Sweet on Sweet Peas

I’ve had that new plant feeling all over again this spring. You know that feeling where you try and try to grow something but fail and fail. But, then something clicks, and you’re off to the races. For me the species that has elicited these emotions is Lathyrus odoratus, the sweet pea.

I used to look reluctantly at people who held fistfuls of sweet pea flowers, thinking that I would never have that. Some of you readers may be surprised to hear that I’ve had challenges with sweet peas since they are relatively easy to grow. But, here in the deep south, they are more challenging. Success with them has eluded me when I have tried them in previous springs. They would quickly peter out from the heat with barely a bloom or two emerging.

So, what changed this spring? My friend Caleb Melchior suggested sowing the seed in the fall to overwinter. On November 1, I soaked seed overnight, and direct sowed them the next day. I was delighted to see their green threads emerge from the soil. I mulched them with aged leaf mold and staked them with nylon netting using this trellising technique I saw from Neversink Farm. They slowly grew over the winter, somewhat creeping along the ground as if searching for an upright to climb even though the trellis was above them. I was surprised when they survived the -6F we experienced in mid-February, no doubt due to the insulation from the heavy snow that came with the cold.

Soon after they began to produce rising shoots. I took Matt Mattus’s advice and pinched them to one shoot per plant to help concentrate the resources into fewer smaller blooms. And, did that practice pay off because my plants began producing giant flowers on foot-long peduncles.

‘Nimbus’ started flowering first with a single deep purple and white flower in early April. I cherished that first little flower. I took it to class, showed it off to students, and described my challenges with this species. Then there were three flowers, and then ten, and now, I chuckle because I’ve probably harvested over a hundred inflorescences off my ‘Nimbus’ plants.

‘Mars’ and ‘Wiltshire Ripple’ followed, and now the eight varieties that I tried this year are in full bloom. From my writings on Baptisia, you readers already know I’m keen on the papilionaceous flowers of the Fabaceae family. But, I could never imagine the beautiful colors of these sweet peas. And, the speckling, ah, to die for! It is amazing to see these dots and stripes that those in the know call flakes on cultivars like ‘Mars’ and ‘Wiltshire Ripple’. I had heard sweet peas were fragrant, but I never imagined how a bouquet could perfume a room. I find myself bringing fresh flowers into the house a couple times a week. Of course I should add that the seeds are poisonous, but my plants never get a chance to make a pod as I keep the flowers clipped.

The success makes me feel like a kid again, giddy with excitement on something that has eluded me for so long. I’m hooked on sweet peas, and you can bet I’ll be growing even more next year.

‘Nimbus’ was my first sweet pea to flower this spring, and it has been an incredibly prolific flowering cultivar.

‘Mars’ started flowering shortly after ‘Nimbus’. I do love the red flakes on this form.

‘Wiltshire Ripple’ has this lovely wine color to the petals.

‘Promise’ offers two tones, a pink banner and white wings.

The color of ‘Carlotta’ reminds me of the petal color on Gladiolus communis var. byzantinus. They also bloom at the same time here in east Texas. Perhaps a possible combination for the future?

Coral is one of my favorite colors, and when ‘Florencecourt’ started blooming, I swooned.

I have been impressed with the size of the pale pink ‘Anniversary’.

I only had a couple ‘North Shore’ germinate. Its variable blue-to-purple flowers are welcome in the dominant red-to-pink cultivar assemblage I planted this year.

One morning’s sweet pea cuttings show the analogous color scheme I unintentionally planted this year. The more flowers you see, the more prolific and longer blooming that cultivar has been. Left to right back row ‘Mars’, ‘Nimbus’, ‘Wiltshire Ripple’; middle ‘North Shore’, ‘Promise’, and ‘Florencecourt’; and front ‘Anniversary’ and ‘Carlotta’.

A Grand Narcissus

I have always delighted in seeing the first Narcissus of the year emerging from the ground to herald that spring is near with their bright trumpets.  Of course, it's funny writing that now that I live in Texas because our in-the-ground paperwhites can start blooming at the end of November.  So, I've had to delay my expectations a bit.

One species that holds to flowering at the end of winter is Narcissus tazetta, the Chinese sacred lily. It has become one of my favorites since moving to Texas.  While the species is native to southern Europe, Asia, and northern Africa and has a fascinating history, this geophyte has naturalized in the south, even into parts of southern Arkansas. Scott Ogden notes in his Garden Bulbs for the South that this perennial is a stalwart and has survived many decades on abandoned homesteads, a living testament to someone who once lived there. They also don't need division to keep them floriferous like other daffodils do.

The planting of Narcissus tazetta ‘Grandiflora’ in the Plantery on campus

There is a thick line of them planted on the north end of our Plantery greenhouse at school where their flowers beam and greet students, faculty, and visitors passing by. Most tazetta types have a cluster of smaller flowers at the top instead of one large bloom with petals and corona, the circular projection on a Narcissus. Research a few years ago demonstrated that these trumpet-shaped growths, a unique feature on Narcissus, are not an extension of the petals or stamens but a fifth floral part that develops after the other floral whorls arise in a young buds. It is these cups—no matter how big—that we love to stick our noses in to sniff the sweet smell of spring. But, in this small space between the greenhouse and headhouse, the flowers perfume the whole area with their sweet scent.

In conversations with Greg Grant, I learned that he planted them here about 30 years ago, which illustrates its robustness. I love how they are sited underneath Panicum 'Northwind'.  The grass emerges to hide the thick Narcissus leaves as they fade, and once the brown Pancium is about ready to cut back after winter, the green straps are rising from the bulbs. 

This particular form of Narcissus tazetta is quite vigorous. While I thought it was 'Grand Primo', Greg said that this selection is an unknown cultivar. His stock came from Celia Jones who originally got these plants from her grandmother who ran Sister's Bulb Farm in Gibsland, LA. They were sold under the name “Paperwhite Grandiflora”, a likely hybrid between Narcissus tazetta var. orientalis and Narcissus papyraceus. It is known that many hybrids between these two genera occur. Pulling again from Garden Bulbs of the South, Scott Ogden stated that Narcissus papyraceus is a diploid (two copies of DNA), and Narcissus tazetta is a tetraploid (four copies of DNA). So, the resulting hybrids are often triploid, and having three sets of DNA usually makes a plant sterile. It is possible to have some hybrid vigor with these selections, possibly because of the lack of seed but also because of the perfect combination of genes.

I’ve been trying to sort out these tazetta types because I have two forms at my house I’ve rescued from abandoned sites. One is the shorter ‘Grand Primo’ with darker yellow cups, and the second is very much like this taller form. In fact, they may very well be the same selection.

‘Grand Primo’ at my house. Notice the darker yellow cup and shorter height compared to the ‘Grandiflora’ type above.

I do feel for them this year and all the other plants that tried to welcome spring early.  We have a record breaking cold front descending from high up in Alberta this weekend that could bring snow, ice, and the coldest temperatures this region has seen in decades. It will be interesting to see how they make it through it all. I’m not worried about them surviving, just sad to see potential flowers go. I picked some flowers to take to my office to enjoy out of the cold where the blooms will last for a good week in water. Even if spring is interrupted outside, I’ll try to keep it going indoors.

A frosted ‘Grandiflora’ type at my house.

Primrose Peerless is Blooming

Our last Narcissus to bloom here in east Texas is Narcissus × medioluteus, aka primrose peerless.  Such a haughty name.  Others call it twin sisters or April beauty, but I quite like a name that has a bit of oomph.  

My two clumps came from a backroad near Tyler, TX in April 2018.  I remember being amazed that a Narcissus was blooming a full month after the rest of my daffodil crew had finished their performance.   I guess you can be the top of your class if you’re the only one around!  

Last year, the flowers aborted, but this year, they seem to be flowering much more prolifically.  We had a very wet spring last year.  Perhaps that’s what made it less peerless.

While some call it Narcissus biflorus due to the pair of flowers that occur on each scape (occasionally it may be plus or minus one), Narcissus × medioluteus is a more accurate name because it is a naturally occurring hybrid between Narcissus tazetta and Narcissus poeticus that’s been around since the 16th century.  I look forward to seeing how well the heirloom bulb will grow at my house for years to come.  

Beauty in the Spring

“I’m probably the only person in Texas doing this.  Well, let’s be honest, Jared.  Probably the whole US.”

I chuckled talking to myself as my shovel loosened the eighth clump of spring beauty from a bed in my vegetable patch.  With a sunny afternoon and the return of warmer temperatures, the flowers were beginning to explode and made finding them easier.  I stood up with the transplant, paused to pull off any weeds that still had purchase in the loosened soil, and reached underneath to check and make sure the corm was there and intact.  It was.  

I smiled thinking about someone else moving this plant because who would waste their time relocating these little guys?  Spring beauty by itself isn’t super showy.  The flowers are maybe the size of a dime, and they are finicky opening and closing with the day or rainy weather conditions.  However, looking up at my yard I was reminded why my fingers were coated in the warming winter muck; drifts of pale pink flowers wafted in the breeze.  And, I couldn’t stand the thought of harming any of them, even if this area was where I would be cultivating vegetables.

Claytonia virginica in full bloom gives the appearance of snow. I had plugged some Narcissus in this area earlier this fall, but I plan to relocate them. The yellow is too saturated for the pink tint of spring beauty.

I have adored spring beauty since I first observed it growing in someone’s yard down the road from our house in Tennessee.  I was amazed at this tiny white bloom that abundantly covered their entire front lawn every spring.  Why couldn’t our homeplace look like that?  I didn’t know the plant at first. I kept wanting to stop and look at it more closely to ascertain its identity, but soon I found it growing in a nearby woods and collected a few to take back to my garden.  I had turned an interesting-looking stranger into a friend by finally meeting Claytonia virginica.  

If you drove by recently and saw me laying on the ground, this photograph was why.

The few I transplanted those many years ago don’t even begin to compare with the thousands that now grow in my Texas yard.  I didn’t know they were here when I chose this location for the edible patch, hence my moving them now to a bed that needs more early spring color and vegetation.  I didn’t even know they were here at all when we bought the house in August 18 months ago!  But, when the first frost erased the turf’s chlorophyll and created a mosaic of tans, thin strips of purple foliage caught my eye.  The Claytonia was slathering on some anthocyanins for winter sunscreen.  And, as the winter unfolded into spring, I would see it was everywhere as it came into full bloom.  

In Tennessee this species became my herald of spring and a sign of warmer days to come.  But, here in Texas I have caught it blooming even before the onset of winter.  In 2017 I noted the first bloom on 05 December, and this past year, I caught two separate plants flowering just shy of the solstice on the 16 of December.  As an ephemeral, it must use its 15 minutes on stage wisely to grow, flower and set seed, and store energy before the canopy closes.  After that, the plant vanishes until the show returns next year.  Therefore, it makes sense that through natural selection it start performing as early as it can.  

I’ve learned much about spring beauty in recent years both digging in the soil and the literature.  There is a single corm from which the flowers and foliage arises.  Some sources will label it a bulb or a tuber, but from what I’ve deduced a corm more accurately reflects the circular storage organ.  The flowers grow out and then up from the mature corm, which gives the appearance of the shoots arising in a circle while the foliage tends to emerge straight upwards.  So, if you decide to move some from the lawn, take care not to slice through the shoots.  I like to sink the shovel in the soil on the outside of a clump and lift.  Then, I take care to settle the plant back in to the same depth.  

A single clump of Claytonia virginica nestled into its new home.

I have often thought of spring beauty as the deep south’s alternative for Galanthus.  We have a sparse selection of geophytes due to our lack of chilling.  Yes, the flowers are smaller, but their bloom time lasts longer than snowdrops due to a dozen of flowers on one raceme.  Claytonia virginica also has color variation within a population. You will likely see white-flowering and dark-pink-flowering plants in the same area with color morphs along that gradient. Research done in 2004 sheds light on why. Pollinators prefer dark-pink-colored flowers; thus, with natural selection you would expect to see the population flower color get darker and darker pink over time. If pollinators prefer a color, that usually means more pollination, more seed set, and more individuals expressing that trait in the population. However, the white flowers get their coloration from compounds like quercetin and kaempferol. These molecules protect the plant from herbivory and fungal infection. It’s a really fascinating look at different selection pressures maintaining variation in a population. One plant I moved had darker pink flowers has some rust-like disease on the leaves. Maybe this research explains why!

And speaking of pollinators, since spring beauty blooms so early, it makes a good model species for studying early spring behavior of bugs.  One paper I read demonstrated that 22 species of insects visited the flowers over a two-year observation period.  Filaments (the structures supporting the pollen-loaded stamens) that reflect UV light no doubt light up the runway for our antennaed friends.  Humans used to depend on them, too. A student once taught me that Native Americans once dug them and ate them. 

Claytonia virginica can have different colored blooms in the same population. Here, you see white and pink flowers. Also, notice how pink the stamens are (the five rice-shaped structures near the center of the flower).

It’s been a few weeks since I transplanted the Claytonia, and they are settling in nicely.   I enjoy walking out the door and seeing them a stones throw away.  With spring on the rise, other tasks call for me in the garden, but know that next year when they emerge again, I’ll find loners that need to be relocated from cultivated beds to less disturbed and more permanent plantings.  One day my garden beds will look look a little less barren and like the lawn will be dusted with this spring beauty, too.