cloudy with off and on light rain: calm: 73ºF


I noticed a photographer walking around the ponds of tropical water lilies while she talked to them. She was asking, “Why do all of you insist on blooming so close to the signs?”

Some of the salvias planted as perennials in warmer zones and grown as annuals around here are bursting with blooms just now. Yesterday a friend told me about a Zone 9+ pink salvia named ‘Wendy’s Wish’ that started blooming in his garden in late spring and started to bloom even more heavily in mdi-September. Wonder if Wendy flowers more when the hummingbirds start to stoke up for their trip South?


I looked for a clump of ‘Wendy’s Wish’ in the botanical garden this morning, but instead I found another Zone 9+ variety named ‘Santa Barbara.’ (Salvia leucantha 'Santa Barbara'). It’s planted in a wheelchair-accessible raised bed garden in the Scented Garden. Add the height of the bed to that of the plant and it’s a flower that I have to look up to. ‘Santa Barbara’ is filled with long purple spikes and this morning it’s loaded with bees and an occasional butterfly. Nurseries rightly advertise it as coming into own in late summer.

The bur or mossy cup oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) near the Japanese Gardens are dropping a huge crop of acorns this year. The ground all around two mature trees is littered with these acorns with pulled down caps that I think could become a teenage fad if they were made of wool. They’re big too – some about 2” across. I read that Bur oaks have good and bad years of acorn production – “high mast” years followed by “nonmast” ones. In any particular year all of the oaks in a stand mast or don’t mast in sync. Ecologists who study these things think that in high mast years there so many acorns that they can’t all be eaten by animals. That means that in high mast years some of the acorns will be left to take root and establish new oak trees.

In a demonstration plot near the weather station the keepers of the botanical garden have an interesting test going on. They’ve planted about dozen gardenia shrubs (Gardenia jasminoides). Gardenias are native to Southern China and Japan a nearby sign says. And they’re hardy only to zone 8 where minimum winter temperatures drop to 15 or 20 degrees. The botanical garden is in Zone 6, so come spring, all of shrubs ought to be dead. However, the test being done here is designed to evaluate different ways of protecting gardenias from cold damage. The sign says that “if cold damage occurs on any of these plants, the temperature is recorded. The data will be compared to determine the effectiveness of each type of frost protection.” As yet, I didn’t notice any frost protection around any of the plants.


I saw this metallic-looking shield-shaped leaf of a Giant Caladium (Alocalsia cuprea) leaning out into the walkway inside the glass-enclosed Climatron.





gathering clouds: almost calm: 66ºF


If the mums are here, so is fall. The display gardens are filled with mums. And if that not enough, outside the garden shop there are pots of them -- 20 inches across in all colors -- being sold at bargain prices. Either mums must be extremely easy and cheap to raise or growers are don’t mind settling for slim profits.


This botanical garden always has an interesting and varied assortment of ornamental peppers on display in the summer. This pepper called ‘Black Pearl’ is my favorite. The low-lying plants are being use to edge two of the reflecting ponds east of the Climatron. Black Pearl is the perfect name for this one. The clusters of glistening cherry-sized fruit are nestled together at the top of a spray of dark leaves making the plant look like a set of bouquets. The peppers are black when immature and turn red as the season wears on. They are edible, but as one reviewer put it, “Do not eat the peppers unless licensed to swallow fire.” These peppers along with all the other ornamental peppers now available I learned are also hot stuff in the agriculture trade. Their sales are reported to be the one fastest growing segments of U.S. agriculture with an annual wholesale value of $5 billion. That’s billion.

This botanical garden started growing Alstroemeria (Peruvian Lilies) as a outdoor perennial a few years ago just as the newer, more cold tolerant varieties were appearing. Now they are thriving and newer ones are being added to garden’s collection. They are especially welcome this time of year because they look continue to look fresh as other summer flowers fade and busy themselves with setting seeds. This peachy-colored variety is named ‘Inca Ice.’ It’s meant to survive temperatures of well below zero.

I certain I would have passed by this ordinary looking mint plant growing in the Herb Garden if it hadn’t been for it’s name – Bastard Balm (Melittis melissophyllum 'Royal Velvet Distinction’). It grows wild in much of Europe, but here it’s uncommon. Too bad I didn’t pay more attention to it sooner. Then I wouldn’t have missed seeing the orchid-like flowers that bloom in the spring.


Watermelons rinds aren’t usually thought of works of art. Rinds are obstacles that stand in the way of getting to the meat of the matter. Here’s one though that will change your mind about rinds. Go the vegetable garden this week and have a look at this melon that keepers have positioned near the walkway so that we can get an up-close look. The watermelon is a variety named ‘Moon and Stars.’ The rind looks like a Hubble space image or the tracks left by the collision of high speed particles. ‘Moon and Stars’ is an old variety thought to be extinct until it was found growing on a Missouri farm about 30 years ago. Now, while 'Moon and Stars' seeds are widely available, the variety is not grown commercially because watermelon eaters prefer seedless melons and 'Moon and Stars' is loaded with oversized seeds. Looks only go so far in the watermelon business.





high haze: slight breeze: 73ºF


The reflecting pond at the botanical garden is filled with all three varieties of Victoria waterliles. Seeing them in the early light is a reminder that the days are getting shorter.

The annual Japanese Festival ended on Monday. For this botanical garden, it marks the end of the summer season and of the large crowds of visitors. It also means that the summer plantings in the display gardens on the South side of the Linnean glass house can be uprooted for compost. Usually I think, “Too bad.” This year, the year of edible plants on parade, I think that bare ground may be preferable. The Garden’s attempt to introduce visitors to the edible qualities of plants that most have never seen didn’t seem to hit the mark. Despite signs that described the plants, their edible parts, and their uses, the plots ended up looking like a weedy roadside. Education without aesthetics is a hard sell in a place where visitors come to be awed by beauty.

All that remains in the edible beds is a plant called Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus). Because it is so tall and so expansive it was used as the centerpieces for the displays. Now that everything else is gone it’s easier to see.

What’s cardoon? It looks like a thistle, complete with bristles and spikes. The sign says it’s a likely ancestor of globe artichokes. When stripped of its leaves, the thick ribs look like a bunch of celery. Recipes that I’ve read say the ribs are stringy just like celery so it’s best to begin by stripping the fibers. Then they’re good to go for boiling, roasting, or braising with a little of this or that added. I’ve read that they taste like celery and artichokes with a hint of licorice.


Found out too that the cardoon acquired a measure of fame in the early 17th Century when it became the subject of Spanish artist Juan Sánchez Cotán’s still life paintings. Perhaps unique among vegetables, the cardoon as painted by Cotán was the subject of several art reviews. The New York Times said: “That vegetable - known in English, where known at all, as a cardoon - forthwith became the protagonist in an image, the like of which had never quite been seen before in European art. . . . its proportions are grand, its color unexpectedly subtle, and its profile both suggestive and ambiguous. As raw in character as in fact, it is not a vegetable to mess with.” And even better, this review in the National Review: “The big vegetables dominate the paintings, seeming to pulse with hidden life. Their careful, ritualistic placement heightens the sense of religious drama. One imagines that these are the cardoons of the third day of Creation, which God looked upon and pronounced good.”

I looked hard to find the ID for this plant. After walking around a large patch of them in one of the beds used for spring bulbs without any luck, I decided to take a picture of this six-foot tall giant and then let Google do the IDing for me. My only hint was the stem – distinctly four-sided. That means a mint of some kind, I’ve been told. The search identified this plant as a Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa). The yellow/salmon sage-like pincushion flowers arrange themselves neatly around the stem as the plant grows. In Victorian times it was considered an old-fashioned flower and I think it still must be since the only time and place I’ve ever seen it growing is here in this botanical garden. Nearly 200 years ago it was described as ‘A rather clammy plant...with...numerous bright yellow flowers of fine effect’. That description still stands.

The first of the reblooming irises has bloomed. This is ‘Double Shot.’ (G. Sutton, 2000)