Forcing flowering

What's a guy to do? Spring is not cooperating, and my taxonomy class needs some flowers. Some of the early flowering tree/shrub species are showing swelling buds, so it's time to force some flowering. Most woody species at this stage can be forced into flower.  First you just cut some branches, and then as soon as possible you pound the base of the stem with a hammer to sort of pulverize it. This helps the wood wick up more water. The branch is then placed in a bucket of water. It works best to put branches is a cool place, but if you need flowering sooner, put it in a warmer place, like a glasshouse. So what's available?  Silver and red maple, witchhazel, alder, birch, filbert, Cornelian cherry, an ornamental pear.  Not bad, but our forsythia flower buds are toast. The shrub is hardier than the flower buds, so if any flowering happens this year all the cheerful yellow flowers will be low to the ground where they were insulated by snow. The silver maple flowered overnight, which was way too fast, but TPP will get some more now that he knows. The Cornelian cherry is showing some color, and other buds are still swelling, so we'll see what happens. Hope the students appreciate my efforts. As for Ms. Phactor, she got some artificial forsythia for St. Patrick's Day because there won't be any others.

Expected witch-hazel, got more snow instead

Well, isn't this just a fine development?  By this time the witch-hazels should be in bloom and probably the silver maples too. Instead it snowed some more and the forecast is for another week of winter weather at least. Blast that woodchuck! This is not helping TPP teach plant taxonomy and ID at all. You see, things have to flower so that you can identify them using a field manual. Granted, plants are not usually cooperative in this regard, but that's the way of it. Now woody plants usually provide enough material that you can identify them on the basis of winter or leafy twigs if you have the right field guide and if the bun-buns have left you any twigs, but otherwise you need flowers. TPP will be reduced to begging for leftovers at the local florist shoppes. How demeaning! The glasshouse helps and this past week it provided examples of several important families: dogbane, euphorb, mallow, cactus, and dutchman's pipe. But that doesn't help with the local flora. So what is a guy to do? Hmm, let's put a nice beef brisket in the spiced brine to "corn" it (takes about 2 weeks), and maybe make some gumbo to cover all the holidays in view. 

Under planted perennials - dwarf forsythia

There are quite a number of perennials that remain very much under planted largely because they are not so common in the trade.  Finding new plants has certainly gotten easier with e-commerce and mail-order nurseries.  Most plant purveyors take the Ohio liquor commission's approach.  After a sales survey (many years ago) discovered that 15% of their stock made up 85% of their sales, the Ohio state liquor stores removed most of their stock, so tough if you don't drink Budswater or Jim Bleem.  Most nuseries carry just the common stock that people are familiar with.  Not much appears for us discriminating gardeners.  So now and again TPP will try to turn your attention to some rather under appreciated plants that you really should consider.  Several come to mind and TPP will do an occasional series on this topic.  First off is the dwarf forsythia, Abeliophyllum distichum, which as you see isn't a forsythia at all although it is in the olive family and is a small to medium sized early spring-flowering shrub.  The flower color is white with a hint of pink, and a pinker variety is also around (var. rosea).  The overall appearance is lacey and they look especially nice against a back drop of dark green.  This shrub handles light shade quite well, and it isn't fussy about soil or water; not sure about the hardiness; zone 5 is not a problem at all.  For some reason dwarf forsythia just isn't known and seldom planted; it seems more common in Europe.   

Spring has begun!

Not counting small weedy winter annuals, like chickweed, the flowering season, our definition of spring, officially began yesterday, the 18th! of February, with the flowering of a witchhazel and snowdrops.  Snowdrops and aconite have been in bloom in warmer sunnier places for a week or more in other places, but our gardens are pretty shady.  Now let's look at the data.  The earliest this witchhazel has flowered in the past was the 9th of March.  The earliest the snowdrops have flowered was the 4th of March.  This puts 2012 15 to 20 days ahead of 2010; 2011 was generally later for everything.  Hellebores and lots of bulbs are getting ready to go.  So the garden log was dusted off, a new column was added, and we're ready to go.