[ Lost in the Landscape ]

plant it once, have it forever

There’s a promi­nent North­ern Cal­i­for­nia nurs­ery* that adver­tises on its web­site that a vari­ety will self-sow and nat­u­ral­ize. Or in its peppy, enthu­si­as­tic way: “Reseeds!” One of the plants so listed has a fol­lowup note: “Due to agri­cul­tural restric­tions, we can­not ship this plant to Arkansas, New Jer­sey, New York, Okla­homa, South Car­olina, and Texas.”

Read between the lines: This plant, under the right con­di­tions, might just run wild, out of con­trol, and take over your gar­den or an ecosys­tem! (Not all plant restric­tions are based on their inva­sive poten­tial, how­ever. For instance, some might be con­trolled because of known pests or dis­eases the species may harbor.)

Over the years I’ve added inter­est­ing plants to the gar­den, only to have them sow and prop­a­gate them­selves all over the gar­den. For most of these, I don’t worry huge amounts that they’ll escape to the nearby wilds because they’re wimps when not pam­pered in a gar­den, but with reg­u­lar water­ing they’re aggres­sive thugs. Pretty thugs, to be sure. But still thugs.

Here are a few of my mis­takes. Some are merely annoy­ing. Oth­ers require mul­ti­ple hours of labor every year to keep under con­trol. Colder areas might not have the same prob­lems with these that I do, but I’m sure you have your own mon­sters. (My apolo­gies in advance to the fine nation of Mex­ico. I just noticed that four of my selec­tions have “Mex­i­can” in their com­mon names…)

Mex­i­can petu­nia (Ruel­lia brit­to­ni­ana). Pretty, tough. Also pretty tough to erad­i­cate in my gar­den once it got a foothold. I should have paid atten­tion when the guy at the plant sale warned me that it might spread. Accord­ing to Flori­data, “Mex­i­can petu­nia is listed as a Cat­e­gory I inva­sive species by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Coun­cil. This means that it is ‘alter­ing native plant com­mu­ni­ties by dis­plac­ing native species, chang­ing com­mu­nity struc­tures or eco­log­i­cal func­tions, or hybridiz­ing with natives.’ This warn­ing applies to all parts of the state of Florida (and other areas with sim­i­lar mild cli­mates). Where hardy, the Mex­i­can petu­nia excels at invad­ing wet­lands.” It also can be a nui­sance in a dry gar­den like mine where it spreads under­ground and via explod­ing seed pods.

Mex­i­can fan palm (Wash­ing­to­nia robusta). Maybe it’s a uniquely Cal­i­for­nia thing: You go out to the gar­den to pull weeds, and along with the crab­grass and spurge, you end up pulling up lit­tle palm trees. Folks in colder climes might be thrilled to have some of these, but here they’re a nui­sance. Our Mex­i­can fan came with the house, and it took us a few years to finally remove it. All that time we were yank­ing baby palms all over the front yard, and the seed­bank remained viable for sev­eral years afterward.

Mex­i­can feather grass (Nas­sella tenuis­sima). I’ve dinged this plant sev­eral times before. I won’t add any­thing more here other than to note that I’ve prob­a­bly pulled up a hun­dred seedlings this sea­son. At least this is down from the orgy of seedlings that I had when there was a harem of adult plants in the gar­den that appar­ently had noth­ing on their mind except sex and reproduction.

Mex­i­can evening prim­rose (Oenothera species, I think it was O. spe­ciosa). I was on vaca­tion at the Grand Canyon in 1991. Inno­cently I bought a packet of seeds of these that were sold as a “wild­flower.” I was thrilled when they came up the first year and I had a gre­gar­i­ous patch of del­i­cate bright pink flow­ers where there’d been a patch of dirt pre­vi­ously. Lit­tle did I know they’d resow and spread by under­ground run­ners and con­tinue to annoy me to this day. Wild flower, indeed.

Sweet alyssum (Lob­u­laria mar­itima). Don’t let the “sweet” in its com­mon name fool you. I con­tinue to weed alyssum seedlings pop­ping up around the gar­den from a sin­gle packet of mixed col­ors I planted in the late 1980s.

Fort­night lily (Dietes irid­ioides). A few clumps of these came with the house. The tough, hard seeds lay dor­mant in the ground for years and plague you with unwanted seedlings long after you’ve removed their source.

Calla lily (Zant­edeschia aethiopica). I’ll have to admit that I have a soft spot for these plants and don’t pull them out the same way I pull out other unwel­come plants. My parent’s house came with a fifty-foot foun­da­tion plant­ing of them on the north side of their house. The way the plant can spread, how­ever, now makes me think the pre­vi­ous own­ers might have started with just a half dozen plants. Feral callas are plants of con­cern in some Cal­i­for­nia wet­lands. A cou­ple well-watered gar­den spots seem to gen­er­ate calla lilies out of thin air.

Epa­zote (Dys­pha­nia ambro­sioides). I won’t quite call plant­ing this Mex­i­can herb a mis­take, since I use occa­sion­ally in cook­ing. It does spread about the gar­den a bit, how­ever, and pops up in unex­pected places. There are reports [ includ­ing this one ] that it’s col­o­nized parts of New York’s Cen­tral Park–though that’s not my doing. I popped over to Wikipedia and learned this pretty inter­est­ing detail I’d never heard before: “Epa­zote essen­tial oil con­tains ascari­dole…; in pure form, it is an explo­sive sen­si­tive to shock.” Botan­i­cal TNT–Wild!

To my mis­takes, I’ll add some native Cal­i­for­nia annu­als and peren­ni­als that have been really suc­cess­ful in repro­duc­ing them­selves in my gar­den. Cur­rently, my plants are wan­der­ing around an area where they’re desired and haven’t escaped far. I won’t call them mis­takes at this point, but I can see that they could become unwel­come in some situations.

Cal­i­for­nia pop­pies (Escholzia cal­i­for­nica). What? Our sacred state flower?! Well, there are some unwel­come escaped colonies in Chile and Aus­tralia. And the seeds reg­u­larly find their way into cracks in the pavement.

Baby blue eyes (Nemophila men­ziesii). Not really what I’d call a thug, though these seem to be pretty suc­cess­ful at repro­duc­ing them­selves. It’s easy to pull out the occa­sional unwanted plants, but who’d want to?

Clarkia (Clarkia spp.). I haven’t grown many clarkia species, but the one that seems to wan­der around the most for me is C. rubi­cunda ssp. blas­dalei.

*There’s a good chance you’ll have guessed the iden­tity of this well-known nurs­ery if you’ve spent any time at its web­site. I don’t mean to diss them at all. You can get poten­tially ram­bunc­tious plants from vir­tu­ally all nurs­eries, includ­ing those ded­i­cated to native plants.

April 03 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: invasive plants • seed-grown plants • weeds | 10 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 »