Tag Archives: gbbd

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, landscape, places

bloom day: natives at home and in the wild

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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-side
At 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 edging
Also 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 spires
Laurel sumac, Malosma laurina
Coyote 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 nicotiana
Your basic Rosa californica flower…
…and pods
The 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 pods
California 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 badly
The 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 bougainvillea
Closer 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 white
A 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 water
A 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.

gardening, my garden

blue and orange (gbbd)

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The color combination of blue and orange reminds me of noisy kiddie toys, of hard molded plastic waiting room chairs, of harshly lit 1970s fast-food restaurants trying unsuccessfully to look modern and friendly, or of jerseys for some high school football team. With two colors screaming at each other from opposite sides of a color wheel, it’s not a combination that brings me a lot of joy or peace.

But spring is here, and part of the far back yard has been blooming away. Its main colors are–you guessed it–blue and orange, mainly hot orange California poppies and sky blue flowers of nemophilia, baby blue eyes.

As much as I generally don’t love these colors together, it’s hard for me not to like this little zone of perky chaos.

Even the blue flowers against the brick hardscape reinforces the blue and orange (or blue and orange-red) colors.

But in a garden you hardly every have two strong flower colors alone. The varieties of leaf green serve as peacemakers, separating the warring colors and injecting their own shades into the garden color palette. Other secondary leaf or flower colors help the enrich the palette and keep the peace.

From some angles a softer blue-gray provides a background to the hot orange flowers. Here the foliage is the now-common chalk fingers, Senecio mandraliscae. It’s still a blue and orange theme, but the blue is less emphatic and the orange is permitted to dominate.

Little pockets of cool-colored plants provide areas of visual rest. Here’s baby blue eyes and chalk fingers with a dark purple-black aeonium. Pretend I cut back the dying narcissus foliage…

Some viewpoints let the cool colors predominate, with just a few punctuation marks of poppy orange. New into this photo are whitish-violet flowered black sage (Salvia mellifera), magenta freeway daisy (Osteospermum), with a softer orange-red desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) in the upper left corner.

I’ll have to rethink what the combination of blue and orange means to me, at least in the garden. These flowers may be gone in a couple of months. Maybe this a combination that I should embrace and associate with “spring.”

Spring is bringing lots of other colors combinations and other flowers to gardens around the world. Check them out at May Dreams Gardens, where Carol is hosting yet another Garden Boggers Bloom Day. Thank you, Carol!

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, photography

bloom day–in 3d!

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Get out your 3D glasses! Part of this Garden Bloggers Bloom Day posting comes to you in glorious 3D, inspired by the news that 3D television was the big news at the recent Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, and by past, current and future 3D movies (Avatar, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Alice in Wonderland).

This is one of my clones of Arctotis acaulis, which is just coming into bloom.

To view the 3D effect you’ll need a pair of glasses or a viewer that has a red lens over the left eye and a cyan (green works too) lens over the right. This image, what’s called an anaglyph, is pretty low-tech, more Black Lagoon than Avatar, but it works. I won’t detail all the steps for making it, but there are lots of explanations out on the web for how to do it in Photoshop. [ Here’s one. ] You can also use a good photo editor like Photoshop Elements that will let you adjust the individual color channels of the image.

You don’t need a proper 3D camera to photograph slow-moving subjects like flowers, but you’ll need two separate images, one for the left eye, and another for the right. Just take two images of the same subject, moving slightly left-to-right before you click the second image. If you have a camera with manual controls, you’ll get the best results if you focus and set the exposure manually.

This is the image pair I started with for the anaglyph above. You might even be able to view this raw pair in 3D. Some people are able to practice what’s called “free-viewing,” where the left eye focuses on the left image and the right eye on the right-hand one. You’ll eventually see three images, and the central one will suddenly pop into 3D.

This last pair shows the next-to-last step big step, before you layer the cyan image over the red one to create the final 3D image.

The rest of this post returns to stodgy old 2D. Sorry.

Winter is the big bloom season for many of the native plants, as well as for many plants adapted to Southern California’s mediterranean climate. Here are many of the plants flowering right now.

Here’s the agave I featured prominently in last month’s posting. It’s nearing its half-way point on the spike.

First blooms of the season on Verbena lilacina.

First blooms of the season on Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astragalus nuttallii.

The very first, brave bloom on another Arctotis acaulis clone, ‘Big Magenta.’

First flowering on another plant, likely Crassula multicava. The bed where this plant is will soon be covered with a dense mist of flowers for several months.

Another flowering crassula, Crassula ovata, your basic jade plant.

Black sage, Salvia mellifera, coming into bloom.

Santa Cruz Island buckwheat, Eriogonum arborescens, still blooming–the Energizer Bunny of buckwheats.

…some weird bromeliad. I have a likely name somewhere, but not stored in my brain’s RAM right now…

I was taking some pictures of this desert mallow, Sphaeralcea ambigua, but was more captivated by the interesting damage patterns created by a leaf-mining insect.

And last but not least: What I’m certain will be the last paperwhite narcissus of the season. I keep thinking that, but another clump pushes up through the earth and starts to flower. I’m not complaining.

As usual, my thanks Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day! Check out what’s in bloom in other gardens around the world [ here ].

If you haven’t had enough of the 3D photos, check out a much earlier 3D garden blog post [ here ].

Now enough of this 2D indoors nonsense. Open the door, and go outside and enjoy your garden in the grand glorious 3D it comes in naturally.

gardening, my garden

one agave, eight ways (december bloom day)

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Agave attenuata spike emerging from plant

Agave attenuata spike middle range

For December 15’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day I’m trying something new. Instead of showing you all the almost ever-blooming things in the garden I’m highlighting a single plant, the foxtail agave (Agave attenuata) that’s finally blooming after a decade and a half in the ground. I posted before on how the monster bloom spike has collided with some some nearby plants. Over the weekend the thousands of buds on the spike began to open.

Agave attenuata spike with flowers emerging from plant

Agave attenuata stalk as seen from below

In homage to artists who take one subject and try to make it interesting in multiple ways, here are some of the first photos of the plant in bloom. I’m not sure which is my favorite photo so far. Maybe the fourth? Maybe the fifth?

Still, it’s hard to begin to do justice to an awesome plant.

Agave attenuata colliding with Aloe beharensis 2

Agave attenuata flowers closeup 2

Agave attenuata flowers and buds

Agave attenuata flowers closeup

Sphaeralcea ambigua

Eriogonum arborescens new flowers closeup

A few other things are blooming, but it’s December and the pickings are slim: a couple of California natives, some late-season blooms on Santa Cruz Island buckwheat (Eriogonum arborescens) and first-of-the-season blooms on the desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua).

Oxalis purpurea before opening

Oxalis purpurea, early in the morning, before it’s fully expanded…

Leonotis leonurus

Leonotis leonorus coming back into bloom…

Senecio cylindricus flowers

Senecia articulata flowers

Senecio mandraliscae in bloom

When so little is in flower, you might pay attention to some of the less significant flowers on plants that are grown primarily for their foliage and structure. These three senecio species would only win “nice personality” in a floral beauty pageant (Senecio cylindricus, S. articulatus, S. mandraliscae).

In fact, the agave I showed earlier is a plant that’s most often used for its terrific architectural structure, in part because it flowers so infrequently. But when that one blooms, there’s no ignoring it.

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Bloom Day!

gardening, my garden

july bloom day

16 Comments

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!