Winged Pollinators

It is time to celebrate those busy insects, not just bees, that are so actively collecting the sweet nectar from flowers.  They don't care that they are also spreading pollen, acting as sexual agents. 

Here is a simple bumble bee on Allium "Millenium' with its small compact globes of lavender flowers.  I have been very pleased with this allium, since it is well behaved. It blooms over a very long period in the hottest and driest part of the summer, and doesn't seem to be spreading seeds all around.

The most popular of the flowers for all of the butterflies are the Verbena bonariensis.  A tender perennial, the verbena has self-seeded across the garden, coming up wherever the soil doesn't have any mulch.  Sometimes plants will survive a mild winter, but usually it is better to encourage newly sprouted seeds.

Here is a Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly, which relies on pawpaw trees, with the females laying their eggs on the leaves, and the larvae feeding on those leaves.  So there is another benefit of the many pawpaws on the slope.

It is amazing what can be found on the Internet with a little patience.  This small butterfly is a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) according to the Gardens with Wings website.  It is very small, only a couple of inches across the wings, and is here feeding on marjoram flowers.  It is described as very common, and the host plant is asters.  There are certainly a number of those in the labyrinth garden.  I just hope the caterpillars don't do too much damage, since my asters are not particularly strong plants.

Back to the verbena banquet.  Here is what appears to be an American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis), again according to the Gardens with Wings website. 

And what a useful resource it is!  On the identification page, there are different starting points, based on the wing shape, colors, common names, and size.  I only wish it allowed you to select more than one characteristic at a time, to narrow down the options a bit more.

This little fellow feeding on one of the cone flowers, is probably a  Variegated Fritillary (Euptoieta claudia).  There are a lot of these to be seen.  The host plants are supposed to violets and stonecrop, which I don't have in the maintained garden area, but I know that there are violets growing in all of the wild areas.  Since they are a smaller size, they do not attract as much attention, but the multitude of them can create a small cloud of movement and color.

The final picture is of a Silver Spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus).  This is an oddly shaped butterfly, and the description of it being a combination of butterfly and moth certainly applies.  It has a much larger body, and short wings.  I am not surprised to learn its host plant is false indigo, since there are many of these planted in the labyrinth area and on the sides of the ravine.  I didn't realize that I was also providing butterflies their preferred diet!

This has been a fun research project, and I hope to have more pictures of other varieties.  There was one dark blue swallowtail that moved too fast to get a picture, either a Spicebush Swallowtail or a Pipevine Swallowtail.  There were also a number a very interesting black wasps, but they will have to wait until I can get a good shot and confirm their identity.

Crocosmias!

I have been in love with the dramatic color and form of Crocosmias for years.  Starting in the middle of June, when the late spring flowers are bowing down to the heat of the summer, these glorious perennials start blooming.  By having different varieties, that bloom can extend for several weeks, through July, and even into September.

I will start with 'Lucifer.'  The brilliant red-orange color, on the top of 3-4 foot tall stems hold their color in the intense sun that straddles the summer equinox.  Having a garden which only receives shade from the small tree planted in its center, it is important to select colors and plants that can deal with the intense sun. With the wiry stems, the flowers seem to be floating above the long, narrow leaves.

This large clump of plants started a a few corms 4 years ago.  In that short time they have multiplied and spread out rapidly, creating a large drift of foliage.  In fact, one of my favorite nurseries warns that Lucifer "actually crowds itself out so quickly that it rarely flowers after the first year in warm climate gardens."

I have not had that problem, yet, but I have had the problem of too much sun. Here you can see that same foliage, just weeks later, after it has endured too much sun and too little water.  I once thought that if I just watered it enough, everything would stay green and beautiful. But I no longer think that is true about this variety.  I need to move this into somewhere else in the labyrinth with less sun.  If is really does keep multiplying too fast, requiring annual sorting and replanting, I will probably get rid of them. It would be  shame, because I love it, but there are many others that I have been trying.  So, there are three others.

Here is the clump of 'Walrhead' which I purchased and planted in spring 2010.  Again, there were 2-3 corms, which have multiplied somewhat, but not as aggressively as the Lucifer.  The plants are much shorter than the Lucifer, with leaves reaching up to about 2 feet.  I am disappointed in that the flowers begin blooming much more down within the foliage, but it is still early in its bloom cycle.  The flowers didn't begin opening until the second week in July, almost a month after Lucifer.  Last year the period of new flowers was relatively short, but it was still establishing itself, so I hope it will live up to the description that it will continue to bloom until September.

Here is a close-up of the flowers.  The petals open up wider, and face outward, creating a more substantial presence than the tubular and upward facing flowers of Lucifer.  The color is not a bold, but still keeps its power when the full sun hits them. More importantly, there seems to be no problem with the foliage turning brown from either too much sun or too little water.  I hope that is true, because I cannot control the sun, and even with our attempts to keep things watered, there is little that can be done when there are periods of drought, like this summer.  The soil is very sandy, and doesn't hold water.

But there are more to discuss, so moving on.

Here is 'Star of the East' which was purchased last year.  Plant Delight nursery describes this as a 1912 introduction, which says pretty amazing things about its good qualities.  What I have noticed is how far it has thrown out new plants in just the year.  I only planted one set of corms, and you can clearly see two clusters about six inches apart, and there is a third behind them.  It has yet to reach the 32 inches in the catalog description, and there are only a few flower stems, but it has only been one year.  I planted this near the bench, and the flowers really do well with a close inspection.

See!

As you might have figured out by now, I have a lot of pictures to show.  That is because I kept taking pictures, but never got around to putting them up for you to see.

So jumping ahead, the final Crocosmia is 'Solfateree' which was also added into the garden last year.

This is clearly a much later blooming variety, just beginning to open its flowers past the middle of July.  It is significantly less prolific than the other varieties, with only a few new corms in the year.  It is staying much shorter than the others also, and I am uncertain about how it will do in the labyrinith.  So, I will need to just watch, wait and see.

Late May 2012

Following up on Allium Forelock, here are two flowers a month later.  While they are still much the same size, they are slowly transforming in seed heads.  I'll have to decide whether to harvest the seeds, and see if they will grow.  I don't want them to scatter about, because if they are viable that would be dozens of new plants, most likely growing in the grass.

I promised to have more to say about the orange foxglove.  That will have to wait until I can confirm the proper name.  I thought I knew it, but a closer examination makes me suspicious. The problem of knowing the proper name soon will be solved by the list of plants I am compiling in digital form, from 12 years of journal entries and a bag full of plant labels.

One of the nice May combinations can be seen on the right.  The lavender blue flower is a native Penstemon smalli bought from the now closed Lower Marlboro Nursery.  The yellow flower is Coreopsis 'Jethro Tull' with a ground cover of Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia) - which has not been added to the list, so I cannot specify the variety.  Unfortunately, the Feather Reed Grass on the right is also still unlisted.  Give me a break, I just started to work on the list this week and am up to 2004.

Here is a close-up of the Penstemon flowers.

The Penstemon blooms for 3-4 weeks, with the Coreopsis starting in the second week and continuing on for about six weeks.  With regular deadheading, the Coreopsis puts up new flowers, though they get smaller and more sparse, until it is done by the end of June. 

Another plant that came from the closed nursery is the Purple Milkweed, Asclepias Purpurascens.  The original three plants, that were little more than seedlings, have taken three seasons to get established and grow large enough to bloom.  This year they came into full glory, with large clusters of flowers.  They sit among a group of other tall perennials including a hardy hibiscus, visible on the left, Russian Sage, appearing behind and on the right. 

Soon they will fade into the background when the hibiscus starts opening its huge, dark red flowers. But for about three weeks they offer a warm color and disguise the still stretching stalks of the hibiscus.

Milkweeds provide food to a variety of insects, and are famous as a food source for caterpillars of Monarch butterflies as well as other insects.  Until doing research for this entry, I didn't realize that the caterpillars ingest and store the bitter and toxic chemicals in the milkweed leaves they feed upon, which protects them from being eaten by birds. 

Speaking of insects, here is a visiting butterfly enjoying the nectar of the milkweed!  Now if it will also lay some eggs, maybe you will see a complete life-cycle?  Stay tuned.

Finally, here is a super-sized Verbena bonariensis on the edge of the sidewalk.  These tender perennials are usually killed in the winter time, but this one survived the mild weather.  Of course, it blocks half of the sidewalk, which David thinks is just wonderful.  It will need to be pruned back heavily to encourage re-blooming, but recovery is quick.  A hat tip to Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter, England, where I first fell in love with these.

Looking back to Early May

In the spirit of remembering what bloomed last month, here are pictures from Early May. 

I will start with the Secret Garden.  I call it that because I hope the deer will never find it. That failed last summer when 20 feet of day lily blossoms were eaten early one morning.  This is a narrow strip between the house and a board fence we put up with our neighbor's permission to get more privacy for all of us.  If you look closely highlights from left to right include: many white peonies with one pink one; above the highest peony is the seed head from one Jack-in-the-pulpit; fading hellebore flowers, yellow tree peony blossoms; white bell-shaped flowers on the Japanese Snowbell tree; and the masses of yellow roses on the fence.

Turning to the labyrinth, most of the planting areas have filled up, looking more mature and established.  I am pleased with the variety in colors, foliage shapes and textures, plant shapes from round to tall and spiky, and fine or coarse textures.  As plants have grown enough to be divided, and then moved into different places, the repetition of things create a sense of unity.  There is still more to be done, and this fall it will require some significant dividing and moving of more large plants.

One of the fun, new plants is Allium Forelock, with very tall stems reaching four feet.  They look a bit alien, growing up so much higher than anything around.  I was worried that strong wind or rain showers might knock the sideways, but that has not been a problem.

I had banned any allium until we had gotten control over the wild onions that heavily infested the whole yard.  I wanted as clean a slate as possible, so when there are new onion seedlings, I might be able to distinguish the bad from the good.  So, this is now the third allium we planted in the last year.  I am hopeful the alliums will work over time, because they are totally varmint proof.  Nothing will touch them, a strong criteria for living next to a nature preserve, with its overflow of deer, gophers, rabbits, foxes, and who knows what else. 

Here is a close-up of the Allium Forelock flower-head newly emerged from its sheath.  It is only 2 inches in diameter, with the sides and bottom becoming more rounded over time.  The top looks like someone with a bad hair day.  I will try to get another shot, soon, to compare.

They are not beautiful, but fit the "what in the world is that" quirky category of flowers - so David thinks they are wonderful!  I find them humorous, and anything that makes him smile is alright by me.  We all need to smile more often.

What I want to watch is what kind of seed-head there is.  I don't know whether to leave them on, or maybe cut them off and discard them so they don't self-seed?  Any suggestions?

I promised last time to show the full flower stage on the Continus 'Young Lady.'  It as a fine, slightly pink haze behind the Penstemon digitalis, 'Husker Red."  Since this picture was taken, the flowers heads totally hide the foliage underneath, making a truly smokey looking bush.  Actually, if you look at the labyrinth shot above, you can see the bush near the left edge.  It creates a very useful contrast.

We originally bought at least two different 'Husker Red' plants.  Multiple divisions later, you can see that this one has more green in its leaves, what the descendants from other plant have a red/purple leaf color. When I dig these greener ones up, I will give them away to neighbors who appreciate the free plants, and keep the others for my own use.  Oops, I wasn't going to tell them that.  Heck, they don't read this blog anyway, so they will never know it!

So, here is one final view across the labyrinth.  I will say more about those orange foxglove type flowers next time.

Catching up on April

I confess, I have been delinquent in putting up new photos for the last, oops, two months.  I have been taking the pictures, but I was gone for almost three weeks in April on a trip to Italy, and then I worked on narrowing down the more than 900 pictures do a manageable 375 and post them on Shutterfly. So, looking back at April, here is what I can show you.

This photo actually dates to before April, when the leaves on the Katsura Heronswood Globe were just emerging.  I wanted to document the progression in color and overall appearance of the leaves on this tree over the first few weeks in Spring. I know there is international interest in the Heronswood Globe because one of the most frequently viewed picture on this blog is one I took of that tree. 

When the leaves are first emerging, there is this interesting blend of light yellow green and burgundy red, making a short term display. 

As the foliage matures over the next 3-4 weeks, the green color deepens into the tone on the right.  However, the leaves on the tips still retain that burgundy color as a light coating on portions of the leaves.  Many websites talk about the foliage color in the fall, but fail to mention this transition in spring. Some places describe the foliage as a blue-green, which doesn't fit what I have seen.  This specimen is in a full-sun situation, and combined with our high temperatures and high humidity in July and August, that may shift the color away from any really blue cast? 

This is an early shot of Cotinus coggygria, the variety Young Lady, which is very slow growing.  There are already pictures, which I will post later, that show it in full bloom, and it is spectacular this year.  It had been in another, prime location in the front of the labyrinth for many years, but never performed well enough to earn its visibility.  So, we moved it a year ago, and put the standard dwarf cedar in its place.  Maybe it is shy and needed a more modest spot, because this year it looks the best it has ever looked. 

You will see water on the next few shots, because I was out early in the morning after a light rain. Those drops of water always sparkle on the flowers and foliage.  On the smoke bush, they bead up dramatically.

The next shot of a rosebud growing in front of the fence in the Secret Garden flouts its water drops in a spectacular way. It just looks so fresh and inviting.  This bush out-performed what it had done any previous years, with dozens of flowers over some weeks of time.  The problem with traveling in April is not being able to enjoy them every day.  After the first flush of warm weather, things cooled back down enough that many flowers lasted far longer than usual.

Moving onto the peonies.  This one, a Kopper Kettle, bloomed for the first time in the three years it has been in the garden!  It had about a dozen flowers.  Curiously, some formed on woody stems above ground, and some on new foliage that emerged from the ground.  As an inter-species variety, with both tree and herbaceous peony parentage, I think each side was showing off!  I took several pictures of this plant, and this one is the most representative of them all.  But I have to say, there were surprising variations - one had bright streaks of magenta on its petals.

This white peony is what I call a "classic" because it traces its heritage to plants growing on the farm my parents bought in 1964 in Pleasant Valley, New York.  I have kept bringing new divisions of it to each garden I have made over the years, and I hope to have one growing nearby into my old age.  These flowers have a strong, spicy fragrance, and a bouquet of 6-8 will fill a room with their heady power.  I have no idea what variety this might be, or where to find that information.  It is tough, lives where ever it is put, and makes me very happy when it is blooming.

I will close with this picture of a soggy common sage plant growing near the front steps.  I am glad we have it there, so I really do notice it blooming.  I would not normally recommend sage for its flowers, but these are worth a front row spot.  This is an area where the previous owner of the house put in a deep layer of gravel, with little soil, and it gets baked in the hot sun during the summer.  If we can get herbs established here, they usually adore the conditions, and we get rich flavors for cooking.

I have lots of pictures from May  that I am working on, and will put them up soon. 

Easter flowers

So, with all of the warm weather, there are lots of flowers blooming at the same time, rather than spread out over different weeks. 

This is the same red Anemone I included in the previous entry, but this is a close-up of just the flower.  My most loyal reader, my sister, questioned me in a email, believing it is a poppy, but it is not.  I cannot get poppies to survive in this location.

So, I point you to a blue flower with the same foliage.

This is certainly not a poppy.  I have not gone digging through all of my invoices and ordering materials, to determine in more detail where I purchased these or what more I can add to the mystery.  I have had other activities like spring clean-up and practicing for Easter Sunday to keep me busy.

With the warm weather, even the shorter plants, such as this iris, have barely gotten out of the ground before they bloomed.  They are in such a rush to get that bud opened that they never really stretched out their stems. It is a good thing I had not planned on cutting flowers to take inside.

Even more dramatic is this blue Iris brought back from Mom's garden in Ohio. For a comparison on height, you can see the four inch tall Grape Hyacinth next to it.  These usually have 18 inches of stem on them.

There are several of these scattered among the boxwood which is destined to become a low hedge.  Some are too close to the boxwoods, and will need to be moved in the fall, which is when Iris prefer any changes in residence.

The Viburnum x pragense is now blooming.  If you compare this picture to the other viburnum, you will see it is very lanky in growth, with long narrow leaves.  The flower clusters are denser and have a rounded top to them. 

This shrub was pruned by some of the deer, which nibbled off some of the outer blooming buds on the lower parts.  Thankfully they either got bored, or something distracted them before doing substantial damage.  It will recover very quickly once its puts out new growth.

Finally, though it might not technically be a "flower," the fancy Jack-in-the-Pulpit, or Arisaema sikokianum, is blooming in the North garden.  It might be fair to call it a flower since it has a clump of red berry looking seeds on the top after they mature?  This is the second Jack-in-the-Pulpit to bloom; the native clump I brought up from the side of the ravine because it was about ready to slide away has not even come up out of the ground yet.

Early April

The warm and early spring is bringing many different plants into bloom at the same time.  This view shows the Viburnum x Burkwoodi Conoy in full bloom in the front, while the Viburnum x pragense is still in bud, directly behind and a bit to the left in the picture.  But if you know where to look, just to the left behind that, you would notice the new needles emerging on the Dawn Redwood as well as the slight bit of green new leaves on the tall wild cherry.  The Crape Myrtle has waiting a bit before putting out its leaves. 

Unfortunately you can also see, on the right side about 2/3rds up, the light blue paper covering a new house being built on the waterfront.  Like all new construction along the Bay, it stands on 10 foot stilts above the water level, with a two story house on top, so it really sticks up in the air like a sore thumb. 

Here is a close-up of that same viburnum.  When I was taking the picture in the late afternoon, it was swarming with bees, some of which are visible in the photo. This bush has grown to fill its location, and requires careful pruning to keep it within its boundaries.  Fortunately, it responds well to the regular and tight pruning needed, filling in the empty spaces with new growth, and replacing old growth that must be removed.  I could imagine a row of these being used for a dense and flowering hedge.  It would not allow strictly geometric shaping, since there are always new branches growing out, but would be perfect for an informal, irregular, evergreen border.

Looking back to the original picture, you will see a group of yellow daffodils blooming on the left side.  These are in their second year, and have nicely multiplied the number of flowers so they create quite a nice splash of color.  I hope they will be good for 2-3 more years before they will need to be dug up.  I liked them so much, here is a close-up.

Finally, we planted a variety of anemone bulbs, which are providing some nice alternative colors.  I will close with those photos for now.