Pelargoniums and Portulacas

This pic shows a small scene in my school garden in Chappaqua, rather the new "slope" garden that I created with the help of my AP bio classes last year. They broke ground and planted the first plants, then I continued to plant, dig, and weed all summer, and the result is very gratifying indeed. Here are two of my favorite flowers, one is a giant form of portulaca which is twice as big as the common sort, seen behind it. This is the magenta one, but there is also a white form. It produces little seed, compared to the regular variety, but is easily propped (and overwintered indoors) by cuttings. Truth is I haven't yet planted the little seed I harvested from it last year, it might be interesting to see if any crosses occured with the normal sort of portulaca. The pink pelargonium is one of my creations from my grad student days at Cornell. I call it Nuwe Pad, Afrikaans for "New Direction" (any spelling corrections are welcome). It is most odd, being a tetraploid with a zonal pelargonium called Rio as one parent, and a tetraploid hybrid I made at Cornell via tissue culture from a white zonal pelargonium and P. aridum as the other parent. P. aridum looks quite unrelated to the zonals, but crosses I did proved otherwise. It is a small plant with deeply divided leaves, small yellow flowers, and red tuberous roots. So somewhere in Nuwe Pad lurk genes for yellow color and finely divided foliage. NP is almost impossible to self, but just this year I was able to cross it with a red tetraploid pelargonium I grew from stored seed, which I evidently created but apparently lost the information on its origin. I will grow some of them out later this year. NP is a nice plant itself, growing rather compactly with single pink flowers and rich green foliage that is quite distinct.

Daylily Season

Daylilies might seem too common for serious plant nerd to consider, but as with most plants, there is much more to them than what most gardeners typically see, such as the ubiquitous Stella d'Oro yellow daylily planted everywhere. Not that Stella d'Oro is a bad plant, on the contrary its performance from late spring till frost is legendary, and its easy reblooming habit is something daylily breeders would love to make more commonplance in their creations. The triploid form of Hemerocallis flava, the common orange "ditch lily" is also everywhere, amazing for a plant that doesn't make seeds. Its secret is to grow from tiny bits of its spreading rhizomes, and its tough constitution, as it tolerates more shade than more refined daylilies, and it is widely grown for its reliable blooms and lack of pests (except in the South, where the fairly new disease daylily rust has made daylily growing more akin to rose growing with the need for frequent sprayings--fortunately the rust thus far has not been able to survive cold winters, effectively sparing much of the US from its ravages).

The best way to find interesting daylilies for your garden is to actually visit a daylily grower to see the plants in bloom. Photos are somewhat unreliable, since they don't always capture the finer aspects of the flowers appearance, nor do flower pics reveal habits of the plant. For example, a great many cultivars have flowers way down among the foliage, when they would look better if they were a few inches higher up. I've been to relatively few nurseries, but most of my daylilies come from two, Grace Gardens in the Finger Lakes region of NY, and Marietta Gardens in southeastern North Carolina. I visited Grace Gardens a few times during the summer while doing the wine route around Lake Seneca, and whatever survives for them will have no problems in my gentler zone of NY. It is a pretty place in a very picturesque region. From them I got Novelty Number, pictured above (light orange, reddish markings, yellow center with a light colored old echinacea bloom behind one petal). It would be considered unremarkable among serious daylily growers, but I love the way the colors blend, and it is a reliable performer for me. Also from them was Lady Neva, a huge orange yellow "spider" with purplish zones on the three petals, and Diabolique, a purple spider with a yellowish center. Milk Chocolate is a wierd one with a color that looks like its namesake, but with a warmish yellowish glow when seen in the "flesh" that make it quite appealing. Bold Tiger is a good performer, nice bright orange flowers with red zones that are borne in large numbers, as in the photo. Mary's Gold has a huge golden yellow flower that attracts attention as well. Marietta's Gardens is my source for the unusual Nowhere to Hide, which has amazing darker veination in the dusky pinkish flower. Also from them is Trooper, a big bold flower borne on a tallish plant, it appears more red than the pic indicates, and has two shades of such, with a yellowish center. Marietta's is a huge place, and I have to say that they gave me the largest plants of the vendors I have broght from, both when I stopped by in person and when I ordered via mail from them. Their fields are huge and contain what must be one of the largest selections of cultivars in the USA. There are many other growers all over the country, and daylilies have quite a large, enthusiastic, and serious following in the US.

Best of all, once you have some cool sorts, you can cross them to get your own unique daylilies. Most of the offspring will be unremarkable, though nice enough garden plants, some will be outright dogs, but you just might get one that is worthy of registration as a new cultivar. Crossing them could not be easier, just remember which ones are dips (diploids) and which are tets (tetraploids) because you can only cross within those groups, not between them. Generally the dips set seed more easily than do tets. Not all cv's make seeds, for example Mary's Gold is pollen fertile but will not set seeds. The round black seeds have fairly limited viability, so should be refrigerated soon after harvest and then sown in spring. You might see your first flowers in the second year, and certainly by the third for most seed grown plants.

Daylily season usually means July in my area, but in fact with careful selection among species and cultivars, I have bloom as early as May and as late as September. Breeders are hard at work trying to get more varieties for both extremes of the bloom period, especially among the late bloomers.

A South African Spring in New York

Its spring at last, and after a rather mild winter, many South African plants in both my home and school gardens have come through beautifully. Leaves remain from last season or emerge for this season, signaling that a good growing year lies ahead. Because I never know exactly where the photos actually end up when my postings are published, I'll describe the plants pictured so that the reader knows which ones they are. With a bent flower stalk from last year hovering over the grey green spoon shaped newly emerging foliage, Haplocarphya scaposa enters its second year in my home garden. This fabulous plant of the South African grasslands will produce its large yellow daisies on long stalks above a rosette of foliage during its first year from seed. It resembles a yellow gerbera but with much better foliage, and it will bloom all summer long. As with many Asteraceae, more than one clone is needed to set viable seed, so I have several plants growing in one of my home gardens. Small grey leaves on a branching young plant of Helichrysum spendidum, pictured with dead oak leaves underneath, show that it remained evergreen (evergray?) over the winter in my school garden. Barely a foot across right now, I know from having grown it years ago at the New York Botanic Garden that it will become a real beast this year, potentially nearing a yard in width and nearly as much in height. It will cover itself with numerous small bright yellow "stawflowers" in late summer. The yellow green vegetative "octopus" is Kniphofia northiae, a magnificent species of "red hot poker" lily from the high Drakensberg. Its overwintered for at least three years at home, growing larger each year but not yet near its full size. Perhaps a more sunny area would spur it to grow faster, but in time it will bloom, though the wide, spiralling and sprawling foliage is entertaining enough in the garden. It is one of many kniphofias I am growing that are hardy here. In bad winters the foliage almost dies back, in good winters like this past one, the foliage remains in good condition right into the new growing season. With pinnately cut leaves resembling a thistle, and like the latter a member of the Asteraceae, the genus Berkheya contains several winter hardy large daisy flowered species from the high mountains of South Africa. Other species grow throughout the country as well. I grew this one from seed, I think it is B. multijuga, which will have big yellow flowers over prickly foliage. If I am wrong, maybe it is B. cirsiifolia, which would have simliar, but white, flowers. Berkheya purpurea is a lovely light purple one that may be short lived but will flower its first year from seed started early. Grassy foliage emerging from a vigorously spreading patch marks Crocosmia "Distant Planet" an orange flowered selection from Ellen Hornig's amazing gardens and nursery (Seneca Hill Perennials) in frigid upstate Oswego, New York. This plant is indeed "unstoppable" as Ellen's catalogue description notes, pushing its leaves up through the fallen leaf mulch I put over everything even before winter is over. I see that Crocosmia aurea has also survived this winter along with Crocosmia "Lucifer" offspring from seeds I started last year, but neither is as quick to get up and go as "Distant Planet".

Some of the other South Africans that are growing right now in my gardens include Leucosidea sericea, one of the few winter hardy woody South African plants, Kniphofia porphyrantha, K. hirsuta, K. "pumila" from Plant Delights Nursery (I suspect that it is a hybrid rather than a species) and other spp and hybrids, Diascia cordata, Wahlenbergia rivularis, Amaryllis belladona (bulbs planted late against the wall at school, a protected location), Salvia disermas, and Artemesia afra. Others remain dormant, but that I know will reappear in time include Albuca shawii, Gladiolus papilio, Galtonia candicans, Eucomis bicolor, and Tritonia disticha. Still others resow regularly as self sowing annuals, among these are a species of Nemesia with white flowers (or various shades of pink in the hybrid swarm that formed when blue N. caerulea was planted nearby) and Senecio inaequidens. I am growing seed of many more South African taxa to try out in the garden this year, so it will be an exciting gardening season.