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| red form (red stem) |
It's always a surprise and a bit of an annoyance when I read in catalogs or on the web how boring
Nolina texana is. It is evergreen (sigh!), it is grassy (yawn!), it is a tough native that needs no irrigation but not very impressive (snooze!). Yes, it is all of these, but boring? I beg to differ.
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| white form (purple buds) |
What plant in this climate is evergreen and grassy? Grasses here are either brown in the winter (dormant), or dead (annuals or dead tropicals). I suppose you could claim that
Yucca glauca is evergreen and grassy, but I think that calling it grassy is a big stretch. And before you claim that pampas grass (
Cortaderia selloana) is evergreen and grassy, I'm just going to stop you with a "no." Enough said.
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| blue form (flowers open) |
In the winter, when there is so much brown, you have to appreciate its green. It is a perfect textural counterpoint to the other evergreen native plants that don't need much if any irrigation, opuntia, juniper, oak, and pinon.
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| red form (green stem) |
People seem to ignore the flowers of this plant. But it does bloom, for a couple weeks in the spring, with 2-3 foot spikes densely packed tiny lily-like flowers.
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| blue form, open flowers |
These spikes are attractive from their emergence, to the dried finished stalks (although you may want to trim these if they start looking untidy).
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| white form curly leaf tips |
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| white form |
Granted, the flowers don't last very long only a couple of weeks, but we have bulbs that bloom for only a week and then we put up with the dying foliage and bare expanse of ground for the summer. And sure, from a distance the flowers are not as impressive as a tulip, but they have a beauty of their own.
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| blue form, flower detail |
Nolina's evergreen leaves have structure throughout the year. The flowers come in a range of shades as shown, from blue-purple, to reddish to white, although the buds are the most colorful, usually opening to white.
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| purple form, in bud |
Perhaps best of all, the leaves of many plants end in a cute twisting curlique. Not boring at all.
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| blue form curly leaf tips |
I think the bigger yawner are half-dead lollipop trees, potentillas, or maidengrass.
ReplyDeleteBTW - Cortederia is evergreen in Abq, and this is the 1st winter in 19 I have seen it go brown. But it is a serious water sucker in our arid climate, not far behind all the favorite stuff in Tanoan, High (un)Desert, etc.
I like Nolina, too. Along with its' companion plant species, Beargrass speaks of how much different Abq is than Santa Fe in ecology.
I never noticed the different color and foliage variations you pointed out, only the pink vs. white ones. You are onto something, Mr Wong!