The spring orgy of flowers is winding down. Some spring bulbs flashed for just a few days and were gone. But it didn’t really matter because they were replaced by something else interesting.
Summer’s flowers seem to come at a more measured pace. But for me it’s a different sort of pleasure, letting me focus on more subtle things like plant forms, leaf colors and textures.
Here’s some of what’s still blooming from spring, along with the beginnings of plants that will accompany me through the summer months.
The flowers above, left to right, top to bottom:
1: Blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella).
2: Lavender cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus–I have to look up the spelling of this species every time).
3: Deerweed (Lotus scoparius) You might confuse this California native for one of the invasive brooms. It’ll drop most of its leaves to survive the summer drought, but the delicate wands of branches stay attractive–at least to my eyes.
4. St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum)–a buckwheat from the California Channel Islands and coastal regions. This is a young plant, but its umbels are already huge–the largest in this photo is two feet across.
5. Santa Cruz Island buckwheat (Eriogonum arborescens)–another California buckwheat.
6. This is a Crinum that came with the house. It might be C. powellii.
7. Verbena bonariensis–a flower that’s exactly the same color as the verbena in the final picture in this post, though their plant and flower forms are totally different.
8. Clarkia williamsonii.
9. Same as 6.
10. Brodiaea species, one that I lost my records for–maybe B. elegans (anybody know this one?).
11. Butterfly bush (Clerodendrum myricoides ‘Ugandense’)–In the same family as mints and sages, this has square stems and a delicate scent to the leaves and stems. It enjoys water but doesn’t get much of it and still looks presentable.
12. Verbena lilacina, a tough species from the Isla de Cedros, off the coast of Baja. At first glance it looks like the lavender lantana many people around here grow, but the leaves are totally different. Here it’s planted alongside some succulents with red and blue-gray leaves.
Thanks again to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!
What lovely, varied blooms! The Veberna and the Clarkia are wonderful.
What a great post for GBBD.And I llove your presentation!
I love the montage of photos – your flowers are lovely. I especially love the Clarkia, one I’ve never seen before. Thanks for sharing!
Interesting how the blossoms just explode in other parts of the country while we cherish a few straggling spring blooms, the buckwheats, and a few other special delights in CA. Happy bloom day!
What a peaceful, soothing collection. 🙂
Lovely set up of all the pictures! I have the Lavendar cotton and it is in bloom right now too. I really like it. Your St. Catherine’s lace is wonderful. Never seen it before.
It’s nice to see what my Clarkia williamsonii flowers will look like if my plant ever blooms. I had no idea they could grow five and a half feet tall either . . . one foot tall is about what I was expecting. I’ve researched it now, though, and apparently the height they grow to is a measure of how much water they get. I never intentionally water mine, but our yard was badly flooded over the winter, so I attribute the monstrous height of my Clarkia to the winter flooding.
I really like that brodiaea, whatever type it is. And I like the color of your clarkia much more than the neon varieties I have in my yard.
Great presentation. More than the blossom photos, I enjoyed your descriptions. The lotus and the erigonums are new to me. Interesting that you have crinums.
Lovely June blooms. The blue butterfly is my favorite.
Jan
Always Growing
Nicely organized! You have great eye for color and texture!
Bird, Kim, Brad–I’m starting to get more attached to this clarkia. This is the first year I’ve grown it.
And Gayle, I hope you get some blooms from yours. Mine is in a really water-deprived spot.
Chris, Tina, Nell Jean, Sylvana–Thank you! The flowers are a little more chaotically arranged in the garden, but it’s fun to imagine new relationships between them by rearranging the flowers in the post.
Town Mouse, it’s interesting to go from the envy of the gardening world in the middle of winter to being one of the stragglers when summer heats up. Well, we’ll always have our buckwheats…
Dreamybee, only now do I realize that I didn’t show anything red in this mix. There’s some of it in the garden, but it definitely on the more delicate, more pastel scale right now.
Jan, many thanks. The blue butterfly has got to be one of the most rewarding and easy things in my garden.
I really like that clarkia. I might try to grow it next year. I don’t know which brodiaea it is, though I don’t think it’s any of the laxa varieties.
The blues and purples with the white/silvers and grays…so pretty! ~~Rhonda