Friday Fabulous Flowers - Helloborus hybrids

Thank goodness for gardening.  You've always got something to do when you have a big garden.  Various cultivars and wild flowers are making their spring appearance, more or less right on time based on past flowering data.  Here and there around our gardens are clusters of hellebores, great big buttercup family flowers and they are really tough, but not actually too cold hardy.  TPP can remember seeing hellebores in flower for the first time. And while it was obvious what family they were in, they did not grow in upstate NY so these were new to me.  They are nearly evergreen herbs and are one of the earliest plants to flower, and for some people their greatest value is that bunnies and deer don't find them very palatable.  The plants are slow to get established but once you've got them going, they'll come back for years, and even produce new plants from seed.  The biggest problem is that they do not make good cut flowers and the flowers on the stems are pendant or just plain droopy.  Some of the newer cultivars hold their flowers up better than others such as the ones featured here today (sorry, lost the name if it ever had one).  And it you didn't know this, the flowers lack petals, but the colorful bracts last a long time.

Friday Fabulous Flower - species tulips

Some time back Mrs. Phactor bought a collection of mixed species tulips and they have done quite well.  Quite a few people seem confused by the term species tulips, but they are basically wild flowers from a different place, real species with scientific names.  They would be called "wildflowers" in their native habitat.  These are not big plants or big flowers, but they are pretty tough, and quite handsome; they seem to naturalize well.  Let's see, top to bottom. Tulipa tarda, T. turkestanica, T. urumiensis, and T. humilis.  However the flowers tend to close when overcast or for the night.  They do well in well-drained rock garden situations.  They flower just after crocus in a sunny bed. These are all natives to the middle east, and at least one botanist thinks tulips may be the "lilies of the field" 
in all their splendor as real lilies in this region are not very colorful.

Friday Fabulous Flower - bloodroot

This is a totally up to date posting because bloodroot is flowering presently in our woodland gardens, a bit late as it usually flowers in March, and without any doubt this is a favorite simply because it is so dang cute.  For the longest time only one small clump of bloodroot grew in our shady areas.  And the clump got pretty big, then after a number of years, bloodroot is suddenly coming up almost everywhere.  Apparently ant seed dispersers are doing their job.  
It also is an early flowering species, a true harbinger of spring, although another wild flower has that name locked down.  Sanguinaria canadensis is a member of the poppy family and like many members it has colored latex, in this case a bright orange-red.  It's possible that the name derives from the old doctrine of signatures, the blood color a sign or signature of the creator to indicate the plant's use or value to humans.  Lots of plant names bear witness to such beliefs.  

Friday fabulous flower - Harbinger of spring

The weather is not exactly warm, but all things being relative, it's a cool, sunny day.  Just the right sort of weather for early spring bulbs.  Little patches of spring flowering bulbs pop up all over our gardens in a very delightful way and most were sort of volunteers anyways in that we didn't plant them, but there they are.  Since our little patches are all asexually propagated from an original progenitor, they all have the same flower color within the patches.  These are very early Crocus, a name derived from and old middle eastern name for saffron which comes from the three branched orange stigma of a fall blooming crocus.  Such bright clusters of color are terribly cheerful as spring slowly arrives.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Another species tulip appears

Things have been busy & entire days are getting away.  At any rate the weather seems to have moved away from the freezing cold over nights for now, weather guy was more optimistic, but no matter what the plants have responded & the Phactors are struggling to clean up over winter debris to let things grow.  Another of Mrs. Phactor's species Tulips has appeared, and this one is T. turkstanica.  The flowers are another star-shaped tulip of sort of a cream color with a yellow center.  Quite bright and quite attractive.  Several flowers are held just above the rather slender leaves.  Again this has been a trouble free plant that seems to be naturalizing to its bed under a witch hazel shrub very nicely.

Peak blue becoming white

Wow, not only is peak blue late this year, but even then in total defiance of Eostra's influence, peak blue is being whitened.  What a difference a day makes when it comes to weather in these parts.  To the best of our knowledge Peak Blue has never been snowed on before.  It must be because of the French-Canadian is here.  Compare with this image from TPP's most recent peak blue post just one day ago from as close to the same place as is possible.  Mrs. Phactor has declared this downright depressing.

Eostre on April 1st.

Eostre is an ancient goddess of spring, and because of some weird dating mechanism based on a lunar calendar, this year the religious holiday superimposed upon this honorable pagan celebration occurs on April 1st, which is often called April Fools Day, a widely disliked display of foolishness.  The religious holiday has no significance for this writer, and it wasn't something that was part of mix of messages, and it was more like Mother Nature was playing an April 1st joke on all of us.  TPP always looks forward to spring, and usually by this time 30 to 40 plants in our gardens have commenced blooming (or even come and gone).  This year, 2018, only 17 plants have started flowering, and three of these events were recorded yesterday on 31 March.  And today will be a sort of joke about spring because it is cold and tonight the temperature may be cold enough to be damaging  to even quite hardy plants.  This morning in the local newspaper an article about houseplants quoted a  horticulturalist as saying "the mental health benefits of plants are obvious."  TPP would concur, growing plants is highly therapeutic, and TPP can think of no person he deeply dislikes who also grows plants, and some of the worst would have to be coached "green side up" if they were laying sod.  So today's weather, and its impact on TPP's plants is rather depressing.  So come on Eostre, some fancy bourbon has been sacrificed (spilt) in your honor, and yet we get more cold, and even snow is possible.  OK TPP admits that the upper Midwest's weather may be beyond the abilities of an ancient goddess (but it was well-aged bourbon).  At any rate let's get this last gasp of winter over with.   TPP will attempt to cheer himself and others around him by cooking something semitropical and warming.  Maybe even indulging in a rum-based cocktail.

Friday Fabulous Flower -Rue those anemones

Today's FFF is a great little plant (and here too), but really wish the taxonomists would leave the names alone, of course TPP can never remember if this was the rue anemone or the false rue anemone.  Sounds like which ever came first claimed dibs.  This particular variety 'Shoaf's double pink' hardly counts as a native, but it's terribly cute. In this case it means developmentally stamen primordia have switched to producing petal-like flower parts, so the flower has that "rose" look to it, rather than having a single perianth surrounding multiple stamens and pistils. And then both the foliage and perianth have a nice pink tint to add to the cuteness. 
When first teaching about spring flowers way back in the early 70s, this plant was Anemonella thalictroides, but this species has now been submerged into the genus Thalictrum, so it becomes Thalictrum thalictroides.  Thalictrum was the genus of meadow rues, and it would help if someone knew what rues were.  These are members of the buttercup family, not the Rutaceae, the rue family. So no help. Although now TPP bitterly regrets bringing this up. Soon you will get to see another rue anemone whose name has been changed too.  

Peak blueness

Today is Peak Blueness.  It isn't as blue as some springs because of last week's shot of very cold weather and snow, although the latter doesn't harm these plants very much.  This is a portion of what passes for lawn at the Phactors.  The image was taken from a way back across our gardens and while the resolution does not allow it, the blue is the result of 10s of thousands of Scilla flowers. The Phactors haven't planted a one of these; they have been naturalizing and on their own for decades.  So plant them now for your future blueness. 

Friday Fabulous Flower - late fall color

Yesterday Nov. 17th probably set a high temperature record for the date - the mid 70s (F). After doing leaves in garden beds, some lawn cleanup, anti-rabbit cages around trees & shrubs, and other odds ends, the Phactors treated ourselves to a margarita on the patio. A walk around the estate let us check on undone jobs and see what late fall color was left. The smoke trees, a Kousa dogwood, a couple of Japanese maples, a European Euonymus, fothergilla, and witch hazels were looking rather nice. One of the witch hazels was also in flower, a not uncommon happening, so it's sort of like early spring and late fall all together.

Spring flowers - time lapse

This is a nice time-lapse video of common spring flowers opening. Although snow is forecast, our Korean azalea decided it was OK to flower; hope it's correct. Bright pink flowers sort of caught TPP by surprise. Can't recommend a nicer spring flower plant than R. mucronulatum. 

Spring cleaning

Spring garden cleanup is quite a chore no matter how well you prepare in the fall.  Where the hell do all the leaves come from? Shrubbery and the dead aerial portions of perennial plants are terrific leaf grabbers.  The high temp today will be in the upper 60s and the predicted rain looks to be heading more easterly while still south of us, so TPP will spend the day doing some garden cleanup. Gently removing the accumulated leaves from among the hellebores will be job number one. The flower buds have really begun to push up through the leaves, but things will look much better and the plants will flower better without the smothering covering of leaves. Before the cleanup is done, the Phactors will probably fill 10-12 of those large paper lawn waste bags for composted recycling by the city.  It was also windy yesterday, so today there will have to be some policing of the estate to pick up limbs also for city recycling as wood mulch. Buds on snow trillium (Trillium nivale), a very small native to local woodlands, but not common is showing color. As are the yellow flower buds of Cornus mas.  Such warm temps will push things along quite quickly, and some not so early flowering shrubs are showing swollen flower buds, e.g., pearl bushes.  So why with so much work to do, is TPP blogging instead of raking?  It requires some planning and at least one more cup of coffee.  All good gardeners know this.

April Flowers

April has been quite mild, even warmish, so the gardens (and field work) are charging along at an alarming pace. This must be pretty close of peak flowering, whatever that may mean. So far over 75 different plants have flowered in our gardens, and a long-time friend upon hearing this at a brunch said, "That's inconceivable." And yes, for that person, that many different flowering plants is inconceivable. You see, it's like this: Trillium - nivale, recurvatum, flexipes, erectum, sessile, and 2 more to go. Magnolia - loebneri, stellata, salicifolia, liliflora, soulangiana, x acuminata "butterflies" and 2-3 more to go. Things like that begin to add up. Right now the crabapples, lilacs, and flowering dogwoods are just beginning. This is the first year that the yellow-flowered magnolia produced a big floral display, and it was not a disappointment. Of course there are many other things that aren't so noticeable like the blue cohosh hidden among a profusion of bluebells. But just knowing they are there makes you feel good. While most things survived the winter, including a Sinocalycanthus seedling, some of the survivors are showing signs of some die-back so they will need some evaluation.   

Taxonomy class field trip

A late spring always truncates TPP's plant taxonomy class, but what can you do?  Well, today TPP guided his class to a seep spring, a smallish marshy-boggy habitat where in this particular area is one of the few places where marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), which is not a marigold at all, but a rather spectacular member of the buttercup family, grows. This is also the only place to see a skunk cabbage (in flower no less!) within a day's driving range, and while it looks to be in the right place, TPP happens to know that it was planted in this location by a retired biologist!  The class also managed to identify spring beauty, a second species of Dicentra, D. canadensis, (got Dutchman's breeches last week), cutleaf toothwort (which used to be Dentaria, but now is a Cardamine), and a yellow violet (V. pubescens).  On the whole not a too bad field trip, and in particular most of this class is becoming quite good at using their field guide and identifying these spring flowers. Didn't have a camera, so this image is from the Wikimedia Creative Commons - thanks carol.

Walt Disney at Dawson Lake

This poem was written by James McGowan and read at a memorial service in celebration of this life.  In a real coincidence, Mrs. Phactor called the poem to my attention today, the day that the second stanza was observed for real by my taxonomy class out in the field (finally).  Enjoy it. Jim did.

He's grab his sketch book
              go in April, May
              for the Spring flowers--
to make them characters,
his little men and women, boys and girls.
He'll do a film
              where they all sing and dance around--
but he must catch them first:

There's Hepatica,
she's trying on dresses,
              white to pink to blue, deep purple.
O that giddy girl look good in every one.

Spring Beauty laughs; she's everywhere
she owns the uplands, sings soprano
             she'll be the chorus
(alto Blue Bell answers from the creek,
             Wild Ginger, red-faced, croaks the bass).

Jack-in-the-Pulpit needs to loosen up.
Walt's going to match him with
that ditzy blond, the Bellwort.
There with the druggy Toothwort
             they'll cavort.

Some extras: White Trout Lily as a pious bride,
her yellow sis a freckled tomboy farmer's daughter.
Blue-eyed Mary is a peppy prep,
             cheer-leader through and through.
That Dutchman's breeches is a bumpkin oaf,
             comic relief,
Squirrel Corn his steadier brother (lots of heart).

A plot?  Who knows. Old Walt will work it out--
a new Fantasia of Spring
Set in that wholesome heartland,

Illinois.

So here's Hepatica acutiloba in one of her rarer dresses; around here the dress color is usually white to very pale pink. And this year it's too early for any of the other "characters" to have flowered.

Oh, yes, a reminder!

Maybe the memory isn't what it used to be, because somehow last fall the Phactor made an unplanned purchase of some spring bulbs on sale, and then had Mrs. Phactor yammering on about who (duh!) was going to plant them and where they were to be planted, and so being smallish, they were stuck into the margins of little gardens, here and there, and then promptly forgotten until the shoots popped up this spring.  And do you think there was any memory of what kind of bulb they were, or any notes about where all they had been planted?  Nope.  But the nice thing then is you get a surprise when they flower and you get your answer, which is Iris reticulata, a very cheerful spring flower.  Now the remaining surprise will be to see where all they appear.  Spring, when things lost are found, but a big pair of loppers are still missing.  Gone. 

Friday Fabulous "Flower" - Tulips

Our early spring gardens provide a lot of yellow, white, and pink, and so Mrs. Phactor has planted clusters of tulips, mostly species tulips because of their naturalizing ability, to provide early spring splashes of shocking color. This is a variety of Tulipa kaufmannii, and while only about 6-8 inches tall, they make their presence known.

Spring flower wish list

Here's an early spring flower that the Phactor doesn't have, the stinking hellebore (also dungwort or bear's claw hellebore because of the highly divided leaf)(Helleborus foetidus). What a charmer! But maybe our climate is a bit too severe for this species. First try at this species resulted in winter kill, and it was a tough winter, but supposedly this is hardy in zone 5, just maybe not in our nasty zone 5 with its radical temperature swings often without the benefit of snow cover. In spite of its various common names, it doesn't actually seem to smell bad, and a cluster of plants on a hillside, as shown here, can make quite an early display even though the flowers are not as large as other hellebores and are mostly green. Any feedback from other zone 4-5 gardeners?

Friday Fabulous Flower – Squill

The Phactor has a blue lawn. No, it’s not sad and depressed; it’s full of squill (Scilla siberica). It takes decades for the original plants to multiply and spread to make such a continuous carpet of blue, and only a few of the oldestyards in town look this way. Many people mistake glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa) for squill, or vice versa, but the GOTS flowers don’t nod and the stamen filaments are broad (dilated) forming a white center in the blue corolla in common varieties. A blue lawn is such a cheerful spring display, and that’s good because there is no way on Earth to get rid of squill once you have it; they can probably survive a nuclear bomb. A bit later in the season, the foliage is a bit of a problem. If you don’t wait until the leaves die down of their own accord before mowing, they will slime your lawn mower with their copious mucilage. Here's another view of the blue sward.

Sure sign of spring - Okeefenokee version

My not-quite-a-redneck kid sister lives off a dirt road on 9 acres of swamp some eres south of Talahassee, and here's a great spring floral display of bladderwort whose traps were featured not so long ago. Wow! And you should see their backyard! Note the buttressing of the tree trunks.