Hymenocallis × festalis - unsexy but cool

This plant, sold in the trade as Peruvian daffodil, is not as sexy as many of the species types that are now available, which other blog contributors and I collect. Its foliage isn't as dark or as broad and its flowers are less delicate and interesting.

It is however, very easy and reliable in sun to part sun and in regular soil or soil that is wet. Mine sits tight until the first wet period late in Spring or Summer. Then it quickly displays leaves followed by these flowers.

Unlike some of my other hymenocallis, there is no repeat ever for me. That's OK since the show is for a fairly long time and it is sufficiently impressive. I get one show for about three weeks starting in May or June depending largely on rainfall.

So, it may not be so sexy, but I'll keep growing it.

Wie gehts, Ich komme aus Stuttgart.

Some plants look better in catalogs then in the garden. Some are so exacting as to their requirements, that they never reach their potential.

Canna 'Stuttgart' has for years been that plant. It scorches, is a favorite place for leaf rollers and is all around ugly when unhappy. Oddly, it grows aggressively and I've never been determined enough to kill it altogether, rather, I've moved it about the garden a good bit.

Well after seven years, I think I found a good home. A kind of Goldilocks location where sun, shade and irrigation keep this plant just right. A little snapping off of insect rolled leaves and I have a very tidy and absolutely gorgeous variegated plant.

So thankfully, I left it here in the garden and now I'm being rewarded. I guess there is a morale to this, but I'm just enjoying the show.

Summer, Summer, Summer!

It's like a merry-go-round! We've had high temperatures above 90°F (32°C) along with high humidity the past few days, so summer is here. So far none of the thunderstorms that pop up each afternoon have delivered any measurable precipitation to the garden, but there's a good chance we'll get a soaking this weekend when a cold front passes through, also delivering a couple of days of cooler temperatures and lower humidity. I try to plan the garden so that it provides interest, if not flowers, every day of the year and adding hardy sub-tropicals to the garden has really improved my appreciation of hot, humid, summer weather. This post is about one of those sub-tropicals, the first Hedychium to bloom each summer.

I think it may be a form of Hedychium coccineum because it has glaucous foliage and small reddish-orange flowers, but it's very short, only 3 feet (1m) tall, and always blooms in June, more than a month before any other Hedychium. While many Hedychiums have fragrant flowers, this is not one of them, but like most members of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), it's aromatic in all parts and crushing a leaf releases a fragrance much like that of culinary ginger, Zingiber officinale. Other attractive garden plants from the ginger family that spice up the summer garden are Alpinia, Curcuma, and Kaempferia. I'll write more about those later this summer.

Early blooming Hedychium

Crinum 'Patricia Hardy'

Crinum 'Patricia Hardy' is one of Dave Lehmiller's hybrids, obtained by pollinating Crinum rautanenianum with Crinum moorei var. schmidtii. It has beautifully shaped, lightly fragrant, pale pink flowers and compact, tidy foliage that's upright, arched, and extremely narrow. Its flowers are durable, each one lasting several days, and they're delivered sequentially, so an individual scape can decorate the garden or vase for at least a week. My bulb, a new addition to the garden this spring, extended the show by producing a second scape which began blooming just as the first one faded. With Crinum rautanenianum, an aquatic species from Southern Africa, as a parent, it's unclear whether this hybrid will survive a North Carolina winter, but its other parent, Crinum moorei, performs well here, giving me enough confidence to leave it in the ground for testing this winter.

Close-up of Crinum 'Patricia Hardy'

Crinum 'Patricia Hardy' umbel

Crinum 'Patricia Hardy' with Canna 'Bengal Tiger'

Update on May 26, 2009: 'Patricia Hardy' did not sprout this spring after encountering air temperatures near 10° F (-12° C) in January. I located the neck of the bulb, dug it out, and found it was rotten throughout, so perhaps this pretty plant should be renamed 'Patricia Not Hardy'.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

Echinacea purpurea, commonly known as Purple Coneflower, is a striking wildflower often standing nearly head high. Its flowers are large and daisy-like with purplish pink rays sweeping back from the spiny reddish cone-shaped central disk. The deep green leaves are rough and tapering. Blooming season for this coneflower is from June to October. It is a native of the North American prairies but its range has spread eastward where it grows wild along open woodlands and roadsides.

This long-lived flower is lovely in the garden and also is excellent for cutting. But that’s not all. Butterflies and other insects are attracted to its nectar and birds such as goldfinch and chickadees relish the seed heads.

And that’s not all! Native Americans used Echinacea for more medicinal purposes than any other plant group. Now it is used around the world, especially in Europe, though it is not native there. In Germany today, more than 200 pharmaceutical preparations are made from Echinacea. This herb has a reputation for enhancing the immune system. Studies have shown that it stimulates the production of white blood cells, which fight infection.

It’s amazing that in one plant there can be such beauty and usefulness too. Echinacea purpurea is definitely not just another pretty face!

Bottlebrush Buckeye

Back in March, I wrote about the emerging foliage of the native Buckeyes, always in the first wave of woody plants to break dormancy each spring. I like them all, but I have a favorite and it's Bottlebrush Buckeye (Aesculus parviflora), named for its panicles of creamy white flowers with exserted stamens and pink anthers. It's my favorite partially because of its beautiful late spring flowers, but it also often produces another grand show in October with bright yellow autumn foliage. It's not a plant for small locations because it spreads slowly underground and eventually makes a large colony, but in the right location along the edge of a forest where it has room to grow it's fantastic.

Bottlebrush Buckeye (Aesculus parviflora)

Petite Beauties

Many Crinums are large plants that don't fit well into smaller gardens, but there are some that are small enough and multiply slowly enough to fit into just about any garden. 'Hannibal's Dwarf' and 'Bayou Traveler' are both small enough as individual plants, but the problem is that they don't remain individual plants and before long they're using far more space in the garden than was allocated to them. Here are two of my Crinum recommendations for smaller gardens.

Crinum 'Spring Joy' has fragrant, shell pink flowers and stiff, spreading, sword-like foliage. While its parentage is recorded as an inbred line of Crinum macowanii, its habit of sequentially opening its long-lasting flowers shows influence from Crinum moorei. It has been reported to be fertile both ways and although I've successfully used its pollen to induce new hybrids, I haven't had any success getting it to set seeds. It has fooled me a few times into thinking that it has set seeds, but the swollen pods are air-filled with no seeds inside. I'll keep trying.

Crinum 'Spring Joy'

Crinum 'Ollene' is another nice compact hybrid, the result of crossing Crinum bulbispermum with 'Seven Sisters'. Its foliage is stiff, upright, and moderately spreading and its flowers are white with contrast provided by bright yellow, pollen bearing anthers and a pink pistil. Because it has an extra dose of Crinum bulbispermum in its ancestry, it's probably very tolerant of cold temperatures. While I haven't read any reports of seed fertility in this hybrid, it is a backcross, which increases the likelihood, so I'll be trying to get seeds from this one too.

Crinum 'Ollene'

Butterfly Weed

Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is a tough, drought tolerant wildflower native to Eastern North America. While not all wildflowers are welcome in the garden, some try to take over the place, and others grow too tall and flop when given extra moisture and fertile soil, Butterfly Weed is a well behaved and beautiful addition to any sunny, well drained location in the garden.

Clump of Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

It bears umbels of small flowers, usually orange, but their color can vary from yellow to near red. The flowers on these plants are orange with red interiors.

Close-up of Butterfly Weed flowers

Pretty flowers buds too

Just about any low maintenance plant with showy flowers would get my attention, but this one goes one step further. It's an important host plant for caterpillars of the beautiful black and orange Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus). In addition to the Monarchs, many butterflies and bees really enjoy the nectar from their flowers, so an established clump in bloom sees more air traffic than Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Butterfly Weed with Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

Hippeastrum 'Baby Star'

Most people are familiar with the bulbs commonly called Amaryllis because they're sold everywhere, often already potted for forcing, just before the winter holiday season. These bulbs are actually hybrids of Hippeastrum, a New World genus, while Amaryllis is a genus of related bulbs native to South Africa. Hippeastrum are great for forcing indoors for winter color, but many also grow well in the garden if the climate isn't too cold.

When grown in containers these bulbs are often planted high, with at least half of the bulb exposed. I don't know if this is the way these bulbs grow in the wild or if this practice was adopted just to allow more space for the roots, but the bulbs would freeze in a central North Carolina winter if planted this way. I bury them completely with about 4 inches of well-drained soil over their tops and in late autumn I refresh the mulch to provide extra protection from freezing. They seem happiest in the garden in part-shade, with too much shade they don't bloom, and with too much sun their foliage is much smaller and pale.

One of my best performers is Hippeastrum 'Baby Star', a compact red-flowered selection with a central white star and a green throat. It returns after every winter and blooms reliably every June.

Hippeastrum 'Baby Star'

Any Volunteers?

While I often try to coax my garden plants, especially the Crinums, into producing new hybrids for me, sometimes the garden just delivers new plants without any help. This post features a new rain lily hybrid I found in the garden. It's a volunteer, rather than the result of one of my more controlled crosses, but I am very pleased with it so far.

Before I get into the details about this plant I'll provide a little bit of general information about rain lilies. They're members of the Amaryllis family (Amaryllidaceae), all native to the Americas, and usually flower in response to rainfall, often within just a few days of a good soaking. These plants are small, but their flowers are relatively large, and if they're planted in quantity they can make quite a show.

The volunteer is a seedling of Zephyranthes 'El Cielo', a rain lily with neat, upright foliage and pink flowers with narrow petals. 'El Cielo' blooms here from April through October, but only rarely does it produce a profusion of flowers, instead a clump will pace itself and deliver them a few at a time over the whole growing season. 'El Cielo' is a good multiplier, forming nice clumps over time, but it's also fertile and will often set seeds.

I suspect that the volunteer's pollen parent is Zephyranthes 'Big Dude', a selection of Z. 'Labuffarosea' and a very different plant than 'El Cielo'. 'Big Dude' has broad and spreading foliage and very large flowers with broad petals that are white with pink tips. It blooms after each rainstorm during July, August, and September, often so heavily that the plants are covered with flowers and the foliage is hidden. Because of this profusion of large flowers, 'Big Dude' is one of my favorite rain lilies. 'Big Dude' is a very good multiplier and rapidly forms large clumps. It will also produce seeds, but appears not to set seed with its own pollen. Despite having good looking foliage during most of the year, one of the drawbacks of all 'Labuffarosea', including 'Big Dude', is a period of semi-dormancy in late spring when their foliage becomes sparse, yellow, and unattractive.

Now that I've introduced the parents it's time to talk about the new baby. Its flowers have similar coloration to 'Big Dude', white with blush pink tips, not as full as 'Big Dude', but much fuller than 'El Cielo'. It got the habit of closing its flowers at night, or in response to the darkening clouds of an approaching thunderstorm, from 'El Cielo'. This is a handy feature, because at least once a summer the flowers of 'Big Dude', which don't close once they've opened, get shredded by a hard rain. Its anthers and stigma are not buried in the floral tube as with 'Big Dude', but they don't stick out of the flower as they do in 'El Cielo'. Its foliage is superior to that of both parents, being broad and frost resistant, but not having an ugly period of semi-dormancy. It's already multiplied into a small clump and it's fertile, setting seeds with its own pollen.

I'll watch this volunteer and if it continues to impress me then I'll be sure to give it a name and share it with other rain lily enthusiasts.

Close-up of Zephyranthes 'El Cielo' × Z. 'Big Dude'

Profile of Zephyranthes 'El Cielo' × Z. 'Big Dude'