the end of immortality

The last bloom on Iris 'Immortality'. It's still a treat to have bearded irises in September.

spectacles, feathers and cat piss

It's been one of those glorious autumn days here, warm but not hot, and with cool nights. On my daily walk through the neighborhood I noticed again this plant blooming in isolation at the roadside. It is quite a showy thing, with snowy white flowers. In the corner of my eye, it looked like an Iberis (candytuft). But candytuft would never survive on our (lack of) rainfall here. I think that it is Dimorphocarpa wislizeni (Spectacle pod). Don't you love the name? Dimorphocarpa. Two form'ed seed pods? Well they do have two parts to the silicle* which indeed looks like a pair of glasses or specs. The spectacle for me, however, was the flowers.



I finally took a shot at my neighbor's liatris, which I assume is the native Liatris punctata (spotted gayfeather). In the late afternoon, the flowers glow with vibrant color. Apparently the bees think so, too, and are attracted in numbers at any time of the day. Happily growing on precipitation alone, the leaves are attractive but not very remarkable tufts of green, growing from the underground rootstock in the spring, so slowly and unnoticeably as to be sneaky. Then in the fall, suddenly overnight, the flowers scream for attention. It's the botanical equivalent of someone sneaking up behind you and suddenly shouting.



I was in my garden today, getting annoyed (or pissed if truth be told) at the cat piss smell in my back yard. Whose #!^*&! cat has been peeing in my yard? =^..^= I remembered there was a cat in my front yard when I came home from a run the other night. He thought that he could hide in the dark shadows under the tree since it was well after sundown, but it was still bright enough that I could see him. I shook my finger at him and told him that he could chill in my garden as long as he didn't harm the plants. But in my back yard today, I didn't see any telltale mounds, and the gravel is not a particularly attractive place for cats to use as a litterbox. Maybe an hour passed with my annoyance increasing. Then it dawned on me to look over the fence. Yep, the chamisa has started to bloom.



* botany lesson (simply because it is such a cool word)
Silicle: a dry, dehiscent, 2-carpeled fruit that dehisces along two sutures, as a persistent partition (replum), and is as broad or broader than it is long, e.g. Brassicaceae. How cool is that?

colchicum

Colchicums are supposed to be so easy, but my one little plant has not been happy. Maybe I should try more of them in different parts of the garden.

eriogonum wrightii

I love the frothy white blooms of Eriogonum wrightii. They are particularly delightful at this time of the year, and especially in the early morning, when the white flowers catch the sunlight peeking over the mountains. I bought a few plants one year, but they turned out to be Eriogonum jamesii, which is a fine plant, but not what I expected. This plants grows all over the foothills here, and still looks like this despite very little water. My neighbor has a few plants in his front yard, and the plants have grown a few feet tall and bushy. I must admit that the wild plants are more compact and cute.

I treasure white flowers, and in native plants white flowers usually occurs in the night blooming plants. Datura wrightii, and Oenothera caespitosa come to mind. Many Yucca species flower in white, frequently tinted green, or with reddish brown outer petals. Some Asclepias bloom in white, although the broadleaf Asclepia latifolia that I mentioned previously is green.

I think that Eriogonum wrightii is an even nicer white than the E. ericifolia that I posted about a while ago.

signs of fall

It is commonly said here that Fall begins when the purple asters and the chamisa begin to bloom. Both are beginning to bloom, the purple asters a little ahead of the chamisa. The coyote gourd is starting to ripen, and the vines are withering. Sure signs of fall. That, and the leaves on my neighbor's ash tree are changing colors, as well as those in the park across the street.

opuntia

The lack of interest in the genus Opuntia in the landscapes of Albuquerque probably shouldn't be too surprising to me, given their prickly nature, but I'm always amazed that more people aren't more interested in this attractive and useful group.

In the winter, I'm impressed with the various colors of the pads: purple, red, orange, yellow, and green. At this time of year, I'm impressed with the variety of color and forms of the tunas, or fruit. I'm actually a little late photographing them, but they've been colorful for the last month.

All of these photographs are wild plants, and occur along one slope along a trail that I walk just about every week. The top photograph shows how different plants can form juxtaposing layers of color. The second photograph shows how attractive they are with other plants, such as the snakeweed blooming now. Above is a rose colored flask-shaped form.

Colors can range from this red...

To this lavender...

To this temptingly plump wine colored form. Seriously, don't you want to juice some?

There are also some orange forms.

Some plants are so prolific that the tunas give nice color to the landscape. Add to that their tastiness, and I wonder why people don't want more of them.

This rose colored form is just covered with fruit, and would be very ornamental in landscape design, even if the fruit is a bit small and dry for harvesting for food.

We plant many shrubs and trees simply for the color of the fall fruit (e.g. viburnum), so why not opuntia? It's true that planting them can be a prickly endeavor, but I'm surprised someone hasn't collected a variety of forms and made a garden from them. Just pick a favorite. I bet you can guess mine.

portrait day

Plant portraits are fun to do. They almost always reveal something about the flowers or plants that I did not realize before doing the portrait. New Mexico is said to be the epicenter of sunflower species, though I don't know them all. I think that this one is Helianthus annuus, the common annual sunflower, since it is growing roadside, and the immature flowers (not seen above) are not hairy as they are in H. petolaris. Look for the spider.

Eriogonum anuum (below) is a roadside plant and can be a garden weed since it self-seeds prolifically. Who knew that it was this beautiful? Eriogonum is of the family Polygonaceae which means "many knees" (named such due to the swollen joints), and Eriogonum itself means 'hairy knees." You may be interested to know that all polygonaceae have involucres, or a bract under the flower head.


I have mentioned before my fascination with milkweed flowers. Silly me, I thought that milkweed flowers were all pretty much the same, but I'm noticing now how different they all are. This one is Asclepias latifolia, the broadleaf milkweed. The leaves are indeed broad and cardboard stiff in texture. Although milkweeds are known for being the food source for monarch butterfly caterpillars, I have noticed that the broadleaf milkweed is extremely popular with aphid-farming ants. These are ants a good 3/8 inch long. Asclepias are in the family Apocynaceae, which contains plants such as Plumeria, Nerium, Stapelia, Carissa, and Pachypodium.

another perspective

I wasn't all that happy about some of the photos from yesterday, so I thought I'd try again today. It's interesting how different colors look depending on the light. I photographed Agastache 'Ava' as the sun started coming up this morning. The photo above is with the light coming in from behind the plant, but not yet direct light. The photo below is the same plant at the same time, but from the opposite direction. The colors look very different to me.

I think this is proof that you can't always go by catalog colors. Plants might look different even though the catalog may not be intentionally misrepresenting the plant. It might just be the quality of light when the photograph was taken.



The blooms on rose 'Winchester Cathedral' have lost most of their pinkness, and are now mostly white.


Salvia 'Indigo Spires' with a better background. This is the cutting that I struck last month. Already blooming.

what's blooming now

I was recently bemoaning the lack of flowers in my garden. During summer's heat, the plants go into a semi-dormancy, and flowering tapers off. Sometimes the flowering stops altogether as that plant's season is over, but even longer flowing plants have less/no flowers or smaller or shorter-lived flowers. I went out today, figuring I'd catch a few things in bloom to photograph, and I was surprised at how many things were blooming.

Salvia pitcheri is blooming, and better than I expected.


It has cooled down enough for Salvia 'Indigo Spires' to stop wilting and start blooming.

Salvia chamaedryoides is blooming again. It has bloomed all summer, but during July and August, the flowers were smaller and fewer.

Rose 'Winchester Cathedral' has put out a flush of flowers. It's supposed to be white, but given that it is a sport of pink 'Mary Rose', it has a tinge of pink.

Mariola looks boring in the picture. Who would have guessed what a delight it is? I've never watered this plant. It stays compact, doesn't require pruning, and the best part is that it positively glows in the evening and on moonlight nights, even compared to other gray-leafed plants. I've just put in two more.

Although Penstemon heterophyllus 'Margarita BOP' is a big mess, it has had a few flowers on it all summer from the remaining flower stems. The plants that were neatened up have no flowers. The problem is that it reblooms on the ends of old flower stems, so that the seed heads can't be trimmed off for neatness if you want rebloom.

Oregano 'Kent Beauty' has some colorful bracts hanging on.

Dittany of Crete has some nice bracts showing, and the bees love it.

I trimmed back Salvia coahuilensis when the stems got scraggly in July, but now it is blooming again. For such a vigorous plant, I was surprised it took so long.

Ceanothus 'Gloire de Versailles' is blooming again, with a few bunches of blooms the color of faded blue jeans. Really faded.

Chocolate flower has been blooming all summer, but now it is getting cool enough for me to go out and sniff it in the morning.

This seedling Agastache echoes the colors of the Sandia mountains.

The stalwart Agastache 'Firebird' in front of the trunk of my desert willow.

Agastache 'Ava' backlit by morning light. I hope it doesn't die like the other one. It's funny how this plant has a scraggly appearance for a while, but then when it starts blooming in earnest, it looks much fuller.