Winecup

What’s green: Trees have resumed the color changes preparatory to dropping their leaves; grape hyacinth leaves have broken through.

What’s turned/turning yellow: Cottonwoods, weeping and globe willows, sour cherries, apples, peach, Apache plume, tea roses, iris, Rumanian sage, bouncing Bess, phlox, flax, yellow alyssum, purple ice plant, Mexican hat, June grass.

What’s turned/turning red: Bradford pear, choke cherry, pasture rose, spirea, raspberry, winterfat, tansy.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia and asparagus fern blooming; rochea and Christmas cactus leaves tinged with red.

Animal sightings: Flock of black chickens down the road, dead racoon by the village road.

Weather: Rain Friday and early this morning; 9:19 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: This summer with its oddly timed rainfall was a boon to the early blooming members of the Mallow family, but less kind to the late summer ones.

The many stalks of hollyhocks bloomed together, and the most favored continued growing with spaced out flowers until they towered overhead. Underfoot, the deeply incised leaves on winecup runners spread everywhere in early summer, but had few flowers in August.

The roses of Sharon and sidalceas were slower to grow or bloom. While I could never say they were a disappointment, I also never had one of those moments when I was suddenly struck by their great beauty.

The roses of Sharon were the first to drop their leaves with the first frost of early October. The leaves of the sidalcea have just turned brown, while some winecup and hollyhock leaves are yellowing. The last will persist through the winter while the poppy mallow will slowly disappear.

While the roses of Sharon are threatened by late frosts every spring, the winecups are impervious to all but the coldest weather. Each spring, usually in late March, new growth begins rising from taproots, and by the monsoons the hairy stems cover the barren, dry area where I planted three seedlings in 1997.

The wine-colored poppy mallows begin blooming sometime between May 14 and May 20, then continue until frost. The five petals open from their white bases each morning and close for the night, and stay shut once pollenation is complete. The petals fall away, leaving the supporting calyx that dries brown. A beaked seedcase remains.

When a stem happened to drop into the ditch that borders the winecup bed and carries water away from the house, it spread rapidly. While the perennial reproduces by seed, the only new plants in my yard have been in that ditch as water carried the seeds towards the main garden, which they promptly invaded. The past two years the runners have been putting down roots in the pinks and snows-in-summer where they are almost impossible to remove without destroying their more desirable neighbors.

Callirhoe involucrate is less vigorous in its native tall grass prairie habitat, where it’s kept to the dry margins, either by fungus, grazing, fire or competition, and tends to brown out in late summer. When the Nature Conservancy let an old pasture go fallow with little grazing in southern Nebraska in the 1970's, the winecups increased but remained insignificant except on the silty lowland where they expanded to 2% of the vegetation in 17 years.

Researchers in Farmington tested some ninety xeric plants to determine their actual water requirements. Winecups started to fail when the moisture fell below half the usual irrigation scheme. The only places the plant grows naturally in the state are the far northeast and the San Juan valley home of that New Mexico State branch.

When freed of its natural limits, especially in a monsoon climate, winecups expand. The Flora of the Great Plains said is "adventive in waste places" and the Flora of New Mexico described it as a "common weed in gardens and cultivated ground." Even the people who sold me my plants suggest it "will slowly spread if you let it."

Next year could be especially difficult, since it’s probably spreading underground right now under all the plants that had a tougher time this year during the drier late summer. The flowers may have been killed by the late October snow, but the plants are still very much alive. Winecups are adapted to challenging weather.

Notes:
Nagel, Harold G. "Vegetative Changes During 17 Years of Succession on Willa Cather Prairie in Nebraska," North American Prairie Conference, Proceedings 14:25-30:1995.

Santa Fe Greenhouse and High Country Gardens, catalog, available on-line.

Smeal, Daniel, M. M. West, M. K. O’Neill, and R. N. Arnold. "A Differentially-Irrigated, Xeric Plant Demonstration Garden in Northwestern New Mexico," International Irrigation Show and Technical Conference, 2007.

Wooton, Elmer O. and Paul C. Standley. Flora of New Mexico, 1915, reprinted by J. Cramer, 1972.

Thompson, Jean Colette and William T. Barker. "Malvaceae Juss, the Mallow Family," including "Callirhoe involucrate" in Great Plains Flora Association, Flora of the Great Plains, 1986.

Photograph: Winecup arrested by cold with shriveled flower, dried calyxes and yellowing leaves; unaffected green leaves in back, 8 November 2009.