Hyacinth

What’s blooming in the area: Plum, bradford pear, purple-leaf sand cherry, fence rows of pink and white flowered trees; pastel tulips, tansy and purple mustard, dandelion, stickseed whitebristle; apple buds; potted roses at one local hardware where a man bought some for next week’s opening at the ballfield because no bedding plants were available yet.

What’s blooming in my yard: Sand, sweet and sour cherries, peach, forsythia, moss phlox, yellow alyssum, hyacinth, grape hyacinth, pushkinia, first daffodil open but few left in area; buds on Bath pink, coral bells, Siberian pea shrub; peach more fragrant than hyacinths all week.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium; new honeysuckle bud.

What’s reviving in the area: Heath aster, loco up; leaves on silver lace vines; Bermuda grass spreading. One man was pruning his fruit trees yesterday, another was tilling his orchard.

What’s reviving in my yard: Leaves opening on snowball, peach, cherries, weiglia.

Animal sightings: Blue tinged bird apparently is the one nesting in my porch soffit; a neighbor says he replaced the hanging porch lamp where birds nested last year with a basket; nest visible in tree down the road.

Weather: New moon; last Sunday damp air and stillness suggested the calm before a storm; winds and rain passed through later in the week, left the ground wet; frost on leaves yesterday morning. One hardware covered all its plant racks with tarps and lined the garden area fence with garbage bags to protect plants Friday night; it also stopped shipments of bedding plants.

Weekly update: Plant catalogs promote heirloom varieties to tempt the unwary with visions of ancestral estates. I succumbed when I bought a dozen Distinction hyacinths in 1996. Ten years and several floral transformations later, I wonder what’s been blooming.

Jo Ann Gardner uses 1950 as a cut-off date for The Heirloom Garden, just before nurserymen began releasing plants for the new Levittown style suburbs with their smaller yards. This was certainly a milestone for hyacinths which demand grand massed formal beds that can be ignored, covered or reused during the summer. No one where I grew up had such space or labor, not even the city park. At best, maybe three people in the older part of town had double lots with herbaceous borders.

Although I’m sure people had short palings hidden near a door, as I’m sure they do here, the only ones I remember were grocery store pots ready to force into winter bloom. The newer houses, with their 4' x 8' construction, were too small to disburse the strong fragrance.

Hyacinths have been in decline ever since breeders began discovering successive waves of newer middle classes. Charles Darwin reported Amsterdam had nearly 2,000 varieties in 1768, but Haarlem knew only 700 in 1864. Last year, McClure and Zimmerman offered 21 cultivars and John Scheepers 14, with 26 unique varieties between them. Mass market catalogs typically offer one pink, one blue, one white, and maybe a yellow or purple.

When I bought those first heritage bulbs I was tired of seeds that were developed for greenhouse growers, and hoped longevity in the market signified durability in the garden. Distinction was introduced in 1880.

Ten of the dozen bulbs sprouted in 1997, and continued to arrive every spring, albeit with increasingly sparser flowers and shorter stems. Most didn’t survive the drought of 2002: today, two clumps remain with narrow grape-colored stalks and spaced florets that resemble their scilla cousins more than the commercial Hyacinthus orientalis.

When I needed replacements, Distinction was no longer available. I settled for ten Queen of the Violets, an 1883 sport of King of the Blues which itself had been introduced in 1863. Two plants with lighter, bluer heads showed in spring. One is blooming now, proving a pedigree is no guarantee a plant will thrive in the rio arriba.

Last year the Queen went out of circulation, so I looked for a color more like Distinction when I ordered replacements. It no longer mattered that Woodstock was recently introduced. I no longer cared to hear it was a mutant form of Jan Boss, developed in 1910 and distributed in 1927. I’m content they all emerged, and are either blooming or budded.

It will be another year before I know if Woodstock is as hardy as Distinction, for it seems that when I was searching for a more Edenic past, I put my bulbs in the least hospitable place in my yard, under a ramp where the shade is so dry not even weeds volunteer. Inadvertently I evoked their primeval home, now the Taurus mountains, where hot dry summers alternate with wet winters. Those that survived are the ones that had preserved the legacy of their forefathers for themselves and their progeny.

Notes:
Darwin, Charles. Variation in Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1868; cites Des Jacinthes, de leur Anatomie, Reproduction, et Culture, 1768, and Mr. Paul, Gardener's Chronicle, 1864.

Gardner, Jo Ann. The Heirloom Garden, 1992.

John Sheepers, Inc. 2006 catalog.

McClure & Zimmerman. 2006 catalog.

Tijssen Historic Bulbs. Hyacinth release dates at http://home.wanadoo.nl/janpiet.tyssen/index/hyacinthus.htm.

Photograph: Ten-year old Distinction hyacinths, with first year Woodstock in middle ground and moss phlox and other plants in back, 8 April 2007.

Raspberry

What’s blooming in the area: Bradford pear, plum, fence rows of pink and white flowered trees; more places with clumps of daffodils; tulip buds; dandelion, first stickseed whitebristle.

What’s blooming in my yard: Sweet and sour cherries, undamaged part of forsythia, moss phlox, hyacinth, pushkinia; yellow alyssum and lilac have color in their buds.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium.

What’s reviving in the area: Tansy mustard, woolly plantain, fernleaf globemallow up; cottonwoods, apples and blackthorn opening first leaves; black gramma grass has some new blades; Russian olive leaf buds. Some fields and gardens have new furrows, some with standing water earlier in the week. One neighbor is erecting a barrier from railroad ties and bark board scrap after a drunken driver ran down his barbed-wire fence.

What’s reviving in my yard: Buddleia, catmint, Rumanian sage, harebells, sidalcia, snapdragons, garden phlox, ladybells, sweet pea, peony, hartwegia, chocolate flower, artemisia, frikarti aster up; raspberry, barberry and spirea leaves opening; tamarix and Siberian pea shrub leaf buds expanding.

Animal sightings: Bees appeared as soon as peach flowers began to open; bird with robin’s egg blue head and shoulders landed in peach; men, two horses, a pickup and a small herd of cattle were beside the main road one morning.

Weather: Waning moon; moderate winds all week turned cold yesterday, with smatterings of snow.

Weekly update: The Rose family continues to premiere spring.

Apricot flowers are browning; cherries and plums, peaches and pears are blooming; the apples are leafing. Half-opened leaves on hybrid teas near the post office are visible from the road and some red raspberry canes have materialized in my yard.

Even though a man near the orchards occasionally sells his surplus raspberry suckers, I consider my plants a luxury I indulge despite constant failure because there is no other way to eat the fruit. The drupelets ripen for a few weeks and don’t store or ship well. Jams and frozen berries are too sweet, sherbert is fattening. The last time I spent $4.00 for a pint brought in from California, they were bitter.

I first tried growing the white-flowered brambles when I returned to Michigan and bought bundles of bare root Heritage and Latham. I was surprised when only one survived under the eaves of the barn because blackberries (Rubus occidentalis) grew wild when I was a child and farmers sold raspberries from roadside stands. However, that one cane suckered into a colony, and I realized I only needed to find one accommodating partner to foster a briar patch.

After years of failure here with mail order varieties, I bought a potted Willamette in 2004 from the local hardware which I planted in the dripline under the back porch roof. It survived the next year’s grasshoppers, but did little last summer. This year, two suckers are up, one on each side of the tiles that isolate the house from fire fuel and vermin litter.

I don’t know if I can attribute their success to last year’s cool temperatures and water, to the new fence that decreased winds they despise, or the survival instincts of Rubus idaeus idaeus. I’m inclined to favor the last, but I suspect it helps that Oregon State’s cultivar withstands warmer climates than the native Rubus idaeus strigosus derived Latham or Cornell’s Heritage.

Even though a thicket will eventually disappear, canes drop uneaten fruit on the ground every summer where the seed remains viable for 100 years. The hard rind prevents it from germinating, but annual weathering slowly removes that skin and alternating seasons of heat and cold stratify the seed.

In Slovakia, raspberries appear about 30 years after fields are abandoned, the time it takes for seed to germinate. In Michigan, shoots appear whenever forests are cut or burned because the seed has been ready, waiting for sun and nitrogen. They continue to sucker for 10 to 20 years, then die out, or go dormant when they no longer can compete with shade trees.

When I see my plants, my childhood delight in raspberries and my sense of a legendary Michigan woods past return with an awareness that those thorny reddish-brown stems are not simply a sign of grace, but a better sign of the nature’s regenerative powers than all the pretty Easter bulbs I saw for sale yesterday.

Notes:
Blazková D. and S. Brezina. “Secondary Succession in Abandoned “Poloniny” Meadows, Bukovské vrchy Mts., Eastern Carpathians, Slovakia,” Thaiszia - Journal of Botany 13:159-207:2003.

Natural Food Hub. “Grow Fruit & Nuts in the Home Garden in Warm Temperate Areas,” on internet.

Tirmenstein, D. “Rubus Idaeus,” 1990, part of U. S. Forest Service Fire Effects Information System available on-line.

Photograph: Willamette raspberry sucker, 7 April 2007.

Forsythia

What’s blooming in the area: Apricot, plum, dandelion. Three have a few daffodils blooming while one woman has masses of white and yellow, some planted last fall; mine are still emerging.

What’s blooming in my yard: Frost damaged the forsythia Wednesday; hyacinths and puskinia stems drooped Saturday morning, but revived with sun.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium, coral honeysuckle.

What’s reviving in the area: Elms bright green; neighbor’s blanket flowers coming up. Ditch meeting yesterday.

What’s reviving in my yard: Saint Johns wort, sea lavender, garlic chives, pigweed and horseweed up; ring muhly and purple ice plant greening, until frost; new blades where buffalo grass planted last summer; spirea, Apache plume, raspberry and more roses have leaves; moss phlox forming buds; peach and lilac buds showing color.

Animal sightings: Flock of small birds in drive where tahokia daisies, sweet white clover and áñil del muerto grew last fall.

Weather: Full moon; fogs and frosts; water in the crevices of arroyos. Yesterday a woman in the village was inspecting her fruit buds while her husband ran a hose.

Weekly update: Today, darkening yellow splashes signal the locations of forsythia bushes that will be difficult to find in a month when the hollow brown branches are hidden by green, serrated leaves.

The species sold here, Forsythia x intermedia, began as volunteer seedlings in Göttingen noticed by Hermann Zabal in 1878. He believed they were a cross between two Chinese species, viridissima and suspensa.

The first is an erect shrub that can grow more than 10' and can get as big around. Its sap must course through the tall spikes at the rear of my plant where the more widely spaced buds were just opening when the frosts settled. One house near the orchards has a fence row of interlacing feathered boughs some 10' high.

Their sheer magnificence offends those who believe man should subdue nature, and the garden should be an exemplar of one’s virtue. Christopher Lloyd warns forsythia "can be strikingly handsome, but one has to be careful." Albuquerque’s Rosalie Doolittle advises "it can grow out of bounds."

It has been subjected to the most severe control by those who treat it like its Oleaceae privet cousin. Near the village, there’s one dense, 3' formal hedge of rounded shrubs that’s fairly covered with flowers, and another with sparse blooms spotting bare wood. Another three people in the area have kept their hedges short, but otherwise unpruned.

Natural gardeners like Lloyd prefer suspensa’s arching branches, so long as they’re in an unfettered area. Since I built the fence behind my plant, it has abandoned symmetry to lunge for the light. The gangling, horizontal branches bend under their own weight and, if they reach the ground, may root.

Doolittle suggests southwestern architecture demands distinctive, brilliant plants, even if, like forsythia, they require attention. Eleven people, many of them living in newer houses on the main road, have a single plant near the house that’s stayed small, whether from conscientious maintenance, nipping for winter bouquets, or irritation when a branch crosses a walkway on a wet day.

Those who’ve learned from their neighbors tend to place the shrubs near a fence or wall, where they can grow unhampered, sometimes upward, sometimes outward, sometimes not at all. Sixteen yards have specimens, six have groups, often with evergreens. The best are beside an open rail fence, near grapes and daffodils.

Seven years ago, when I stared at 8" sticks of Lynwood Gold, the common intermedia introduced into this country around 1949, I would like to have known which species’ genes would be dominant. My blooming bush is now 6' wide and 4' high, but with near barren branches reaching 7'.

It turns out it may not have mattered. Ki-Joong Kim tested a number of forsythia species and cultivars to reconstruct their evolutionary relationships and discovered there was no molecular evidence to support intermedia’s traditional ancestry. All the baseborn seedling’s seedling’s bud sport’s cuttings’ cuttings can promise is better weather’s coming.

Notes:
DeWolf, Gordon P. and Robert S. Hebb. "The Story of Forsythia," Arnoldia 31(2):41-63:1971.

Doolittle, Rosalie. Southwest Gardening, revised 1967.

Kim, Ki-Joong. "Molecular Phylogeny of Forsythia (Oleaceae) Based on Chloroplast DNA Variation," Plant Systematics and Evolution 218:113-123:1999.

Lloyd, Christopher. The Well-Tempered Garden, 1985.

Photograph: Lynwood Gold Forsythia between other shrubs, 28 March 2007, the day before frost killed the flowers.

Apricot

What’s blooming in the area: Apricot, dandelion. Daffodils are opening down the road, but just emerging by my garage.

What’s blooming in my yard: Forsythia, hyacinth; pushkinia and native dandelion in bud.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, zonal geranium, coral honeysuckle.

What’s reviving in the area: Bradford pears, weeping and globe willows have leaves, arborvitae turning green, tansy mustard in neighbor’s drive. Outer edges of piñon turning blue in village; four of the six I transplanted last summer survived; seven more need moving.

What’s reviving in my yard: Purple mat, bouncing Bess, large-leafed soapwort, yellow evening primrose, loco, vinca, daylily, tulips, tahokia daisy coming up; iris, red hot poker and winterfat have new leaves; California and Shirley poppies germinating; coral bells, beardtongue, pinks, small-leafed soapwort and purple aster turning green; Russian olive, purple-leafed sand cherry, and snowball leaf buds expanding; spirea and lilac buds showing green; peach and apple buds fattening with leaves beginning to open at branch tips.

Animal sightings: Put down ant dust last Sunday; new hills by Thursday.

Weather: Waxing moon; ground was turning to dust when trod before three days of rain saturated the soil and temperatures dropped.

Weekly update: Spring arrived in the valley last Sunday when apricot buds burst open.

Apricots have been grown here as long as this land has been entailed. Ibn al-Awam saw al-burquk in Moorish Andalucia in the middle 1100's. They weren’t on the list of plants prescribed by Spanish officials anxious to transplant their cattle and grain economy to the new world, but the pits were easy to stow, the flesh sweet and nutritious. Like those legendary emigrants sneaking past the Holy Office, the trees defied officialdom.

Alonso de Benavides, a Franciscan associated with the Inquisition in Cuernavaca, noted albaricoques were grown in Santa Fé in the late 1620's, when he came north to superintend the missions. In 1776, another Franciscan, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, reported the rosy-hued, orange-colored fruit in small orchards on family-owned ranchos around Santa Fé. That was probably two generations after my local village was settled.

The interior department sent its own observers in the 1930's. In the Española settlements east of the river, Prunus armeniaca was an important crop in the "heart of the fruit-growing region." When the trees produced, which was about one year in four, the flavor was "excellent" and the yield "exceptional." Most years, frost nipped the blossoms.

They had already spread to the Tewa, where anthropologists from the Smithsonian discovered the Santa Clara had extended the terms for chokecherry, "be" and "bep’e", to all fruit trees in the rose family, including "apple, peach, plum or orange." I assume the outlanders, who’d lived in Arizona, California and Colorado, mistook the white flower clusters that sheathed dark branches for the zone 9 Citrus sinensis.

Yesterday I counted trees blooming in 8 house lots edging the highway by the pueblo. Flowers were visible in 47 yards near my main road, in 23 places in the village, and in 29 on the adjoining roads.

In the village, apricots grow near houses, within the stone or stucco walls if they exist. Only five were in fields, four at the edge of apple orchards, the other heading a line of trees bordering a vineyard. In yards and compounds, specimens tend to be in front, near the wall or road. When there’s more than one tree, they’re planted on opposite sides of the house, sometimes surround the homestead.

Five-petaled blossoms could also be spotted back along drives in town and along the main road, suggesting the boundaries of old farmsteads abandoned as land use has changed. Apricots take at least four years to bear, then produce for another 20 to 25 years.

The front locations were probably selected because they were near ditches and protected from winds; the sites also kept the spreading roots away from buildings. However, as apricots have become symbols of domestic well-being, more people have placed them where they can be seen.

The fig-sized drupes are one of the few plants recognized by Rubén Cobos as having a local name, and his albercoques are the one food people take to work to share. The fuzzy-skinned fruits are also the only ones that are quickly eaten. Both giving and receiving signify the trust, generosity and friendship that survive even in censorious times.

I suspect many of the trees now blooming have been grown from pits passed within families and given to friends, for the tall spreading trees are too big to be the semi-dwarf Blenheim-Royal available yesterday in the local hardware. Carlos Romero’s team found it could distinguish the DNA of Spanish leaves from that of California cultivars. I suspect if ours were tested, the genes would be like those of their owners: mixed among the newcomers would be germplasm dating back to the conquistadores and, before them, the caliphates.

Notes:
Cobos, Rubén. A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, 1983.

Dunmire, William W. Gardens of New Spain, 2004, mentions the work of Benavides, Domínguiz, and Yahya ibn Muhammad Ibn al-Awan.

Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington and Barbara Friere-Marreco, Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Romero, Carlos, Andrzej Pedryc, Verónica Muñoz, Gerardo Llácer and Maria Luisa Badenes. "Genetic Diversity of Different Apricot Geographical Groups Determined by SSR Markers," Genome 46:244-52:2003.

US Dept of Interior, Tewa Basin Study, volume 2, 1935, reprinted by Marta Weigle as Hispanic Villages of Northern New Mexico, 1975.

Photograph: Apricot and other trees beside main road, 24 March 2007, between showers.

Blue Flax

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, kalanchoë, ivy and zonal geraniums; honeysuckle buds elongating.

What’s reviving in the area: Forsythia is beginning to bloom in the village and town; stems of globe and weeping willows have turned bright green; more fields have been plowed, ditches cleared, and weeds burned. The local hardware stores have their first shipments of seeds; the one has its bare root roses, the other some potted fruit trees.

What’s reviving in my yard: Pushkinia, horseweed, hawkweed, tansy, and the unidentified yellow coneflower emerged; iris, coral bells, pinks, moss phlox and fern-leaf yarrow produced new leaves; columbine leaves turned green; some tea roses are leafing out while the rugosas have new sprouts.

Animal sightings: Horses were being trained in both rings in the village yesterday.

Weather: New moon, with very warm afternoons that have stimulated plants that respond to temperature more than sunlight. The peach buds are expanding on greening twigs, but will likely be damaged by frost in April. Last precipitation, 8 March.

Weekly update: The flax has made it through another winter.

The five-petaled blue perennial has naturalized on the west side of the house where seedlings have come up each year since I put out two plants in 1995. It almost died out during the cold, dry winter of 2002, and barely bloomed last summer as it recovered from the grasshoppers of 2005, but ten plants are now up, and I expect more will appear.

I don’t know my plants’ antecedents. When I found them in the local hardware, they came from an unidentified source with a generic, mass-produced Pixie label that simply called them “Blue Flax Linum.”

In those years, Santa Fe Greenhouse was selling Linum perenne ‘Lewisii.’ In 2002, David Salman introduced Linum lewisii ‘Appar,’ which he said had been collected in “South Dakota and improved through breeding to have outstanding vigor and a long season of bloom.” This year, the catalog description and index entry remain the same, but the actual identification has been modified to Linum perenne ‘Appar.’

A. Perry Plummer collected the original seed in 1955 for the Forest Service. The Aberdeen Plant Materials Center tested seed from a number of locations, and released his to restoration seed producers in 1980 as the most prolific.

Then, in 1993, R. L. Pendleton’s team discovered the reason Appar outperformed its rivals was that is wasn’t the western native Linum lewisii after all, but the European Linum perenne which the USDA says has clung to zone 5 as it moved from the mid-Atlantic states.through Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin to Kansas and Nebraska. Unbeknownst to them, it also migrated north to neighboring zone 4 South Dakota.

The original audience for the plants cared more the seed worked than that it was a certifiably American. The sparsely rooted forb has been used to reclaim mine lands around Anaconda, Montana, contaminated by copper, zinc and arsenic, and has also been tested on buried uranium tailings at Shiprock.

However, since the 1950's, environmentalists and Lady Bird Johnson have made many care very much about the biodiversity of the plains. The Colorado Weed Management Association banned Appar as an invasive species, only to hear loud protests from seed producers who had invested years in the Aberdeen seed.

In 2000, the association met to rescind its ban after pro forma workshops on the two Linaceae species. Pendleton had already established the pair don’t interbreed, so there was no danger of DNA dilution. Taina Matheson’s group later found both varieties produce genetic variations, so neither selection is likely to precipitate an environmental catastrophe.

Meantime, government researchers had been collecting more samples. Stanley Kitchen’s compeers ran field tests to identify one they believe produces between 70 and 90% of the seed spawned by Appar. Maple Grove, found in 1988 by Susan Meyer in Millard County, Utah, was released in 2003, about the time the Santa Fe nursery was able to procure Appar through commercial channels.

At the 2000 weed association workshop members were told how to identify the species. Following Linneaus, the only external characteristic that separates the two is that all lewisii flowers have styles that are longer than their stamens, while some perenne plants have longer stamens and others have shorter ones. You know what you have if you have long stamens, otherwise your knowledge is tempered by variations in the stand. Younger scientists use DNA.

There are reasons I don’t know the identity of my plants. I care more that my colony of short-lived individuals perpetuates itself than how, and for the moment, I’m satisfied.

Notes:
Keammerer, Warren R. and Jeffrey Todd. High Altitude Revegetation Workshop Proceedings, 2004, includes papers on Anaconda and Shiprock.

Kitchen, Stanley G. “Lewis Flax–native or Exotic–cultivar or Weed: Implications for Germplasm Development,” Seed Gleanings 21:4-5:2002.

Matheson, Taina, Devin P. Johnson, Sanuel L McMurry, and Leigh A. Johnson, “Using ISSRs to Assess Genetic Variation Within and Between Populations of Blue Flax,” Botany Conference Abstracts, 2004.

Pendleton, R.L., S. G. Kitchen, and E.D. McArthur, E.D. “Origin of the Flax Cultivar ‘Appar” and Its Taxonomic Relationship to North American and European Perennial Blue Flax.” Wildland Shrub and Arid Land Restoration Symposium, 1993, cited by Kitchen.

Salman, David, president, Santa Fe Greenhouse and High Country Gardens. Annual spring catalogs.

United States Department of Agriculture. “Linum Perenne,” available on-line.

Photograph: Blue flax leaves, 11 March 2007, showing new growth under darker leaves that survived the winter.

Ground Covers

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, kalanchoë; honeysuckle and ivy geranium buds.

What’s reviving in the area: Daffodils emerged down the road; green leaves appeared on lance-leaved yellowbrushes. Saturday, three men in the village were burning weeds along the road: one worked the gas burner, while another raked over the charred plants. Nearer my place, one man was burning weeds a second was dropping on his pyre. Two patches in the village were plowed this past week; an alfalfa field down the road was turned over, as was the yard where the sheep ate last summer.

What’s reviving in my yard: Crocus and hyacinth bulbs planted last fall poked through; new leaves on flax, caryopteris and Mexican hat; some chrysanthemum leaves pushed up, as did Autumn Joy sedum and one species daylily; June and needle grass are greener at their crowns; more moss appeared in the bed west of the garage.

Animal sightings: Small birds built a nest in the eave of my front porch, and now consider the peach to be their territory; ant hills sprouted in the drive.

Weather: Waning moon, with frosty nights and warm afternoons; a little rain on Thursday.

Weekly update: Ground covers, so beloved by my mother, do not exist in this part of New Mexico. When she reinforced her yard lines with barberry hedges, she filled the dug up ground with lavender-flowered moss phlox. Here that area under shrubs would either be bare or colonized by adventitious grasses and weeds.

It may be the heritage of fire. The Cerro Grande taught those who had forgotten how dangerous plant life can be when houses with no trees and wide expanses of concrete were more likely to survive in Los Alamos than those that melted into the landscape. We’re reminded of the fire’s wiles every time we drive up the hill and see dead trees far from the front which had their moisture sucked by the heat, ready to immolate themselves when the flames arrived.

The preference for bare ground may arise from an atavistic memory of some family farm where the ground was cleared in the spring, and only the orchard had a grass covering or an even older, inherited European aesthetic. Pictures of Italian villas show areas around houses were paved with stone.

Old Mediterranean gardens used low hedges to define their boundaries. The dense outer plants redirected the winds away from the interior herbs which pictures usually show stood isolated from one another. Both ornamental beds and vegetable patches assumed virtuous tenders who made sure nothing competed with the specimens for food and water.

The lack of ground covers here could simply reflect the realization that vermin and grasshoppers take advantage of matted plant life to nest. My mother’s cat may have found the occasional field mouse, but they were nothing near as dangerous as our disease carrying rodents. In Michigan, I never heard a spring report of the first diagnosed case of bubonic plague.

For whatever reason, people here favor a view of the homestead untouched by William Robinson’s late-nineteenth century English impatience with bare ground and his recommendation that one "let the little ground plants form broad patches and colonies by themselves occasionally, and let them pass into and under other plants" in mixed borders.

I’ve been trying to establish ground covers for years, if for no other reason than to countermand nature’s choices: the harmless, but sparsely leaved knotweed, and the attractive, but vicious goat’s head. Along the soaker hoses, between taller, more dramatic flowers, I want inconspicuous plants that spread over the drier soil and keep it from blowing away.

I’ve found a few species that can colonize barren areas, but winecup and rockrose are too aggressive to function as the lowest level of Robinson’s domestic adaptation of the four layers of forests. Sweet alyssum is an annual which can only defend the soil against early spring winds if dead plants are left to winter, and possibly nurture disease and deer mice.

Probably because wholesalers see no market, it’s difficult to find plants in local stores, and mail order nurseries often don’t offer them because they have to ask higher prices than customers will pay who need masses of plants. Amos Pettingill didn’t offer my mother's moss phloxes because "they are difficult to ship."

Last summer I may finally have found some viable snow-in-summer in the local hardware. Plants I’d bought before were either root bound or had rootballs encased in the hardened layer that sometimes forms inside plastic pots. They kept their leaves during the snows that alternated with thaws, and now are putting out new leaves. Last year they spread from 2" clusters to 6" mats. This year, they may finally prove that ground covers are possible here, even if they’re not popular.

Notes:
Pettingill, Amos. The White-Flower-Farm Garden Book, 1971, page 290.

Robinson, William. The English Flower Garden, 1933 edition reprinted by Sagapress, Inc., 1984, page 47.

Photograph: Snow-in-summer in front of green pinks and a red-leaved coral bell, 10 March 2007.

Honeysuckle

Signs of spring: Leaf buds visible on tea roses; tumble mustard growing in my neighbor’s drive; purple aster leaves more obvious. Home Depot and Lowe’s have shipments of trees, bareroot shrubs, bulbs and Ferry-Morse seeds.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium; kalanchoë; honeysuckle buds.

What’s green and visible in the area: Some honeysuckle leaves; unidentified grasses: agave, yucca, yew; arborvitae, piñon, juniper and other pines.

What’s green in my yard: Columbine, rose stems, Apache plume, thrift, rockrose, coral bells, hollyhock, winecup, yellow evening primrose, horseweed, Mount Atlas daisies, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hat, chrysanthemums, some yellowbrush. Moss growing on the west side of the garage where ice lingered.

What’s gray: Four-winged salt bush, snow-in-summer, pinks; Greek and fern-leaf yarrow, golden hairy aster.

What’s red: Cholla, pinks, small-leaved soapwort; coral, blue and white beardtongues.

Animal sightings: Horses in the village. The other local hardware, the one that sold sonar devices to repel gophers, now has traps instead.

Weather: Ground remains frozen; cold winds, sometimes strong; light dusting of snow before dawn Saturday; full moon.

Weekly update: Linnaeus lived in a Manichaean world where things were either annual or perennial, coniferous or deciduous.

Here in New Mexico we have semievergreens that lose their leaves farther north, but keep them here most winters. Last weekend many of the remaining coreopsis and vinca leaves were killed by cold winds that followed the disappearance of their protective snow cover. Leaves of pinks, columbines, and beardtongues remained dark maroon.

Dark, weatherbeaten leaves on Japanese honeysuckle vines in the village looked greener on a coyote fence behind protective boulders where Queen Anne’s Lace bloomed last summer. The fence fronts a ditch. Behind it lies an orchard and French-influenced territorial style farm house on grass flats that stretch back towards the river.

After watching those vines bloom year after year, I bought a honeysuckle plant last spring for my inside porch where the more common philodendron and pothos wouldn’t grow. When I got home, I discovered I’d bought coral honeysuckle by mistake.

Honeysuckle has two species diffusion centers: one in northeast Asia of Manchuria, China, Korea and Japan that begat the village vine, Lonicera japonica, the other in the eastern United States that produced my Lonicera sempervirens. Some 65 genera share this bipolar distribution.

The honeysuckle family emerged during the late Cretaceous, some 65 to 97 million years ago when polar water temperatures were some 35 degrees higher than today. Arctic sea temperatures rose 3 degrees during the Eocene when forests spread to the poles some 55 million years ago and the primary Caprifolia genera began to evolve. Many believe the temperature spike was caused by an increase in carbon dioxide.

Forests that had spread through the northern hemisphere receded when northern ocean temperatures dropped to current levels 25 to 34 million years ago. Glaciers reformed and disrupted the forest corridor, thus isolating plant communities.

Temperatures rose to levels slightly less than those at the end of the Eocene 5 to 25 million years ago, and species again diversified during the resulting Miocene as plants adapted to changing conditions. Many plants’ DNA shows they now share more with surrounding plants than with their ancestral genera. The village honeysuckle has sweet, night blooming flowers that attract pollinating insects. The native has odorless red funnels to lure hummingbirds.

When the two honeysuckles compete for resources, Japonica is more successful. It apparently has retained more of its Eocene heritage. It remains active so long as predawn temperatures don’t fall below 26 degrees. The stems begin elongating when soil temperatures are between 37 and 46 degrees. New growth appears when air temperatures are between 42 and 85.

More important, it tolerates higher levels of carbon dioxide, a trait that may be traced to surviving the global warming that ended the Cretaceous. Cold-tolerant leaves use the gases released when other plants die in the fall to maintain their color during the winter. In the valley, more gases are released when people use wood stoves and burn weeds.

At the moment my plant is the more precocious. Last weekend, it put out new leaves. This week the stem began lengthening and Friday the leaves spread to reveal flower buds.

My porch shares many characteristics with the outside environment, including the quality of light, longer hours of daylight, changing sun angles and drafts. However, the porch is warmer, with a minimum temperature in the low 40's and highs last week in the mid-80's. Plants also get more reliable water.

It won’t be long before outside temperatures rise, and Japanese honeysuckle growth will be visible from the road. Soon after, temperatures on my porch will increase, and my plant will retard its growth to protect itself.

In the meantime, I watch the two wintergreens recover from winter and think about that other Asian-American disjuntion archeologists want so badly to explain: the movement of Clovis people to Curry County 10,000 years ago when temperatures were reaching modern levels.

Notes:
Bell, Charles D. and Michael J. Donoghue. "Dating the Dipsacales: Comparing Models, Genes, and Evolutionary Implications," American Journal of Botany. 92:284-296:2005.

Schierenbeck, Kristina A. "Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) as an Invasive Species; History, Ecology, and Context," Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 23,:391-400:2004.

Wen, Jun. "Evolution of Eastern Asian and Eastern North American Disjunct Distributions in Flowering Plants," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 30: 421-455:1999.

Photograph: Coral honeysuckle on inside porch with new leaves opening to reveal flower buds, 2 March 2007.

Mt Atlas Daisy

What’s blooming outside: Nothing. An alfalfa field that’s been turned into a rough lawn was burned during the week.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium; kalanchoë.

What’s green and visible in the area: Some honeysuckle leaves; needle grass and other unidentified grasses: agave, yucca, yew; arborvitae, piñon, juniper and other pines.

What’s green in my yard: Columbine, rose stems, Apache plume, thrift, rockrose, coral bells, hollyhock, winecup, yellow evening primrose, horseweed, dandelion, Mount Atlas daisies, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hat, chrysanthemums, some yellowbrush. Needle grass has been compressed by the weight of snow; evergreen perennials are uprighting their stems; rugosa rose fruit is desicating.

What’s gray: Four-winged salt bush, snow-in-summer, pinks; Greek and fern-leaf yarrow, golden hairy aster, buddleia leaves are getting brown spots.

What’s red: Cholla, pinks, small-leaved soapwort; coral, blue and white beardtongues.

Animal sightings: Pigeons looked for roost in my eaves last weekend; small birds in Áñil del muerto yesterday; gopher probably killed the roots of the two remaining 10-year old miniature roses. Local hardware is now carrying gopher poison, traps, and gas canisters.

Weather: Light covering of snow pellets Tuesday morning; intermittent strong winds during week broke off tumbleweeds and spread remaining seed on still wet ground; yesterday winds turned cold, threatening to kill plants with green or tender parts like roses, flax and coreopsis.

Weekly update: Last Sunday a Santa Fe grocer was selling hydrangeas. Somewhere in that city there, no doubt, are houses with such perfectly controlled interiors that those water hungry shrubs can survive. Not in my drafty place.

My first years in New Mexico were spent learning what does not grow here, unaided by wholesalers who stocked local hardware shelves with whatever was popular or available from contracted growers. Even the best intentioned nursery catalogs didn’t help. A plant that grew in dry shade in Minnesota probably still needed more water or less reflected light than the Española valley could provide.

In 1995, I ordered some Mount Atlas Daisies from Weiss Brothers on the belief that Morocco has a dry Mediterranean climate and the naive assumption that mountains are mountains. Anacyclus depressus was introduced by John Ball when he published the findings of Joseph Dalton Hooker’s 1871 expedition to the Great Atlas Mountains. It’s now recognized as a subspecies of Anacyclus pyrethrum, used for centuries to treat toothache, ague, and rheumatism.

Others have made similar attempts to match far-flung habitats with their own. Europeans use the composite flowers in alpine and rock gardens. In the intermontane west, municipal spokesmen promote it as a water-wise plant. After some experience, they’ve narrowed their recommendation to use along gravel walks.

The plants did very well the first years, colonizing by 1998. Individual plants spread to 8" and bloomed from late April through late July. Then, in 2002, there were fewer, smaller plants. The number continued to decline, and the Carpet Daisies, as they’re also called, didn’t bloom last year.

Seedlings persisted in odd places, but remained small, maybe 3" across. I don’t know if the perennials are naturally short lived as some say, or if the winter and summer droughts of the past few years sent the organism into remission. This spring the newer plants crowd the soaking hose, instead of the hard dry spots they once favored.

Searching for matching ecologies may be a noble pursuit, but mountain environments are far more complicated than mass market garden books can report. One place the daisies are growing today is Oukaïmeden, an Atlas resort near the Toubkal National Park on the drier south facing slopes of Adrar Tizrar overlooking a large grassy plain that supports transhumant sheep herding. Mohamed Rejdali found them on trodden and grazed lands and along roads and the park’s car lot.

Oukaïmeden is more than 2500' feet higher than Española and more than 5 degrees latitude to the south. It averages 14" of rain a year, compared to our 10". More important, its floristic diversity is supported by wet lawns when water accumulates beneath the soil.

It doesn’t matter much that the Anacyclus groundcover can adapt to Germany and Poland, where crown rot is the biggest problem. Here, the environment apparently fell below its minimum thresholds for survival. Hopefully, the increased water, especially the unusual amounts of snow, will bring it back. I won’t know for a few months, but right now I can see that not only are the evergreen plants perking up, but new plants nurtured by a return to a more Moroccan climate are poking through the soil.

Notes:
Alaoi Haroni, S., M. Alifriqui, and V. Simonneaux. "Altitudinal Wet Pastures: Threats and Conservation Means; the Case of Oukaïmeden Plateau (High Atlas Mountains, Morocco)," Proceedings, European Water Resources Association, 2005.

Ball, John. "Description of Some New Species, Subspecies, and Varieties of Plants Collected in Morocco by J. D. Hooker, G. Maw, and J. Ball," Journal of Botany 11: 364-374:1873.

Hooker, Joseph Dalton. Journal of a Tour in Morocco and the Great Atlas, 1878, reprinted by Elibron, 2001.

Rejdali, Mohamed. "Annotated Checklist of Oukaïmeden, High Atlas," available on-line.

Photograph: Mount Atlas Daisies, one established plant and two new ones, 18 February 2007

Apple Trees

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium; kalanchoë buds formed.

What’s green and visible in the area: Some honeysuckle leaves; needle grass and other unidentified grasses: agave, yucca, yew, and juniper. Pines and arborvitae are more brown than before; piñon more gray.

What’s green in my yard: Columbine, rose stems, sweet peas, thrift, rockrose, hollyhock, winecup, vinca, Saint John’s wort, coreopsis, horseweed, dandelion, some yellowbrush. Looks like new Mount Atlas daisy seedling; coral bells are turning green.

What’s gray: Buddleia, Greek and fern-leaf yarrow, golden hairy aster, four-winged salt bush. Snow-in-summer and pinks look more alert.

What’s red: Cholla, pinks, small-leaved soapwort; coral, blue and white beardtongues.

Animal sightings: Small birds flitted between peach, cherries and cholla yesterday.

Weather: Some rain Sunday; 3-4" of snow on ground Thursday morning, melted by Friday afternoon, except in shadows. Ground continues to freeze and thaw.

Weekly update: It’s apple pruning time in the valley.

Last Sunday, a man on the back road stood on a short ladder to trim his trees in the mist. Another cut his the last week of January, three weeks ago. Others are probably waiting for thawing ground to stabilize.

My trees are too young. I assumed from the varieties sold at farmers’ markets that Red Delicious was the most commonly cropped apple here. In 2003, I planted three Bisbee cultivars, along with another variety for pollination. They didn’t grow much the first two years, but overcame transplantation shock and developed better roots. Two years ago grasshoppers stripped them, and they put out no new growth in the fall. Last year, they had scattered leaves that began the recovery process.

When I bought two year saplings, they had been trimmed and pruned to leave one strong stem and a few smaller horizontal branches. The central trunk, or leader, does not bear apples. Instead, it functions as a pump, bringing sap up to leaves that fortify it with nutrients created by photosynthesis. Sap returns through the horizontal
branches where it deposits those nutrients in the flowers and fruit.

After apples form, Malus Pumila trees begin their regeneration by forming small leaf and larger bloom buds along the sides of branches. Adolescent trees produce only leaf buds, and concentrate on producing branches, including the small spurs that bear fruit.

When water levels in the soil drop in autumn, roots produce abscisic acid to prepare the terminal bud meristems for winter. Ethylene, another inhibiting growth hormone, prepares the branches to drop their leaves.

When temperatures fall below 55 degrees F, critical processes continue beneath the protective cover of hardened bud scales. When temperatures fall below 35, activities necessary to bud development all but stop.

Scientists aren’t sure exactly what occurs during winter. They only know if the weather warms before trees experience 1,000 hours of cool temperatures, apple buds open later and over a longer period of time, and so miss the flowering time of their pollinating cousins. Poorly formed flowers produce little fruit.

When farmers prune their trees, they take spurs down to three buds, and remove any branches that look like they’ll only produce leaves. Coincidentally, auxin, a growth hormone, is synthesized in terminal buds; when those tips disappear, the tree transfers development energy to the remaining lateral buds.

Red Delicious is notorious for vertical branches that compete with the leader. You can identify unpruned trees in the local orchards by the mantles of 1' to 2' spikes rising from the branches.

If an apple tree remains unclipped, it may lapse into a biennial cycle to only produce fruit every other year. Pruning helps a tree balance its competing requirements. It’s done now, after the worst of the winter cold to prevent freeze damage to the cuts. It needs to be completed before the tree blooms. Exactly when depends on individual growers, and the weather.

Orchards have probably nearly accumulated their chilling time. I think we had over 800 hours between October 16 and the end of November, and have had more than 200 scattered hours since temperatures fell before the solstice.

An experienced eye can see right now, in the cusp of winter, what the crop may be in September. Weather, insects, disease, irrigation, sprays and fertilizer may improve the fruit, but they can’t increase the yield beyond the potential of the existing buds.

As for my trees, I can only hope for good weather to keep them growing to maturity. They have recovered enough to produce the rudiments of spurs. Patience and water are all I can provide, along with snipping the dead tips some sunshiny day.

Photograph: Branches of Red Delicious apple tree, Bisbee cultivar. 10 February 2007.

Four-wing Saltbush

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

What’s green and visible in the area: Needle grass and other unidentified grasses: agave, yucca, yew, juniper, arborvitae, piñon and other pines. People down the road burned weeds along road and fences.
What’s green in my yard: Columbine, rose stems, thrift, rockrose, coral bells, hollyhock, vinca, coreopsis, Mount Atlas daisy, horseweed.

What’s gray: Snow-in-summer, buddleia, pinks, Greek yarrow, golden hairy aster, four-winged salt bush.

What’s red: Cholla, pinks, coral beardtongues.

Animal sightings: Dog and cat sized prints in mud.

Weather: Warm temperatures continue to melt snow into saturated soil sitting atop frozen ground that refreezes at night. Some snow survives in north and west areas in shadows of slopes, buildings or fences.

Weekly update: Who would think a plant we send to Iran and Uzbekistan to mediate ecological disasters would be fussy in New Mexico?

Atriplex Canescens doesn’t even have a common name. Frederick V. Colville called it Four-wing Saltbush for the Bureau of Plant Industry. Spanish speakers have several terms, including Chamiso. The Tewa living among the Hopi in Hano, Arizona called it ‘Tajaen

The mound-shaped shrub evolved in central México, then moved north through the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts. It survives with 8" to 12" of rain a year and is found anywhere from below sea level to 8,000'. Taproots that can reach down 20' tolerate soils containing salt, selenium, boron, and alkalis, but accept slightly acid soils, deep sandy loams, heavy clays, and gravel washes.

Saltbush has been used to reclaim abandoned mine sites and rescue eroded grazing lands. The leaves contain high levels of protein and carotene in the winter, but saponin makes them unpalatable in the summer when they’re producing seed. If the soil is saline, the leaves may exude salt into their surface flakes.

The Chenonpodia species has male and female plants, but the females morph into males when there’s not enough water. Genetically, some plants have double sets of chromosomes, some three, and some four. While the plant tends to keep its narrow grey leaves in winter, it will drop them when times are bad, and some have even adapted by growing from spreading roots rather than windblown seeds.

A male shrub appeared in 1992 uphill from my neighbor’s new septic field. A male and female were blooming downhill from mine in 2000, some six years after the tank was installed. The original plant is about 4' high, mine closer to 6'.

This year, I noticed two new plants expanding the copse that already had attracted winterfat and yellowbrush. Another was growing uphill, about 3' from a water line. So far they have produced no seed heads, but the young plants have more leaves than the older ones this winter.

This preference for lands that border disturbances led Charlie Steen, an archaeologist with the National Park Service, to use the presence of stands of Saltbush to locate possible ruins on the Pajarito plateau. It usually wasn’t directly over the ruin, but atop the middens, usually rubbish heaps, that accompany settlement.

Some plants are growing down the road where an abandoned roadbed cum arroyo goes under the road; they remain short, probably because county road crews cut them down in late summer. If they’re anywhere else in the area, the dense upright branches are indistinguishable from other brush. More likely, they’ve been eaten, or the seeds are just very picky about where they germinate.

Picture: Female Fourwinged Saltbush, with empty seed cases; male shrub in rear without cases. 4 February 2007.

Bulbs

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

What’s green and visible in the area: Needle grass and other unidentified grasses: yucca, yew, juniper, arborvitae, piñon and other pines.

What’s green in my yard: Rose stems, rockrose, Mount Atlas daisy, horseweed.

What’s gray: Snow-in-summer, buddleia, pinks, Greek yarrow, golden hairy aster, four-winged salt bush.

What’s red: Cholla, coral bells, pinks.

Animal sightings: Wednesday, scared up a large-eared rabbit who bolted for the empty lot across road.

Weather: Snowed Tuesday night. Warm temperatures Wednesday softened the ground and turned the snow to slush which has been freezing every night since in places where it has not evaporated or melted.

Weekly update: Theory and reality clash here.

Bulbs ought to grow. After they bloom in April and May, the leaves carry nutrients down into the bulb, where the plant creates embryos of next years flowers and leaves. During the summer heat and drought, after the leaves have died away, cell division slows, earlier for Daffodils than for Tulips.

In the fall, after the monsoons have brought new water, bulbs put out new roots. The cold slows elongation of flower stalks, redistributes water within bulbs, accumulates nitrogen in roots and converts starch to sugar which is transferred to developing shoots.

In 1997 I planted tulips and daffodils on the east side of the house, and absolutely nothing came up.

It’s pretty hard to fail the first year with healthy bulbs. After all, they’ve gone through the regeneration process in the hands of skilled nurserymen. I blamed in on the gopher who may have eaten the tulips and removed the dirt under the poisonous daffodils, and decided anything that attracted that mammal wasn’t worth the risk.

Years passed. I noticed red and yellow tulips never seemed to survive for more than a year or so in anyone’s yard. I also noticed grape hyacinths I planted in 1997 on the west side of the house were thriving.

I thought perhaps bulb catalogs were misleading when they said bulbs only needed cold for 13 to 14 weeks. When they’re put in a refrigerator at 35 to 48 degrees, temperature and humidity conditions are uniform. Snow does more than chill: it puts moisture on frozen ground ready to sink in, protects that water from drying winds, and insulates the ground against wide temperature changes.

On the east side of my house, the snow melts quickly. This year it has been bare and recovered at least five times. The west lies in the shadow of the house, and has been snow covered since late November. There’s 2 to 6 inches there now.

The point of cooling bulbs is to recreate their natural conditions. Narcissus Pseudonarcissus, the parent of domestic daffodils, is from the Cordillera Cantábrica of northern Spain and Portugal. When it naturalizes in England, Caldwell and Wallace observed it prefers southern or western exposures, often in damp, poorly drained soils. Other have found it likes heavy clay.

Tulipa Genisarias, the progenitor of hybrid tulips, had been cultivated by Moslems for centuries when they were discovered by Europeans. M. H. Hoog found the primary gene center for the genera lay in the Pamir Alai and Tien Shan mountains. The geophytes diffused from there to the Caucasus where a secondary gene center developed. Modern tulips are from the eastern Crimea, just west of those mountains.

Española lies at about 6,000' at 36 07 N latitude. The Iberian mountains are at 43 00 N, while the Caucasus are at 42 00 N and the Crimean at 45 00 N. Our average rainfall is 10" a year, while it's 21" in Leon south of the Cantabrians, and 14" in Feyodosia at the east end of the Crimea. We may get more sun and less precipitation, but our hot dry summer, cool wet winter seasonal patterns are similar.

In 2003, I decided to try again, this time on the west side of the garage that so far has never seen a gopher. The snow disappears a little sooner there than by the house, but the water that drips off the metal roof has dug a furrow that fills with ice in winter.

I planted four varieties of tulips among exiting plants between the garage and the drip line, then put a mixed bag of daffodils between the furrow and grass, just beyond the existing plants.

The first year, most of the tulips and many of the daffodils bloomed. The stems were a little shorter than advertised, but otherwise there they were. They’ve now bloomed three years, with increasingly shorter stems, perhaps because the past few winters have seen little snow. The number of tulips has remained constant, the number of daffodils has declined leaving only the best adapted varieties.

They’ve passed the first test, and probably can survive for years, as they are. Genuine colonization won’t occur until the bulbs clone themselves. In the best conditions, daughter bulblets take three years to flower. Here in the hostile, dry rio arriba those fertile years may be spaced by seasons of dormancy.

For now, the snow promises they should break ground in March and bloom another year.

Notes:
Caldwell, John and T. J. Wallace, "Narcissus psudonarcissus L.," The Journal of Ecology 43:331-341:1955.

Hoog, M. H, "On the Origin of Tulipa," Lillies and Other Liliaceae, Royal Horticultural Society, 1973:47-64, summarized by many, including Richard Wilford and the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Kilsdonk, Maria Gerarda van. Assessment of the Internal Quality of Stored flower Bulbs using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, 2002, "General Introduction" available on-line.

Picture: West side of garage, 31 January 2007. Snow covers daffodil bulbs. Tulips are between the ice and stucco wall. Vegetation includes needle grass, phlox. purple coneflower, and Silver King artemisia.

Horseweed

What’s blooming outside: Nothing. Someone in the village pruned his fruit trees; two men down the road were clearing weeds Saturday.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

What’s green and visible in the area: Honeysuckle; needle grass and other unidentified grasses; agave, yucca, yew, juniper, arborvitae, piñon and other pines.

What’s green in my yard: Columbine, rose stems, sweet peas, thrift, rockrose, yellow evening primrose, vinca, tansy, coreopsis, Mount Atlas daisy, horseweed.

What’s gray: Snow-in-summer, pinks, buddleia, Greek yarrow, golden hairy aster, four-winged salt bush.

What’s red: Coral bells, pinks, small flowered soapwort, cholla; white, coral and blue beardtongues.

Animal sightings: More gopher mounds, especially near tree roots.

Weather: By Wednesday, snow was gone from open fields, but survived on walks, drives, and north and west sides of buildings and fences. Ground frozen.

Weekly update: Horseweed is a weed, plain and simple.

Farmers hate it. Seed can sprout anytime after it drops, and it starts blooming here in June. A single plant can produce 200,000 wind-borne achenes and 80% of those can germinate. 91% of those that emerge in the fall survive winter as rough textured basal rosettes. More break ground when temperatures rise in the spring.

Worse, roots release chemicals that inhibit corn growth. Roundup Ready soybean, corn and cotton seeds were released in 1996 and 1997. Farmers tilled their land less often to uproot weeds. Conyza Canadensis plants that resisted the active agent, glyphosate, were reported in 2000, and Darwinian selection has prevailed.

In my yard, the annual’s not particularly noxious, just gawky. The stalks grow anywhere from 1' to 6' high, but the white composite flowers are no more that 1/4" high and never fully open. The fluorescence is so private it might never occur, except for the puffball seed heads.

Horseweed has no nasty thorns or harpooning seeds, and isn’t particularly difficult to pull when the ground is wet in July. The roots don’t usually break and regenerate like dandelions. The taproots are long, but aren’t nearly as entrenched as those of sweet clover.

When I remove them, they release a lemon smell that hints the plant might be good for something. Indeed, limonene from leaves grown commercially in Michigan is used to flavor candy and soft drinks.

Even so, here in the southwest, this North American native has been ignored more than used, perhaps because the leaves are so bitter not even a rabbit will eat them in winter.

The Zuni dried flowers to induce sneezing for sinus and nasal problems. The Ramah and Kayenta Navajo used the stalk or leaves in a lotion for acne. The Kayenta of Arizona also tried hot poultices for prenatal infant infections and earaches, and essayed the plant for stomachaches. The Ramah of McKinley County prescribed a cold infusion for snakebite.

Young Spanish girls in the rio arriba soaked pazotillo leaves in water to lighten their complexions. They probably theorized the aroma of limonene signified it would bleach like the acids in lemons do.

It was the eclectic physicians who determined the tannin that causes the bitterness could staunch bleeding. In 1898, gynecologist Finney Ellingwood recommended an oil made from cinnamon bark, Erigeron Canadensis, as it was then called, and grain alcohol for heavy menses and bleeding from abortions. Scientists have since established that tannin is a polyphenol that binds with proteins to produce clotting.

Such utility does not negate Horseweed’s ugliness. I sympathize with farmers whenever I yank plants or cut stalks. Then I smell the lemon and wonder why someone somewhere isn’t investigating how this insignificant composite can withstand the full chemical force of Monsanto and what that biological mechanism might suggest about disease, survival, and life itself.

Notes:
Curtin, L. S. Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished by Western Edge Press of Santa Fe in 1997 with notes by Michael Moore.

Ellingwood, Finley. The American Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Pharmacognosy, 1919, Hebriette Kress's copy available on-line.

Shaukat, S. Shahid, Nadia Munir and Imran A. Siddiqui. “Allelopathic Responses of Conyza candinsis L.(Cronquist): A Cosmopolitan Weed,” Asian Journal of Plant Sciences 2:1034-1039:2003.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians, 1915.

Vestal, Paul A. The Ethnobotany of the Ramah Navaho, 1952, cited in the Native American Ethnobotany database.

Wyman, Leland C. and Stuart K. Harris. The Ethnobotany of the Kayenta Navaho. 1951, cited in the Native American Ethnobotany database.

Picture: Horseweed growing under a rugosa rose, 21 January 2007.

Tansy

What’s blooming outside: Nothing. The man down the road who painted his new vertical board fence green this past summer added framed pictures of the virgin Mary this week that imitate niches in an adobe wall.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium..

What’s green and visible in the area: Snow covers everything again.

Animal sightings: Rabbit tracks.

Weather: The early week was cold, but most of the snow was gone by Wednesday. It snowed again Friday night, leaving about half an inch Saturday morning. Temperatures rose above freezing by midmorning, and snow started falling in the afternoon. Another quarter inch accumulated by nightfall when temperatures fell and the snow stopped.

Weekly update: Tansy leaves have survived the snow. It’s the most remarkable thing they’ve done in twelve years.

Tansy promises composite yellow corymbs, leaves that repel insects and rhizomatous roots. Mine never bloomed but it did spread underground. Since I already had any number of combative yellow plants that did flower, I saw no reason to give it leg room. I started pulling it out in 1999, putting some discards in places where nothing grew. It’s taken nine years to rid it from my garden, if I have.

The rejects survived in one place where water is too erratic for anything else. There it behaved almost like a fern bank or low hedge. That is, until the grasshoppers ate it to the ground in 2005. It barely came back this past wet, cool summer.

Tansy has a reputation for such fickleness. An abuela in Taos told Michael Moore the ponso she grew from garden cuttings was safe, but plants that grew from seed were "bad medicine." Tanacetum Vulgare can become so toxic it can kill.

Roman Catholics ritualized its use to young sprouts, limiting it to cakes, teas or puddings eaten during Lent or Holy Week. Many have observed horses and cattle will only eat Tansy leaves when they’re young. Curious Hungarian researchers measured the essential oils during growth and found differences indeed existed in the accumulation patterns of the six chemicals they analyzed.

While variations in chemistry during a plant’s life cycle have long governed human uses of plants, Lithuanian scientists tested Tansy from three locations for several years and found the concentration of volatile oils in mature plants was less in 2002 with a dry, warm spring than in the previous two years. They isolated 41 chemicals in mature plants, and variations in the strength of each within the plants.

Further trying to refine the reasons for the volubility of Tansy, Norwegian chemists brought plants from forty locations to one site where they grew them for two years before extracting the oils. Jens Rohloff’s team found that even then the distilled essential oils varied from 0.35 to 1.90% and those plants that contained the most thujone were especially rich in volatile oils. In addition, they identified six other chemotypes, each of which varied in strength from plant to plant. They had earlier established genetic uniformity in the population.

Canadians discovered the distillation method itself influenced the ability of beta-thujone in Tansy oil to kill spider mites. They also found the presence of another chemical that survived one of the extraction processes may have enhanced the strength of the thujone they took from another species, one of the many chemicals found in unpredictable degrees in Tanacetum Vulgare.

Thujone is most famous for its presence in absinthe. Hold and her colleagues found the terpenoid inhibits the activity of GABA _A receptors in the brain which, in turn, prevents the release of chloride to calm neurons. When they gave high doses of thujone to mice, the overexcited neurons produced convulsions, and ultimately death.

The alpha form of thujone is more toxic than the beta. Mockute’s team noted that Tansy from eight countries contained beta-thujone, while plants from three countries had alpha-thujone like that they found in Vilnius.

However, it’s not the thujone that works against Colorado potato beetles, but the vapors which mask the attractive smell of the spuds.

We’re still discovering individual human variations in health and temperament that arise from individual biochemical differences. The possibility that a plant like Tansy that looks so uniform contains the same secret idiosyncracies is beyond our ken. Until science can identify the sources of variability and produce croppable plants, we’ll continue to treat it with prohibitions, do not touch, do not plant, do not nibble.

Notes:
Chiasson H, A.Belanger, N. Bostanian, Cvincent, and A Poliquin. "Acaricidal Properties of Artemisia Absinthium and Tanacetum Vulgare (Asteraceae) Essential Oils Obtained by Three methods of Extraction," Journal of Economic Entomology 94:167-71:2001.

Hold K.M., N. S. Sirisoma, T. Ikeda, T. Narahashi, and J. E. Casida. "Alpha-thujone (the Active Component of Absinthe): Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid type A Receptor Modulation and Metabolic Detoxification," Proceedings, National Academy of Science 97:3826-31:2000.

Moore, Michael in L. S. M. Curtin, Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished by Western Edge Press of Santa Fe in 1997.

Mockute, Danute and Asta Judzentiene. "Composition of the Essential Oils of Tanacetum Vulgare L. Growing Wild in Vilnius District (Lithuania)," Journal of Essential Oil Research: 16:550-553:2004.

Nèmeth, É. Z., É Héthelyi and J. Bernth, "Comparison Studies on Tanacetum Vulgare L. Chemotypes," Journal of Herbs, Spices & Medicinal Plants 2:85-92:1994.

Rohloff, Jens, Ruth Mordal, and Steinar Dragland. "Chemotypical Variation of Tansy (Tanacetum Vulgare L.) from 40 Different Locations in Norway," Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 52:1742 -1748:2004.

D. Thiery, D. and J. H. Visser. "Misleading the Colorado Potato Beetle with an Odor Blend ," Journal of Chemical Ecology 13:1139-1146:1987.

Photograph: Tansy with dead rose canes and white stalks of grass and áñil del muerto that did not prosper there, 14 January 2007.

Aptenia

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

What’s green and visible in the area: Snow finally melted yesterday, too late to see what’s still evergreen.

Animal sightings: Monday, birds, probably quail, left tracks around áñil de muerto in drive where snow had dumped the seed heads; yesterday, red-bellied birds hunted around the Black-eyed Susans.

Weather: Cold temperatures early in week, dry air started to evaporate snow; warm temperatures Friday and Saturday melted remaining snow and thawed top layer of ground which refroze each night.

Weekly update: I’m constantly surprised at how little we know about plants, after eons of agriculture and centuries of scientific exploration.

Several years ago I bought a groundcover at Home Depot. When I got home I realized I’d never heard of Aptenia. The only reference I could find was Aptenia Cordifolia in my 1934 Hortus. Since it was grown in zone 9 Arizona by McK Greenhouses, I decided I’d probably let my hopes overrule my experience again, and that my perennial in fact would be lucky to survive the summer in zone 5.
Feeling chagrined and conservative, I stuck the four slips in a planter on my inside porch, hoping, if nothing else, they’d provide some greenery. They grew long trailers with pink flowers. However, when I trimmed the stems, thinking they would come back vigorously, it took two years. I would have been better off taking the cutoff pieces and sticking them back in the dirt.

They’re finally blooming again, but only when the sun shines. On overcast and snowy days, the buds half open.

When I could see the flowers, I decided there really should be some information about Aptenia on line. I learned Louisa Bolus initiated it into the world of botany in 1928. Full Linnaean descriptions of leaves, flowers and fruits followed. Younger researchers have been analyzing the DNA of the Aizoaceae family to define evolutionary relationships.

But, I didn’t learn much more. When something’s new and there’s little information available, the curious test it with tools they use to deal with nature in general. In some cases, they use methods that lead to new knowledge, in others the expansion of popular superstition. So far, no consensus has developed about Aptenia.

Writers echo one another’s unverifiable comment it was introduced into California in 1970 from Israel. The Mediterranean Garden Society continues to promote the plant, but Ran Pauker only told them about his experiences in the Negev in 2000. Purists condemn it as a noxious, aggressive invasive threat to ur vegetation, because it spreads quickly and smothers other plants. One is an extension of the conservationist’s search for water-wise landscapes, the other the xenophobic fear of another kudzu invasion.

Exotic cooks have nibbled it and declare it can be used in salads. Pragmatist repeat it won’t burn easily in a wildfire, but none have provided anecdotal or experimental evidence.

The fact the ice plant cousin has succulent leaves has attracted the attention of those who search for new mind-altering drugs. Michael Smith and his co-workers analyzed the existence of mesembrine alkaloids in the Mesembryanthemaceae subtribe of the Aizoaceae family, and found Aptenia was the only genus to contain significant quantities. Since, drug sites have passed on their own lore, probably as unverifiable as the west coast lore.

When I looked for information on South African plants I found a different vacuum. Early settlers and their descendants, like Louisa Bolus, recorded the diverse flora they encountered, but most of their Capetown publications aren’t available in northern New Mexico.

When Crouch and Hutchings began researching the herbal practices of the Zulu, they found another area that is more hearsay than fact. The most intriguing comment they reported was from Rev. J. Gerstner, who noted in 1938 that Aptenia was one of the few plants that appeared to be cultivated, set to grow along kraal fences where it would "be always at hand." As an outsider, and a moral authority at that, he was told it was anti-inflammatory. The plant’s mere existence signified more than was knowable.

And so it blooms, the little pink daisies, oblivious to my ignorance, happily scrambling over my chair, treating this human artifact as one more interesting support in a useful life.

Notes:
Bailey, Liberty Hyde and Ethel Zoe Bailey. Hortus, 1934.

Bolus, Harriet Margaret Louisa. Notes of Mesembrianthemum and Some Allied Genera with Descriptions of a Hundred New Species. Part I. Bolus Herbarium, 1928.

Crouch, N. R. and A. Hutchings, "Zulu Healer Muthi Gardens: Inspiration for Botanic Garden Displays and Community Outreach Projects," Proceedings, International Botanic Gardens Conservation Congress, 1998.

Gerstner, J. "A Preliminary Check List of Zulu Names of Plants, with Short Notes." Bantu Studies 12:215-236:1938, quoted by Crouch.

Mediterranean Plant Society meeting, 11 November 2000, notes available on-line.

Smith, Michael T.
1996 _____ Neil R. Crouch, Nigel Gericke, and Manton Hirst. "Psychoactive constituents of the genus Sceletium N.E.Br. and other Mesembryanthemaceae: a review," Journal of Ethnopharmacology 50:119-130:1996.
1998 _____ Courtney R. Field, Neil R. Crouch, Manton Hirst. "The Distribution of Mesembrine Alkaloids in Selected Taxa of the Mesembryanthemaceae and their Modification in the Sceletium Derived ‘Kougoed’," Pharmaceutical Biology 36:173-179:1998.
Photograph: Aptenia Cordifolia, 6 January 2007.

New Year's Rituals

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, Christmas cactus.

What’s green and visible in the area: Snow still covers everything; its weight collapsed the sunflowers and áñil del muerto earlier this week.

Animal sightings: Animals left tracks looking for food. Some bird, probably a quail, landed on the cholla, then walked between the cactus and front garden. Quail later found the sunflowers. Green-bellied birds, much puffed up by the cold, foraged in front and discovered they couldn’t hop onto Mexican hat or black-eyed Susan stalks.

Weather: Moisture condensed into hoar frost early this week, then fog condensed early mornings mid-week. By Friday, warmer temperatures were beginning to melt snow, when it snowed again and temperatures dropped..

Weekly update: The week between Christmas and New Years used to be when seed and nursery catalogs would arrive. I would begin the annual ritual of planning next year’s garden: reading about new plants, making lists, totaling prices and crossing out items to fit a budget. Everything needed to be done by mid-February to receive early ordering discounts.

All has changed in the last twenty years.

There are fewer catalogs. Some companies, like Mileager, changed to internet marketing, and I didn’t have an on-line provider. Some, like White Flower Farm, looked at my scant ordering history (or maybe my zip code), and dropped my name. Others, perhaps like Bluestone, may have noticed I complained about bad plants, and decided I wasn’t a valued customer.

Some companies simply disappeared. A few years ago, the owner of Nor’East retired and sold his business. Abundant Life had a fire, and merged with Territorial. Weiss Brothers returned an order saying it no longer was in the mail order business. The owners of Raintree divorced, and each sent a catalog from a new entity, inviting me to take sides. Others were taken over by the next generation or investors who thought all the oddities their parents sold should be replaced by more commercial products.

Corporate takeovers take their toll, although it’s usually hidden. The first thing that changes is the address. In the 80s, it was to Bloomington, Illinois, and Plantron. More recently, many have changed to the Randolph, Wisconsin address of J. W. Jung. Van Bourgondien and Van Dyck moved to Virginia Beach from Babylon and Bridgewater, New York. Henry Fields abandoned Shenandoah, Iowa for Aurora, Indiana.

Changes in the catalog are more glaring. Offers replace plants. Pictures are cluttered with balloons filled with admen’s catchwords ("Great Color," "Fast Grower," "Must Have.") The traditionally fusty, thick Thomson and Morgan and Wayside Gardens sprouted so many guideposts last year, I set them aside. The pictures were obscured with captions that were so distracting I couldn’t read the text.

I’m not sure there are many catalogs left that serve my original purposes - to provide plants or seeds I can’t find in local stores, and find things grown regionally that might do better in my conditions than the rarified hybrids developed for bedding plant and cut flower growers.

When I first started requesting catalogs in Michigan, I searched for nurseries in the northern midwest, thinking they were growing their own produce. Some were, but even then, most were supplementing their stock with items purchased from foreign suppliers. Already, there were the mere retailers who grew nothing, but packaged European and Japanese seeds in catalogs aimed at niche markets.

The more the seeds derived from the same growers, and the only distinction between catalogs was the wit of the retailer, the more price became the only criteria. Cost became more important when shipping fees increased, first when companies like UPS raised their rates, then when petroleum companies raised theirs. Shipping used to be just a little over our high gross receipts tax, then rose to double it. This year, most of the seed company rates are running about 25% of my orders.

With the transition from production to marketing, the idea of an ordering season disappeared. Seed catalogs arrived earlier and earlier, plant catalogs later and later. Companies no longer needed to know what would sell to determine what to plant; they controlled the market so they could believe what they offered had to sell. Early ordering discounts disappeared, leaving only high volume order ones.

I spent this past New Years Day going through catalogs and looking out at snow that transformed the prairie into a tundra. I was down to four seed catalogs, two geared to commercial growers. One made clear with price increases that my business was more a nuisance than before, but it is still the only company that offers single color packages of annuals like larkspur and bachelor buttons. The other apparently figured the more sales the better. The third was filled primarily with purchased seeds, but its original varieties were still there to be ferreted out. The last, which once sold only its own seeds, started supplementing its choices a few years ago.

As for plants, I don’t think I have any choices left. I’m down to two outlets I trust, and only one has sent a catalog.

I contemplate the new year, and regret the losses of the past. I would like to add some new plants, but there’s no longer a Lambs catalog to study. I would like to buy some older varieties, but there’s no longer a Rocknoll or Mellinger. I would like to continue using Crimson Rambler morning glories and Florence bachelor buttons, but they’ve been dropped by the larger catalogs, and I have to scour the others.

I would like more of nature’s bounty, and business models dictate less is more.

Notes: The history of Ferry-Morse and Burpee are treated in Cameron, the story of a midwestern small town, available at http://www.xlibris.com/Cameron.htm .

Photograph: Snow early morning, 6 January 2007, taken through the porch window. Juniper and bunch grasses, with winterfat in back, sunflowers in front.

Christmas Cactus

What’s blooming outside: Nothing.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, Christmas cactus.

What’s green and visible in the area: Snow covers everything.

Animal sightings: Rabbit out last Sunday. Occasional small bird landed on Maximilian sunflower heads during week and leaned over to peck seeds.

Weather: Sunday melted snow from 20 December; about 3" left by Wednesday. Heavy snow fell Friday at dawn. Smaller flakes fell Saturday before dawn and continued all day; temperatures stayed warm enough that some snow melted below, while more accumulated above.

Weekly update: Holidays are so alluring with their Poinsettias and Christmas Cacti, which some are able to keep blooming year after year.

I finally succumbed. I rationalized that since it was a cactus, it should be able to survive the rugged conditions on my enclosed porch. Only when I got home did I read the label. Bay City Flower Company never actually called it a Christmas Cactus, just gave a Latin name, Schlumbergia Truncata, said it was the product of “worldwide hybridization” and left it to me to supply the associations, which of course, gullible consumer that I am, I did.

When the deep-rose-colored buds started to open, I discovered the flowers look like badly died carnations, with white centers and carmine tips. Fortunately, I normally see it from a distance, through the porch door, and the colors diffuse into an opalescent pink.

I can’t fault the grower for misrepresentation. Schlumbergia Truncata was the first of the genera to be sent to Europe in1819 from the Organ mountains north of Rio de Janeiro. Schlumbergia Russelliana followed in 1837, and, was inevitable in those days of experimentation, William Buckley introduced a cross of the two in 1852 for the Rollison Nurseries in England that became the first Christmas Cactus (Sclumbergia x Buckleyi).

From there it spread, not just through commerce, but through its own initiative. Schlumberigia has jointed stems that break easily, and root themselves in the litter that accumulates in tree branches. It quickly became a pass-along plant that moved from neighbor to neighbor, from generation to generation, as it had probably moved from tree to tree under the rainforest canopy.

Mark Zwonitzer tells us, Mollie Bays Carter’s “granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and great-great-granddaughters still have portions of a Christmas cactus she started more than a century ago, and to this day that plant blooms in houses up and down Poor Valley.”

It’s a shorter hop from Brazil to my New Mexico porch via England and Half Bay Moon, California, than from commercial greenhouses to her small Clinch Mountain hamlet in southwestern Virginia in the early twentieth century where hard cash was scarce. Mollie was 17 when she married Robert Carter to live in a log cabin with nothing covering the window opening in 1890. A few years later they moved to land given them by her father, and later still, to a house built for them by their son, Eck.

One can conjure any number of routes that plant took to arrive there. Mollie’s brother, Flanders Bays, ran singing schools and sold trees and shrubs for Larkey Nursey; later her son Pleasant joined him on the circuit. Either could have bought a plant at discount, or been given one. It’s the type of thing that might have been used as a sales prize.

One of Robert’s kin on his paternal grandmother’s side, John Smith, left for Richmond, a rail junction town in Indiana in the 1880s. Thereafter, whenever someone needed money he headed to Wayne County. Robert had gone before he married Mollie. Pleasant gave it a try in 1911. Anyone could have brought back a plant, and from there it could have spread from Bays to Bays, until it reached Mollie.

The plant may not really be 100 years old. Accurate chronology is often lost when grandchildren discuss a past before their memories. It could as easily date from some time in the 1920s when Eck was making good money working as a postal clerk on the railroad, or after Pleasant began making hillbilly records with his wife Sara and Eck’s wife Maybelle. A brilliant red flower blooming in December is just the sort of inexpensive luxury someone would buy who didn’t have a lot of money, but could afford a small indulgence.

The little plant could have followed any of the paths cash took to enter a subsistence community much like that of northern New Mexico before World War II. The important thing is that despite its commercial origins, the Christmas Cactus became a symbol of family tradition, not just among the Bays and Carters, but among families everywhere in this country who pass on cuttings.

In southwestern Virginia it became something more. Gardening may not have been indigenous there, but an appreciation of beauty was, especially for gifted voices. Mollie’s son and daughters-in-law became famous as A. P. and the Carter Family. Sara will always be remembered for putting together one of their most enduring songs from a miscellany of exotic plant images. “Wildwood Flower” is about love and beauty and music, and maybe that rare glimmer of winter color that was passed from hand to hand as precious a heritage as all the song signifies.

Notes: Zwonitzer, Mark with Charles Hirshberg, Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, 2002.

Photograph: Schlumbergia Truncata, 30 December 2006, with two flowers and some buds looking through the window to fresh snow.