Regale Lily

Weather: Afternoon temperatures rose above 90 degrees on 5 June, and, except for three days around the rain of 16 June, they’ve stayed there. Friday they reached 97 in the shade of the house.

It doesn’t matter how much you water, those temperatures combined with the greater exposure to the sun around Thursday’s solstice affect plants. My seedlings have stopped growing, and I haven’t notice any great growth in corn elsewhere. Leaves on some of my alfalfa are dying, while the needle grass in open spaces has lost its green base. The soil between winterfat shrubs has a glazed look.

Last useful rain: 6/16. Week’s low: 48 degrees F. Week’s high: 97 degrees F.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, desert willow, trumpet creeper, bird of paradise, fern bush, silver lace vine, honeysuckle, daylilies, lilies, red hot poker, onion, Arizona and red-tipped yuccas, Spanish broom, Russian sage, purple salvia, hollyhocks, snow-in-summer, datura, sweet pea, hollyhocks, yellow yarrow, cultivated sunflowers, coreopsis

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, Maltese cross, golden spur columbine; foxglove, smooth, and coral beards tongues; Johnson Blue geranium, catmints, Romanian sage, lady bells, sidalcea, winecup mallow, blue flax, tomatillo, pink evening primroses, white-flowered spurge, sea lavender, dark purple larkspur, Shasta daisy, white yarrow, chocolate flowers, blanket flower

White yarrow is a white composite flower. I have some growing amid alfalfa that have a lavender hue. At first I thought it was an optical reflection from the legumes’ purple flowers. Yesterday I looked closer. The ray petals are pink, but fade to white as they age. Since I can’t believe the two cross-fertilized or color can magically transfer from one flower to another, I have to idea what happened.

What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Tamarix, cholla, alfilerillo, purple mat flower, stick leaf, white tufted evening primroses, scarlet bee blossom, velvetweed, bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, greenleaf five eyes, leather leaf globemallow, showy milkweed, buffalo gourd, scurf pea, alfalfa, white sweet clover, tumble mustard, Queen Anne’s lace, Hopi tea, fleabane, common and native dandelions, goat’s beard, plain’s paper flower, golden hairy asters, Tahoka daisy

Bedding plants: Sweet alyssum, pansies, violas, snapdragons; local petunias

Tasks: Thursday I passed one of the market garden fields where a solitary man was out with a hoe in the noontide sun. I thought what a lonely and arduous life to raise crops in a drought.

I hate being in the sun. I do my hour of garden work early in the morning and lay down soaker hoses so I don’t have to go outside to water. This year, for the first time, I’ve been going out around noon to water the surface of the seedling beds that dry within hours of being watered in the morning. I’ve also been spraying down the trees I planted last summer and this past spring because they were wilting. I knew I wasn’t giving them the water they needed; that came from running a soaker hose by them every third day. Instead, I simply wanted to cool down the leaves.

I also sprayed the cholla cacti that had been damaged by the ground squirrel because I think they may absorb water from the air as well as from the soil. This past week I started spraying the native grasses in the areas where I was standing with a hose because I think they also manage to use the little water they get in monsoon showers. You can’t spray a hose in a continuous stream on the seed beds; you have to water the surface, wait for it to sink in, and water again. All I did this week was direct the hose outward between the seconds it was directed at the beds.

Animal sightings: Hummingbird, other small brown birds, geckos, sidewalk ants, cabbage butterfly, ladybug, bumble and small bees, hornets, other small flying insects, grasshoppers

Weekly update: As should be obvious by now, I have no knack for growing seeds. I marvel when I read about breeders who hand pollinate, then plant all the seeds they’ve produced, and they actually grow. The only seeds I have doing tolerably well right now are the zinnias and African marigolds that come a hotter climate than this one.

I also don’t deadhead. Since I only work an hour a day, I never get the basic chores done so I can do such secondary work. Thus, those plants that can naturalize have. They’re mainly natives like chocolate flowers, coral beard tongues, blue flax, hollyhocks, and columbine.

Last year I noticed lily leaves growing near the Bradford pear. Bulb growers don’t reveal their secrets, beyond assuring you their products are not harvested from the wild. I knew lilies produced seed, because that’s the purpose of flowers. However, I thought the Dutch used divisions of bulbs rather than seeds to perpetuate their crops.

This week the lily revealed itself to be a Regale that originally came from western Sichuan. [1] The region is mountainous with the climate varying by elevation. [2] The stems can produce up to 25 trumpet-shaped flowers, [3] but mine only ever have two that are streaked with maroon on the outside. The seedling has less external color and is more fragrant than the parents that also started blooming this week.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Some years ago I mentioned I had some hybrid Red Hot Pokers that didn’t bloom as well as my neighbors, and had more subdued coloring. [4] I had planted them on the slope that bordered my main garden, and when they didn’t survive the winter of 2012-2013, I didn’t mourn them much.

A year later one appeared in the main bed, and this year there were three blooming where they were never planted by me. They had shed their hybrid characteristics, and were tall and garish. Since the golden spur columbine has taken over the bed and shoved everything else to the periphery, I was glad to have some different shape and color in the mass of pale yellow. The fact Kniphofia are in the lily family may mean their bulbs can hold their own against the fleshy Aquilegia roots.

Notes on photographs:
1. Regale Lily, Lilium, 23 June 2018.
2. White Yarrow, Achillea millefolium, 23 June 2018.
3. Red Hot Poker, Kniphofia uvaria. 16June 2018.

End notes:
1. "Lilium regale." Missouri Botanical Garden website.
2. Wikipedia. "Sichuan."
3. Missouri.
4. See the post for 8 February 2009.