Blue is a very subjective color. Remember that song "Lavender Blue"? That's a song that always annoyed me. If lavender is truly blue, then why is there a color called lavender? Maybe we should sing a song like "Oranges Yellow". Lavenders primarily do not produce blue flowers, although there are many that are blue-violet. What I consider blue is what most people call violet-blue. True blue is a paler color, with less red/pink in it. True blue is very rare in the plant world, what most people consider blue tends toward purple or mauve. This becomes particularly evident when trying to photograph "blue" flowers. What looked like blue to the eye ends up looking like purple, pink or mauve to the camera. This is said to be because the flowers reflect far red and infrared, which our eyes can not see, but the camera records as red (on film at least).
In 1999 Christopher Lloyd wrote in Horticulture magazine, "Everybody loves blue. Blue skies, blue eyes (at least in Nordic and Anglo-Saxon countries), candor, innocence, all such connotations. Blue flowers are in such demand, are such certain sellers that the nurserypeople have to stretch the meaning of the word to its snapping point. More than half the flowers described in seed lists and plant catalogs as blue are some shade of mauve or purple. Truly blue flowers are few." Think of what is advertised as a blue rose and you get the point.
In my "blue" garden, I consider blue not only true blue, but I allow, and even favor, those flowers that are violet-blue instead of true blue. Most people think of delphiniums, himalayan blue poppies (meconopsis), and corydalis when considering blue flowers, but these will not grow in the vagaries of Albuquerque's climate. But there are bulbs that will.
Two bulbs are blooming in my yard now, that make me say, "Wow, that's blue".
The first is muscari. I don't remember what muscari I planted back in October, when in a fury of plant madness I bought two varieties of muscari. In this mad effort I'm sure one of them was a variety of M. armeniacum, but that's about as good as saying I bought something labeled "Grape Hyacinth", which is the common name. All I know now, is that one is blooming in the typical way, and the other is just starting to come out and has larger and fewer leaves (several bulbs with only one leaf), and with a larger bloom. Perhaps it is M. latifolium.
When I was a child, I didn't like grape hyacinths. They had nowhere the fragrance of true hyacinths, and although they had a richer blue color the flowers were small. The ones in my yard were planted at the forgotten back of the rose bed, and came up every year a bit sparsely, not at all like the dense waves of blue you see in the magazines. They survived from year to year, but that's as much as I cared to know about them. But now that I don't live on the mild coast of California, things that can thrive in Albuquerque's sometimes challenging climate are valuable. When I saw a friend's yard with a massing of muscari, I knew I had to find a place for at least a few.
The second is Ipheion, also known as Blue Star Flower. I don't like this name, even though it is apt, for it always reminds me of Isotoma (Blue Star creeper) instead, or Amsonia (Blue Star). I planted this in my garden as a child as well, and it was very easy. I didn't like the garlic smell of the crushed leaves (hey, as a child, you can't leave well enough alone), and even though the flowers were delightful, I didn't want an "onion" in my 3'x5' plot that I was allowed. When it multiplied the next year, I rooted every one of them out. But times changed and I grew older. A friend's shrub border in Albuquerque has a clump of Ipheion in it, and even though it is uncared for, without irrigation except what drips off the roof, and growing under the shade of a Philadelphus microphylla, blooms reliably every year. Every spring, I look for it to bloom. A couple of years ago I decided it was time to plant some of my own. I didn't want some of the anemic pale blue varieties that I had seen around town. In the small area that I have, I wanted something that really said "blue". I considered some named varieties. I considered 'Wisely Blue' which is said to be variable in its shade of blue, but "prolific". I also considered 'Jessie' which is said to be the darkest blue. I settled instead on 'Rolf Fiedler' which had a more cheerful shade of blue (at least in the catalogs).
The growth habit in my yard is different than that of my friend's. In the shade of the shrubs, the growth is weak and flowers sparse. Those planted in the sun bloom a week earlier, and have multiplied much more rapidly, but the leaf tips burn. Of those planted under a redbud tree, only one survived, and hasn't multiplied or bloomed.
It's funny that every time I look at the blooms now, I think of my childhood perspectives. How awful that I thought of the Muscari and the Ipheion as weedy, and rooted them out! I now see them as a delight.
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