[ Lost in the Landscape ]

something yellow this way comes

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.

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 »

naked ladies and tarts

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…)

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!

August 05 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: food • in bloom • Lycoris squamingera • naked ladies • plums | 2 Comments »

in the garden

I’ve been work­ing on print­ing some of my Yel­low­stone pho­tographs. While I wait for the scan­ner to scan and the printer to do its thing it’s a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to step out­side and snap some ran­dom pic­tures of what’s going on in the garden.

The first Chero­kee Pur­ple tomato, grown from seed saved from farmer’s mar­ket toma­toes last year: I’ve been watch­ing it turn color for a week now, and I thought it was finally time to pick it. It’s smaller than most of the other fruits on the plant, but I’m guess­ing it’ll be pretty tasty…

Peru­vian daf­fodil (Hymeno­cal­lis fes­talis): John’s sis­ter sent down a lit­tle pack­age of presents the last time she vis­ited over ten years ago. A bulb of this plant was in that pack­age. That one bulb has mul­ti­plied all over the place, some in places where we put it, oth­ers in places where soil with the some bulb off­sets was moved to. And some are even com­ing in places–like the lawn–where it prob­a­bly have only arrived via seed.

This plant clearly has a life wish. No prob­lem. We like it. It’s happy with lit­tle or heavy water­ing, dap­pled shade to full sun. And it smells great.

A moth that died in the arms of Drosera dichotoma ‘Giant,’ a car­niv­o­rous sun­dew in the bog gar­den: When I first put out some car­ni­vores I was think­ing, “Ooh cool! Bug-eating plants!” Now that I’m start­ing to see all the carnage–this moth, plenty of gnats, and a beau­ti­ful orange dragonfly–I’m start­ing to worry about my ethics. I’m a veg­e­tar­ian, so why can’t the plants be too? Still, I guess it’s some sort of karmic pay­back: I eat veg­gies, so some of my veg­gies eat meat.

The flow­er­ing stem of another car­ni­vore, Drosera x ‘Marston Dragon.’ Droseras have a rep­u­ta­tion for reseed­ing like weeds. No weeds spot­ted so far, but it’s early yet in the season…

This sad lit­tle lupine is the descen­dant of a pack­age of seeds that were given out at a wed­ding we went to on the Olympic Penin­sula in Wash­ing­ton State. There was a bare spot in the yard, so the pack­age got emp­tied into it. But there was a rea­son the spot was bare: The area got almost no water and even weeds had a hard time get­ting a hold. The lupines never have attained much size–this one is less than four inches tall–but enough keep com­ing back to remind us of that misty sum­mer day.

And oh yeah, here are a cou­ple of the images I’m print­ing up. The first one: Undine Falls, Yel­low­stone National Park. The sec­ond: Tower Falls View­point, Yel­low­stone National park.

July 27 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: carnivorous plants • Cherokee Purple tomato • Drosera dichotoma • Drosera Marston Dragon • Hymenocallis festalis • in bloom • lupines • Peruvian daffodil • Tower Falls • Undine Falls • Yellowstone National Park | 2 Comments »

toloache

In the local canyons, this time of year brings about the spec­tac­u­lar flow­ers of the sacred datura, Datura wrightii. The low, mound­ing bushes grow two to three feet tall and eas­ily twice as wide, and are cov­ered from dusk to mid-morning with immense white trum­pets, eas­ily eight inches across, often flushed with pale lavender.

Photo by Dlarsen, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons [ source ]

This is one of sev­eral species of the genus that has been called toloache in Mex­ico. It’s in the night­shade fam­ily, and like other mem­bers of the genus Datura, the plant is as toxic as it is spectacular.

Even though it’s highly poi­so­nous, some Native Amer­i­cans used the plant as part of a cer­e­mony mark­ing the pas­sage of a child to an adult. From the Wikipedia: “Among the Chu­mash, when a boy was 8 years old, his mother gave him a prepa­ra­tion of momoy to drink. This was sup­posed to be a spir­i­tual chal­lenge to the boy to help him develop the spir­i­tual well­be­ing that is required to become a man. Not all of the boys sur­vived [my emphasis].”

On my recent pre-dusk hike through our local Los Peñas­qui­tos Canyon Pre­serve all the buds on the numer­ous toloache plants were tightly furled when I arrived.

But by the time I left, less a half hour before sun­set, the flow­ers buds were loos­en­ing. Had I stayed an hour longer I would have been able to view the fresh flow­ers in the last glow of day­light like an intox­i­cat­ing evil wel­com­ing the night.

Here you can get a sense for how large these flow­ers will be.

Despite its bad press this is one of our local plants that I’ve been eying to add to the gar­den. The only thing the cat shows any inter­est in are plants that look like grasses or cat­nip, and there are parts of the yard no small child could get to. Besides, I’ve already got a num­ber of toxic plants in the garden–oleanders, toma­toes and other night­shade cousins.

In addi­tion to hav­ing amaz­ing flow­ers, this datura requires no added water dur­ing the long dry sum­mer. Noth­ing this spec­tac­u­lar can make that claim.

Speak­ing of poi­so­nous plants, last week’s New York Times had an arti­cle on the Duchess of Northum­ber­land. She’s in the process of build­ing a mod­ern annex to grounds that were designed by Capa­bil­ity Brown, the land­mark British land­scape designer from the eigh­teenth cen­tury. Tra­di­tion­al­ists are not happy. “They said I am to gar­dens what Imelda Mar­cos is to shoes,” the Duchess is quoted. In her project one of the fea­tures is the Poi­son Gar­den, which the arti­cle describes as “a spooky fenced-off area with about 100 vari­eties of toxic plants, as well as cannabis and opium poppies.”

I bet this duchess’s gar­den par­ties will be pretty inter­est­ing affairs…

July 23 2008 | Categories: gardening • plant profiles | Tags: Datura wrightii • drought-tolerant landscaping • ethnobotany • in bloom • native plants • poisonous plants • sacred datura • toloache | 2 Comments »

mariposa lily

Here’s a plant I hadn’t grown before, the Mari­posa Lily, Calo­chor­tus super­bus.

The first plant to bloom was creamy yel­low, almost white, with very few mark­ings. It had a remark­ably lacy petal thing going on–but that was due to insects munch­ing on the plant.

And then this clone bloomed, pale blush with some of the most out­ra­geous petal mark­ings I’ve ever seen on a bulb, almost like a pea­cock feather. Gee, I thought I’d got­ten the wrong bulbs since they were so dif­fer­ent. But doing my research I was assured they were actu­ally the kinds of vari­a­tion you can expect from this plant. In fact, there’s a web page that shows lots of vari­a­tions of this species.

I haven’t seen what this plant does dur­ing the sum­mer in a bed that gets moderate-to-light water­ing. This is a Cal­i­for­nia native and comes from areas where it dries out in the sum­mer, so chances are excel­lent that the bulbs would rot in the ground. I’ll try to dig up most of them and store them dry, but I’ll leave a few in the ground for a test, par­tic­u­larly those in areas that are far­ther away from the sprin­kler. They’re so cool–I hope they’ll come back next year!

May 17 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Calochortus superbus • in bloom • Mariposa lily • native plants | No Comments »

jacaranda

Sun­day I went down to San Diego’s annual Art­walk street­fair down by the cool water­front in the Lit­tle Italy neighborhood.

This has been a seri­ously bipo­lar spring, alter­nat­ing chilly peri­ods with intensely hot ones. This week­end was one of the hot ones, and peo­ple were milling about slowly, check­ing out the stalls of art. But almost every­one seemed to be more inter­ested in the stands offer­ing cold drinks.

I talked to one of my pho­tog­ra­pher friends down there who had a dou­ble booth and has been pretty suc­cess­ful there in years past. “Peo­ple are mostly look­ing this time,” she said.

I guess I was one of the look­ers too, for the most part. After get­ting my fill of the art, the one sight that really caught my eye was this jacaranda tree in bloom over an orange back­hoe near where I’d parked my scooter:

I don’t see eye-to-eye with Jerry Sanders, the mayor of San Diego, but this is one thing we agree on. It’s his favorite tree, and one of mine. It’s Jacaranda mimosi­fo­lia, a South Amer­i­can native that’s well adapted to areas with­out much in the way of frost. The leaves are ferny and del­i­cate and the plant’s pretty well behaved in the U.S. (It’s con­sid­ered an inva­sive pest, how­ever, in South Africa and Queens­land, Aus­tralia.) In the spring it turns into this, an explo­sion of pur­ple flow­ers that rain down on cars and side­walks below. Messy as all get out but a pretty exul­tant mess! Yet another plant that’s too big for my yard…

April 29 2008 | Categories: art • plant profiles | Tags: Artwalk • in bloom • Jacaranda mimosifolia • spring | No Comments »

april plant combinations

The gar­den is always chang­ing. As plants mature and oth­ers come into bloom, I’m always see­ing com­bi­na­tions of plants and inter­est­ing rela­tion­ships between them. Here are a cou­ple plant com­bi­na­tions in the yard that I’m par­tic­u­larly happy with.

This is Home­ria col­lina, a South African bulb, with an uniden­ti­fied rosette-forming succulent–quite likely a grap­topetalum, pos­si­bly G. ‘Point Dexter’s’ or G. paraguayense–bloom­ing in the fore­ground and cas­cad­ing over a retain­ing wall. It’s right on the side­walk in front of the house, and it’s extra-nice that you see the com­bi­na­tion at eye-level.

I like how the purple-gray tones in the suc­cu­lent com­ple­ment the color of the block wall, and how its orangey tones work well with the homeria.

In the back yard there’s a dif­fer­ent group of things con­verg­ing, a bromeliad going out of bloom, some red Russ­ian kale that’s just about ready to pick, plain white land­scap­ing pan­sies that are near­ing the end of their lifes­pans, and a Pen­ste­mon with its first flow­ers of the sea­son. (The kale was much more pur­ple just two weeks ago, before the weather started to warm up.)

In a cou­ple of weeks these com­bi­na­tions will be gone, and there’ll be new ones that I’ve never seen before. All these joys of gardening!

April 08 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: color combinations • in bloom • plant combinations | No Comments »

protea pink ice

Shown here with its last flow­ers of a long sea­son that started last fall is Pro­tea x Pink Ice, a hybrid between the species P. com­pacta and P. susan­nae. Although one of the grow­ing guides says this stops at 5–7 feet tall, it’s now push­ing 10 or more, egged on by a cool and moist winter.

The shrub is well-behaved, and responds well to gen­tle prun­ing. But you grow it because of its flow­ers, and they’re pretty exotic:

When I get all piney over not hav­ing a cold enough cli­mate to prop­erly grow lady’s slip­per orchids or pro­duce even a small apri­cot crop, seri­ously cool plants like this begin to make up for what I can’t do.

March 27 2008 | Categories: my garden • plant profiles | Tags: in bloom • Protea Pink Ice | No Comments »

some spring wildflowers in the fake forest

I wrote a bit on find­ing dich­e­lostemma in the fake for­est of UCSD’s euca­lyp­tus groves. Here are a cou­ple more shots of some of what’s bloom­ing there, cour­tesy the win­ter rains:






Where are we? Cal­i­for­nia? Aus­tralia? The wild­flow­ers say one thing, the trees another…

March 16 2008 | Categories: places • rambles | Tags: eucalyptus • in bloom | No Comments »

everything’s red and orange and yellow

I was look­ing at a bed in the front yard the other day and noticed every­thing bloom­ing in it right now is in var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of red, orange and yel­low:

Freesia hybrid

Epi­den­drum ibaguense hybrid


Gail­lar­dia pul­chella


Linaria retic­u­lata ‘Flamenco’

Okay, okay, I some­times do have a com­pul­sive side when I decide where to plant things…

March 10 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: epidendrums • freesias • Gaillardia pulchella • in bloom • Linaria reticulata | No Comments »