Friday Fabulous FLower - Spring has sprung

 Spring has sprung but winter isn't over yet.  Signs of spring: earliet bulbs in flower like snow drops and winter aconite open in sunny places, mallard ducks return to lily pond like clock work (Mar 1st), and of course the FFF in flower, two varieties of witch hazel, Arnold's promise and DIane (orange-reddish frs). Very, very cheerful.

Friday Fabulous Flower - And the winner is - witch hazel!

It's the 23d of February; technically still the dead of winter.  But we've had good snow cover so bulbs do well beneath the snow cover, and now it's in a bit of a winter thaw and the tips of leaves are showing all over the place.  The real contenders were snowdrops (a close 2nd), winter aconite, and witch hazel.  This particular flower is from Hamamelis x. intermedia 'Diane".  She differs from 'Arnold's Promise' in having reddish-orange flowers in the spring; if she flowers in the fall they are yellow like Arnold is in the spring.  This is by no means a record, 'Diane' has flowered as early as the 12th of February (last year).  

Last flowers addendum

Or would that be spelled addendumb?  TPP knew he'd missed the witch hazel, but an alert reader who was not worried about hurting feelings, but wanted to see the gold corydalis, let me know the ball had been dropped.  Well, while checking the estate to see how well the leaf guys had done (very well), TPP noticed that these were still in flower and likely to continue for awhile.  So here are the missing blooms, the Corydalis lutea (probably better named Pseudofumaria lutea), but this hardly helps because the old Fumiariaceae (bleeding heart family) is a defunct family now submerged into the Papaveraceae, the poppy family, and it's a false fumaria anyways.  And the 4-parted witch hazel with those long narrow petals.  This same shrub can also bloom in the spring, but then the flowers are reddish in color.  Pretty cheerful, huh?  Happy?  Hope so. Because this is it for the season.

Friday Fabulous Flower - winter thaw edition

The high today, Feb. 17th, is nearly 70 F. Night time lows are staying above freezing.  And this is February, a real winter month. A walk around our gardens showed nearly all our early spring shrubs with swollen buds, and if they are pushed just a bit further, a nice wintery blast from the Great White North will bring them and their acting like spring to an abrupt stop. 
Both of our witch hazels are in flower, but they will not get damaged in any way by more cold. Very tough plants.  So this is 'Diane'; she bloomed almost a week ago. She also flowered late in the fall, but then her flowers were yellow.  'Arnold's promise' opened it's bright yellow flowers today.  Snow drops will bloom shortly.  To celebrate our garden's awakening from its brief hibernation, TPP began some garden cleanup and shopped for some upcycled kits for raised garden beds. 

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.

Disappointing fall color - Persian ironwood

A Persian ironwood (Parrotia persica) was installed in our gardens about 14-15 months ago. It was decent sized, nicely shaped, and a reasonable price, so it seemed like a good idea. The tree has established itself in the medium back border of our lily pond, and looks handsome enough. Well, the fall color was pretty good this year, now most of the trees are pretty bare. Now some very cold weather is bearing down on us, so the fall color season will officially be over tonight. The Persian ironwood is still mostly green; only a few leaves are showing any sign of changing. In the same family as witch hazel and Fothergilla, Hamamelidaceae, the Persian ironwood is mostly planted for its fall color, and it's still green! What's up with that? Hard to say. The tree has plenty of flower buds, so it will flower in late winter/very early spring, right along with the witch hazels, but let's just say that in comparison the witch hazels put on quite a flowering display. The flowers are similar, but Persian ironwood lacks a corolla/petals although the anthers are red and a bit conspicuous, but not so much as Fothergilla. The fall has been so mild, perhaps a good hard frost was needed earlier to get things going. The genus is a nice example of an honorific name honoring Johann Jacob Friedrich Wilhelm Parrot, a German naturalist.

Friday Fabulous Fall Color

It's a late fall this year and a lot of plants are slow in developing fall color.  Here's witch hazel showing you why you should plant it.  It grows in the shade, it's a pretty tough plant, it flowers very, very early in the spring, and it has great fall color.  In general it's an under planted, under appreciated shrub that is a bit too subtle for your average suburbanite.   

Under planted and under appreciated perennials - winter hazel

While many people are familiar with witchhazel (Hamamelis), very few people know about winter hazel (Corylopsis), a close relative.  The two are similar in being early spring flowering shrubs, and in TPP's experience, both are dearly loved by bad bunnies.  Both shrubs have a nice fall color display too.  Winter hazel is also a bit less hardy, so check on cold hardiness as the species differ (TPP has C. spicata shown in flower.), and it would suffer dieback at the bottom end temperatures of zone 5, which haven't been realized in quite a few years now.  Winter hazel is a handsome, somewhat delicate looking, but graceful shrub, but the pale to lemon yellow inflorescences are the real eye-catcher.  This is certainly not a feature plant, but finding room for one in a shrub border works very well.  Unfortunately the plant is rather hard to find in the trade, so TPP started with just a stick, and it's slow initial growth and it's delectability to bunnies got things off to a slow start, and as Mrs. Phactor keeps pointing out to me, when it comes to woody plants, time is not on my side, so buy the biggest you can find.  The images above are from the Wikimedia Creative Commons courtesy of Kenraiz and Kenpei respectively.

An official beginning to spring

It's official! Spring is here! The Phytophactor doesn't much care for the calendar designations of the seasons. What matters is what the garden and gardener do. While taking my morning coffee, spring was declared because the witch hazel (Hamamelis) out beside the garage was in full , cheerful yellow flower. Witch hazels will bloom reliably when every other shrub is nothing more than bare naked twigs, some in the late fall (November) and some in the spring (March). This year the witch hazel even beat the snowdrops for first to bloom. Another witch hazel variety beat this shrub by a week or more, but it's a young plant and only had a couple of flowers after the rabbits pruned it so thoroughly during the winter. Witch hazels also have nice fall color and the grow well in shady areas.

Not to be out done, the Phactor planted spinach, lettuce, and mustard salad greens in boxes that went into the cold frame greenhouse. Any time the daytime temperatures are at or above freezing, cold tolerant plants will grow quite nicely in a cold frame heated only by trapping solar energy. This is a great way to extend the salad season by two months a year (spring and fall). So come on people, what are you waiting for? Spring is here!