firebird

Every year I say that I am going to take out Agastache 'Firebird'. Each year, 'Firebird' ends up staying. It's been easy enough to take out the other agastaches. They don't bloom, or they are scraggly, or the brittle stems tear off the plant in the gusts of wind leaving ragged holes in the plant, or they just randomly decide to die. They are no-brainers.

'Firebird' has its challenges as well. First of all, it dies to the ground in winter in a very visually prominent place in my garden, so I've been thinking about replacing it with something with more winter interest. It has been getting bigger each year, so that although when I first planted it, the several plants were a uniform 16 inches tall, now it is about three feet tall and not in balance with the other plants surrounding it. The color is a bit problematic as well, on hot days the flowers fade to a nondescript pale orange/tan.

This year, with a number of hot weeks without rain, 'Firebird' had few flowers and were of that faded color. The lower leaves turned yellow and dropped, leaving a stemmy-looking plant, rather than a mass.

But then it rained, and rained quite a bit. Gradually, over a week or so, so that I hardly noticed at first, more flowers appeared on the spikes, until the plants are veritable flower factories (as you can see above). The hummingbirds and nectar sipping insects are ecstatic. From inside the house, the color now stronger, works again.

Truth be told, 'Firebird' is my most reliable agastache. Despite the lack of irrigation, the plants survive, and I probably should be impressed that it had any flowers at all, rather than being disappointed. It comes back every year without fail, unlike the other agastaches which sometimes suddenly collapse and die in the middle of the growing season, for unknown reasons. It always produces flowers, unlike the other agastaches that have put out some weird blind bracts instead. The stems stay firmly attached despite fierce winds. It is a hybrid of native A. rupestris (with A. coccinea). It barely self-seeds at all, unlike the prolific seedlings of other agastache. It blooms for almost 4 months, during the late summer and into fall, perhaps the most difficult time of year to get blooms here.

It looks like I'm keeping it.