Author of 'Exodus' Honored by Plant?

Leon Uris (1924-2003) wrote the epic Exodus about the founding of the State of Israel. You probably never read it but you might have seen the movie with Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint and the ill-fated Sal Mineo (poor guy, a roller coaster ride through Hollywood, then murdered during a botched burglary in his late 30's).

Until the end of the 20th century, I thought author Uris had a plant that was named in his honor: Leonotis leonurus. I figured the change of spelling at the end - from "is" to "us" - was some Latin mannerism.

WRONG.

As featured in last week's blog, here's a close-up of a leonotis flower head. Despite my tendancy towards hyperbole, come late fall, this plant lives up to the hype.

photo credit: Andy Carvin, NPR

 

Leonotis leonurus is a South African mint family member otherwise known as Lion's Tail or Wild Dagga, though I've never heard it called anything but leonotus (leeya NOtice). A valuable medicinal (I think it's particularly popular in South America), the trade calls it a "tender perennial" so you'll still buy it in the hopes that it won't die come winter, but for most of you it's going to be an annual.

Give your leonotis space and sun and behold summer in October.

photo credit: Andy Carvin, NPR

 

I garden in Z8 where my leonotis has been surprisingly reliable year after year. Or it was before Zoe Mae moved in. Alas, she has chosen that exact spot where dear Leon is growing to plant her four padded feet and stare down anything that walks down the street.

How 'bout those buds? Like I said, whorls in tiers and a square stalk.

photo credit: Velveteen Swirl

 

This, of course, is unacceptable. Such a plant deserves much, much better, simply incomparable for the late fall garden when everyone but salvia's petered out.

And it's color! Pure, thirst-quenching orange. If you didn't know better, you'd think the plant in full flower was a fake: densely clustered spider-legged whorls of flowers growing in tiers along a square-stemmed stalk.

Check and see what others' experience with this plant has been in your area if you're skeptical, but I can't imagine you'll regret giving it a try. Once upon a time I tried a cultivar named 'Staircase' or 'Ladder' or Giraffe Legs', who the hell remembers, it was a towering 8' but way too lanky.

Stick with Leon's namesake.

12:29 PM ET | 11-13-2007 | permalink | comments (8) | e-mail post

Maypop Memories

The gig's up. The mystery's solved. The Flickr Pix of the Week was Passiflora 'Incense'.

One of this hybrid's parents is commonly known as Maypop, and just about everything I know about the plant -- also known as Passiflora incarnata -- I found out this week from you.

All I'd hoped was to tease out a few passiflora experts with our Talking Plants Flicker Pix of the Week. And I did find a few.

But I'm happy to report I got way more than I bargained for. Click here and you will, too.

For instance: Chris has learned not to kill caterpillars (right, Chris?) because they could turn into Gulf Fritillary butterflies; Jason uses the plant's flowers to make tea; Michelle used to pretend the flowers were ballerinas, with three sets of arms and three heads; and Serene has a recipe for passiflora juice.

In addition: it's the Tennessee state wildflower, it's rich with Christian symbolism, and it does a wicked imitation of that creature immortalized in the 1958 classic, The Purple People Eater.

Finally, I'm aware of at least one person in our community who did NOT use a search engine to come up with the mystery plant's name. Congrats, Tai Haku.

I send you off into the weekend with the maypop memories of a Glasgwegian. Here's the last two stanzas of Where The Passion Flower Grows, by a fellow flower-lover, Charles M. Moore.

Feel your mind exploding
in the heavy scented air
experience the shiver
as you're captured unaware

A little touch of heaven
where imagination flows
the valley in the garden
where the passion flower grows.

10:18 AM ET | 09- 7-2007 | permalink | comments (2) | e-mail post

Can You Name This Bard of Berries?

I picked up blueberries last night at an undisclosed farm market outside Pittsfield, MA. YUCH. Let this not be a harbinger of local berries to come. For today, then, I take solace in the visual beauty and poetic possibilities of the fruit.

When the market produce disappoints, there's always the macro lens.

photo credit: dklimke

 

And now for the poetic challenge. Without using Google (restrain yourself, please!), who wrote the poem about today's featured fruit that these lines are taken from?

"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they're ebony skinned:
The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned."

On-your-honor winner gets a Talking Plants keyring. On my honor.

2:04 PM ET | 07-23-2007 | permalink | comments (13) | e-mail post