Yellow Alyssum

What’s blooming in the area: Wisteria, pink and yellow iris, Jupiter’s beard, fern-leaf globemallow, tansy mustard, hoary cress, oxalis, bindweed, western stickseed, goat’s beard, common and native dandelions, cheat grass, June grass. Snowballs in bud; rose of Sharon and skunk bush showing leaves; bigleaf globemallow coming up. Siberian elm seeds have been blowing all week, sometimes in great brown drifts.

In my yard: Siberian pea tree, spirea, tulips, purple and white iris, yellow alyssum, flax, vinca, mossy phlox, small-leaf soapwort, pink evening primrose, Mount Atlas daisy, perky Sue; pinks, coral bells, sea pinks, and fern-leaf yarrow in bud; catalpa leafing out; butterfly weed and California poppies coming up.

Inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë; bougainvillea, zonal geranium

Animal sightings: Rabbit exploring yard; more birds heard, but not seen; flies and ants

Weather: First week that morning temperatures did not reach freezing, but high winds continued. Last year the lilacs were in full bloom; this year the only one in the village that started to open has retreated. Last snow April 4, but last significant moisture March 5. 15:00 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: My yellow alyssum is going out of bloom this dry spring, one plant, 15" high by 24" wide, in a 100 square foot bed of bare dirt and slowly emerging foliage.

It would be nice to have a larger mass of color, but my attempts to add more plants failed. In the late 90's, the plant was sold by one of the local hardware stores, and bloomed so nicely for several people near the village that I bought nine in Santa Fe in 1999. Four survived. The next year I replaced four, and ended the season with five. The number dwindled to two in 2003, and since 2005 it’s been only the one.

At the time I wondered what I was doing wrong; now I’m curious how the one plant has managed to survive so long. When I read descriptions I suspect I have a changeling. Garden writers constantly use words like compact and trailing when they recommend it for rockeries. My perennial is shrubby with stiff branches leaning out rather like a succulent fall sedum, with last year’s gray-green foliage dying beneath.

Back then, I would have blamed the usual culprits especially growers who substitute cheapers plant for named ones. This year Jelitto offers 1,000 seeds of my variety, Goldkugel, to growers for $5.56; Germania sells the more generic, even shorter Compactum for nearly a dollar less, $4.60 per 1,000. Few of Germania’s immediate customers, the ones who specialize in germinating seeds for wholesale growers, still sell yellow alyssum. Henry’s Plant Farm offers Gold Ball, the English for kugel, while Raker offers Compactum. Both, no doubt, buy seeds from more than one supplier.

Back then, I would also have suspected growers who sell plants that aren’t ready to transplant or do so when it’s too late in the season. As businessmen with bank loans to cover the season, they need to make money from their distributors who demand plants for Mother’s Day weekend. Jellito’s growth schedule for Goldkugel varies from 9 to 13 weeks. These mustard seeds don’t perform to the day like tomatoes, and planting a young seedling four weeks too early or too late could well produce disaster in this hostile environment.

Gardeners do not accept repeated failures. Allan Armitage says he could grow this native of the rocky northwestern Ottoman Empire in Michigan and Ontario, but it failed in the summer heat and clay soils of Georgia. The Missouri Botanical Garden says it can survive in humid Saint Louis, but for only a few years.

Growers notice when plants no longer sell or when they receive too many demands for refunds. This year only a few nurseries offer my Aurinia saxatilis. The store where I bought my plants in 1999 is advertising an Alyssum montanum variety. Alyssum and Aurinia are members of the same Alysseae subtribe within the Brassiceae familythat can only be distinguished by specialists. Lobularia maritinum, what we call sweet alyssum, is tentatively grouped with them, but has some anomalous DNA.

Even more quickly do growers drop plants that gardeners never buy for aesthetic reasons, no matter how hardy they may be. One would think Goldkugel’s tiny, four-petaled flowers offered everything beginning gardeners could want. The great rounded clusters cover the plant, are attractive in detail and from a great distance, open at one time, stay open, and are easily sheared off. The hairy basal leaves last all winter. Even though tonier nurseries offer paler varieties like Citrina, the strong chrome yellow is not too bright for people who love daffodils, yellow tulips, and forsythia.

Even successful plants become difficult to obtain when they prove too difficult or too expensive to grow or ship. Karl Jelitto was one of the men in the 1970's who pioneered the commercial production of cold weather perennials from seed, rather than labor-intensive cuttings. His innovation increased the complexity of seed production, while simplifying planting for his customers, especially after companies emerged who produced seedlings for the next tier of nurserymen.

Once seeds were reintroduced, nature became the most likely jester for random sports. Today Bugtussle Perennials offers what it calls a seed strain with "more compact uniform plants" that have "none of the floppiness of the other Aurinias." My plant could be a similar genetic quirk.

Every year at this time, after the cherries in the center of my main bed have bloomed and I’m waiting for perky Sue and columbine to open, I look at the lone yellow alyssum plant and wish for more, but then remember it’s all probably the result of some cosmic event that probability says I can never duplicate, an event that can only be accepted and appreciated as presented.

Notes:
Armitage, Allan M. Herbaceous Perennial Plants, 1989.

Bugtussle Perennials. "Aurinia saxatilis Summit," on-line catalog.

Germania Seed Company. "Alyssum (Aurinia)," on-line catalog.

Jelitto, Klaus R. "My Recollections of 50 Years in the Seed Trade," available on-line.

Jelitto Staudensamen GmbH, "Alyssum saxatile 'Compactum Goldkugel,'" on-line catalog.

Missouri Botanical Garden. "Aurinia saxatilis," available on-line.

Photograph: Yellow alyssum, 10 May 2008.