[ Lost in the Landscape ]

a new weed

This past win­ter I was notic­ing a weed pop­ping up all around the yard that I hadn’t noticed before. I was men­tion­ing it to John, and added, “I’m not sure what it is, though think it could be some sort of euphorbia.”

Then in the gen­tly tact­ful way spouses have of cor­rect­ing you and point­ing out your blind spots he qui­etly cleared his throat and pointed to one of the four young pot­ted plants we have around the gar­den of Euphor­bia lam­bii, one of my dry garden-adapted plants from the Canary Islands. “Maybe it’s that?”

Uh, like duh. What else would it be?

Last year was the first that these plants bloomed, and this spring they bloomed with a vengeance. Dur­ing sunny weather over the last few weeks I’ve heard lit­tle pop­ping noises from the direc­tion of the plants, and have come to the con­clu­sion that the sounds were that of seed pods explod­ing and jet­ti­son­ing the dust-like seed every­where.

I may come to regret the day I intro­duced these to the gar­den, which accord­ing to my records is March 9, 2008.

Speak­ing of weedy plants, here’s another sur­prise seedling from the gar­den, a lit­tle baby red foun­tain grass, one of three seedlings I noticed this year. In recent years the related green foun­tain grass, Pen­nise­tum setaceum has become a nox­ious (though stun­ningly beau­ti­ful) weed and has landed high on vir­tu­ally every thou-shalt-not-plant list issued for Cal­i­for­nia. But many peo­ple gave a by to this related red plant. It was often pushed as being ster­ile and inca­pable of repro­duc­ing by seed, a piece of mis­in­for­ma­tion even I relayed in this blog. (I’ve cor­rected that ear­lier oops in case any­one reads that ear­lier post.) As you can see here it can repro­duce by seed, though this form doesn’t spawn the same way reg­u­lar foun­tain grass does. Nor is it imme­di­ately the same mon­ster pest that feather grass (Nas­sella tenuis­sima) can be.

Pok­ing around the web I found an updated plant descrip­tion at San Mar­cos Grow­ers that includes some inter­est­ing back­ground on this plant:

Recent work in prepa­ra­tion for the grass sec­tions of the Flora of North Amer­ica, which will include nat­u­ral­ized and cul­ti­vated grasses, indi­cates that the name cho­sen for this plant will be Pen­nise­tum advena or per­haps P. x advena. Dr. Joseph K. Wipff, pre­vi­ously with Texas A&M and now a tur­f­grass breeder, wrote the sec­tion on Pen­nise­tum and has indi­cated that Red Foun­tain Grass is most likely a cross between P. setaceum and P. macrostachys (AKA ‘Bur­gundy Giant’). As a hybrid the name would most appro­pri­ately be Pen­nise­tum x advena ‘Rubrum’. The latin word advena means “newly arrived” or “stranger.”

So is it safe to plant this form of foun­tain grass? Here’s my think­ing: Hybrids between species are often ster­ile. (Think of mules, the off­spring of a horse and a don­key.) But every now and then some­thing hap­pens that allows the hybrid to repro­duce. Some­times the seedlings will be just as nearly ster­ile as the imme­di­ate par­ent, but other times a muta­tion could ren­der the seedling entirely fer­tile. In that lat­ter sce­nario the nearly-sterile foun­tain grass could turn into some­thing with the ugly inva­sive poten­tial of its Pen­nise­tum setaceum ancestor.

In other words, today I would be cau­tious and not plant it. Unfor­tu­nately, almost twenty years ago, we designed the front yard around a big mound of the stuff. The plants look stun­ning and move gra­ciously in response to the breezes. Their size is per­fect for the spot, and their red color is unmatched among other grasses. Every now and then I look at other options, like those rec­om­mended in the Don’t Plant a Pest brochure put out by the Cal­i­for­nia Inva­sive Plant Coun­cil. But these lists often fall short in the alter­na­tives they offer and end up read­ing like, “Cheese­cake is bad for you. Would you like to eat this deli­cious raw rutabaga instead?” So…I’m still look­ing for the per­fect replace­ment plant–hopefully some sort of native, but in the mean­time I’m pulling the occa­sional seedlings.

June 20 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Euphorbia lambii • Fountain grass • invasive plants • Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' • weeds | 10 Comments »

brown is in

Maybe I was inspired by the gar­den designs of Piet Oudolf. Maybe I was inspired by my recent trip to see things turn­ing brown in Los Peñas­qui­tos Pre­serve. Or maybe I’m just a lit­tle busy and/or slacker-ey in the dol­drums of summer.

What­ever the rea­son, I’ve decided to let the flow­er­ing heads on a lot of plants do their nat­ural thing and turn brown, to see what they look like. These are all exper­i­ments that I might develop into some­thing a lit­tle more fin­ished look­ing at some point. And all this is tak­ing place in the front yard, where appear­ance is every­thing. What will the neigh­bors say? Hope­fully they have a sim­i­lar sense of adventure.

The plant on the top of this pic­ture is a spi­raea I bought fif­teen years ago. This is before I started my plant data­base, and the label is long gone. I’m still work­ing on research­ing the species. Even the Cal­i­for­nia native Spi­raea dou­glas­sii likes a lit­tle bit of water, but this one in the front yard gets very lit­tle in the sum­mer. It’s even sur­vived six weeks or more with no irri­ga­tion. It doesn’t look the pret­ti­est that way, but it survives.

Here it is con­trasted against the almost-white foliage of com­mon dusty miller, Senecio bicolor subsp. cineraria, a plant usu­ally sold as an annual. But it’s hung on for well over five years in this tough spot. Looks pretty good most of the year, too.

Another plant with light-colored foliage is San­tolina chamae­cy­paris­sus, also called laven­der cot­ton, ground cypress, and a few other things. I like the swoop-ey rhythm of the dried flower heads and stalks. This is one of those plants I really hate in bloom. The yel­low against the gray foliage for two weeks in early sum­mer is unfor­tu­nate. And the flow­ers smell creepy, too–something between bad med­i­cine and paint remover. At least the plant stays a nice mound of gray­ish foliage most of the year.

And the last plant in this lit­tle gallery is some basic laven­der, con­trasted against the brown-red foliage and seed heads of red feather grass, Pen­nise­tum setaceum ‘Rubrum’. Some peo­ple dead-head their laven­der, both to lengthen bloom-time and to keep the plants tidier. I like the pointil­list bits of laven­der with the gray-green foliage and the brown of the dead flow­er­ing heads.

I’m not pos­i­tive that dead­head­ing the spent flow­ers off the laven­der does much to keep the plant bloom­ing: It looks good win­ter through about now, and then starts to slow down as my water­ing slows down. The san­tolina blooms once a year, dead­headed or not. And the spiraea…well, the thing that would perk it up the most would be some more water and not vig­i­lant remov­ing of its spent blooms. Poor plant. It had the sad for­tune of end­ing up in my yard as its adop­tive home. San Diego isn’t surf and fun and sun­shine all the time…

August 20 2008 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: deadheading • drought-tolerant landscaping • dusty miller • lavender • Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' • Santolina chamaecyparissus • Senecio bicolor • spiraea | 2 Comments »