Tag Archives: flowers

gardening, my garden

from the desert to the coast

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Sunday I went for a little plant walk out to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. It’s been a good year for desert flowers, but it’s not one of those spectacular seasons when the ground pulsates purple with sand verbena or gold with brittlebush. Some of the ocotillo were in bloom, and the desert agaves like this one (Agave deserti) were sending up their pink and green stalks.

Lots else was in bloom. But as I review the photos from the trips I’m finding that I’m staring at a pile of images of plants I don’t know the names of. I’ll share more of the pictures than this first one once I get them a little better organized and the plants matched up with my list of names.

Since it’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day I’ll share with you some plants from my garden that I do know the names of. Some of these are old friends that have been blooming for a while, and I’ve been sharing over past Bloom Days. But a lot of these are just coming into bloom for the first time this year.

I thought the blooms on this carpenteria were finished a month ago, but the plant has surprised me with a robust bloom spurt, bigger than the first one.

Unlike the carpenteria, this old friend, the tree coreopsis, won't be blooming again for another nine or ten months.

Many of these plants survive in the garden with minimal added water. The climate in this area is dry in a coastal-influenced sort of way. I might water once or twice a month in the summer, but the frequent morning overcast and occasional fog helps keep the plants hydrated. Additionally the plants in the garden have enjoyed a slighter higher than average rainfall so thoughts of the dry summer ahead aren’t in the minds of these plants. Spring is here.

This Salvia Bee's Bliss has been in the ground for over two years, but only now is it starting to take off.

Black sage, Salvia mellifera.

The local annual chia, Salvia carduaceae, with the exotic Phlomis monocephala in the background. The chia is one of the coastal plants that also can get to be pretty common in parts of the desert.

Here's another combination of plants, the lavender pink of the stinging lupine with the strident gold of the crassula relative behind it. The contrast is pretty strident to my taste, but hey, spring isn't all about subtle plays of one color against another...

Last month I showed this orange mimulus seedling. That time I got it in focus.
From the same parents that lived in this bed comes this other monkeyflower, this one velvety red with almost black detailing.


And here's another velvety red mimulus seedling. You might confuse it for the previous one, but the flowers are subtly different.

Nuttall's milkvetch, looking full and flowery, close to its seasonal peak.

Verbena lilacina looks better for me with a little more added water than some of the plants around it. But it survives even when I forget.

The pale Verbena lilacina 'Paseo Rancho' was just starting to bloom last month. It's starting to wake up for the spring.

Some parts of the garden get treated to more frequent watering.

This California buttercup, Ranunculus california, comes up reliably every year in an area of the garden where lawn meets unwatered gravel.

Blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, appreciates a moister spot as well.

Geum Red Wings, a pretty, informal plant.
Hummingbird sage, Salvia spathacea, is a California plant from moister places than my garden. Even in semi-shade it looks best with water two or three times a month.


And these last two of these go about as far from desert plants as you can get without getting aquatic plants. Both of these grow in my bog gardens, with their feet in standing water most of the year.

Sarracenia flava var. maxima is one one of the first plants in the bog to put out flowers. The common description of the scent is 'cat piss,' but I think that's a little too harsh a description. The flowers are nice, but most people grow these for the pitcher-shaped leaves.

A couple more sarracenias, a different S. flava in the back, and a hybrid of S. flava and S. alata up front.

Head over to Carol’s blog, May Dreams Gardens, to check out all the other bloggers celebrating Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day!


gardening, my garden

february bloom day

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I’ve just returned from a week away and haven’t had a chance to inventory everything that’s blooming this month. Besides, you’ve seen a lot of it already. Here are a few snapshots from today of what’s new or what’s changed.

Carpenteria california was looking great for the last two months. Now, the petals are all dropping, and this is as close to anything resembling a flower left on the plant.

I keep thinking the narcissus are finished blooming, but I found this yellow one blooming beneath the jade plant. Bulbs--you gotta love how they're these little surprise that pop up where you forgot you planted them...

This verbena lilacena was blooming last month, but it's looking even better now.

Here's the pale Paseo Rancho clone of the previous verbena.

Stinging lupine, Lupinus hirsutissimus. No, the photo isn't upside down. For some reason the plant is. It started growing up, and then did a U-turn and headed for the ground like an errant missile. I somehow suspect gophers had something to do with it.

Here's an upright spike of the previous lupine...

Spharulcea ambigua, desert mallow, starting to bloom.

Looking very much like the previous mallow, this is S. munroana. For some reason this species is supposed to be a better garden plant than the previous speceis. In my gardne the plants are virtually identical, and if anything the basic desert mallow does better for me.

A seedling of a Mimulus aurantiacus hybrid. Its color is definitely lighter than the scarlet ones found locally.

Ranunculus californicus

Bulbinella frutescens(?)--Edit, February 25: Actually, according to Oscar Clarke, it's Bulbine bulbosa. Thanks for the assistance with the ID!

Euphorbia lambii

Blue dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum

Rose-scented geranium (pelargonium)

Among the edibles in bloom, this is rhubarb. This is my first attempt at growing this plant that supposedly doesn't like anything warmer than Zone 8. I'm not sure that I really like rhubarb, but I was curious to see how it would do, particularly since my local trusty nursery was selling it.

Flowers on another plant--apricot--that likes colder climates than mine. Unlike rhubarb, I know that I love apricots, but I really can't grow them well. This year, maybe because November was so insanely cold, the tree so far has a few dozen flowers on it. Still, I won't count my apricots until they're picked.

Astragalus nuttallii starting to come into its own. Some species are called locoweed, and not much more than two pounds is supposedly enough to kill an average cow. Don't think less of me when I tell you that one of the reasons I planted this species was to see if it might help me control the gophers. I can't say it's done anything to reduce their numbers.

Not everything is peaking, of course. Here's chalk dudleya in bud. Check back in a month or two to see it in bloom.

Thanks as usual to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting this fun garden blogger meme. Take a look [ here ] at what else is blooming in other gardens around the country, around the world.

My prediction: a lot of the colder-climate gardeners will be posting on the Valentine’s Day flowers they gave or received. I hope you all had a god one. Middle age has struck and I don’t look so hot in my Cupid outfit anymore. You’ll have to settle for flowers delivered this way…

gardening, my garden

january bloomday

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The big aloe, Aloe arborescens, up close

Here goes… January bloomday, hosted by Carol of May Dreams Gardens.

The front garden, like the rest of my lot, mixes California natives with exotics from all over. Our local bladderpod in the foreground, yellow and perky and virtually ever-blooming, with a big clump of aloe that owns January.

Folks in colder climates may be drooling a bit, but there’s a price for year-round gardens: Year-round weeds! Since this is Bloomday, let me start off with a few weeds in bloom, doing their best to generate even more weeds. There are times when I think that it might be nice to live where you can forget about weeding for three months or more…

Weedy nightshade, right before I pulled it up
Weedy chammomile relative, Pineapple Weed
Pure yellow evil, from the big family that gives us sunflowers
Weedy grass

California native Corethrogyne (Lessingia) filaginifolia duking it out with weedy alyssum

But through the magic of photography, an artistic medium well suited to telling lies and half-truths, here are some blooms for the month. I could tell you there are no weeds around these blooming plants, but then I’d be lying. Big time.

From California, and the California floristic province:

Hummingbird sage, Salvia spathacea
A prostrate form of the local black sage, Salvia mellifera, picking up its flowering
Our local very fragrant nightshade, Solanum parishii
Winnifred Gilman sage, with a few scant flowers, not quite buying into the fact that spring is coming.
Tree Coreopsis or Giant Coreopsis, Coreopsis gigantea, still a ways to go before achieving tree status
San Diego Sunflower, Bahiopsis (Viguiera) lacinata, battling iceplant on the slope
One of almost a dozen monkeyflower seedlings. It is definitely partly Mimulus aurantiacus, but other species could be involved.
Verbena lilacina
A lone Coast Sunflower, Encelia californica, with way too many weeds back on the neglected slope garden
Santa Cruz Island Buckwheat, Eriogonum arborescens
Our local chaparral currant, Ribes indecorum, pleasant, not spectacular
Arctostaphylos manzanita Dr. Hurd
Astragalus nuttallii, from the California Central Coast

Okay, everyone, say awwwwww. Carpenteria california


From beyond California:

Your basic prostrate rosemary
The last of the bicolor narcissus. I didn't get the camera out while it was looking nice.
A kalanchoe species or Edit January 17 Cotyledon orbiculata--see first comment from Elephant's Eye
Your basic jade plant
Crassula multicava, a low groundcover with vaporous little jade-plant-like flowers floating above it
Arctotis Big Magenta
Another Arctotis hybrid
Your basic prostrate rosemary
People generally grow aeoniums for their foliage...
...but they also have a month or so when their flowers can upstage the plant.
And humans aren't the only species that appreciates the flowers. Look closely and you'll see quite a few ants going to town...


Two forms of Oxalis purpurea, purple- and green-leaved. It's pretty, but best contained in warmer climates where it can spread.
Sleepy Oxalis purpurea flower, slowly unfurling as the morning advances, feeling blurry until until the sun hits it.


Green rose in bud...

Green rose unfurled...looking a little less green.


Checking out the garden, photographing flowers, you get to see what’s going on in the garden. I’ve mentioned the weeds already. Now, let’s add gopher holes into the mix shall we?

While I’ve pretty much given up trying to control the gophers, I can at least pick away at the weeding. Okay, enough blogging for now. Time to pull some weeds. But maybe I’ll check out a few more Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posts first…


gardening, my garden

white solstice

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The year's first carpenteria, which opened on December 17th, shown here with an appreciative local critter on the stamens.

Winter Solstice is a celebration for optimists. Six months of ever-diminishing sunlight leads up to this, the day with the longest, darkest night. If you weren’t an optimist or schooled in the rational ways of the world you might expect the days to diminish into perpetual darkness–No wonder the Mayan Long Count Calendar ends on this day in 2012. A pessimist could see this day as the beginning of the end of time.

But I know things are about to change. The duration of the sunlight I find so precious is about to start to increase. The plants that are beginning to sprout will take advantage of the extra light and grow faster and run headlong into California’s manic late-winter, early-spring season of flowering and regeneration. Call me an optimist. It may be tough now, but to appropriate the words of Dan Savage in his campaign to fight bullying of LGBT young persons, It gets better!

Here’s a brief white-themed gallery in case you’re dreaming of a white solstice. We have no snow to offer you, but instead how about some bright white flowers, some white leaves to get you into the mood?

Have a warm and safe holiday, everyone, whether the white stuff around you is snow, foliage or blooms. It’s all about to get better, soon.

The local chaparral currant, Ribes indecorum, a plant new to the garden within the last year, coming into bloom for the first time.
Detail of the chaparral currant flowers.
December paperwhite narcissus
Early-season blooms of black sage, Salvia mellifera. The overall color is really more pale violet than white.
Flowers on a volunteer statice plant, Limonium perezii. The bracts give the flowering structures a lavender look, but you can see that the flowers are actually white inside the bracts. The closest neighbor's plant of this is a few hundred feet down the street. I had no idea the seeds could travel so far. Enjoy it now. This weed is outta there once the holidays are over.
Details of the leaves of San Miguel Island buckwheat, Eriogonum grande, green on top, white beneath...

The white-ish Dudleya brittonii with December precipitation, rain, not snow...

Who could forget our great local white sage, Salvia apiana?

...and one of our great local dudleyas, D. pulverulenta, one of the whitest of the dudleyas, and it loves life in my garden. Joy oh joy!

gardening, my garden

high spring (gbbd)

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This is it. High spring in San Diego. There are probably more things blooming now in the garden than there will be at any other time of year.

I start with the current state of the agave that I’ve been showing for the last few months. It’s bloomed its way from the base of the flower stalk to very near the very end. The plant will soon die and you won’t see any more photos of it. Fortunately the plant has several other growths to keep it going into the future.

The spike has arced up and come back to the ground, where its final blooms are resting.

I’ve provided a few captions, but there are too many flowers to comment on in detail. For the rest of the photos, hover your mouse to view the names or click to enlarge.

Leaves of the unknown Gasteria.

An unknown gasteria. The flowers are nice, but I grow it mainly for the foliage.


The weird double blooms of this pitcher plant, Sarracenia leucophyll 'Tarnok,' shown with the first pitchers of the season.
The bloom of another carnivorous pitcher plant.
Geum and blue-eyed grass.
Salvia lyrata 'Purple Volcano.' It's rather weedy according to Robin Middleton, but it does have its nice garden moments.

The not-quite black flowers of Salvia discolor.

Flowers on the grapefruit. They smell great. And they bode well for a good crop next year.


Thank you thank you thank you to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Stuff is beginning to bloom everywhere. [ Check it out all the blooming gardens! ]


gardening, my garden

plants as compass (february bloom day)

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I was looking at my blooming Agave attenuata and noticed something for the first time. The flowers on its spike have been opening asymmetrically, with the south-facing buds opening a few days earlier than the ones on the shaded side. I guess it’s the agave equivalent of moss growing on the shaded north side of a tree trunk. As I looked at all the agaves in the neighborhood, I was noticing the same thing: All the south-facing buds open first. It makes sense, I guess, with the sun-warmed buds developing sooner than the ones growing in the shade. There must be a botanical term for this–I’ll see if I can’t look it up sometime.

Something else I noticed the other week was that two of the little rosettes growing underneath the growth producing the big spike are also blooming. They’re nice, but the blooms get pretty lost in the foliage.

And compared to the big main spike, which must be something like twelve or more feet from base to tip, you can see how it’d be easy to overlook the little pups…

In the photo above you can make out this big red aloe in the background, Aloe arborescens. The clump began as a one-gallon plant in the early nineties. Now it’s probably six feet tall and twelve across.

February in Southern California is a busy month for flowering plants. Here’s a selection of what else is blooming in the garden.

This raised planter of Oxalis purpurea is the first part of the garden that visitors encounter as they head up the front steps. Dozens of white flowers and a lone pink one in the front. Oops.

Verbena lilacina, greened up from the rains, beginning to hit its stride.

One of several plants of Nuttall's milkvetch, Astragalus nuttallii, that I raised from seed last summer.

Snapdragon-relative Galvezia speciosa 'Firecracker,' never a prolific bloomer for me, though mine's a young plant.

The pink-flowered, purple-leaved form of Oxalis purpurea.

Carpenteria californica, a California plant that reminds me a lot of sasanqua camellias in its simple contrast of stamens against broad petals.

First flowers on Phlomis monocephala.

February flowers on a yellow crassula that I've forgotten the name of...

The final blooms of the season on another crassula, your basic jade plant, Crassula ovata...

The fragrant Solanum parishii, a widespread California native, doing battle on the slope garden against iceplant, Algerian ivy and Bermuda buttercup.

Freeway daisies (Osteospermun) below, with black sage (Salvia mellifera, prostrate form) above.

Keeping up the daisy theme, Arctotis acaulis hybrid...

Another actotis, 'Big Magneta'...

...and a final photo, a final arctotis, shown against a piece of garden art made from glass, steel, and concrete.

As always, my thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Even with snow on the ground many places up north, there’s still plenty in bloom today in warmer, more southern locations, and on windowsills and greenhouses around the world. Check them out [ here ].

gardening, my garden

plants falling asleep

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White Oxalis purpurea closing up for the evening
White Oxalis purpurea closing up for the evening.
Detail of white Oxalis purpurea thinking about some shut-eye.
Purple-leaved Oxalis purpurea closing up in the late afternoon shade.

A lot of the flowering plants in the garden don’t bother opening their petals until the sun’s up and then shut their flowers as soon as the light begins to fade and temperatures drop in the afternoon. Over the weekend I was noticing this going on with my oxalis plants and, less dramatically, with my arctotis.

There must be a name for this behavior, I thought, and so off I went looking for an answer. Before long up pop three interesting words: photonasty, thermonasty and nyctinasty.

According to one of the sources, the Textbook of Botany by Chhatwal and Singh, photonasty happens when a plant senses light and reacts to it by opening or closing its flowers. Because of this, morning glories open in the…well, morning. Then there’s thermonasty, where flowers react primarily to temperature. Tulips will open with a rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius, while a crocus will zip open when the temperature rises just a half degree.

And then there’s the more complex phenomenon of nyctinasty, which “is influenced by the intensity of light and also temperature differentials, the former stimulus being more powerful and effective. The foliage leaves and also the floral leaves in many species of plants…attain different positions at day time and at night viz during the day, the leaflets remain open or spread up in case of Oxalis, clever beans, alfalfa, etc., while by the onset of darkness they close down. This is also known as sleep movement.”

Yesterday afternoon was pretty bright, but cool. The oxalis barely opened before shutting back up. So it requires both heat and warmth to open fully. So nyctinasty makes sense. The arctotis seemed to open more fully, earlier in the day. My guess is that they respond more simply, mainly to light, which would mean that they exhibit photonasty. (What’s truly going on could be lots more complex than this and really might only be solved by experimentation, a point made in an article, “Flower opening and closure: a review” by Wouter G. van Doorn and Uulke van Meeteren in the Journal of Experimental Botany. Read the interesting text [ here ].)

Next I need to find out what “clever beans” are.

In my web trawl it turns out I’m not the only garden blogger looking at this phenomenon this week. Tilthy Rich took a quick spin around nyctinasty [ here ]. Maybe he has the same plants blooming, making him ask the same questions…

Flowers of Arctotis acaulis 'Big Magenta' beginning to fold up for the night.

Another clone of Artotis acaulis closing up in the afternoon: Photonasty? Thermonasty? Nyctinasty?

my garden

november garden bloggers bloom day

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Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’ would be in every month’s bloom day posting because it never has stopped blooming for me since it went into the ground two years ago. The plants are getting huge and taking more than their share of the garden, and I’ll have to admit that they’re on my list of flowers that I’m almost tired of seeing. But because of these plants, the hummingbirds are a constant presence in the back yard. I’d hate to do anything rash like remove their favorite year-round source of nectar.

A while back I had to find out what it was about these plants that was so appealing. I took one of the flowers and popped it into my mouth. A tiny hit of flavor, faint but sweet, registered on my tongue. Pretty tasty if you’re a bird addicted to nectar. But I wondered if I was pimping my neighborhood birds with sugar water in the way a busy suburban parent might keep their kids supplied with gallons of soda.

Some other plants that are in the “I’m almost sick and tire of seeing them all the time” category: Salvia nemerosa ‘Snow Hills,’ Gaillardia pulchella, and Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost.’ They’re all in the gallery of flowers below.

The season also brings some new blooms to the fall garden: Oxalis bowiei, Protea Pink Ice, Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra,’ lemongrass, and the plant formerly known as Lessingia filanginifolia var. californica (now relabeled as Corethrogyne filaginifolia var. californica). And then there are the sporadic bloomers. You can’t set your calendar by them, but they’re nice to have around. Hover over any image below for their name.

Happy Bloom Day, and thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting this monthly online garden party.

gardening, my garden

july bloom day

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For this month’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day I have some closeup photos of some of what’s blooming in the garden. I’ve done a couple posts on using backgrounds behind plants (Background check / One way to photogrpah a tree). Inspired, all but one of these shots uses a white sheet of matboard placed behind the plants. Each color of background presents a different end result. Using white accentuates dark flowers and stems, and some of these photos are a busy network of dark lines against the light background.

There are some newcomers just coming into bloom, but many plants have been in bloom for several months. When life gives you more of the same flowers…well, I was thinking I’d try to photograph them a little differently.

I suspect the neighbors think I’m odd enough taking pictures of everything in the garden, and I thought it’d be extra-distressing if I were to be walking around the garden with a big white board as well as the camera. As a result all of these are from the quiet privacy of the back yard, with the exception of the one plant without a white background.

echinacea-purpurea-with-white-background

echinacea-purpurea-2-with-white-background

Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea.

leonotis-leonorus-with-white-background

sphaeralcea-ambigua-with-white-background

Lion’s tail, Leonotis leonorus; Desert mallow, Sphaeralcea
ambigua.

hymenocallis-festalis-with-white-background

osteospermum-with-white-background

Peruvian daffodil, Hymenocallis festalis; Freeway daisy, Osteospermum sp.

verbena-bonariensis-with-white-background

juncus-patens-2-with-white-background

Verbena bonariensis; Juncus patens (with fallen leaf caught in the plant).

Some salvias:

salvia-nemerosa-snow-hills-with-white-backgroundsalvia-cacaliaefolia-with-white-background

Salvia nemerosa ‘Snow Hills’; Ivy-leaved sage (Salvia cacaliaefolia).

salvia-discolor-with-white-background

salvia-microphylla-hot-lips

On the left is Andean sage (Salvia discolor with its almost black flowers set in light green calyces; on the right is Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips.’

Some California buckwheats:

eriogonum-fasciculatum-with-white-background

Flat-topped buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum)

eriogonum-grande-rubescens-with-white-background

San Miguel Island buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens)

eriogonum-giganteum

St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum)

clerodendrum-ugandense-with-white-background

sarracenia-leucophylla-with-white-background

Butterfly bush (Clero- dendrum ugan- dense); seed pod of whitetop pitcher plant (Sarracenia leucophylla).

double-variegated-bougainvillea-with-white-background

agastache-aurantiaca-apricot-sprite-with-white-background

Pink and white double bougainvillea (unknown variety); Agastache aurantiaca ‘Apricot Sprite.’

double-pink-bougainvillea-with-thie-background

datura-wrightii-with-white-background

Pink double bougainvillea (another unknown variety); toloache (Datura wrightii).

Thanks again the Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. It’s a terrific way to build community among garden bloggers wanting to share the flowers in their gardens. Check out this month’s offerings!

gardening, my garden

from spring into summer

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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!