Heavy Metal Hits

Metallic blue is a preposterous color which behaves badly in front of a camera. Which makes the genus Eryngium the naughtiest of them all. So bravo to our Talking Plants Flickr Pix of the Week winner, who we trust did not doctor this photo of Eryngium alpinum -- the so-called alpine sea holly -- posing here in all its impossibly blue-osity.

Thank you Canadian TP friends Rob and Sharon Illingworth for posting this little portrait of E. alpinum, a perennial that likes its feet in fast-draining soil, its head in full summer sun, and its neighbors some breathing space away.

photo credit: Rob Illingworth

 

I find this genus so captivating, its infertile blue bracts (the feathery bits) so ridiculously showy, its color so consistently elusive, and its demeanor so percussive, I thought I'd regale you with a couple more close-ups. Ready, Mr. DeMille?

This was taken in Switzerland more than two decades ago. It's a decidedly more purple look at Eryngium alpinum, the same plant as our Flickr Pix of the Week.

photo credit: Dr. Robert Thomas and Margaret Orr copyright California Academy of Sciences

 

I'll wait for you while you check out this gorgeous shot also taken in a Swiss meadow but just last year.

Awesome, right?

OK ... let's give the alpine eryngiums a rest, and move on to a different species (stop groaning). Drumroll, please...

Killer photo, isn't it? Now take a close look at those bracts -- the Elizabethan collars around the fertile flowers -- and check out the textural difference between this puppy and the two above. So cool!

photo credit: htop

 

What, you're not awed? I'll find your weakness yet.

Maybe it's native plants, in which case, meet the little guy from Kansas, E. leavenworthii. This is one anatomically nice annual. You'll have to tell me whether it works as a garden plant -- maybe in a meadow? -- but at least you Kansans, Texans and Oklahomans get to tiptoe through fields of it in summer.

If I might quote from the photographer, botanist Tom Clothier, "Eryngium leavenworthii is nothing short of fantastic with its metallic purple stems and flowers". He also notes that the flowers' stamens come out as bright blue filaments, which you can see in the still-blooming flower heads, the ones that look spray painted. photo credit: Tom Clothier

 

OK, I'm just about done, but I must point out that even Shakespeare took note of eryngium.

"Rain me eringoes...." says Falstaff of the candied eryngium root. Turns out it was both a celebrated sweet, and an aphrodisiac.

1:55 AM ET | 08-30-2007 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

Colorado Grass Controversy Take Two

Rather than sending you on a hyperlink hunt, I'm going to recap a continuing blog saga.

Talking Plants reader Luanne Stehno lives in the Denver 'burb of Arvada. Several years ago, she entered a city-sponsored contest and won a xeriscape garden. This past summer, someone complained that Luanne's mass planting of blue grama grass was way too high.

And indeed it was, according to Arvada city code, which places a height limit of 12 inches on "grass and weeds". And 12 inches is typically as high as blue grama gets, according to the city that sanctioned its planting.

Unfortunately, two things happened.

For one, Arvada had a particularly wet growing season, resulting in exuberant grass growth.

For another, plants can't read.

Maria VanderKolk, assistant to the Arvada's city manager, sent Talking Plants a very thorough letter detailing Arvada's side of the story. We thank her for pointing out that Arvada "wholeheartedly supports lawns planted with drought-tolerant varieties," adding, "we also believe those lawns should be maintained."

Call me wild and crazy but this whole affair seems a brilliant opportunity for Arvada -- a city that prides itself on being named "Colorado Energy Champion" of 2006 -- to ditch its landscape code in favor of one that addresses a more 21st century aesthetic and resource awareness. Already, as Ms. VanderKolk points out, Arvada shows more flexibility than nearby Denver, whose tolerance for seas of Colorado's state grass stops at 6 inches.

No doubt changing city code will be an enormous hassle; I don't underestimate the effort. But I'll bet lots of Arvadians will step up to the challenge.

Just ask Luanne Stehno.

Under loud protest, Luanne Stehno has since trimmed her grama grass meadow. "We have to be accepting of different-looking landscapes," she says. "This is what the future is going to be."

Courtesy Luanne Stehno

 

11:54 PM ET | 08-26-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Going Gazaniac

What about those concentric circles and that geometrically perfect face?

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

Now that it's been established that I can't tell an annual gazania from a tuberous dahlia, I'd like to introduce you to a straight species gazania -- unadulterated by hybridizing -- as she once appeared to me in her native South Africa.

Here's some more gazanias in the wild. If you've ever wondered what "natural" planting looks like read it and weep: No artifice, just art.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

On my honor, here's an untouched pix of the South African native, Gazania rigida. Like many native gazanias, she's a perennial in the daisy family, and smolders like coal as she sprawls across the landscape.

On this particular trip to the western Cape in September 2002, the plants stretched every which way along roadsides and across fields. I fondly recall a group of us even botanizing in acres of garbage.

I only bring this long ago but oh! so! delicious! trip to your attention because I'm just back from hiking in New Mexico's Jemez Mountains, where I saw wildflower displays reminiscent of South Africa's western Cape.

Not the same brilliant colors, of course, and certainly not the same flabbergasting array of species; I'm talking 'bout the sheer acreage of bloom. At one point my friend Bill and I were standing in a flowering field of soft violet Erigeron divergens at least 200 ft long and 100 ft wide!

3:39 PM ET | 08-22-2007 | permalink | comments (5) | e-mail post

It's Flickr Pix Monday, Do You Know Where Your Dahlias Are?

So let's start off this deliciously wet Monday (at least here in Oregon) with the Talking Plants Flickr Pix of the Week...

This week's photographer is Steve Garfield, who shot right down into the kisser of a pinwheeled dahlia. At least that's my best guess what the flower is, based on its foliage. Any dissent in the ranks?

photo credit: Steve Garfield

 

Good idea to get your flower in focus if you're going to submit to the Talking Plants Flickr Pix. (Clearly, I have no business being in the club.)

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

And speaking of dahlias, there is none finer (nor more ubiquitous) than the red alarm in a dark night that is the dark-foliaged dahlia, 'Bishop of Llandaff'. Here's a quick shot just scored from the dripping front garden.

Meanwhile, amidst this jumble of August growth you might see the red flowers from a flowering shrub known as Abutilon in the background, left.

Care to offer your fellow gardeners your favorite dahlia picks with pix?

4:32 PM ET | 08-20-2007 | permalink | comments (17) | e-mail post

Colorado State Grass Unacceptable For Garden!

I really don't want to become the stifle-a-yawn Lawn blog. But I got an e-mail from Luanne Stehno and you've got to hear this story.

She lives in the Denver burb, Arvada. She wins the city's 2004 This Old Yard essay contest which asked contestants to describe why it was smart to conserve water in the landscape. What she wins is a new garden, designed by the supremely credentialed landscape architect Ken Ball, who's been associated with Denver Water (the folks that coined the term "xeriscape") for who knows how long.

The garden is a great success: lovely plants, green lawn, very little water. So great, it's considered a prototype for what can be done by the average water-wise homeowner. And one of the stars of the show is Colorado's venerable state grass, Bouteloua gracilis, commonly known far and wide as blue grama grass.

Here's Luanne Stehno's lush, three year old landscape featuring flowering perennials and a flowing, blue gama grass lawn. The photo was taken this past June.

photo credit: Luanne Stehno

 

Last month, a neighbor of Ms. Stehno's called the City of Arvada to complain that the blue grama grass looked tall and weedy. Guess what happened? No, no one took the neighbor aside to explain that this was a demonstration garden, a view into the future, and would she like to learn more about xeriscaping?

Not even close.

Instead, Luanne Stehno was asked to cut her blue grama grass down to city-ordained size.

Well, the story's just rolling along like endless fields of Kentucky bluegrass. Neither Luanne or Ken Ball are going to go quietly. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, for more background, here's the Denver CBS affiliate's story, and here's an item from the Rocky Mountain News.

12:32 AM ET | 08-15-2007 | permalink | comments (20) | e-mail post

Your Photo Here!

Oh the fame! and exposure! that await you if your stunning gardenesque moment is chosen as the Talking Plants Flickr Pix of the Week!

Or not. But at least it gives me something to post this dog-day of an August morning.

This week's photographer is Elizabeth Yu Ellsworth, who captured this inner moment in the life of a flowering vine. And we'll have no political discourse, thank you, about this often unstoppable genus, Ipomoea, the morning glory.

photo credit: Elizabeth Yu Ellsworth

 

Seriously, folks, there will be one photographer each week posted Monday morning, chosen from pix posted at the Talking Plants Flickr Group.

Congratulations, Elizabeth Yu Ellsworth.

And now, on another note ... TP is taking orders for Rove farewell bouquets. What would you put in yours? ;-}

8:55 AM ET | 08-13-2007 | permalink | comments (10) | e-mail post

Take This Lawn And XERISCAPE!

Well, what a lively discussion we've been having about lawns in Arizona. I've had to beg for kindness, edit out four-letter words, interrupt with a little levity ... yes indeed, this one had legs.

So what did John Tynan and Rene Gutel do after the the City of Tempe popped 'em one on the nose?

They xeriscaped, what else ...

Working with a professional gardener who knew what and what not to plant, our favorite sod slackers are now enjoying the minimalism of a xeriscaped front yard.

photo credit: John Tynan

 

If you'd like to know how John and Rene went from scorched lawn to desert bloom, check out the family's blog.

And yes, folks, I heard you loud and clear: I'll pitch a story about xeriscaping to She Who Must Be Obeyed (aka, my editor) and see if we can't get one on the air.

11:27 AM ET | 08- 7-2007 | permalink | comments (27) | e-mail post

Take This Lawn and Kill It!

And now this, ripped from a private communique to Talking Plants:

John Tynan and his wife Rene live in Tempe, Ariz., where the operative word is "drought". Being of reasonably common sense, they know better than to waste precious resources on maintaining a grass lawn.

However ... their preferred choice of landscape -- let's call it Postmodern Parched -- has offended their lushly-lawned neighbors, who evidentally reported the Tynans to the Tempe Taste Police.

Are you among the undesirables who've been warned about their ugly front yards?

photo credit: John Tynan

 

Let's examine the evidence. First, the Tynans' front yard, featured below, at first glance not a particularly offensive sight, but that's clearly in the eye of the beholder.

Postmodern Parched: the Tynan yard as it looked when the city busted them

photo credit: John Tynan

 

Now let's look at the offended neighbor's yard, where someone clearly knocks his or herself out to have a "perfect" (also in the eyes of the beholder) lawn.

Talking about his next door neighbor's landscape, John Tynan says, "It's a beautiful lawn. But is it right for Arizona?" Hmmm. Me thinks he knows the answer.

photo credit: John Tynan

 

I'll have an update soon on what John and Rene have done to maintain calm in Tempe. But theirs is not a new story. In fact, I was surprised these kinds of notices were still going out, particularly when no mess is apparent. So tell me: Has this happened to you?

10:17 AM ET | 08- 2-2007 | permalink | comments (86) | e-mail post