Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

Paul Zindel wrote the play, Paul Newman directed the movie and it looks like the European Space Agency is now going to show us how to grow marigolds on the moon.

The BBC reports:

A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface.

Wouldn't have spied this if not for our own Greg, who turned me on to http://pruned.blogspot.com/ which mixes plants with science, landscape architecture, environmental issues, all the juicy and provocative stuff. Check it out!

11:35 AM ET | 04-30-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

 

Behold, Sumptuous Snapshots

A recent walk through the Talking Plants photo garden reveals that your eyes are keen and your imaginations fired. How I treasure you roving troubadours of spring.

Another TP regular didn't have to go very far to find stunning spring ephemerals. The prolific and talented Aleth11 just had to wander into the woods behind her house to behold the sparkle of the truly wondrous Sanguinaria canadensis (that link will take you to the bloodroot profile from my book).

Finally, though there's not a whole lot new to be said about tulips (after moving to the NW, I'm pretty much ready to give them up, except for the unimproved smallest species), TP friend Troye captured a few lovely shots that pretty much tell the story of why they'll always be a market for tulips.

2:17 PM ET | 04-25-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

 

Doyenne of Dirt Comes Clean

Consider me humbled.

You may have noticed I'm not the hippest blogster in the bunch. In other words, if it's hot and happening in the blog world, you're NOT likely to read about it here.

Believe me, I'm not bragging. I get that my creds as a blogger are slightly pathetic, possibly even considered rude, if the standard of gentility is linking to others.

So consider me a plant in need of sunlight and nourishment and help me out here. What are the enlightening, surprising, irreverent and relevant plant-related blogs I need to read?

12:02 PM ET | 04-25-2008 | permalink | comments (14) | e-mail post

 

If Dogwoods Made Music...

...what instruments would they be, what songs would they sing?

It's a question that floats along city streets and woodlands this time every year, and an answer that changes with the light and time of day. Sometimes I hear a solo oboe, at other times a Baroque instrumental fugue.

I know this much, it's as loud and sublime as it gets during this busting-out-all-over week I'm spending in D.C. Which reminds me of a few musical moments I collected a few years back; perhaps you'll give them a listen and let me know if they sing for you.

11:29 PM ET | 04-23-2008 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post

 

Remind Me, Why Do We Hate Dandelions?

It's a banner year for dandelions around Portland, I don't ever remember them looking so fulsome and jaunty before. They're strewn like wildflowers along parking strips, lawns and empty lots (the few that are left here in Boomtown) and by and large, their arrangements are quite picturesque.

So what's the deal? Why do millions of Americans prefer using 2,4-D to kill them instead of making dandelion fritters and enjoying the show?

No doubt the answer dates back to the heyday of the British lawn, rhapsodized and defended by no less a plant lover than one of my favorite garden writers, Anna Pavord who wrote, "dandelions are bullies. They simply had to go". At least she had the good grace to feel guilty about buying a weedkiller, but buy it and publicize it she did.

Perhaps a later blog needs to throw open the debate on 2,4-D, still very much in ample supply on the garden shelf but so clearly deserving of more consumer dissuasion. But the focus here is on the dandelion itself.

It's been two decades since the New York Times reported on the "weirdo" Maine farmer who canned dandelion greens. Today, there are dandelion cookbooks, dandelion dinners (strictly upmarket), dandelion blogs and in honor of Passover, Jewish dandelion news:

Conveying the misery of the Israelites' slavery, bitter herbs vary from place to place and even from family to family. Ashkenazim favor freshly ground or sliced, fresh horseradish root, bottled horseradish, or romaine lettuce. Sephardim prefer bitter greens such as endive, escarole, chicory, sorrel, arugula, dandelion, or watercress.

Nearing holiness, let us not forget that dandelions make wishes come true. You just have to do is put your lips together and blow. But if you really can't bear them yet know better than to use herbicides (what, me, guilt you?) garden writer Anne Lovejoy suggests you love them to death.

6:51 PM ET | 04-17-2008 | permalink | comments (12) | e-mail post

 

I Sing the Wildflower Blue

Never mind the body electric, mine doesn't seem to much sizzle and sing anymore, but it's no small compensation to have the time, patience and appetite for hanging out with wildflowers which, this very week along the Columbia Gorge, have burst into audacious blues. We're talking a color wave of genera that includes nothing less than lupine (a dozen different species!), forget-me-not, larkspur (a half dozen!) and pools of multi-hued camassia which I most enjoy in bud.

Camas is the Pacific Northwest for many people, certainly for my neighbor's mother who saw fields of them when she arrived in Oregon (a young woman traveling alone from Arkansas) and decided this was where she belonged. And camas has kept untold thousands of indigenous people alive over the millennia, even the not-so-indigenous as described in this excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes:

On their trek to the west coast, Lewis and Clark saw vast meadows filled with the blue flowers of camas, noting that they looked like lakes in the distance. The hospitable indigenous people rescued the expedition from starvation offering them, among other foods, baked camas bulbs...Humans cannot easily digest raw camas blubs, so they were always cooked first...No matter how they were prepared, poor Meriwether Lewis found the bulbs indigestible, but they helped keep the Corps of Discovery alive...

...unlike the meadow death camas, Zigadenus venenosus, which is also blooming this week. One of my field guides, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest notes that much to their later upset, members of the L&C expedition ate this bulb as well.

So, I showed you, now you show me. Natives in the woods, on the roads, by the stream? Post those pix at the Talking Plant Flickr Group and I'll share the best on the blog. If you're not flickr friendly yet, here's how.

1:04 PM ET | 04-15-2008 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

 

Dog Bites Hummer (almost)

In the very likely event you missed this HBird post by Anthony Mann on April 1st (nah, it couldn't be a joke), I thought you'd get a kick out of it, particularly you people with black labs.

Ketzel,

We had one of these cool little nests on our porch one summer, and watched three little beaks being fed by their parents for several weeks. All our neighbors even came for a looksee, it was simply amazing.

Well, I was there the day the little hummers decided to fly, and for all the effort that the parents put in to getting to this one day, well let me just say it was over in a blur. On their first flight out of their nests baby humming birds simply leave and never look back at their homes or their parents. Ours flitted about on the porch for a moment while they figured out their flight controls and then two of them hovered into the yard and disappeared.

The third, well he got an unexpected mid-flight dog bath.

Our black lab, which was sleeping on the porch while all this was happening, suddenly awoke to the sound of something buzzing around in front of his face, and so he instinctively snapped and much to our horror caught the little bird inside his mouth! Luckily, labs are known for their soft touch and we managed to get him to cough up a wet, drool-covered baby hummingbird. After a wash and a tissue dry, the little bird briefly scratched his head and cleaned off his beak with his foot and then he buzzed away into the sky.

That was the beginning of one of those really great summers!

Interestingly enough, my experience has been nothing like Anthony's. The birds are still in my garden and to my surprise, extremely comfortable around my own wildlife. My alleged labradoodle was lying on the ground right beneath her, and the beagle...well, the beagle...let's just say she's not something birds need worry about.

So...rats with wings...anyone get why my (as yet unnamed) colleague calls them that?

8:42 PM ET | 04-12-2008 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

 

Hummingbirds: Name That Syndrome

I've refrained from mentioning my little "rats with wings" (yes, that's what an NPR colleague calls them, and with good reason, she says) until all the emotion died down. Not your enthusiasm, no, nor your pleas that I get back to plants (which I did), but my own sadness since the morning I woke up and found a syndrome in the place of nesting birds.

The good news is that I got to watch each of my two little tidbits flitter around the nest once they'd fledged, under the strict supervision of Mama. To witness such intimacy, so much flapping to get from branch to nearby branch ...

And the way Mama remained within inches of their every move once beyond the nest! I even got to see her feed them while she hovered mid-air, though in truth her maneuver reminded me of a far less romantic aerial refueling.

One of the sweetest things I witnessed was when the little guy left behind was rejoined by her/his nestmate after a long, cold day alone (how I suffered for her!). The next day, the proverbial nest was empty, and has remained so. But to my great joy, the family remains in my garden playing hide, seek and eat while enjoying the shelter of my dense Pittosporum 'Tall'n'Tough' as its primary habitat.

Though I am reluctant to call too much attention to "what the birds have taught me", I have had quite a few more wake-up calls re:turning fantasy and projection into fact. Shortly after baby #2 fledged, I couldn't find any of the birds. Nowhere. Not one. And earlier that same day I'd heard a scream, like a baby but not quite. So I immediately concluded the entire family had been massacred by a murder of crows.

Not.

Also, as you might remember, I was all in a flutter that one of the three original babies was dead. Another fearful projection made real. See for yourself, and blame me not! I am, alas, morbidly human.

Thanks to all of you who have encouraged me to hang with the hummers. I am late to the birding party, but I get it. I get it.

2:09 AM ET | 04-10-2008 | permalink | comments (31) | e-mail post

 

Mystery Plant Alert

Little did I know when I grabbed this shot that it would end up making me nuts.

So far, two esteemed colleagues have offered two different opinions about what this native NW perennial is: a forget-me-not relative (think blue) or a composite (think generic yellow daisy). I'm skeptical that these buds will open to yellow; admittedly my first thought was a kind of borage, but now I'm convinced it's not. Can you help?

2:06 PM ET | 04- 9-2008 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

 

An Avalanche of Yellow Lilies

Despite several downpours and hailstorms a day, we've also had ample sunbreaks (I'd never heard that term till I moved to Oregon), which means the forests and mountainsides of the Columbia River Gorge are officially in flower.

The grass widows (formerly known as Sisyrinchium, now split off as Olsynium) are just about done in, but the camassia has yet to begin; larkspur and lupine, except in the odd hot spot, are still playing it safe.

Not so the glacier lilies (aka yellow avalanche lily), no ma'am, no way!!!

In case you've never met, Erythronium is a fabulous genus and a very garden-friendly plant, with lovely, pendulous flowers ranging from white to yellow to pink (not all in one flower, of course). It also comes in species with showy, mottled leaves.

And while I'm making introductions, consider spending a little time with Keith Wiley, one of horticulture's most electric plantsman. Several years ago, Keith visited the Pacific Northwest searching for erythronium. Just an update since he was last here; Keith is longer with The Garden House, but did show up recently in the Royal Horticulture Society Journal.

11:54 PM ET | 04- 6-2008 | permalink | comments (1) | e-mail post

 

Hummingbirds: The Video!

OK, this may be my penultimate post about the hummingbirds recently hatched outside my window. My wonderful web producer (he of the excrutiatingly high standards) has softly suggested I consider blogging about something else. Like — just an idea here — plants?

And indeed, I will (any day now!), but first let me invite you to see life through my eyes: standing on the front porch, crouched in a fairly miserable position, camera aimed at the action in the nest.

Here it is, unedited and unemcumbered (oh shut up already) ... the video:

11:18 AM ET | 04- 3-2008 | permalink | comments (25) | e-mail post

 

Hummingbird Eyes

Watch a few young hummers in the nest long enough and they're bound to look your way ...

11:05 AM ET | 04- 3-2008 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

 

Down A Hummer

I've over-reacted before but for the life of me I can't find hummingbird baby #3. I don't know whether he's infinitely smaller and just not visible, whether she's been smothered beneath the other two, or whether it's lying somewhere dead on the round (I don't wanna look).

Even when mama comes by to feed, I don't see a third beak. Not good.

However, I both witnessed and captured on film one of the two happy bruisers trying out his wings. As soon as my blog producer shows me how to post video, I will.

As for that Riders in the Storm moment I promised (you guessed right! and wrong!), said producer pronounced it sub-prime so you won't be seeing it (his point being, you can't see it too well anyway). I am hoping he'll like the little wing-beater better.

Meanwhile...let's compare and contrast. From my Hummingbird folder (more than 300 pix and useless little movies), here's mama from March 20th.

And below, from April 1st, the ever-dominant sibling #1; very consistent behavior from the first time his beak popped up out of the nest.

I've actually managed to drag myself away from the beasties today since it's time to practice that separation stuff before everyone leaves home. We got a fabulous note yesterday on that very subject with an irresistible twist, can't wait to post it. Speaking of which, we are having posting problems on the site; I apologize that your messages from the last few days haven't gone up yet, any day now...

7:38 PM ET | 04- 1-2008 | permalink | comments (0) | e-mail post