when it’s grown indoors in bright sun. Shade-grown, over-watered succulents seem to attract the critters. Try a brighter spot, and cut down on the watering if the little beasties are a problem.
Overall, this is a happy plant that easily crosses party lines. But you might want to keep it out of sight when the elephants come to loll about in your koi pond.
September 17 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: elephant bush • in bloom • jade plant • Portulacaria afra • spekboom • succulents | 1 Comment »
One of my favorite weird plants has bloomed for the first time this year. For much of the year Stapelia gigantea grows low to the ground, forming a dense succulent mat about eight inches tall. But in the summer and fall it perks up and produces these amazing flowers.
Stapelia gigantea with my hand for scale
The proportion of the size of the flower to the size of the plant almost reminds you of alpine plants, where the flowers start to dwarf the plants they grow on. (Proportionally, imagine a rose bush four feet tall producing a rose four feet across…)
Stapelia gigantea showing furry petals
The flowers are a pale cream-to-icy-green color, with dark rose squiggly lines running all over them. And the flowers are covered with fur.
Center of Stapelia gigantea
I could stare into the spiral vortex of lines at the center of one of these flowers for hours…
And did I mention that if you stick your nose into the flower the aroma might remind you of hamburger left in an unplugged refrigerator for a couple days? Although the camera scared them away, you can imagine that flies find this the most irresistible flower. It’s no surprise that one of its common names is “carrion flower.”
The genus Stapelia has other stinky flowers, though most with the exception of S. grandiflora have much smaller flowers. A number of closerly related genera in the Stapeliae tribe also have stinky but amazingly intricate and beautiful flowers. Hoodia gordonii, the plant that has become popular as an appetite suppressant, also belongs to this same group of plants.
Growing Stapelia gigantea is easy—actually, too easy in Hawaii and Australia, where it’s considered a weed. Basically give it bright light (it might not bloom in shade), protect it from freezing, and supply it with light to moderate water. (It tolerates not being watered for two or three weeks, thanks to its succulent stems, but it’s happiest with some moisture.) Mine is growing well in a shallow clay pot about eighteen inches in diameter, in regular potting soil.
If you or someone you know has a youngster attracted to crawling, scary bugs, turn them on to this plant. They’ll be a gardener for life.
September 07 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: carrion flower • in bloom • Stapelia gigantea | 9 Comments »
I was writing recently about how my new raised bed was a yellow exclusion zone except once a year when the kahili ginger (Hedychium gardnerianum) came into bloom. That time is now. The plant began Thursday, and should keep going, on and off, for just a few weeks.
Kahili ginger
In my early teen years I was involved in the dark underground world of competitive rose and flower shows, a subculture fraught with as much danger and intrigue as the illicit drug network or the world of showing dogs. My only best-of-show attempt came with a tall spike of this ginger, the best example of it that I’d ever grown. The stem was in peak bloom the morning of the judging, and the entire auditorium glowed with the flowers’ amazing fragrance.
The plant that I have now is a piece of that first plant, which itself was an offset that had been pimped me by one of my mother’s friends. Here in San Diego kahili ginger just chugs along minding its own business, asking only for occasional water. It’s hard to imagine that this plant is considered a nasty invasive species in some tropical regions. In fact, one site in Hawai’i recommends: “Because this is an extremely invasive plant, it should be destroyed when found.” Reading that was like finding out a loved member of the family is wanted in three European countries for crimes against humanity. Not my precious ginger!
The key difference between here and there is one of water. In warm, frost-free areas with abundant water it can easily become an unwelcome pest. But it stops where the supplemental water stops, and the local ten inches or less a year of natural rain can’t sustain it outside of watered garden spaces.
If I were ever to retire to Hawai’i it’d be a tough choice. Could I leave this plant behind?
August 09 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: flower shows • gingers • Hedychium gardnerianum • in bloom • kahili ginger | 2 Comments »
Plum tart
Early last week, while I was working, John had a chance to go up to Northridge and visit his aunt for a few days. As part of the long weekend he was able to go to the aunt’s sister’s house and raid her plum tree. “You couldn’t tell I touched it,” John said, referring to the number of fruits the tree still had on it. He came home with maybe five or six pounds of them.
When you have a small crop of anything you savor every single fruit. But with this many I could splurge, and breakfast Sunday included a plum tart. Photographing something purple-black against a white background turned out to be a little too much contrast to make the picture look that appetizing. But hot out of the oven it wasn’t bad. (I must admit, though, that John might be getting tired of this blogging thing, with me going, “Wait a minute. We need a picture before we eat it…” I can just see the next tell-all book to hit it big: I married a blogger…)
Lycoris squamingera on bare stem
Outside, things were blooming. The first of the month brought this big burst of Lycoris squamigera Amaryllis belladonna, which along with a passel of other common names is called naked ladies. The plant grows actively in the fall through spring, putting out long strap-shaped leaves, but no flowers. The flowers come now, in midsummer, after the plant has gone dormant and dropped all its leaves. The lone flower stem comes up from the bare earth, completely unadorned by leaves—hence the common name. Another of its common names is “surprise lily,” which also makes a lot of sense—Imagine seeing this after writing the plant off as a goner. Edit: “Surprise lily” refers more to lycoris, which I’ve decided this plant isn’t after all, after a couple discussions.
Because it grows in the winter, when it’s wet, and is basically dormant in the long rainless summer, it gets by with minimal supplemental watering, making it a perfect bulb for Mediterranean climates like Southern California.
Other species in the genus Lycoris are sometimes called naked ladies as well, but the plant around here that is most commonly referred to by that name is the rounder, taller, more buxom Amaryllis belladonna.
The rental house next door which often gets zero yard care has a patch by their front door. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong with mine. Why were mine shorter? And why did mine bloom for a somewhat shorter (but more intense) period? Then I put the pieces together…totally different species. I suppose there’s something of that grass always being greener thing going on here.
Now that I’ve figured it out I like mine just fine. In fact I think these, my kids, are much more wonderful than anyone else’s… See the species correction above. I’ve decided this is Amaryllis belladonna after all!
Lycoris squamingera closeup
August 05 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: food • in bloom • Lycoris squamingera • naked ladies • plums | 2 Comments »
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