What’s blooming in the area: Roses, Apache plume, silver lace vine, buddleia, honeysuckle, canna, datura, Heavenly Blue morning glory, narrow leaf globemallow, white sweet clover, yellow evening primrose, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, pigweed, chamisa, broom snakeweed, winterfat, Tahokia daisy, Maximilian and native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, ragweed, gumweed, wild lettuce, broom senecio, golden, heath and purple asters; catalpa beans, hay cut.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartwegii, nasturtium, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.
Looking east: Fashion rose, garlic chives, pinks, rock rose, sweet alyssum, winecup, hollyhock, California poppies, Crackerjack marigolds. Looking south: Rose of Sharon, rugosa rose, Crimson Rambler morning glory, Sensation cosmos, zinnia.
Looking west: Caryopteris, Russian sage, catmint, leadplant, ladybells, purple ice plant, Monch aster.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy.
Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.
Animal sightings: Quail, gecko, ants, bees.
Weather: Rain Sunday, Friday and yesterday, prairie wet deeper than my shovel; frost on car windows Thursday morning; low hanging, full moon before dark on Wednesday.
Weekly update: We finally got rain last week, and now the habitues of late summer have resumed growing, racing to produce seed before it gets too cold.
The rains began last Monday. Áñil del Muerto germinated last Saturday, and put out its second leaves two days ago. There was sun on Monday and Muhly ring grass showed some green that afternoon, as did the black grama and needle grasses. Downy chess grass sprouted in the drive.
Muhly is one of the grasses that colonizes land denuded by overgrazing. It’s palatable in early spring when it’s growing, but goes dormant in the heat of the summer and turns dry and harsh. When the monsoons appear, it regreens to send up short purple culms with seeds that are also unappetizing.
Not only is it well armed against herbivores, but it also adapts to scarce water. The perennial begins as a small round tuft. Over the years, the tuft turns into an inch or two greyish white wide band that expands outward, leaving an ever widening doughnut opening. When it greens up, it begins on the outer faces, where seeds form. In relatively flat areas, its new growth appears on all sides; on more sloping land ring muhly greens on the downhill or wet side first.
When I see it spread across the top of my south facing slope, I wonder if it prevents or abets erosion by stopping or channeling the flow of water. The recent rains have been able to sink into the ground, instead of rolling downhill. The ring, or its shadow, acts as a small reservoir where other seeds plant themselves and its shallow tenacious, fibrous roots hinder the wind.
The 2" high grass’s life cycle is heavily dependent on rainfall. During the droughts of the past few years, it all but died out, and snakeweed invaded its territory. With last year’s rains, it came back in the area where the needle grass had died, but didn’t try to resettle the area with the broom.
Frederic Clemens believed the order of succession on damaged arid lands was annual grasses, short perennial grasses, bunch grasses with ring muhly, and, finally, the original gramas. Others have since found grasslands rarely get beyond the needle and rice grasses, and that factors like weather and soil influence the progression.
Even if my uphill neighbor hadn’t told me he had worked for the ranch that owned this land before he settled on its perimeter, the mere presence of Muhlenbergia torreyi could have told me. I don’t know if it was cattle or sheep, but the remains of animal chutes near the old road bed don’t look wide enough for full-grown cows.
What I don’t understand is why it only appears on the upward side of my house, and why the lower land and much of the surrounding prairie are predominantly needle grass. I’m guessing there could be differences in the quality of the soil, or that area near the ranch perimeter may have been trampled more and the compacted soils less porous, less receptive to water.
It does appear the grass can’t compete with other vegetation, and that it dies out when either the bunch grasses or the scrub seed themselves. It also doesn’t like being crushed and cracks when it’s stepped on during its dormant phases. It would appear to be the first thing to disappear when humans or animals appear. While it seems common enough, in fact, in this area, its period of existence is limited by both humans and nature.
Notes:
Clements, Frederic E. Plant Succession and Indicators: A Definitive Edition of Plant Succession and Plant Indicators, 1928, discussed by Debra P. Coffin, William K. Lauenroth and Ingrid C. Burke, "Recovery of Vegetation in a Semiarid Grassland 53 Years after Disturbance," Ecological Applications, 6:538-555:1996.
United States Department of Agriculture, Forrest Service, Range Plant Handbook, 1937, republished by Dover Publications, 1988.
Photograph: Muhly ring grass, 29 September 2007.
What’s blooming in the area: Roses, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, buddleia, honeysuckle, canna, datura, bindweed, Heavenly Blue morning glory, cardinal climber, narrow leaf globemallow, white sweet clover, goat’s head, yellow and white evening primrose, purslane, Russian thistle, pigweed, broom snakeweed, winterfat, Tahokia daisy, French marigolds, Maximilian and native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, ragweed, gumweed, golden, heath and purple asters; piñon cones and juniper berries; grapes turning color.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartwegii, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.
Looking east: Hosta, garlic chives, large-leaf soapwort, sweet alyssum, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, larkspur, scarlet flax, California poppies, pink bachelor buttons, Crackerjack marigolds.
Looking south: Rose of Sharon, rugosa rose, Crimson Rambler morning glory, Sensation cosmos, zinnia.
Looking west: Caryopteris, Russian sage, catmint, leadplant, ladybells, purple ice plant, Silver King artemisia.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy.
Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.
Animal sightings: Small gecko, stink bugs, ants, bees, grasshoppers, miller moth; turkeys feeding in grass near orchards yesterday.
Weather: At last, some rain on Monday. The storm was severe when I drove through Pojoaque, but the skies were already blue when I got to my turnoff. Water still stood in gullies by the road, and water was flowing in the arroyos I crossed. The road was drying when I started up the rise to my house, but when I got to my drive, water was standing in tire tracks and I could hear the big arroyo running in back. The sun was shining, and a rainbow appeared to the north. When I walked out, even the ground in the bone dry prairie was soft enough to sink into. Storms remained in the area the rest of the week, releasing more water on Thursday and preventing evaporation the other days.
Weekly update: Larkspur is usually described as a hardy, cool season annual. That turns out to be a useful guideline for planting and planning, but doesn’t much explain why I have problems growing it.
Sunset’s garden manual suggests cool season annuals like cool soil and mild temperatures, but doesn’t hazard ideal temperatures. Stokes advises greenhouse owners to prechill larkspur seeds, plant them in soil 45-50 degrees and grow seedlings at 50-54 degreesConsolida, while HPS informs the same growers the optimal germination temperature is 60 degrees and the best growing temperature is 50 degrees.
Seymour told readers hardy plants were those that could be started outdoors, as distinct from a greenhouse or cold frame, and still have enough days to flower. However, he didn’t indicate the number of days required for larkspur, but did recommend planting in May for blooms all summer.
The reason writers may be hesitant to specify the number of days to bloom is that germination times vary from 8 to 15 days for Ann Reilly to a month for June Huston. Peter Loewer had success in 20 days with flowers 100 days after he planted seeds.
Larkspur apparently has not lost its evolutionary sensitivity to climate. Consolida ambigua née Delphinium ajacis are members of the buttercup family, one of the first flowering groups to emerge in the cretaceous age, after North America had separated from Eurasia and temperatures were dropping following the extinction of the dinosaurs some 50 million years ago. As climates continued to change, Ranunculaceae retreated north. Consolida apparently developed in southern Europe, probably in the cooler, mountainous regions of eastern Balkan places like Albania, Bulgaria, and Croatia, and Mediterranean islands like Crete.
Larkspur found its natural environment so favorable, it developed no adaptation strategy for bad years. The seed is only viable for one cycle, which means it must drop and bury itself, then hope winter snow melt fosters it. Wildseed claims 80% of its Rocket Larkspur will germinate; Stokes found its rate was between 74% and 76% in January. Viability declines rapidly after that.
Hot, dry New Mexico is obviously the wrong place for larkspur. I had no success until last year when I dropped Rosalie and Exquisite Rose seeds between perennials in the windy bed shaded by the retaining wall. The seeds I planted last May 20 bloomed from August 30 until killed by frost in late November. This year, I planted seed May 12 that put out its first flower August 29.
My two French grown tetraploids are the only varieties that have prospered here and probably only one of them is, in fact, blooming. I suspect, on the flimsiest of evidence, that it’s the Exquisite because I failed with Rosalie in 1999 and the other was being developed when seedsmen were still creating new offerings by multiple crosses with both Consolida ambigua and possibly other larkspurs. Paeonut found Exquisite Pink in a 1929 catalog.
Sometime, some person somewhere introduced some genetic factor that allows the one cultivar of a winter hungry wildflower to germinate in New Mexico’s late spring, then endure the summer heat to bloom when conditions change in late summer. Here, it turns out, cool season can mean either late spring or early fall.
Notes:
Horticultural Products and Services. Catalog.
Hutson, June and Brian Ward. Annual Gardening, 1995.
Loewer,Peter. Rodale’s Annual Garden, 1988, 1992 edition.
Paeonut. “Introduction Dates for some Annuals,” 2005, available on-line.
Reilly, Ann. Park’s Success with Seeds, 1978.
Seymour, E. L. D. The New Garden Encyclopedia, 1936, 1946 revision.
Stokes Seeds. Catalog.
Sunset. Western Garden Book, edited by Kathleen Norris Brenzel.
Wildseed Farms. Catalog.
Ziman, Svetlana N. and Carl S. Keener. “A Geographical Analysis of the Family Ranunculaceae,” Missouri Botanical Garden, Annals 76:1012-1049:1989.
Photograph: Larkspur, 22 September 2007.
What’s blooming in the area: Roses, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, canna, datura, silver-leaf nightshade, bindweed, Heavenly Blue morning glory, narrow leaf globemallow, white sweet clover, goat’s head, yellow and white evening primrose, purslane, Russian thistle, pigweed, broom snakeweed, chamisa, winterfat, Tahokia daisy, French marigolds, Maximilian and native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, ragweed, hawkweed, cocklebur, Hopi tea, gumweed, golden, heath and purple asters; apricots and unripe grape clusters visible, hay baled yesterday.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartwegii, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos.
Looking east: Hosta, garlic chives, large-leaf soapwort, sweet alyssum, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, larkspur, scarlet flax, California poppies, pink bachelor buttons, African marigolds, Italian white sunflowers.
Looking south: Rose of Sharon, rugosa rose, Crimson Rambler morning glory, Sensation cosmos, zinnia.
Looking west: Caryopteris, buddleia, Russian sage, catmint, leadplant, ladybells, purple ice plant, Silver King artemisia, Monch aster.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy.
Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.
Animal sightings: Quail, ladybug in Russian thistle, dragonfly, white butterfly on Tahokia daisy, grasshoppers, ants, bees; gopher leaving mounds.
Weather: Another week of promises, but no lasting rain; last wet ground, September 2, last real rain, August 8.
Weekly update: A week or so ago, The New York Times reported yet more genetic problems have evolved from this area’s isolation between Oñate’s entrada and the advent of the national labs. This time it was drooping eyelids caused by oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy, probably inherited from a wandering French Canadian trapper, and headaches or seizures caused by cavernous angioma.
Our wild sunflowers blooming everywhere right now can also develop genetic idiosyncracies in isolation. All the flowers along the road and filling fields are a uniform, bright yellow. In my yard, many are darker gold, and a few are motley mixes. The difference is the feral plants mate with one another, while I throw down some purchased seed each year.
These two tendencies, the development of isolated populations and the openness to interbreeding have been instrumental in the development of the sunflower as a commercial crop. The cultivated large seed, single stalk plant diverged from the multiple branched one more than 4000 years ago in North America to become a separate subspecies, macrocarpus.
The Spanish took seeds back to Madrid where they spread through Europe. Peter I introduced them to Russia from Holland, and men like Andrey Bolotov, estate manager to Catherine I in the 1700's, found ways to extract oil. A century later, Russian Mammoth was developed, then exported back to the United States in 1893.
Agribusiness only became interested in hybrids when Americans became concerned about saturated fats, cholesterol, and heart problems, but their model for seed development required plants that did not exist. With corn, they removed the male tassels and fertilized the plants with other pollen. They often used pollen from the original plant to reintroduce fertility into the next generation. The composite disks of sunflowers, with both male and female organs, were too small to manipulate.
In 1969, Patrice Leclercq found a species of sunflower, Helianthus petiolaris, with naturally sterile cytoplasm that would combine with annuus. Soon after, Harry Kinman found the gene to restore fertility. Agricultural suppliers began improving farmer’s seed, and geneticists began testing the inherent dangers of that single prairie sunflower father.
Sunflowers for ordinary gardeners remained untouched. In 1987, when Yasuo Gato bought Vincent Van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, Thompson and Morgan offered a smaller range of varieties than it had in 1955: one seed plant, Russian Giant, instead of four; one species, Italian White, in place of six; one semi-double, Piccolo; one dwarf, Sahin’s Teddy Bear, one branched sunflower with multicolored flowers, Ernst Benary’s Autumn Beauty, and one with yellow flowers, Sunburst.
People who couldn’t afford $400,000 for a painting and couldn’t summer in Provence, suddenly aspired to the life of Van Gogh and opted for sunflower arrangements. Only things hadn’t change since he rushed to finish work each day by noon before his flowers wilted.
Companies scrambled to produce seeds for the cut flower industry. For them, male sterility meant more than the possibility of a commercial hybrid. It meant little or no pollen to soil table cloths or annoy allergic guests, it meant no heavy oil bearing seeds to bend stems, it meant flowers that had no reason to die.
A number of new branching plants were offered in 1991, but the magic words "little pollen" and F1 did not appear in an American retail catalog until 1994 when Park offered Sakata’s Sunbeam. From the next year on, at least three new varieties have appeared a year as breeders have worked to shorten time to flowering, make them grow in any season, have more disciplined stems, longer vase lives, and more varied colors.
Here in the valley, we don’t think of cutting the flowers; we know them, and their bees, too well from the drive. Instead, we eat them. At least four people this year are growing the traditional Russian plant, but only one other person has colored sunflowers. Meantime, inexorably, the laws of genetics are working each time two pure natives cross-pollinate with the chance some recessive genetic equivalent to drooping eyelid will take hold and spread through the ditches and roadsides.
Notes:
Crites, Gary D. "Domesticated Sunflower in Fifth Millennium B.P. Temporal Context: New Evidence from Middle Tennessee." American Antiquity 58:146–148:1993.
Daitz, Ben. "Heirs to a Rare Legacy in New Mexico," The New York Times, 4 September 2007.
Heiser, Charles Junior. The Sunflower, 1976.
Van Gogh, Vincent. Letter to his brother, Theo, 21 August 1888.
Zhukovsky, P. M. 1964. Kul’turnye Rasteniia i Ikh Sorodichi, 1950; translated by P. S. Hudson as Cultivated Plants and Their Relatives, 1962; cited by Heiser.
Photograph: Three native sunflower plants, three flower colors; 9 September 2007.
What’s blooming in the area: Few roses, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, canna, datura, silver-leaf nightshade, bindweed, Heavenly Blue morning glory, narrow leaf globemallow, bouncing Bess, white sweet clover, goat’s head, yellow and white evening primrose, toothed spurge, purslane, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, pigweed, broom snakeweed, chamisa, winterfat, Tahokia daisy, French marigolds, Maximilian and native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, goldenrod, horseweed, hawkweed, wild lettuce, golden, heath and purple asters; hay cut, apples and peaches beginning to fall.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartwegii, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos, chrysanthemum.
Looking east: Hosta, garlic chives, large-leaf soapwort, sweet alyssum, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, larkspur, scarlet flax, California poppies, pink bachelor buttons, African marigolds.
Looking south: Rose of Sharon, rugosa rose, Crimson Rambler morning glory, sedum, Sensation cosmos, zinnia.
Looking west: Caryopteris, buddleia, Russian sage, catmint, leadplant, ladybells, purple ice plant, Silver King artemisia, Monch aster.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy; more Sweet 100 tomatoes daily.
Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.
Animal sightings: Quail, hummingbird, gecko, yellow butterfly, miller moth, grasshoppers, ants, bees moved to sunflowers.
Weather: Hurricanes in Caribbean but all I saw was heavier dews and colder mornings; last wet ground September 2..
Weekly update: Even someone as inattentive as I was in high school biology knows there’s something extraordinary about an annual that blooms for only two hours a day, yet perpetuates itself in a clay pot with no visible sign of flying insects.
Purslane is one of those weeds I take for granted. I used to see it everywhere in Michigan, where its red stems spread along the ground in interlacing mats. The succulent leaves were never dense enough for a groundcover, but it didn’t get tall and rangy, didn’t clamor over other plants, and didn’t produce vicious seeds.
John Winthrop, Junior, bought an ounce in 1631 in London before leaving for Massachusetts Bay Colony. Since that’s about 280,000 seeds, he must have intended to grow it for food. No doubt it made the trip many times, sometimes in seed packets like Winthrop’s, other times as a stowaway. Purslane’s now spread to south Pacific islands where there are no familiar animals.
Here in the rio arriba, it displaced the native notch leaved purslane which the Santa Clara once minced to release the mucilage for gravy. By 1915, the old world leaves were eaten by both Tewa and Spanish speaking natives, with no nutritional loss. The newcomer contains vitamins A and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as antioxidants and minerals.
My plant arrived with a potted shrub in 2000. This is the first time I’ve seen the hermaphrodite bloom. It needs light, and apparently didn’t get its necessary eleven hours a day until the sun dropped enough to reach the east end of the porch. In other parts of the country it starts blooming in late spring.
The yellow flowers begin to open around ten in the morning to a maximum width of 5/16". Soon after noon the two sepals begin to close, pushing the five petals closer to the male stamens. Within 25 minutes, the petals fold over the stamens, pushing them towards the female pistil. In another 15 minutes, all the flowers are shut into mitres under the sepals.
When the pollen from the stamens falls onto the stigma, the generative cell produces a pollen tube, which reaches down until it pierces the embryo sac formed in the ovary. Cooper says fertilization is complete within three to four hours of contact. When the seeds are mature, the protective cap breaks away, leaving a tan receptacle bearing black seeds, which spill onto leaves or fall to the ground.
The next day, new flowers open in the base of leaf clusters at the ends of stems. In the afternoons, I can see as many as five buds in an axil, some still buds, some developing grain cups. If the season is long, those seeds may produce the next generation of flowers in four to six weeks. If the winters stay warm, it doesn’t die. If a stem breaks off, it may root itself.
The wind may initiate fertilization, but this flower depends on no such fickle occurrence in its brief fluorescence. Portulaca olearcea may be an old maid, but it is rarely a barren one.
Notes:
Cooper, D. C. "Macrosporogenesis and Embryology of Portulaca oleracea," American Journal of Botany 27:326-330:1940.Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington and Barbara Friere-Marreco. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.Simopoulos, Artemis P. "Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Antioxidants in Edible Wild Plants," Biological Research 37: 263-277:2004.Winthrop, John Junior. Seed list, included in volume 3 of Winthrop papers held by Massachusetts Historical Society; reprinted by Ann Leighton, Early American Gardens, 1970.
Photograph: Purslane, 2 September 2007.
What’s blooming in the area: Apache plume, roses, trumpet creeper, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, canna, datura, silver-leaf nightshade, bindweed, Heavenly Blue morning glory, purple phlox, bigleaf globemallow, bouncing Bess, white sweet clover, perennial sweet pea, goat’s head, yellow and white evening primrose, velvetweed, toothed spurge, purslane, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, stickleaf, pigweed, heliopsis, broom snakeweed, chamisa, winterfat, Tahokia daisy, French marigolds, Maximilian and native sunflowers, goldenrod, horseweed, hawkweed, wild lettuce, golden, heath and purple asters.
What’s blooming in my garden, looking north: Golden spur columbine, hartwegii, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, yellow cosmos.
Looking east: Floribunda rose, hosta, garlic chives, large-leaf soapwort, sweet alyssum, winecup, hollyhock, sidalcea, larkspur, scarlet flax, California and Shirley poppies, pink bachelor buttons, African marigolds; raspberries ready to eat.
Looking south: Rose of Sharon, Crimson Rambler morning glory, sedum, Sensation cosmos, zinnia.
Looking west: Caryopteris, buddleia, Russian sage, catmint, leadplant, flax, ladybells, David phlox peaked, purple ice plant, Silver King artemisia, Monch aster.
Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, snapdragons, petunia, Dahlberg daisy; more Sweet 100 tomatoes ripening every day.
Inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.
Animal sightings: Quail, hummingbirds, baby gecko, bees, grasshoppers, ants, squash bug, dragonfly; gopher active again.
Weather: More days passed with futile clouds, thunder and wind; Thursday and today the ground was wet in the morning for the first time since August 6, but plants continue to kill off their leaves to survive the dry spell.
Weekly update: Roses love garlic, or so the old folks say.
In her pioneering collection of folk usages and companion plant combinations, Louise Riotte suggested garlic planted near roses helps fight black spot. In a followup book, Bob Flowerdew repeated that recommendation and added the aroma of the one increases the perfume of the other. Website contributors believe garlic also discourages aphids.
Riotte was more definitive about the benefits of an organic spray made from crushed garlic. Biologists have established the bulb contains an antibacterial non-protein amino acid, allicin. However, the chemical exists in cells as alliin which only converts to allicin when the tissue is damaged. Researchers have also found that oil, almost any oil, enhances the effectiveness of the extract in water.
Scientists are more skeptical about the benefits of passive companionship. Entomologists in Kentucky found garlic chives did nothing to attract or deter Japanese beetles. However, Hsiu-chen Cheng found the same plant increased the number and variety of micoorganisms in soil tainted by PCB’s.
Fortunately, I hoped garlic would solve a simpler problem, the bareness of the wind scourged land above my retaining wall where only pigweed and Russian thistle volunteer. I also tried chives, scallions, onions, and Welsh onions, even Dutch clover, anything that would provide a green cover. Nothing survived a year, although clover and scallions each succeeded one, unrepeatable summer.
My roses have to settle for garlic chives for companionship, because they are the only plants that replenished themselves. The seeds fell from the retaining wall into the bed below where the floribunda Fashion grows protected in a corner with winecup mallows. This year, those blooming stalks are 28" tall, while the seedlings in the original bed are only 16".
The various Alliums are not as interchangeable as I’d hoped, although most contain some alliin. Even those with untrained palates know garlic, onions, and chives taste differently. Garlic chives, also called Chinese chives or Allium tuberosum, are more common in Asian cooking and gardens where, Penny Woodward says, they are cropped with spinach, lettuce, and pak choi.
What specifically separates garlic chive from the other Alliums within the lily family is fairly obvious to those of us who only look at plants. Garlic chive flower heads are larger than those of chives, and white instead of purple. They’re blooming now, instead of early summer. The leaves are flat like garlic, not round like chives or onion, and the entire plant is smaller than garlic or onion, but larger than chives.
Botanists need to go father and isolate binary distinctions. So far, they’ve failed to produce a definitive classification scheme. The Allium genera evolved early. After species separated, members in different lineages made the same adaptions, so now cellular characteristics are shared across evolutionary lines. Garlic chives and chives share five mutations, but are rarely grouped together. Garlic has apparently reverted back to the bulb form of its ancestors. They’ve all lost genome content.
Taxonomy is not my concern, but the bare spot above my retaining wall still is. Alliums are not the answer. However, nature’s decision to salvage the garlic chives has had an unanticipated aesthetic benefit. The five-petaled florets that surround my coral roses look like baby’s breath from a distance, and a bit like sweet alyssum from above. Companionship in beauty, not utility, is enough for me to hope they’ll naturalize there.
Notes:
Cheng, Hsiu-chen. The Study of Phytoremediation of PCP Contaminated Soil, 2005.
Flowerdew, Bob. Good Companions, 1991.
Havey, M. J. "Phylogenetic Relationships among Cultivated Allium Species from Restriction Enzyme Analysis of the Chloroplast Genome," Theoretical and Applied Genetics 81:752-757:1991.
Held, D. W., P. Gonsiska, and D. A. Potter. "Evaluating Companion Planting and Non-host Masking Odors for Protecting Roses from the Japanese Beetle (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae)," Journal of Economic Entomology 96,:81–87:2003.
Obagwuand, J. and L. Korsten. "Control of Citrus Green and Blue Molds with Garlic Extracts," European Journal of Plant Pathology 109:221-225:2003, discuses utility of oil.
Riotte, Louise. Roses Love Garlic, 1983.
Skorová, Eva, Jií Fajkus, Marie Mezníková, Kar Yoong Lim, Kamila Neplechová, Frank R. Blattner, Mark W. Chase and Andrew R. Leitch. "Minisatellite Telomeres Occur in the Family Alliaceae but are Lost in Allium," American Journal of Botany 93:814-823:2006.
Van Wyk, Ben-Erik and Michael Wink, Medicinal Plants of the World, 2004, discusses amino acids.
Woodward, Penny. Garlic and Friends, 1996.
Photograph: Garlic chives and Fashion floribunda rose, 1 September 2007.
What’s blooming in the area: Roses, Apache plume, silver lace vine, buddleia, honeysuckle, canna, datura, Heavenly Blue morning glory, narrow leaf globemallow, white sweet clover, yellow evening primrose, lamb’s quarter, Russian thistle, pigweed, chamisa, broom snakeweed, winterfat, Tahokia daisy, Maximilian and native sunflowers, áñil del muerto, ragweed, gumweed, wild lettuce, broom senecio, golden, heath and purple asters; catalpa beans, hay cut.
