Baby's Breath

What’s blooming in the area behind the walls and fences: Tea roses, Spanish broom, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, trumpet creeper, red yucca, Russian sage in town, larkspur, datura, Shasta daisies, alfalfa, onions; buds on tall yuccas; peas for sale.

Outside the fences: Tamarix, Apache plume, cholla, Queen Anne’s lace, tumble mustard, fern-leaf and leather-leaf globemallows, velvetweed, scarlet beeblossom, white evening primrose, milkweed, bindweed, bush morning glory, Dutch and purple clover, buffalo gourd, Indian paintbrush, goat’s head, wooly plantain, alfilerillo, silver-leaf nightshade, native dandelion, goat’s beard, hawkweed, paper flower, strap-leaf and golden hairy asters; buds on white sweet clover.

In my yard looking north: Catalpa peaked, miniature roses, daylily, red hot poker, golden spur columbine, Harweig evening primrose, butterfly weed, chocolate flower, blanket flower, coreopsis, Parker’s Gold yarrow, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, anthemis, orange coneflower; reddening sour cherries.

Looking east: Dr. Huey rose, hollyhock, winecup, sidalcea, coral bells, Jupiter’s beard, baby’s breath, Bath’s pink, snow-in-summer, bouncing Bess, coral beardtongue, last year’s pink snapdragon, sea pink, Maltese cross, pink salvia, pink evening primrose.

Looking south: Blaze, prairie and rugosa roses, sweet peas; first ripe raspberry.

Looking west: Catmint, blue speedwell, blue salvia, spurge, blue flax; buds on lilies, sea lavender and ladybells.

Bedding plants: Moss rose, nicotiana, tomato.

Inside: Aptenia, zonal geraniums.

Animal sightings: Red snake, humming bird, geckos, cabbage butterfly, bees on catmint and columbine, small grasshoppers, large black harvester and small red ants.

Weather: All week it’s wanted to rain, but all the clouds produced were high winds and occasional droplets; last rain 05/14/09; longest day was 14:37 hours; 14:36 hours of daylight today; the fire in the Jemez has now burned more than 16,000 acres.

Weekly update: Baby’s breath is always described as delicate or dainty or airy. If the plant is noticed, the leaves are described as sparse or gone by the time it blooms. These are people who go to the ballet and watch the pas de deux, but never see the calves of the male dancers.

The thing I’ve noticed most since I put some Bristol Fairy plants in the wind blown pseudo-alpine bed is the muscularity of the plants. They aren’t at all like the sea lavenders with their wide tutu of green leaves that hug the ground, so narrow stems can rise from the center to support their myriad sprays of flowers in high open second.

Baby’s breath’s in the carnation family and it looks like the florist’s plant when it emerges with narrow grey leaves that look too much like heath asters. When the stems do appear, they’re thick and swollen at the joints where the leaves peel back. It’s only after the heads have fully expanded that the tiny, double white flowers dominate the scene.

Garden guides tell the unwary how simple they are to grow from black bean-shaped seeds in limey soil. Seed companies imply they’ll bloom the first year. Notes to professional growers warn seedlings are highly variable and they should rely instead on grafted plants or cuttings of some kind.

As children many of us were seduced by the promises of annual recitals staged by local mall dance studios. When I walked into a class in Philadelphia and the instructor showed the first combination, it all look quite familiar and doable - until the better trained dancers lead the line and I realized the difference between my childhood experience and dancing.

My baby’s breath is a triumph of engineering and adaptation. Gypsophila paniculata grows from Siberia west through the Caucasus and up into eastern Europe where, Maria Shahgedanova says, it’s adapted to the open steppes by turning its stalks into tumble weeds. The root can reach down more than ten feet to both anchor it and find water.

On this continent, James Pringle says that while it can naturalize in the east, it has become abundant in parts of the west where it’s treated as a noxious weed. In Saskatchewan, the perennial has invaded disturbed areas dominated by bunch grasses.

Bristol Fairy is a double form of the five-petaled flower that was introduced in 1928 and became the trade standard, even though it still behaves like a wild plant. Only a quarter of its seeds will produce fully double plants, it will only bloom when it’s grown in conditions that ape its original habitat, and the flowers refuse to all open at the same time.

The roots need to be chilled each winter, the flowers only appear when days grow longer, and won’t appear if they get too warm. In Florida in the 1970's, growers dug the roots every summer and knew incandescent lights at night would speed their bloom, even though they couldn’t afford the electric bills. In Japan, Motoaki Doi’s team found different strains of Bristol Fairy respond differently to the same stimuli so it can be a waste to run the generator.

Fortunately, after three years of settling in, New Mexico’s highly variable weather produced naturally what all those professionals seek. I first noticed buds on my plant on June 5. The flowers didn’t start to appear until four days before the solstice. In this week of the longest days of the year, the tiny stems holding the separate flowers are widening and new flowers are appearing to replace those already spent in a net of tulle.

Sometimes, watching an amateur or provincial company do Swan Lake is more satisfying than more famous professionals exhausted by touring and bored by repetition. And sometimes, nature shares its bounty with anyone willing to put something in the soil, add water and wait in the wings.

Notes:
California Department of Food and Agriculture. "Baby's breath [Gypsophila paniculata L. var. paniculata]," weed info website.

Doi, Motoaki, Eiko Morita, Nobuyoshi Ogasawara, Yasuka Takeda, and Tadashi Asahira. "Growth and Flowering of Gypsophilla paniculata L ‘Bristol Fairy’ Selections as Influenced by Temperature and Shoot-Rate Interactions," Japanese Society for Horticultural Science Journal 60:119-124:1991.

Pringle, James S. "Gypsophila paniculata Linnaeus," efloras website.

Raulston, J. C., S. L. Poe and F. J. Marousky. "Cultural Concepts of Gypsophila paniculata L. Production in Florida," Florida State Horticultural Society Proceedings 423-428:1972

Shahgedanova, Maria. The Physical Geography of Northern Eurasia, 2003.

Photograph: Looking up at Baby’s breath from the leaves before the flowers are fully open, 23 June 2010.