greenZoo: Walks in a botanical garden in June 2008

gathering storm clouds: windy: 76ºF

One of the major display gardens in this botanical garden is filled with hundreds of white cleome plants. They're all a new variety named ‘Spirit Frost.’ Garden wizard P. Allen Smith calls the Spirit series of cleomes “clever” because unlike certain lilies, they don’t grow any taller than their stocks will bear. Spirits also get fuller than old-fashioned cleomes because they send out lots of flowering branching shoots. The description I read about Spirits said that they are all produced by tissue culture. So with the consistency of chain store hamburgers, we now have cleome that will without fail have the same color and the same features whereever they're grown.

But then there’s environment. Here the 'Spirit Frost' cleomes have been planted in a bed partly shaded by a young maple tree at the center of the bed, by larger trees behind, and by a building alongside. I’d say only about half of the plants get full sun. The others are in part shade. Look what happens to these plants with identical genes. The ones in full sun perform as advertised producing short globular plants with plenty of flowering side shoots. In part shade, this clever cleome could pass for one of its traditional cousins. It’s lanky. It has just a single flower dangling at the end of a swaying stock with no hint of accompanying side shots. Here environment trumps heredity. Because the cleomes are staging such an unsightly, inconsistent performance here in one of this botanical gardens most prominent display beds, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find them all uprooted and a patch of dragon winged begonias put in as understudies.

For the first time I can remember this botanical garden has planted a garden of heirloom tomatoes. The keepers of the garden selected twelve varieties that were prominent in the late 1800’s. A nearby sign says varieties planted here became “reliable standards” because of their quality, resistance to pests and diseases, and tolerance of local climate conditions. All of their seeds will grow ‘true to type’ – meaning that unless cross-pollinated, they will produce plants just like their parent.

There were also signs identifying each of the heirlooms by name, but nothing else about the variety of tomato to expect or about why this dozen had been selected from among hundreds of others that could have been planted. From sources on the web that specialize in heirloom tomatoes I found that this small collection has tomatoes that differ in color, shape, and size. It’s also packed with varieties rich with the lore and stories that make heirlooms unique and force gardeners to brag about them.

First the reds and pinks: the largest, often a pound or more, is ‘Brandywine.’ It dates from 1885. It’s said ‘Brandywine’ was a favorite of the Amish who farmed the land around the Brandywine River in Chester County Pennsylvania – the same area where the Wyeth’s would later live and paint. Four other large ones: ‘Henderson’s Crimson’ introduced in 1892 by New Jersey seedsman Peter Henderson; ‘Missouri Pink Love Apple’ grown since the Civil war by a Missouri family who planted them as ornamentals thinking that tomatoes were too poisonous to eat; ‘Buckbee’s New Fifty Day,’ a standard-sized tomato introduced in early 1900s by H.W. Buckbee Seeds from Rockford, Illinois as quick-ripening variety tomato; and ‘Large Red’, a tomato with ribbed sides grown by the Shaker’s in Massachusetts as early as 1830 and said to be the most commonly grown tomato in America before the Civil War.

The red heirloom paste and cherry varieties are ‘Polish Linguisa,’ a pointed sausage-shaped tomato brought to America by Polish immigrants in the late 1800s; ‘Riesentraube,’ a cherry tomato whose name means "Giant Bunch of Grapes" brought to America by German immigrants in the mid-1800’s; and finally, my favorite – the oldest and the one with the best story: ‘Red Fig.’ It’s a pear-shaped tomato that’s been in gardens since the 1700’s. In the mid-1800’s it was made into a treat called “tomato figs,” a dried, sugary sweet substitute for figs that would last all winter.

Now everything that’s not red: First there’s ‘Dr. Wyche’s Yellow,’ a giant yellow beefsteak variety reputed to be grown in Oklahoma by Dr. John Wyche. According to one story Wyche owned a circus and swore that the secret to growing good tomatoes was to fertilize them with elephant manure and then to scatter lion and tiger droppings around the garden to keep out the deer and rabbits. ‘Persimmon’ is a sweet orange tomato with very few seeds that dates to the mid-1800s. Finally, two very unusual ones: ‘White Beauty,’ a large tomato with yellowed-ivory colored skin and flesh, and ‘Cherokee Purple.’ ‘Cherokee Purple’ is a large beefsteak tomato with burnt-red colored flesh and reddish-purple flesh. This tomato is supposed to be the finest tasting tomato ever. It’s been described as complex, rich, deep, smoky, and subtle with many of the flavors emerging near the end of the bite, I’ve also read that ‘Cherokees’ are one of most sought after heirlooms by gourmet chefs.

The closest I’ve ever come to heirloom tomatoes before this morning was about ten years ago when I planted a variety named ‘Tigerella’ that I bought from Thompson & Morgan. I bought it as a novelty item to set among my Burpee best-ever (at least until next year) hybrids. I remember enjoying the look of the ‘Tigerellas’ on a plate – juicy three-inch slices of red and yellow stripped flesh. They were fun for a season, but for reasons I don't remember I never planted them again and never thought much about heirlooms since. This year though with a dozen varieties at the botanical garden to watch, my interest is back. I only hope that the garden would have a “tomato cupping” evening to sample all of their new, old varieties.

clear: light breeze: 76ºF

My wife has a large, well-organized stock of fabric that she goes through when she uses her hands to make the things she sees in her head. Because the fabric she uses must be cut and then often dyed or painted over, she tells me that sometimes she bypasses the perfect piece because it seems “too precious” to use. She says that while she knows that that precious piece is the just right, emotionally it’s hard to overcome the feeling that something that’s already perfect and beautiful is being destroyed or desecrated.

I thought of her when I saw what the keepers of this botanical garden had done to the collection of camellias growing in one of the glasshouses. The keepers drastically pruned every specimen larger than a shrub. Even whole, healthy braches were sawed from many of the larger trees. In warmer places where camellias are part of the landscape, I doubt if anyone would have noticed. Here though, where they are rare and precious, the thinning felt offensive.

Seeking reassurance, I checked a website from a part of Australia where camellias are as common as lilacs are here. On ithe site was a picture of chainsaw-welding Angus Steward. His advice is to give camellias a light trim every year to keep them “looking tidy.” If the bush is “out of hand, don't be frightened to bring out the loppers and go in hard. Drastic pruning will rejuvenate the plant for years to come. Just don't expect the plant to flower well the first year after a major cut back.” Finally, he says long-neglected camellias that are leggy or twiggy call for “extreme gardening” -- a chainsaw prune. “When you have finished it might look like a chainsaw massacre, but within a year the tree should develop a compact shape.”

So if Angus is right, the trees here in this camellia house will come back better than ever. Blooms next February likely will be sparse though. I’d bet the keepers of the house will plant lots of primulas to enliven the understorey ground and will hang even more jasmine baskets than usual to flavor the air. An aside: the tallest trees in the glasshouse are now the fragrant olive trees. They escaped the saw, at least for now.

Minature Papyrus

The botanical garden’s container pots usually include a few surprises. This year a fair number of the larger pots have used a plant named “Miniature Papyrus” (Cyperus prolifer) as a centerpiece. The plant reminds me of an arum gone to seed. If it has leaves I couldn’t see them. It’s all stems -- blue-green ones jutting up two to three feet above the understorey flowers – topped with green umbels that arrange themselves in bowl-shapes.

The ground and walkways under one of the magnolia trees is littered with hundreds of one- to two-inch fruit that look like gherkins. The fruit has a way to go before the seeds inside ripe so I’m puzzled why so many have dropped so soon. Squirrels or maybe birds may be the answer, but I don’t think so. I picked up a few of fruit to see if I could see signs of chewing or pecking. They were none. As I walked along the path under the tree, I found that the pods popped when I stepped on them. So I walked back. Then like a kid, I did it again.

The national convention of the American Hosta Society is in town this week. The hosta auction is open to the public, so I decided to go out to the convention hotel to observe the sale. Three hours of hosta after hosta were offered and sold. That I expected. What I didn’t expect to see were several offerings of a rose-maroon Turk's cap lily (Lilium martagon). The lilies sold at auction were about three feet tall. They had buds, but none were in bloom. But why were lilies even included here at a gathering where they seemed oddly out-of-place?

The auctioneer explained that Martagons were one of the few lilies that tolerate shade. So Martagons must be the lily of choice for hosta growers willing to allow a little diversity in their hosta patches.

Since the lilies have now begun to bloom in the botanical garden, I looked for Martagons among the hostas. Deep inside one of the beds smack in between two unnamed hostas – a giant blue one and some slightly smaller green ones with cream margins - I spotted this cluster of Martagon lilies. They towered over the hostas looking almost as if they were the hosta scapes.