Sunday, September 24, 2006

Morning Glories

What’s blooming in the area: Lance-leaf yellow brush, datura, purple aster, tahokia daisy, ragweed, Russian thistle, golden hairy aster, bigleaf globeflower, purple mat, large white roses of Sharon, roses, purple salvia, sweet peas, heavenly blue and wild morning glories, silverlace vine, Maximilian and native sunflowers. Áñil del muerto smells late in day, especially if no wind; it was not perceptible until flowers began to die. Hay baled in one orchard; red apples visible in another. Two older men pulled pigweed and burned when they had large enough piles; stacks at sheep house are curing nicely, waiting for wind to scatter seed.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Black-eyed Susan, gloriosa daisy, blanket flower, chocolate flower, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, yellow cosmos, creeping zinnia, nasturtium, lance-leaf coreopsis, columbine, chrysanthemum, miniature rose (Rise and Shine).

Looking east: Garlic chives, California poppy, crackerjack marigold, tall zinnias, winecup, large flowered soapwort, pink bachelor button, larkspur, autumn joy sedum, Shirley poppy, sweet alyssum.

Looking south: Crimson rambler morning glory, sensation cosmos, heath aster.

Looking west: White phlox (David), frikarti aster, lead plant, catmint, Russian sage, purple ice plant, young caryopteris.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnia, nicotiana.

Animal sightings: Gecko, ants, flying and leaping grasshoppers, flies, horse. Bees, including bumble bee, move to asters in afternoon.

Weather: Temperatures, colder in night; have already killed my grape leaves. A friend in a settlement to the south says her hybrid tomatoes have been killed, but not the heritage Brandywine. Neighbor split wood yesterday; smell of wood smoke in the morning. Despite rain Wednesday and Friday, grassfire near big arroyo late Saturday afternoon was quickly contained.

Weekly update: Morning glories are another meso-American plant flourishing in this year’s cool summer and early fall.

I’ve had the most success with Crimson Rambler. Seed I bought two years ago, but sowed this spring, is blooming everywhere, hanging over pots, creeping along the retaining wall, and scaling any plant it strikes. With changing sun angles, the pots are shaded longer so flowers remain open most of the day.

Heavenly Blue is the name everyone associates with morning glories. Several years ago, a man down the road developed an intensively cultivated vegetable plot and planted the blue flowers along the vertical board front fence where they naturalized. When he moved, the next renter converted the garden into a dog run and systematically rooted out the vine, leaving the usual pigweed and bare dirt yard.

This year someone in the village seeded an annual bed a bit higher than the road. The morning glories started opening the end of July along a wire strung above a two foot wall. By mid-September, a sheet of backlit blue flowers filled the space between the support and the wall.

In the past in Michigan and New Jersey, I bought mixed packages. Instead of multicolored patches, I discovered only one color would bloom, sometimes red, sometimes purple, but never both, and never, ever white. Apparently, they were sensitive to the environment, and depending on sun, rain, and atmosphere, the seed that thrived would vary by year in the same location.

One thing that never varies in the village is bindweed, which starts putting out its pink or white round flowers the end of May. This year, small scarlet funnels also appeared along farmers’ fences the first of August.

A few weeks ago I discovered ivy-leaved morning glories in the ditch up the road when I went to take pictures of áñil del muerto. Last weekend, I found them mixed with pink and white streaked trumpets, which a USDA guide suggests may be hedge bindweed (Convolvulus sepium). However, it looked like the 1970 map showed them on the other side of the Sangre de Cristo and Cimarron ranges.

I’ll probably never know the origin of the other wild members of the convolvulus family. It’s difficult enough to know the commercial varieties. Morning glories don’t readily cross-breed, but they do mutate. Heavenly Blue is a selection of the perennial Ipomoea tricolor, which some call Ipomoea violacea. It’s the species that’s attracted the most research because its seeds contain LSD.

Crimson Rambler is probably not the same, if only because it’s not listed by the most authoritative psychedelic writers. More likely it’s the annual Ipomoea purpurea. However, most catalogs group it with Heavenly Blue because a morning glory’s a morning glory. This far north, they all die in the fall anyway. Even so, the purpurea have been more affected by this week’s cold temperatures than the tricolor.

The red flowers with arrowhead leaves are Ipomoea coccinea, while the tiny, blue ones with big, three-lobed leaves are Ipomoea hederacea. Both are available by mail order, but I’ve never seen either sold here. So who knows how they got here, the one twining through fences edging three roads, the other only in the proto-arroyo.

No one asks where bindweed comes from. Few want to know it’s Convolvulus arvensis. Still its profuse flowers scrambling over the ground delight, so long as it’s someone else’s land.

Notes: United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Selected Weeds of the United States, 1970, reprinted by Dover Publications as Common Weeds of the United States in 1971.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Sensation Cosmos

What’s blooming in the area: Lance-leaf yellow brush, datura, purple aster, tahokia daisy, stickleaf, white evening primrose, ragweed, Russian thistle, áñil del muerto, golden hairy aster, goldenrod, bigleaf globeflower, purple mat, only largest roses of Sharon, roses, purple salvia, canna, goat’s head, heavenly blue and wild morning glories, silverlace vine, Maximilian and native sunflowers. Tomatoes and gourds visible, grapes begin to show color, corn leaves turning brown, Virginia creeper turning red. More piles of weeds drying.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Black-eyed Susan, gloriosa daisy, blanket flower, chocolate flower, perky Sue, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, yellow cosmos, creeping zinnia, nasturtium, chrysanthemum, miniature roses (Sunrise, Rise and Shine).

Looking east: Garlic chives, California poppy, crackerjack marigold, tall zinnias, winecup, floribunda (Fashion), large flowered soapwort, pink bachelor button, larkspur, thrift, four o’clock, autumn joy sedum, Shirley poppy, sweet alyssum.

Looking south: Small zinnias, crimson rambler morning glory, sensation cosmos, heath aster, sweet peas, hollyhocks, blaze, rugosa and rugosa hybrid (Elisio) roses.

Looking west: Purple coneflower, white phlox (David), frikarti aster, lead plant, catmint, Russian sage, purple ice plant, caryopteris.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnia, nicotiana.

Animal sightings: Bees stay with Russian sage, ants, grasshoppers, dragonfly, cows lowing across the big arroyo, horse, more turkeys, flocks of birds overhead.

Weather: Day’s shorter and mornings colder, stronger afternoon winds with rain mid-week. Ladybells flowers die from cold; spirea and caryopteris leaves begin to change color. Men talk of an early winter.

Weekly update: If you don’t want to look your cosmos in the eye, don’t plant it.

Seed companies keep thinking, if only they could breed a short, well-behaved plant, they would find new buyers.
People either like the flamboyant, simple composite flowers or they don’t. It they love them, they accept their rambunctiousness. If they don’t, housebreaking won’t help.

Still, new varieties appear. PanAmerican developed the shorter, sturdier Sonata for bedding plant suppliers who sell to suburbanites living with neighbors concerned with real estate values and restrictive covenants. Sakata bred Versailles for the European cut flower market. Burpee reminds buyers it’s "very chic." Jung promoted Hinomaru as "elegant," while R. H. Shumway assures growers Sweet Dreams is "exceptionally elegant."

The real thing, the only cosmos, is Sensation, introduced in 1930. The most prominent color in any mix is light lavender pink. The darker rose and white are also sold as Dazzler and Purity.

It’s hard to believe it ‘s been growing here less than 75 years. It’s one of the few annuals found in the village, usually near a fence, wall or walk. It’s currently blooming in three yards, five places on the back road where farmers’ fields survive, and at two houses on the main road. Two have plants more than 6' tall; one has flowers towering over an 8' wall.

The path of Cosmos bipinnatus from Mexico to this Spanish-speaking valley wasn’t the trade route from Zacadecas, but the byways of European fashion. It’s found at low to middling altitudes in the Valley of Mexico where its called mirasol, and farther south in Puebla, Michoacán, Nayarit and Hidalgo. It needs heat to germinate, but long nights to bloom.

The bright flowers captivated nineteenth century English gardeners who grew hundreds in hot houses, then set them in beds that imitated Persian carpet patterns. According to Penelope Hobhouse, they were part of a Mexican plant craze that included zinnias and dahlias.

Greenhouses circumvented the limits of long nights, but nothing could help common gardeners or nurseries hoping to sell to them. In 1917, Robert McCurdy complained that his season was too short for cosmos "which is generally coming into its own about the time of the first frosts." A contemporary rued, "In the Northern States the superior variety, Lady Lennox, seldom blooms."

Sensation changed everything. The tetraploid was bred for longer days, and might bloom by the end of July. The colors are brilliant, the flowers big. It naturalizes despite poor soil, drought, high winds and hard rain.

I’ve never found a good place for cosmos. It’s found places it likes, always in a bed reserved for something else. So we battle - I remove its seedlings from where it wants to grow and it refuses to grow where I want it.

The seeds I planted in mid-May along the back porch have been blooming since mid-July, but languish about a foot high. The leftover seed I threw along my new fence in mid-June started blooming a month later. They’re taller than the May sown plants, so maybe they’ll come back.

For now, the tallest plants are volunteers I missed when I was weeding earlier this year. They track the sun, but it doesn’t matter the flowers turn their backs on me when the sun filters through the petals. I can’t imagine them in a carpet bed. They’re much too independent.

Notes:
Hobhouse, Penelope. Gardening Through the Ages, 1992.

McCurdy, Robert M. The Book of Garden Flowers, copyright 1917, published 1932.

Unidentified comments on cosmos reproduced at backyardgardener.com.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Áñil del Muerto

What’s blooming in the area: Winterfat, lance-leaf yellow brush, datura, purple aster, tahokia daisy nearing peak, stickleaf, white evening primrose, horseweed, hawkweed, wild lettuce, toothed spurge, ragweed, Russian thistle, áñil del muerto, golden hairy aster, faded goldenrod, bigleaf globeflower, purple mat, rose of Sharon peaked, roses, sweet pea, purple phlox, canna, bindweed, heavenly blue and wild morning glories, cardinal climber, silverlace vine, Maximilian and native sunflowers, muhly ring and black gramma grasses. Peppers and grapes visible; buffalo gourd have fruit; apples beginning to drop to the ground. More hay baled and yards mowed. Man gave up on sheep and pulled his pigweed; weed piles drying in his yard and across the road waiting to be burned.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Black-eyed Susan, blanket flower, chocolate flower, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, yellow cosmos, creeping zinnia, nasturtium, chrysanthemum, miniature roses (Sunrise, Rise and Shine).

Looking east: Garlic chives, California poppy, crackerjack marigold, tall zinnias, winecup, floribunda (Fashion), large flowered soapwort, pink bachelor button, larkspur, thrift, four o’clock, Shirley poppy, sweet alyssum.

Looking south: Bouncing Bess, small zinnias, crimson rambler morning glory in full bloom, sensation cosmos, heath aster, blaze, rugosa and rugosa hybrid (Elisio) roses.

Looking west: Purple coneflower fading, white phlox (David), frikarti aster, lead plant, catmint, Russian sage, ladybells, purple ice plant, caryopteris peaked.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnia.

Animal sightings: Worm, grasshoppers, ants, bees, mosquitoes, small butterfly, turkey flock in village.

Weather: Gentle winds early in week, rain Thursday with light showers Wednesday, Friday and yesterday. Mornings are colder. Ground in front away from garden wet for 1" then too dry to dig.

Weekly update: Yellow daisies overflow roadside ditches. Even people who never notice nature know something’s blooming.

The incurious absorb a few names, which they apply to anything that falls into the general category represented by the signature plant. If they call these anything, it’s wild sunflower. In Spanish, the generic term for yellow flowers is girasolillo.

Field guides use the term crownbeard. They also report names like gold weed, butter daisy, yellow top, and toothache plant. Spanish speakers have tried capitaneja, flor de Santa Maria, girasolillo o Santa Maria, qillu-it pilfers and mirasolcito del campo. L. S. M. Curtin heard áñil del muerto in northern New Mexico in the 1940s. None of these roll trippingly off the tongue.

Even botonists have not produced a name anyone can remember. Cavanilles called it Ximenesia encelioides, but Bentham and Hooker reclassified it as the slightly more pronounceable Verbesina encelioides.

Daisy it remains, even if the plants get 6' tall. The composite flowers have about a dozen double notched ray petals, that vary in number just enough for the counting out rhyme to work. When the center appears pock-marked, the disk flowers are open. The brown quills are the fused anthers of those flowers.

People say the plant stinks. I’ve never noticed it, and haven’t been able to release an odor by crushing the various parts. I don’t know if it’s variation in plants, the current phase in the life cycle, the lack of moisture in the air, or a stupefied nose. Still, it’s been called skunk daisy and hierba de la bruja (witch).

Michael Moore believes áñil del muerto refers to the smell. It’s also possible it literally means deadly sunflower. Sheep, a mainstay of the historic local economy, sometimes died when they ate it. Keeler, et al, isolated the active agent as galegine, a hypoglycemic alkaloid that’s been synthesized as metformin to treat type 2 diabetes.

Uglier names are used in the south Pacific where the plant was introduced to Kure when a radar reflector was built in 1955, followed by Coast Guard installations between 1960 and 1993. From there it took over Midway. It probably spread so quickly because the annual found a perfect incubator.

Here, a few of the flat, greyish white seeds germinate in the spring. In my yard, those are the flowers that are now nearing the top of the fence. Apparently it needs a high temperature to sprout and so waits for the first rains of July, then blooms when solar or atmospheric conditions are right in mid-August. By the first of September, 6" high stalks bloom along side rangy plants that have flowers at the end of every branch.

The usual explanation for the success of an alien specie is natives forgot how to compete for resources. On the periphery of the plant’s range, Inderjit and Dakshini confirmed chemicals released by the taproot suppress the growth of radishes. In this country, peanut and cotton farmers are avaricious for eradication research.

Here, in it’s traditional habitat, it’s gregarious when left to itself, but doesn’t mix with others. If it has a choice it doesn’t appear with sunflowers. Neither likes the prairies, but both rise in the disturbed ground of abandoned gardens, fallow fields and fence lines. There’s a reason people in easier farm lands call it cowpen daisy.

I’ve thrown dead stems of both along my fence. This year sunflowers are growing with the Maximilians. The tall daisies survived south of all but a few of the rough natives. Both will try the better, wetter garden soil, but I pluck them early.

My plants arrived when my neighbor dug his septic field with its basement layer of gravel and plastic that traps water. From there the seedlings migrated west. This year, like the Mexican hat, the seeds blew along the fence where they landed along a 15' stretch in the gravel and clay of my driveway. I can’t think of a better place to leave them to exercise their allelopathic magic on the weeds that creep in from my neighbors.

It remains there today, and everywhere in the rio arriba, a brilliant autumnal presence that leaves no trace in the collective memory because it has no name.

Notes:
Curtin, L. S. M. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, reprinted by Western Edge press, 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore.

Inderjit, Chikako Asakawa and K. M. M. Dakshini, "Allelopathic Potential of Verbesina Encelioides Root Leachate in Soil," Canadian Journal of. Botany 7:1419–1424:1999.

Keeler R.F., D. C. Baker, and K. E. Panter, "Concentration of Galegine in Verbesina Encelioides and Galega Officinalis and the Toxic and Pathologic Effects Induced by the Plants," Journal of Environmental Pathology Toxicology and Oncology, 11:11-7:1992.

University of Texas web-site has the best description of the flower.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Rose of Sharon

What’s blooming in the area: Apache plume, winterfat, lance-leaf yellow brush, golden eye, purple aster, tahokia daisy, stickleaf, white evening primrose, horseweed, toothed spurge, ragweed, Russian thistle, white sweet clover, golden hairy aster, goldenrod, bigleaf globeflower, purple mat, bindweed, roses, sweet pea, purple phlox, canna, heavenly blue morning glory, cardinal climber, trumpet creeper, silverlace vine, Maximilian, native and farmer’s sunflowers, muhly ring and black gramma grasses. Some pigweed, velvetweed and cosmos plants over 7' in village. People had serious allergy problems to pigweed midweek; state mowed shoulders of the main road.

What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Black-eyed Susan, blanket flower, lance-leaf coreopsis, chocolate flower, perky Sue, Hartweg evening primrose, fern-leaf yarrow, Mexican hat, yellow cosmos, creeping zinnia, nasturtium, butterfly weed, chrysanthemum, miniature roses (Sunrise, Rise and Shine).

Looking east: Yellow evening primrose, garlic chives, California poppy, crackerjack marigold, tall zinnias, winecup, floribunda (Fashion), large flowered soapwort, pink bachelor button, larkspur, thrift, Shirley poppy, sweet alyssum.

Looking south: Bouncing Bess, small zinnias, crimson rambler morning glory, sensation cosmos, heath aster, blaze, rugosa and rugosa hybrid (Elisio) roses, tamarix.

Looking west: Perennial four o’clock, purple coneflower fading, white phlox (David), frikarti aster, lead plant, catmint, Russian sage, ladybells, purple ice plant, caryopteris.

Bedding plants: Dalhburg daisies, marigolds, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunias, profusion zinnia.

Animal sightings: Gecko, more grasshoppers, ants rebuilding, mosquitoes, sheep, horse.

Weather: Noisy last weekend as one neighbor down the hill ran a backhoe and another up the road used his weed-whacker on the pigweed. Mornings are cooler. Mild winds in mornings and mid-afternoons are pollinating late summer grasses and plants like pigweed.

Weekly update: After ten years, my Roses of Sharon are finally blooming. I discovered I wasn’t growing what I thought.

I planted three shrubs in 1997. I remembered them as double red and bare roots from one of the local hardware stores. In fact, they appear to be Collie Mullins hybrids of Hibiscus syriacus bought in pots from the other hardware. I have labels for both, The flowers are dusty pink with lighter streaks.

I bought them because they grow in the village and are related to hollyhocks which naturalize here. I assumed because they flourish a few miles away, they would survive. And they did start blossoming in 2001, but only produced a few flowers. Every year since things began well, then late frosts killed the leaves. Last winter the gopher burrowed in winter, followed by the grasshoppers. The frost got them again this year, so I was surprised to see any signs of color.

They bloom on new wood, need moisture to develop, and open best in shade. After last year’s depredations, they have nothing but new wood. This year has been remarkable, first for the cool nights, then the past few weeks for rain and clouds. In the early morning I can see them in all their glory.

Only glory may not be the word for them. When they first opened, the blossoms were stunted and the color an ugly purple red. The deformities reappeared when they shriveled from age. They took several days to fall.

More flowers turned the brush into pincushions - neat urns with decorations randomly stuck about. All faced away from the house where they couldn’t be seen. The cactus imitation is more pronounced in the village where one person pruned a group into a low, rounded hedgerow. A few grape moons with prominent stamens protrude into the road.

When even more flowers opened they resembled cocktail toothpicks with curlicues lodged on the tips of woody stems. The bushes have yet to develop any width. L. E. Cook says this hybrid only gets 4' wide for its 8' to 10' height. Mortrello Nurseries cautions patience, suggests the shrubs get tall before they expand.

Once enough flowers opened, their complex, camellia form emerged. It’s easy to imagine Carmen plucking one for behind her ear. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to see their imitations on the hats of older women in period stage productions.

Up close, Roses of Sharon are fascinating, especially when they catch the afternoon sun. At a middle distance, merged into a mixed shrub border, they look like poor quality climbing roses. When I step farther away, they dissolve into skinny, pretentious poplars.

I drove through the village to see how I could have been so wrong about nature In addition to the formal hedge, another man put in a fence row a few years ago, probably ordered from one of the catalogs sent from Bloomington, Illinois. It looks just like the pictures, with no obvious gaps for dead bushes.

The most glorious mounds are taller than a double wide, three next to the house, one a little away. Two are red, the others single whites with red centers. Nearly as magnificent is a tall white column as tall as a garage near the post office. The shrubs at eight other houses are specimens, planted away from the house where the similarity to roses is best seen. They’re all about the same size as mine, probably hybrids. Most are double. None have surviving seedlings growing near to suggest old plants.

I’m reassured. When they grow here, they’re wonderful. I just have to wait a few more years for mine to broaden. Or, maybe the neighboring shrubs will fill in and provide a greener background for the blowsy blooms. In the slow time of near desert, I have adolescents waiting to grow into their flowers.

Notes:
L. E. Cook Company, "Collie Mullens Althea," on-line catalog.


Mortellaro Nursery Inc. "Althea, Collie Mullens," 1998, on-line catalog.