To booster or not to booster, that is the question.

 OK, officially TPP is a boomer.  And since experts say I should get a vaccine booster, then I shall.  TPP is quite fed up with people who aren't smart enough to know who to listen to and who to ignore.  The excuses given to avoid the vaccines do  not change my mind about thinking that the anti-vaxxers are not very smart.  Quite pathetic arguments on the whole.  Now TPP finds out that teachers and staff from our local grade school are taking the state to court because they are in a group mandated to get vaccinated.  Now of course they have already accepted a number of mandated vaccines (and some of us remember how grateful people were for a vaccine for polio), do what is the issue?  That they don't have a choice in the matter?  It isn't about YOU and your individual choice. it's a matter of public health. Need you be reminded that some 750,000 people have died of this covid.  And that millions of doses have been administered without and serious complications.  So get vaccinated already, or get fired TPP is tired of the whining and the masks.

first frost -Nov 2

This area got its first frost, and TPP picked green tomatoes from the garden on Nov. 1.  NOV. 1!

That's a good 2-3 weeks beyond when we usually have the first frost.  So until 10 days ago the gardens were pretty green.  Trees were not changing color because we hadn't had enough cool weather to stop the cholorphyll synthesis.  But with the first hard frost things changed dramatically, virtually overnight.  The image shown here is a Hydrangea 'endless summer" and it is flowering on new wood and it seldom does this because the new growth doesn't get old enough in time and the season runs out.  So here it is in late October and it looks great as a result of all the flowering.  Pretty pink for Nov. 1.  Sorry for being distracted of late.

Plant migration of a sort

 It's the 25th of October, and still no frost, which is now over-due by about 2 weeks.  Fall color may be a bit of a bust this year because the first freeze may be a hard one and not the lighter series of frosts that promote leaf color change.  The area is still pretty green.  But TPP got a bit nervous and started the plant migration shortly after mid-October.  This is when all of the tropical plants, or at least non-hardy plants, get taken inside after their nearly 5 month R & R outside for the summer.  The fluffy tailed tree rats decided to simply chew up two epiphyte cacti, so-called Christmas cacti, not actually eating, just chewing up.  Mrs. Phactor thinks they needed replacing anyways.  A number of plants are a bit confused by the weather pattern and some break-through flowering is happening even though the foolishness of this has been explained (stoopid azaleas).  Most of the tropicals flower quite well during their winter inside (just check out past Friday Fabulous Flowers during January and February).  A couple of tough bonsai trees that seem to do well with a taste of cooler weather a are all the remain outside.  Now the sun room porch looks cheerfully vegetative.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - Toad lily

 Another late blooming perennial is called toad lily.  This native of Japan has never quite been hardy in TPP's gardens, but we're trying again.  There are  some differences among varieties in flower color, but most are light- colored with dark purple spots and splotches.  Nothing particularly toad like about it that TPP discerns but common names are common names.  In a shady spot, and protected location, this lily can make a pretty nice clump of flowering stems especially in.  Tricytis hirta is the species that they are placed in October, of course TPP still has tomatoes on the vine.  Thank you global warming.   

Friday Fabulous Flower - nearly last, not the least

The growing season is winding down, but not over as yet.  So far if anything the growing season has been extended a week or so.  But both this FFF and next week's too never have flowered before October, unless conditions have some plant confused, e.g., a yellow azalea has flowered a bit here in September and of course some of our Corydalis has never actually stopped flowering.  Roses are also putting out a few new flowers and so is the Abeliophyllum.  Interestingly enough this late flowering plant is also one of the first plants to sprout in the spring, and so far it has never been frost damaged.  By now the clump of stems is 5-6 feet tall, and drooping if they haven't been staked.  The entire plant is quite toxic, so nothing eats it, (true for many buttercup family members) and helps account for it's common name of wolf bane.  The shape of the flower made by petalloid sepals provides another common name, monk's hood.  This is probably Aconitum napellus, the most commonly cultivated species .

So no herbvorous pests, no pruning, no transplanting (doesn't like being moved).  By October most gardeners have forgotten that they have this plant.  Ours grow well in light shade, and so are sort of in out-of-the-way corners of the gardens.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - An African Bignon

Our African trip was focused on animals not plants, but TPP was at least familiar with one rather common tree that was in flower & fruit this time of year, the beginning of the dry season.  It's called the sausage tree because of the big, heavy indehiscent fruits hanging down like so many salami in a deli (bottom image).  Like other Bignons, Kigelia africana, has winged seeds but since the fruit doesn't open they don't get much of a chance to fly until after a large mammal gnaws it open.  The dark maroon-colored flowers only open for a single night and they are bat pollinated; sometimes you can see the marks left by bat thumb hooks on the outer throat of the flower.  Since the flower is rather large and fleshy that much biomass attracts considerable interest and various antelope, and even elephants will stop by trees for a snack of recently dropped corollas.

 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Very rare, not an Aster

 TPP is back!  It was a great trip even if it required several episodes of covid testing (failed them all, a good thing), including one administered by a nurse helicoptered into a field camp for just 9 of us.  At any rate today's not a Friday, not an aster, is actually called a false Aster, Boltonia decurrens.  Presently it is flowering in our perennial garden.  At well over 7 feet tall it is truly a standout.  And this is a rare plant in Illinois, an endangered species.  And having never seen it in the field it was quite surprise.  Now TPP knows what you are going to say, "Endangered? it looks like a fleabane aster, an Erigeron.  And technically TPP has no idea why it isn't one, and sorry haven't had the chance to look it up.  The numerous narrow pinkish ray flowers and yellow disk flowers certainly to look like a fleabane aster.  This particular species has leaf bases that are prominently decurrent down the stem, but Verbesina (wing stem) as the name suggests has winged stems so the two could be confused if you only had stems.  Although the yellow ray flowers of the latter leave no doubts.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Big

 If your perennial garden doesn't have one of these, it should.  The flowers aren't just big, they are huge.  And it is almost a carefree plant.  It only suffers from being tasty to Japanese beetles.  This cultivar is related to one of the rose mallows, a species of Hibiscus, but TPP doesn't know which one, perhaps H. moscheutos.  This is the one of the biggest flowers in our garden in terms of diameter, only surpassed by one of the big-leafed magnolias (back a few FFF's ago).  So that flower is about 8 " in diameter, pretty gaudy.  The cultivars come in a range of colors from white to dark red.  All have a center target of darker red.  It also flowers in mid to late summer.  

This plant was also called a marsh mallow because the grew in wet areas.  The roots were spongy and white, and if sweetened they were used as a confection, the botanical ancestor of marshmellows, a purely sugar confection.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Big and Blue

 

Somehow TPP missed a Friday.  Who knows how this happens but it did.  Fortunately there are a few reliable plants that flower in the late summer.  This plant moves around the garden a bit, but it's always around. Quite reliable, you just have to learn how to recognize the seedlings and leave a couple.  This is the great or big blue Lobelia (L. siphilitica), probably the easiest Lobelia to keep around your garden. And this part of the garden is fairly dry, although some field guides suggest it likes wet areas.  Don't know about the specific epithet, perhaps this species was thought to have a medicinal use, but no obvious connection.  There are supposedly two varieties here in Illinois, but TPP isn't sure he's ever a seen a difference.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - Meadow rue

 

Well, it's almost Friday, so may as well do something in bloom.  The Meadow Rue right next to our patio is an elegant tall plant (5') with a spray of purplish flowers at the top.  This is a dioecious species, probably Thalictrum delavayi.  The flowers are basically either a cluster of stamens or a cluster of pistils with a whorl of several petalloid bracts below.  In another taxonomic affront to TPP's memory, Hepatica. has been placed in the genus Tahlictrum.  Some molecular study obviously nested it within the meadow rue genus and so for neatness the genus got changed.  The meadow rue generally flowers now in mid to late July, whereas Hepatica flowers in the very early spring.  It also has petalloid bracts, and unlike many spring ephemerals, its leaves do not die back but over winter above ground after turning a purplish brown, thus the liver leaf, that and it's three lobed. Oh,crap there is a weedy vine climbing the meadow rue.