The Clouds of Pycnanthemum

“Is this thyme?!?”, I remember my teenage mind questioning at the sight of foliage that resembled the herb.  It was March, and I was rummaging through the fencerows near our house looking for wildflowers on a cloudy day that couldn’t decide if it was winter or spring.  Per usual, nothing much was to be seen since I lived in the avoidance zone, but my blitheful, naive self still held out hope I might find something in the leaf litter.  

And, here it was.  I knew enough about herbs to cue in on the small, elongated leaves stooping down.  The foliage looked a bit more pointed than the mother of thyme clump I had back home, but I crushed some, and it released a spicy menthol smell supporting my teenage hypothesis.  “Wow, I’ve discovered thyme from some old homeplace,” I said to the forest around me.

Looking back on the whole experience now, I chuckle.  I didn’t know about Occam’s razor then.  Nor, did I pause to critique my thinking with questions like how has thyme survived in this underbrush, or how has it not spread out and taken over creation?

No, back then I knew thyme wasn’t native to the US; therefore, I assumed someone planted it here.  It still had its low winter foliage just like the herb in my garden. 

So, I transplanted it home and nurtured it.  And, then it started to grow. And grow and grow and grow until it was over two feet tall.  This plant was not thyme! I went through a wildflower book I had and found a match in the Lamiaceae section—Pycnanthemum tenuifolium. 

Pycnanthemum tenuifolium flowering en masse.

Narrow-leaf mountain mint is currently blooming in my garden, and seeing it flourish was a fun reminder that I make mistakes and learn from them.  Sometimes when we are wrong, it turns out better than we could have imagined! Some fifteen years ago in my teenage years I didn’t realize what I had discovered—one of the best native perennials for pollinators and other insects. 

I’ll go ahead and address the white elephant (or, should I say white-flowering herb!) in the room.  Yes, as a “mint” it can spread some, but I’ve never had the issues with it that I’ve had with other Pycnanthemum or Mentha species.  I see having more of it as a good thing.  Even with its vigor, I lost the clump I found along the roadside.  But, a few years ago, I began to hunt for plants for creating floras.  I knew where Pycnanthemum was; therefore, I decided to saunter back along the same fence row in search of it.  After a few hours, I found one inflorescence.  I collected a piece from that Tennessee plant and some seed, and this germplasm became the basis for our plants that we use on campus.   Years later, I would find local Texas ecotypes on the road.  Both are blooming now in my garden and offer so much.  

A haze of Pycnanthemum tenuifolium flowers over a perennial planting at my house.

The fine-textured foliage emerges in tight columns rising upward.  In bud the plant makes me think of the constellation Crux, or the southern cross, for the haphazard dots that attempt to form perpendicular lines.  After flowering I enjoy seeing the seedheads that persist well into winter.  

X marks the spot on Pycnanthemum tenuifolium. Since the inflorescences are cymes, that character likely generates this interesting floral architecture.

But, the flowers are the pinnacle attribute of this plant.  The blooms remind me of stratus.  Instead of countless moisture particles composing a flat, gray-white cloud that blankets the earth, here hundreds of mithril-colored flowers form sheets that hover over the foliage.  These dense flowers are the origin of the name Pycnanthemum (pycn- means dense, and -anthemum refers to the flowers).

And, the insects that flock to this all-you-can-eat-buffet is astounding—bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and more that I’m missing.  Research has shown Pycnanthemum tenuifolium to be a great niche for beneficial insects from providing resources for native bees to creating habitat for predators and parasitoids.   I’ve observed that the plant buzzes most with activity in the middle of the day.  I have plants near each other to accentuate their seasonality, and for the pollinators it makes cloud hopping even easier.  

A zebra swallowtail waddling through the flowers on Pycnanthemum tenuifolium. Yes, I know you can’t see motion in this still picture, but trust me. It waddled.

A giant swallowtail probed Pycnanthemum tenuifolium flowers.

The other day I took advantage of an overcast sky to take photos of my narrow-leaf mountain mint.   I smiled at the similarity of seeing the dark insects dart amongst the silvery-white flowers and how they resembled the shadows of birds circling above me in a broken, gray altostratus sky.  Both looking for food and both trying to live.  This national pollinator week, I recommend planting this perennial in abundance in the garden so that you, too, can have a richer life and enjoy the clouds of Pycnanthemum and all the life that comes with it.  

Delphinium carolinianum, Rock Candy for the Garden

Delphinium carolinianum (Carolina larkspur) is flowering in my garden.  Since seeing it in Texas, it has scurried to the top of my list of favorite wildflowers.  The native stands out with unique form and color—lines of electric blue that pierce the hurly-burly of the prairie.  To me it looks like rock candy. You know, the kind that you used to eat as a kid where sugar crystals surrounded a wooden stick?  I ate it up then, and I’m eating this flower up, now.  Currently, the colors I have in bloom are the prominent rich blueberry and fewer of the light raspberry and soft grape.

Delphinium carolinianum flowers are such a stark yet cheerful blue to see against the greens and golds typically seen in grasslands.

It wasn’t on the property when we arrived.  I’ve been collecting seed from local populations, and it’s thrilling to watch plants I started from seed erupt into bloom.  As the rachis elongates, it slightly sinews from node to node, each bend a place for an immature flower. As the buds develop, the long nectary starts resembling a horn, and upon unfurling I see the spur becoming a beak of a Belted Kingfisher; the flared petals to the sides are the wings and the two pointing down the tail.  

It has taken two years to get the plants from seed to flower.  I made the mistake of sowing the seed my first fall here before I learned how the winter shadows moved in our new garden. The spot received little sun.  The seedlings struggled, and I thought all was lost when they vanished last spring.  Imagine my delight when I found the little dissected leaves breaking ground last fall!  

Before the cold set in, I relocated the plants to sunnier spots.  Now, I and the fauna of my garden have been rewarded this year with blooms.  I’ve watched the inflorescences sway from probing by Ruby-throated Hummingbirds by day and hummingbird moths by night.

But, this larkspur does have an ephemeral nature.  Soon, the rock candy will dissolve with the heat of summer, leaving only seed behind.  But, I will collect them, coax the seedlings along, and hope for an even sweeter show in years to come.  

Pick your flavor. The classic vibrant blue, …

soft purple, …

or, a light periwinkle. Or, do what I do. Collect seed and you may end up with all three.

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.

Bolting to Boltonia

I’ve been on a Boltonia kick of late.   

It started because of how well Boltonia asteroides has grown for me this year.  I’ve wanted to try this species for a while because BONAP showed its range extending down into Louisiana, and I thought it might do well in east Texas.  On a trip to North Carolina several months ago, I picked up a plant labeled Boltonia asteroides ‘Snowbank’.  It was just scrawny leaves in a 4 inch pot when I bought it.  I stuck it in a trial bed that received very little moisture over the summer and didn’t expect much from it.

But, the doll’s daisy kept growing and growing and growing.  Till it was over my head.  That was even after the top was nipped out by deer.  Althought it was labeled as ‘Snowbank’, I actually think that I got the straight species instead.  ‘Snowbank’ tends to be shorter.  The height isn’t a bad thing and allows me to look up into a cosmos of thousands of flowers, each swirled with white rays and a glowing yellow disk at the center.  

Boltonia bokeh.

Close up of Boltonia asteroides flowers. Once they begin to fade, the ray florets rain down and cover the ground like little white sprinkles. Or, your arm if you brush past the plant.

This Boltonia asteroides is over six feet tall in my little trial bed beside our house.

On mornings following a rain, the thin stems are bejeweled in droplets of water that shimmer in the rising sunlight.  The foliage is a glaucous color, and this dusting of blue-gray provides the slightest color echo for the white ray florets.  And, if you pull on the margins of the leaves, you’ll notice a sharp edge from the little cilia.  So much character from a native.  

Armitage’s tome says that "most species are too large and lanky to be considered for anything but the wildflower garden."  Bah.  I think there’s an elegance to the plant, and I agree with Allan Lacy’s account in The Garden in Autumn where he admires the “delicacy and substantial presence” of Boltonia.   And, let’s be honest.  The wildflower look is quite what I’m after.  Maybe it’s not as lanky because we are so dry here in east Texas?  Time will tell.  My only concern growing it is I’ve read if it’s happy it can spread via rhizomes underground.  So, I’m going to find somewhere it can grow where that won’t be a problem. I’m already eyeing our fencerow.

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Around this same time that I was being enchanted by my Boltonia blooming, my friend Patrick Cullina posted a picture of Boltonia diffusa at the Atlanta Botanic Garden on Instagram.  Same effect, but only a third of the height!  Wowzers.  I went back to BONAP and was delighted to discover it’s native to our area!  My mind started drifting back to last fall when in the post-house buying haze and rush I wondered if I had caught a glimpse of this species in our area, perhaps even on our road.  I reached out to a few local colleagues who said they had seen it scattered on county roadsides and ditches.

A day or two later, a flurry of white flowers caught my eye on the side of the road, and one evening when I had some time I stopped to investigate, I found smallhead doll’s daisy.  The flowers and foliage were just like Boltonia asteroides, only smaller.   It had been nipped a while back, and inflorescences arose from around the pruned point.  The cut was probably from the mowers when they came through in August. 

Boltonia diffusa growing in the wild.

Boltonia diffusa settles into its new home in our garden. Blooming at just over a foot tall, I see it making a great companion plant to weave through accent grasses and taller forbs.

A second patch I found was much larger. It seems these two were early to come into bloom.  With a mental image of this dwarf doll’s daisy, it seems every quarter mile driving into town I’ve started seeing little clumps of the blue-green foliage waiting to be adorned with autumnal flowers.

I collected pieces of the two clumps I found and planted them back at our house to start bulking up for our prairie here.  I don’t think it will be hard to propagate.  The rhizomatous nature was evident from the off-white shoots I found underground. 

Whether these doll’s daisies are tall or short, I’m happy to have them in our garden.   I’ve still got ‘Snowbank’ on my wish list, and diving into Lacy’s book on autumn alerted me to ‘Pink Beauty’, a pink-flowering form from Montrose Nursery.  Looks like I’m not done growing this genus.  

Eragrostis, a Grass I Love

One of the perks about living out in the country is I have a delightful 20 minute drive into town to enjoy the east Texas countryside and keep abreast of the phenology of the local flora. 

It was about this time last year right after moving into our new house that I was driving to work familiarizing myself with my new route when a plant sporting a glimmering haze on the side of the road caught my eye.  When I actually had a chance to stop, I pulled off and identified it as Eragrostis spectabilis, commonly known as purple love grass.  I enjoyed seeing the dew collecting on the panicles and the early morning light imbuing it with an ethereal character that would inevitably evaporate as the day aged.  Most sprigs I saw were single, scraggly flowers that looked like the way a young girl might practice putting her hair up for the first time. 

But, one clump was spectacular!  It was full and lush, bigger than a basketball, and hard to miss in the fresh light of dawn.  Every day I’d drive past it and admire that shimering plant against a shaggy fencerow.

I had to have it.  Since I arrived in Texas in July of 2014, I’ve been hunting for short, groundcover species that will perform well in our area.  Most plants I’ve tried are imports, but here was a species right down the road just waiting to have its potential realized.  Being September, I knew that there was a chance it might not survive as many grasses moved in the fall don’t establish well.  But, with love and care and some horticultural knowledge, there was also a good chance it would live.  

With shovel in car one Saturday morning, I pulled off along the roadside and walked over to meet my new friend that I had been admiring from afar.  The spade slid right through the sandy soil, and a few jabs and levers later the Eragrostis was up with a nice rootball still intact.   Any guilt I had collecting the wild vanished a few weeks later when the mowing crews came along and sheared the roadsides.  

Back home, I found a nice spot for the transplant in the catch-all herb bed of our newly formed kitchen garden.  There, I could check on it every day and water it as needed.  I was thrilled when I saw little discoloration the next few days from it adjusting to being moved.  A few blades turned tan and purple, but overall the plant settled in nicely.  

Even though it had a few bruises and browning after being transplanted from the roadside, this mother plant of Eragrostis has settled in just fine.  You can see the speckled haze of flowers hovering above the foliage.  

I loved going out in the mornings and see my new Poaceae pal wrapped in a crystal veil.  The flower color is not as purple/pink as most of the examples I’ve seen in catalogs or online, which made me question it's identity.  But, the height is right, it has knobby rhizomes, and the flowers match what I can find in dichotomous key photos.  My guess is down south the color is weaker than our northern counterparts as is the case for many other ornamental plants in our sweltering heat.  Or, perhaps this southern ecotype sports inflorescences that are a lighter shade of maroon?  I tried another strain of Eragrostis spectabilis from further east a few years ago whose flowers were more pink in color, but our little trial of plants died.  Perhaps they were in too wet a spot in too wet a summer?  Or, maybe it wasn’t locally adapted yet?  Not sure, but this one I discovered has performed beautifully. 

The typical rosy-colored flowers of Eragrostis spectabilis.  

The clump I found and those that I've propagated have more of a light pink or tawny color in the inflorescence.  

As September wore on, the panicles started to mature.  I collected some seed, and sowed them on a whim.  To my amazement, they started germinating within just a few days!  No stratification or even dry storage required.  For those that need a review from plant propagation, dry storage is the name of the germination delay that some seeds experience to prevent them from germinating too early or on the mother plant.

Once the seedlings got some size to them, I took them to school and had a student pot these few up into a couple trays for our school garden beds.  To my amazement, the disturbance in the pot caused even more to germinate!  It seemed to good to be true.  These little sprigs I brought home and planted into beds here at the house.  As more of the original plant’s inflorescences began to mature, I collected more seed to become the stock for our plantings on campus.  

Winter came with the worry of loosing the original clump, but this spring, I was thrilled to see new shoots emerging on the mother plant.  Being a C4 grass, it was slow to get going, but when the brunt of summer arrived it erupted into growth.  Eventually, I tried my hand at dividing the clump into about 20 propagules, and the majority of these survived.  However, divisions do seem to grow a bit slower than those from seed.  I was also delighted to discover a few offspring popping up around the mother plant.  One even sowed its way into a crack in our pavement.  

Now, a year has passed.  We have hundreds that have been planted around the SFA agriculture building.  And, back home a few that I transplanted carpet the ground in a portion of our herb garden.  I’ve also planted it as the groundcover layer in the beds on the eastern half of the swale I’ve been building through our kitchen garden (more on that in a later post).  What few perennials I plugged around these starts look like ship masts emerging out of a grass fog.  The effect is similar to muhly grass (Muhlenbergia sp.), but the height is shorter.  It would occupy more ground, but I ran out of plants here at the house and have to propagate more.  No worries as it appears I’ll have thousands and thousands of seed in a month and Heaven knows how many seedlings next spring.

En masse this Eragrostis is spectacular, especially when covered with morning dew.  Here, it is planted along the swale that runs through our edible patch.  Next year, I expect more perennials to be established and piercing the floriferous fog.  

I feel proud having moved it—perhaps I could go as far as saying saved it?  And, I feel that joy every time I walk past the clumps.  In the morning, strolling past the wet panicles reminds me of the plant perspiration Christopher Lloyd wrote about in Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners.  And, once the dampness vanishes, the flowers brush against your leg like a friendly feline. 

This ecotype of Eragrostis will become a permanent fixture in our prairie plantings here at the house and on campus.  And, why not?  With a plant named love grass from right down the road that thrives in our climate, what’s not to love?

Echinacea Named Tennessee

Echinacea tennesseensis (Tennessee coneflower) is beginning to bloom in our SFA student garden here in east Texas.  Plants that we started over two years ago as class projects have returned yet again and are flowering their little heads off.

I must admit, when Echinacea tennesseensis first bloomed I was amazed at how floriferous it was!  

It's one of my favorite native wildflowers, but I'm a bit biased, being a native from the great volunteer state.  You can easily identify this member of the aster family apart from the other nine or so species of Echinacea that are native to the US. Their inflorescences face east once mature, and the ray florets ascend to the sun instead of drooping like the petals on most other coneflowers.  This plant embodies such a great metaphor for life.  Start every day gazing at dawn and reaching toward the sky; I can get behind that.  Or, in front of that I should say as this trait does force us to consider where to situate it in gardens.  It must be planted on the eastern flank.  Siting it to the west will cause you to only see the backstage of the inflorescences and leave you unable to enjoy the full performance.  

Can you spy the east-facing Echinacea tennesseensis 'Rocky Top' in this incredible planting at Chanticleer's elevated walkway?  Hint, it's on the right.  Compare these blooms where the ray florets curve upward with the typical Echinacea at the back left of the image whose outer rays droop.  

Of course, it's a bit of a miracle that we still have this delightful perennial with us.  Tennessee coneflower is only found in a few counties in Tennessee, and if heroic stewards hadn't stepped in to save it, our world would be less colorful.  It was discovered in 1878 by Augustin Gattinger, and less than a century later in 1961 its absence in field surveys led some researchers to claim it extinct.  Later in the 60's it was rediscovered; however, survival wasn't guaranteed as the land some populations inhabited was cleared to make way for trailer parks and housing developments.  We have people like the late Dr. Elise Quarterman to thank for advocating for this species's livelihood.  Efforts from her and others helped the plant become listed on the endangered species list, one of the first flora ever.  This attention led to areas where Echinacea tennesseensis occurred being protected, and with enough populations safe, the species was delisted in 2011, certainly a success story for horticulture and humankind's intervention.

The endemism is a peculiar subject.  Why is such a floriferous species isolated to just a few counties in Tennessee?  Sure, humans destroyed a few sites, but it seems that it never had the wide distribution that some of the other Echinacea genera enjoy.  The current hypothesis is that the species arose during the hypsithermal interval, a period of climatic warming and drying that occurred around 5000—8000 years ago.  Drier conditions opened the woodlands of middle Tennessee and allowed the colonization of prairie species like our Echinacea.  When the climate cooled and became more moist, forests began to reclaim the land, and this stress-tolerant species began to decline in numbers.  Walck et al. (2002) state that its narrow endemism is due to several factors—seed-based reproduction; large seeds that aren't animal or wind dispersed; self sterility; intolerance of shading; a lack of seed persistence in the soil, and few individuals making it to adulthood in the wild.  All these characteristics would have limited its dispersal from middle Tennessee.  

The xeric-adapted nature of established plants is quite apparent in the root systems. Earlier this spring I had to move some Echinacea tennesseensis, and I was very surprised to discover massive, deep taproots on plants that were only one year old.  Unearthing knowledge about roots (in a literal and figurative sense!) is always exciting, like discovering buried treasure.  I expected to see more rhizomatous roots like those on Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower) that I've transplanted much of my life .  The soil had mostly sloughed off one taproot, so I rinsed it to get a better look.  Near the crown it was as thick as a plump carrot!   From there, the chthonic organ divided with depth, but the roots were still stout.  (Yes, most of the transplants survived in case you are wondering.)

I learn so much each time I expose roots.  Here, plump taproots on Echinacea tennesseensis likely help the plant survive stressful times during the year and store resources for the coming bloom.  

A close up of the crown of Echinacea tennesseensis.  The pink tinge in the lower wrapper leaves are hints of colors yet to come.  

I'm already applying this new anatomical knowledge to our propagation culture.  This spring, we currently have over 10 deep-celled propagation trays of Echinacea tennesseensis that my student team has grown.  Seeing the deep taproot was insight to not keep the plants in the trays for too long.  

While it is beautiful to see in the gardens, I hope one day to see this Echinacea named Tennessee in its provincial habitat.  Perhaps at daybreak with their heads basking in the new glow of the day and me basking in the existence of such a great species for our plantings.

Discovering Blue Wood Sedge

Last fall, a plant caught my eye under the mammoth Magnolia grandiflora in our front yard.  Few plants save for moss can survive under its shade, but yet here was a grass ally holding its own.  Squatting down, I ran my fingers over the triangular edges and felt giddy.  It was a sedge I had never before seen.

Sedges are the "in" thing in horticulture.  Using Carex is quite fashionable now as green infrastructure, rain gardens, no mow lawns, and designed plant communities are all trends that capitalize on this incredibly durable species.  I have been searching high and low for the latter reason, good candidates to use as a ground cover layer in my plantings, and here was one right under my nose.  Well, my tree.  

The foliage was glaucous and broad, which limited it to a few species.  Searching online images and Carex keys made me believe that it was Carex flaccosperma (blue wood sedge).  But, with time I started leaning towards Carex glaucodea (whose common name is confusingly also blue wood sedge.  Why not call it glaucous sedge?).  Evidently Carex glaucodea used to be a variety of Carex flaccosperma, so I don't think I'm that far off.  And, the official taxonomic identity doesn't matter for the purpose I have in mind.  

Carex glaucodea/flaccosperma in a wooly part of our yard.  

I considered digging the single clump to propagate, but as with many flora finds, once you acquire the mental image it's suddenly everywhere.  The plants are primarily along the property perimeter—on the front bank, skirting fencerows, and under trees.  A few are actually hiding out in our lawn in full sun.  Frost made it easier to locate them as it browned the surrounding camouflage, and made the evergreen, glaucous blue blades easier to see.  With the arrival of longer days it's still easy to see from a distance.  The emerging foliage is colored honeydew and spikes above the turf.  

Back in November I started transplanting clumps into a bed along the roof drip line of our house, and recently, I finished filling it with plugs.  Any plant that can grow in such varied conditions warrants evaluation in the garden as we turn to using lesser known but ecologically importance species.  These relocated clumps will serve as a source for propagules and seed if the plants produce any.  In total, I moved over 100 clumps, and there’s still plenty more around our property.  

Saved from the mower blades, a wheelbarrow full of Carex ready for planting.  

Carex is hipster Liriope.  

Propagating all this Carex reminds me of reading in Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher's Garden Revolution where they share how Native Americans would replant Carex barbarae (Santa Barbara sedge) as they dug clumps to use the blades for weaving.  And, as I re-wild our 2.5 acres of mostly turf, I’ll be sure to move some back into the landscape once I make more.

As far as the first plant that started it all, I left it.  I figured as a survivor under a mighty tree it should stay right where it is.  Plus, who knows how long it'll live if not moved.  We shall see. 

Stalwart Asparagus

Asparagus is a real stalwart, evidenced by the times I’ve seen it in road right-of-ways and farm borders.  My first encounter was a clump catching the breeze off Highway 22 that led to my grandmother’s house in Tennessee.  While I thought this lone survivor from an old timer's garden was a fluke, I’ve since seen the frilly fronds on roadsides in Arkansas, North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas.  

Asparagus also thrives in the north as seen here at Chanticleer.  

They aren’t native.  No, these old landrace plants are relics of yesteryear, markers of some old homestead or the final brush pile containing said homestead.  In these places it has survived abandon and bulldozer and seems to do just fine as the stem slithers under the surface of the ground, gaining a bit more purchase each year. 

The true stem, that is.  Most people call what we eat stems, but the spears are actually called cladodes, modified leaves that resemble a stem.  If you ever want to check, damage the asparagus’s foliage top.  New shoots don’t originate from the fronds as they would from stem tissue.  Instead, they pierce upwards out of the ground from the rhizome.  

These remnants may not be the supped up cultivars we see in seed catalogs today, but they are still delicious.  Asparagus's culinary essence seems to attract all the attention; however, the plants are quite ornamental, an epiphany I had when I saw in our SFA Sprout garden two falls ago asparagus's senescing canary-colored foliage next to blue, bold Rudbeckia maxima.  It was one of those color combinations that gives you pause in the garden and makes you ask, “Why didn’t I think of that?”  The autumn color and the plant's dainty foliage lent to its installation as a see-through structural interest plant in the food prairies on campus last spring.  The leaves on some individuals reached six feet tall before the end of the summer. 

I'm sure I'm not the first to appreciate Asparagus officinalis's texture and color attributes, but I feel like it.  A plant that you can see going 70 mph down the road warrants more use in ornamental plantings.  I don't think I've ever heard of using asparagus as a perennial like I have the tomes on Rudbeckia, Phlox, and Hosta.  I suppose that's because it "only belongs in the kitchen garden."  Rubbish.  

Nestled amongst Bouteloua, Symphyotrichum, Liatris, and more, one might not immediately notice the Asparagus in our plantings.  But, in the fall when the foliage fades gold, it hides no more.  It will hold a light yellow/tan color for the rest of the winter.  

I didn't even mention the flowers.  While they are no bigger than a rice grain, small pollinators like to jump from blossom to blossom.  The plants are different sexes.  You need a male and a female for fruit set.  The red fruit are usually not preferred since they take away energy from the spears, but if you're using the plant for ornamental purposes, have at it!

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This week, I planted asparagus into our kitchen garden at the house with the end goal of contrasting the fine-textured foliage with herbs and low-growing perennials.  A few students helped me collect some wild plants (thanks Aries, Jade, and Jevon!).  

Dividing the mature clumps took some finger work.  The rhizome can be separated into smaller pieces.  The five clumps we dug resulted in about 16 propagules, each with solid, off-white roots and a few buds.  Finding the growing buds, which resemble turtle heads just poking out of their shell, was fairly easy since on most specimens the remains of last years foliage were visible.  Broken up, the crowns look like they belong in Animalia, resembling a jellyfish with long tentacles.   

A clump just after excavating

Pulling the rhizome apart

See any turtle heads?  Then you've found the buds!  If you need a hint, one is at the base of this large out-of-focus root in the left corner of the photo.  

Planting was a breeze.  One has to go wider than deeper.  I prefer to shovel soil out of the first hole, situate the crown, and then use soil from the next hole to fill the first.  The last hole gets the first soil.  Before watering and mulching, I made sure that the buds on the crowns were visible or close to the surface.

Jellyfish washed up on shore?  Nah, just asparagus crowns ready for planting.

By the end of the summer, they’ll form a swaying, verdant wall enjoyed in our side porch rocking chairs for years to come.  Who knows?  Maybe a century or two from now some other lad will find them and ponder from whence they came, and maybe he or she will enjoy how delectable they are as both a feast for the mouth and the eyes.  

Titanotrichum Or Treat

One of the plants I associate with fall is Titantrichum oldhamii (gold woodland foxglove).   The flowers look like candy corn.  From the outside they are costumed in a bright canary yellow that can rival any sugar maple's foliage, and looking inside the flowers is a smoldering burnt red throat. 

Also, my first encounter with this Gesneriad was in the fall of 2011 with Jon and Adrienne Roethling in Wyatt LeFever's garden in Greensboro, NC.  They had taken me to see his garden on an cool, overcast day and built up his horticultural reputation by saying he was the breeder of the Forsyth daylily series.  The garden certainly did not disappoint.  Before even looking back at photos, I remember a towering Magnolia macrophylla that Wyatt at one point sported a leaf as a temporary umbrella and the surprise of seeing Cylcamen flowering in his lawn.  Some gardeners can't even grow them in garden beds, and here they were in the turf! 

We rounded a corner in his garden and I remember Adrienne commenting to him about how his Titanotrichum was beginning to flower.  To me it looked like a hot-rod colored Digitalis flower.  I added it to my mental plant wish list as we continued to tour his garden. 

See? Candy corn.  

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Seeing it at Wyatt's inspired me to purchase one a little over a year ago, and it's been blooming on my patio in a container for weeks now.  The indeterminate inflorescence keeps elongating and throwing them out. 

I haven't always been as impressed with it.  Earlier this year the plant did an odd thing.  It put up an inflorescence that resembled something in the amaranth family.  I was quite confused.  At first I thought it was actually a different plant that had somehow seeded in.  Or, maybe it had not enough energy to fully develop flower buds and needed a few more years before it actually bloomed.

However, from my investigations I learned Titanotrichum can actually produce two different types of inflorescences!  Depending on the time of the year, the inflorescence can either sport a shoot that contains thousands of small bulbils for vegetative propagation (much like the little black bulbils on some lily scapes, but smaller) OR it can produce a flowering inflorescence.   The research says the plant produces the bulbil-producing shoot during short days and flowers during long. 

In an inspection of the inflorescence one morning earlier this month, I counted nine flowers blooming and one in bud.  However, this morning it's flowerless.  The inflorescence is continuing to elongate, but I don't see any more yellow flower buds at the top.  So, I assume it's made the switch back since we just started autumn? 

I'll keep a watch on it in future weeks.  Even though this plant tricked me with it's weird inflorescence, it's always a treat to learn about a plant that breaks the mold. 

I Like Showy Evening Primrose

I like showy evening primrose (or, Oenothera speciosa for those of us who are botanically inclined).  I love seeing the cheerful little flowers that dot roadways, and when the petite, pink parasols pop up in the lawn, it brings a smile to my face.  It was actually one of the first wildflowers I ever grew.  I recall buying a pack of seed at the garden center, scattering them in my tiny garden behind our pool, and watching as they quickly came into bloom.  Success in a season.  What gardener doesn't want that?  

But, I didn't realize there was such animosity towards one of my favorite wildflowers until I read Steve Bender's piece "If you value your life and yard, don't plant this."

Such a scary thing, huh?

He writes,

“If you see pink evening primrose ... for sale at your garden center, I have a single word of advice. RUN. Do not buy. Do not plant. Do not say to yourself, “It’s a native plant, so it must be good.” Do not overlook the fact that any wildflower that can conquer acres of farmland can gulp down your garden in a single sitting...”

— Steve Bender

Reading that opinion made me sad.   My biggest qualm with the piece is recommending to thousands of readers to not plant something because it spreads.  He goes on to say, "a pink primrose tsunami swept over my garden the next spring, choking the phlox and drowning the daylilies".  

That's such a boring way to garden!  Plant perennials.  Mulch them in their little cubicles.  Don't let them touch.  Repeat next year.  And, the next.  And, the next.  Ad nauseam.  

I want plants to touch, mingle, grow through each other, and duke it out in the garden.  I want to see ecology in action and for plants to actually live instead of being static chlorophyllic mannequins.  

I'm constantly looking for good groundcovers for southeast mixed plantings, and this native primrose shows such promise for use in mixed plantings.  In Texas, it covers our soil in the winter and reduces erosion, and ours that we grow in the Sprout garden have been blooming now for over three months since March 8th.  Then, come summer it peters out with a reflush of flowers in the fall.  As a bonus for the pollinator groupies out there, research conducted at UT Austin showed honeybees, skippers, and pierid and papilionid butterflies visit the flowers.  

Sure, it's aggressive and seedy as many ruderal species are.  But, in a world covered with mulch, hell strips, and roadsides, I'd rather look at pink flowers.  To tell people to not plant something because it proliferates itself is wrong.  

So, spread the word.  Plants like evening primrose that spread can be a gardener's best friend.  Unless you want to keep mulching...