This is why I enjoy growing native plants: On a quick hike through my nearby Tecolote Canyon Natural Park there were a few plants blooming away, hardly aware it’s midsummer and three months since the last real rain. And when I came home some of the same species were blooming just as exuberantly in my garden. That’s a great sense of connection with the wild, and I get a sense that parts of my garden are participating in the continuity of nature.
The common California flat-top buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum:
In the wilds (actually a reveg parking strip) with seaside daisy (Encelia Californica)At home, one the easment slope garden, doing battle with the neighbor’s sacred iceplant
Bladderpod, Isomeris arborea, with its bee-magnet yellow flowers.
Trail-sideAt home, in a mixed planting of natives and exotics
The totally awesome sacred datura, Datura wrightii.
In the wilds, the form with a pale lavender edgingAlso in the wilds, the all-white form…at home, also on the slope garden
Amaryllis belladonna (“naked ladies”) is native to South Africa, but there were two little clusters in the canyon. They don’t really colonize the canyons and generally aren’t considered invasive. They were a surprise and I wonder if someone planted them here. And at home I also happened to have the first of them blooming in the garden.
One of the ‘wild’ amaryllis…another of the ‘wild’ amaryllis…and the amaryllis back home, in the garden
In the canyon there were a few other things going at it:
Blue elderberry blooms and fruit (Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea, formerly Sambucus mexicana)Oenothera elata, a primrose that blooms on tall spiresLaurel sumac, Malosma laurinaCoyote melon (Cucurbita palmata). It’s generally considered inedible. I tried one once. I agree.Nestled in the dead stems of the invasive fennel is this other non-native. It looks like some sort of garden nicotianaYour basic Rosa californica flower……and podsThe very cool fiber optic grass, Isolepsis cernua
And at home were some California plants that either weren’t blooming in the canyon or aren’t native to this area:
Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astragalus nuttalii, with its noisy rattle-like podsCalifornia sealavender (Limonium californicum) the only statice native to California — EDIT November 20, 2014: Although this plant was sold to me as this California native, it is in reality the INVASIVE L. ramosissimum ssp. provinciale. Yikes! Even the native plant specialists can make a mistake, looks like.Cleveland sage at the end of its summer blooming, with the gorgeous grass, purple three awn (Aristida purpurea)San Diego sunflower (Bahiopsis laciniata), not looking great, but considering it’s battling iceplant on the slope garden and hasn’t been rained on or watered in over three months, it’s not doing that badlyThe desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) could probably stand being cut back a bit, but it still has a small few blooms on its almost leafless stems. I’m really coming to enjoy the light green, slightly yellow color of the plant, a great contrast against silver or dark green foliage
If the naked lady amaryllis weren’t pornographic enough, here are some of the non-natives blooming in the garden right now. It’s August, and the flower count isn’t what it was three months ago.
Salvia Hot Lips and a big pink bougainvilleaCloser view of Salvia Hot Lips. As the weather warms, this one of three plants is showing more red with the white in the flowers. The other two plants are still mostly whiteA really fragrant ginger, Hedychium coccineum ‘Tara’Society garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) is a common xeriscape plant, but it’s so adaptable that it’ll grow with its roots standing in water, as you see here in the pond. It has as much of an aroma as the ginger, but I wouldn’t exactly call it fragrant…Butterfly bush, Clerodendrum myricoides. The flowers are nice, but people don’t talk enough about how pleasant the plant smells when you touch it…and underneath the butterfly bush, this tidy little lead wort or dwarf plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides). It does fine in dappled sunlight with very little added waterA cactus and some succulents draping over a wall. Blooming is Crassula falcata, in the same big family as all the California Dudleya species…and a closeup of the Crassula flowers, showing the red petals and little gold shocks of the stamens. This one’s worth looking at up close
These last plants definitely aren’t California natives, but they’re native to somewhere. If I lived in those places, I’d probably want them in my garden.
Check out the other gardeners around the world participating in this month’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting this event.
16 thoughts on “bloom day: natives at home and in the wild”
I feel like I just visited an exotic foreign country’s GBBD! (Although, California has enough varied climate for a few different countries of its own, really, right?)
I’m glad you pointed out that lavender edge on the first datura picture. It’s so subtle that I think I would have missed it on my own. But what I’m really drooling over is the crassula falcata. I’ve seen that funky foliage at the botanical garden here, and occasionally in a local garden center’s houseplant section. Had I known it looked so cool in flower, too, I would definitely have picked it up!
The native plants are sooo interesting at this time of year. Being on opposite side of the country, I am unfamiliar with much of what you have shown.I enjoyed the tour.
Kim, some of the plants definitely come from pretty distant lands. I hope you have luck blooming the crassula if you add it to your collection. It probably would bloom for you if you were to grow it outdoors during your warmer parts of the year.
TM, I’m sure it’ll be great to be home, but it looks like Boulder is treating you really well!
Donna, I’m glad you could come along on my little hike and then the trip around the garden. We’re lucky to be able to grow so many things, though many of them require more water than our limited resources allow.
What fun to see things in the wild and then in your garden. It reinforces the ‘right plant, right place’ mantra. Food for thought, as well as a delightful tour. Thanks!
James, I really enjoyed seeing the same plants in the wild and in your garden. Do you know what the range of Oenothera elata is? I had what I assumed was Oenothera biennis (which are very common here) pop up in the gravel outside my basement door. It started blooming at about 6′ tall and fell over under its own weight when it got to about 8′. Maybe it was O. elata.
Very cool to see the same plants hiking and in your garden. I wish I could get datura to grow like I see it when I go down south. I’ve been wanting to try the native limonium. It looks nice.
I also love seeing my garden plants in the wild. I took one of our dogs for a walk last week and saw two of my garden plants in the wild – California grape and narrowleaf milkweed – and considered posting side-by-side comparisons similar to yours. Maybe I’ll get around to making a separate post about the walk.
Your native Datura is gorgeous! Something is wrong with mine. It resprouted after the winter, but it’s just staying about six inches tall and wide, and not blooming. I guess it must be getting too much water, but it’s in the front yard where there’s a slight slope, so plants normally survive there that would drown anywhere else.
everything is really nice. I love the natural beauty of it all. REally interesting. Actually, it’s making my garden feel really gaudy with it’s colors and non-nativeness. Love that fiber optic grass.
I’d love to see more of your slope – maybe on a slow blogging week?
Wonderful tour. I love your mix of CA natives and exotics, which translates into a beautiful and engrossing garden for August, not an easy thing to accomplish! That coyote melon is gorgeous.
So many great blooms … gorgeous Crassula, wonderful Ginger and the Clerodendrum is beautiful. You showed a terrific collection of natives … in the canyon and in your garden … loved the Sea Lavender. A great post.
Wow. You’ve got a lot blooming, both at home and nearby. Thanks for the butterfly bush pic. My neighbor has it and I walk by it all the time and admire it, but didn’t know what it was. I also didn’t realize it had a nice smell if touched. I’ll make sure to brush up against it next time I pass by. It’s a beautiful plant.
What a fantastic assortment of native flowers. I’m green with envy over your kind climate and growing zone. 🙂 I tried to purchase that amaryllis belladonna for my garden this year, sold out. Now I’m wondering if it will be invasive since you have it growing wild? Anyhoo, everything is just gorgeous. Happy bloom day!
Well put, James. I too really enjoy the connection between my “wild” garden and local open space. Love your datura. I don’t have any but think I ought to grow it! Happy August.
Wow! Thanks, everyone for stopping by this post!And thanks for all your great comments. For those of you that left a question:
Wendy, I’ve been meaning to post something on the slope one of these days. I’ll try to move it higher on the list.
Kate, I’m 100% certain this plant wouldn’t be invasive where you are, and I really haven’t heard of it being a problem here. Nor have I ever seen it in the wild until now. This canyon is surrounded by suburbia on 3 sides.
Susan, I’m not sure if it’s the same species, but definitely the same genus as the one Georgia O’Keefe painted. I left my detailed botanical book somewhere out in the backcountry, so I can’t key out her plant versus mine. I know you can count the number of tips to the petals to tell some daturas apart. I wouldn’t be surprised if what she painted was jimson weed, D. stromonium, a more widespread but smaller-flowered version.
I feel like I just visited an exotic foreign country’s GBBD! (Although, California has enough varied climate for a few different countries of its own, really, right?)
I’m glad you pointed out that lavender edge on the first datura picture. It’s so subtle that I think I would have missed it on my own. But what I’m really drooling over is the crassula falcata. I’ve seen that funky foliage at the botanical garden here, and occasionally in a local garden center’s houseplant section. Had I known it looked so cool in flower, too, I would definitely have picked it up!
Too much fun! I can’t wait to return to my own garden, finally, next week, but in the meantime, I’m so glad to see your blooms.
The native plants are sooo interesting at this time of year. Being on opposite side of the country, I am unfamiliar with much of what you have shown.I enjoyed the tour.
Kim, some of the plants definitely come from pretty distant lands. I hope you have luck blooming the crassula if you add it to your collection. It probably would bloom for you if you were to grow it outdoors during your warmer parts of the year.
TM, I’m sure it’ll be great to be home, but it looks like Boulder is treating you really well!
Donna, I’m glad you could come along on my little hike and then the trip around the garden. We’re lucky to be able to grow so many things, though many of them require more water than our limited resources allow.
What fun to see things in the wild and then in your garden. It reinforces the ‘right plant, right place’ mantra. Food for thought, as well as a delightful tour. Thanks!
James, I really enjoyed seeing the same plants in the wild and in your garden. Do you know what the range of Oenothera elata is? I had what I assumed was Oenothera biennis (which are very common here) pop up in the gravel outside my basement door. It started blooming at about 6′ tall and fell over under its own weight when it got to about 8′. Maybe it was O. elata.
Very cool to see the same plants hiking and in your garden. I wish I could get datura to grow like I see it when I go down south. I’ve been wanting to try the native limonium. It looks nice.
I also love seeing my garden plants in the wild. I took one of our dogs for a walk last week and saw two of my garden plants in the wild – California grape and narrowleaf milkweed – and considered posting side-by-side comparisons similar to yours. Maybe I’ll get around to making a separate post about the walk.
Your native Datura is gorgeous! Something is wrong with mine. It resprouted after the winter, but it’s just staying about six inches tall and wide, and not blooming. I guess it must be getting too much water, but it’s in the front yard where there’s a slight slope, so plants normally survive there that would drown anywhere else.
everything is really nice. I love the natural beauty of it all. REally interesting. Actually, it’s making my garden feel really gaudy with it’s colors and non-nativeness. Love that fiber optic grass.
I’d love to see more of your slope – maybe on a slow blogging week?
Wonderful tour. I love your mix of CA natives and exotics, which translates into a beautiful and engrossing garden for August, not an easy thing to accomplish! That coyote melon is gorgeous.
So many great blooms … gorgeous Crassula, wonderful Ginger and the Clerodendrum is beautiful. You showed a terrific collection of natives … in the canyon and in your garden … loved the Sea Lavender. A great post.
Wow. You’ve got a lot blooming, both at home and nearby. Thanks for the butterfly bush pic. My neighbor has it and I walk by it all the time and admire it, but didn’t know what it was. I also didn’t realize it had a nice smell if touched. I’ll make sure to brush up against it next time I pass by. It’s a beautiful plant.
What a fantastic assortment of native flowers. I’m green with envy over your kind climate and growing zone. 🙂 I tried to purchase that amaryllis belladonna for my garden this year, sold out. Now I’m wondering if it will be invasive since you have it growing wild? Anyhoo, everything is just gorgeous. Happy bloom day!
Well put, James. I too really enjoy the connection between my “wild” garden and local open space. Love your datura. I don’t have any but think I ought to grow it! Happy August.
Is that Datura the same that Georgia O’Keefe painted?
Wow! Thanks, everyone for stopping by this post!And thanks for all your great comments. For those of you that left a question:
Wendy, I’ve been meaning to post something on the slope one of these days. I’ll try to move it higher on the list.
Kate, I’m 100% certain this plant wouldn’t be invasive where you are, and I really haven’t heard of it being a problem here. Nor have I ever seen it in the wild until now. This canyon is surrounded by suburbia on 3 sides.
Susan, I’m not sure if it’s the same species, but definitely the same genus as the one Georgia O’Keefe painted. I left my detailed botanical book somewhere out in the backcountry, so I can’t key out her plant versus mine. I know you can count the number of tips to the petals to tell some daturas apart. I wouldn’t be surprised if what she painted was jimson weed, D. stromonium, a more widespread but smaller-flowered version.