|
|
By Hilda, on May 8th, 2011
I took this photo one year ago, on Mother’s Day weekend. I was visiting friends in Fancy Gap, Virginia, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, and found myself being called upon to identify a few varieties of wildflowers that had sprung up in my hostess’ yard. And while I had never seen one of these in person before, I knew immediately what it was — the pink lady’s slipper orchid, increasingly rare and very much endangered.
This lady’s slipper is sometimes called moccasin flower, for the shape of its pouch-like lower petal. In Latin, it goes by Cypridedium acaule. And it’s endangered for one simple reason — it’s extremely picky about its habitat, requiring extremely acid soil and very specific conditions.
If you come across one of these in the woods, enjoy it and take photos, but never try to move it. No matter how carefully you try to transplant pink lady’s slipper, you will almost certainly kill this delicate wildflower in the process.
Here’s why: the lady’s slipper has a symbiotic relationship with an organism known as mycelium that exists in the soil. (Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus, and consists of a mass of branching, thread-like filaments.) Without it, the lady’s slipper plant can’t extract nutrients from the soil. It’s nearly impossible to cultivate this plant at home, so it’s best to let it do its own thing in its natural habitat.
By Hilda, on January 8th, 2011
During the winter months, one of my main chores as a gardener is to keep the grass growing tall and healthy. I’m not talking about the lawn outside, I’m referring to the little pots of oat grass that my cat depends on for her fix of greenery. Serena is nearly 15 years old and limps from arthritis, so I don’t let her go outside anymore. The only thing she really seems to miss about the great outdoors is the time she used to spend grazing on the lawn, so I’ve come up with the oat grass solution to keep her happy. (She’d chew on the houseplants if I made it easy for her, but I don’t.)
Seeds of the common oat (Avena sativa) are readily available online not only from seed companies, but from pet supply sites – a testament to how popular this little grain is with the kitties. I usually order a one-pound bag, rather than buying lots of little packets. (You could also try wheat grass or rye grass seed, if that’s easier to find in your area.)
Oats are incredibly easy to grow. I fill a pot with potting soil, sprinkle a thick layer of seeds on top, cover them with another very thin layer of soil, and then water well – and in a few days, Voila!
During spring, summer, and fall I can set the pot outside on my kitchen porch to germinate, and I usually cover it with a garden cloche to keep the brown thrashers from snacking on my oat seed before it sprouts. The greenhouse effect of the bell jar is also useful when nights are cool, which can slow down the growing process considerably. And when it’s really cold out, like now, I sow the oat grass inside under a fluorescent grow light and it grows so fast it’s almost like factory farm production.
 Here’s a shot I took of oat grass growing luxuriously in a pretty ceramic container. It’s basking in the sun alongside several other houseplants, and it looks so lush and cheerful that I’m happy to have it in my kitchen.
I like to wait until the grass is two to three inches tall before giving it Serena – the roots have a better toe-hold by then and she can graze on the tips without ripping so much of it right out of the soil. (And sometimes, if I don’t want her to make a mess, I’ll trim the grass myself with scissors and simply serve her the clippings on a saucer.)
I don’t know why Serena goes nuts over this stuff – she’s completely uninterested in catnip – but if I’m carrying a pot of oat grass she’ll follow me all around the house, meowing incessantly until I set it down for her. Often I have to limit her grazing time, unless I want to find a mess of regurgitated greens on the carpet later. 
I understand that some health food aficionados grow wheat grass and oat grass indoors so they can juice it and add it to smoothies and such. And others grow it because it’s an easy houseplant, or because they’re in need of a little reminder that springtime will eventually be here.
By Hilda, on December 6th, 2010
I shot this photo a couple of years ago while I was taking a little road jaunt with my friend Connie, somewhere up near Adairsville, Georgia. It’s funny, sometimes when I mention bottle trees in a conversation, people don’t know what I’m talking about – so maybe this is your first one too, and I’m glad I could introduce you.
I think of bottle trees as a Southern tradition in yard art, mainly because I never saw a single one before I moved to Georgia. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and some of them are truly creative. I’ve always been a bit enamored with cobalt blue glass myself, and I save all the blue bottles that come into my house, though I tend to perch them on a windowsill and not out in the yard. Maybe someday I’ll have a bottle tree of my own…
(As a side note, my neighbor Kathy once hung an old wine rack on the fence between our properties and stocked it with cobalt blue bottles. It made a beautiful ornament, and it stayed there till it fell apart a few years ago. I deeply regret not having photographed it.)
I’m not an expert on the history of bottle trees, but I’ve always heard they came to the Southeast from Africa, a by-product of the slave trade. The belief was that marauding spirits would get trapped in the glass bottles overnight, and then be vaporized by the sunlight before they could cause any mischief. Think of the genie trapped in Aladdin’s lamp – it’s all part of the same folklore, going back many centuries to Arabia and the Middle East.
One of my favorite garden writers, Felder Rushing, has researched bottle tree history thoroughly, and you can read all about it on his website. He also has a bottle tree gallery that contains over a hundred photos, which he’s taken on four different continents. It’s highly recommended, very entertaining, and you don’t want to miss it – you’ll be amazed at the wacky, arboreal things people have done with bottles, and the link will open in a new window, for your viewing pleasure.
Back in 2006, the famed glassmakers on the Venetian island of Murano put together the world’s largest glass Christmas tree. Reportedly, the sections were all blown individually, then bolted together. It sat in the town’s Campo Santo Stefano through the holiday season that year, and is now in the Murano Glass Museum. The pictures are just beautiful – and it looks very much like a Southern bottle tree to me, although on a grander scale.
“Planting” Tip:
If you’re inspired to build your own bottle tree, you’ll be glad to know that you don’t have to fabricate a metal base on your own. You can order the “tree” itself from any of the sites below, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Then, just add bottles!
By Hilda, on November 25th, 2010
Things turned out pretty well for the settlers at the Plymouth colony. Every year we acknowledge, through our Thanksgiving celebration, the Pilgrim’s agricultural successes. It’s practically legend, the way they learned from friendly natives which indigenous plants could be gathered for food, and how to grow New World crops like maize, beans, and squash.
 jimson weed (Photo: MissouriPlants.com) Then there was the ill-fated Jamestown settlement. Colonists there also had much to learn about the native flora – and they left behind a very different kind of legacy. What we remember today is mainly their misadventures with Datura stramonium, a shrubby, flowering plant that we know now as jimson weed (shortened from “Jamestown weed”). Reportedly, those who ingested the notorious weed “went mad” for several days, due to the hallucinogenic properties of the plant.
Flash forward to the modern, gardening world — and many of the ornamental plants we currently know as angel’s trumpets belong in the Datura genus, and are closely related to the devilish jimson weed.
From its divine scent to its startlingly large, coronet-shaped blooms, angel’s trumpet is an aptly named flower. A single plant can put on quite a show, easily reaching 10 feet in one growing season. Flowers tend to close during the hottest parts of the day and open in the evening. At twilight, fragrance is at its most intense, as the plants seek to seduce lunar moths and other nocturnal pollinators.
 Angel's trumpet comes in many shapes and colors, including ruffly double forms not seen here.
Though tree-like in form, angel’s trumpet is actually an herbaceous perennial in warm climates (zones 7-10), and it’s grown as annual further north. Here in my Atlanta neighborhood, angel’s trumpet is still blooming like crazy at Thanksgiving time, as we haven’t had a frost yet.
But let the gardener beware:
The Jamestown stories are more than myth. Today, Datura’s effects on the central nervous system are well known. All parts of the plant are toxic, containing the alkaloids atropine, hyocymine, and scopolamine. Ingesting the seeds can cause delirium and disorientation, even hallucinations that have sometimes resulted in harmfully reckless behavior.
 Gardeners should also know that the plant’s sap contains large amounts of atropine, the substance used by ophthalmologists to dilate the pupil during eye exams. There are numerous reports of people who have rubbed their eyes after working with angel’s trumpet and have suffered from dilated pupils for days. Since you can also absorb the alkaloids through an abrasion, it’s best to wear gloves and wash your hands frequently if you’re cultivating angel’s trumpet.
X
X
Want to collect Datura seeds for next year’s garden? It’s easy to harvest them from the pods – just be sure to label and store them safely. In 1983, according to a CDC report, a couple lapsed into a coma just after phoning for an ambulance. Upon their awakening, this is what doctors learned: While making dinner, the wife had added a seasoning to the hamburger, but later realized it was Datura seeds she’d saved from her garden. She scraped most of the seeds off the meat and served the meal. Shortly thereafter, the couple began hallucinating and passed out. They were hospitalized for three days.
The genus Brugmansia, once lumped in with Datura, is also made up of plants known as angel’s trumpets. The easiest way to tell them apart? For the most part, Brugmansia has dangling, pendulous blooms, like these, while Datura sports trumpets that are a bit more upright. They are equally toxic.
By Hilda, on November 17th, 2010
 Photo: Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center
A friend of mine always says it wouldn’t seem like Thanksgiving without a pot of paperwhite narcissus in bloom. There’s definitely something magical about flower bulbs in general, but at this time of year, paperwhites become almost staggeringly precious for their ability to grow and bloom indoors. Watching a pot of the bulbs progress from day to day is a deep, private pleasure – from the first plump white roots to the lengthening stems, fattening buds, and, finally, the creamy white blooms. A vase of cut flowers, no matter how beautiful, can’t captivate and engage its audience this way. Not even close.
With paperwhites, it’s really a misnomer to refer to the process as “forcing” the bulbs, because it’s so darn easy, it’s almost fool-proof. The biggest problem is trying to control the long, leggy stems the bulbs put out when grown indoors. It’s just not as much fun when the flowers flop over on the table, and I know at least one person who’s given up on paperwhite bulbs because of this.
I’ve used a few tricks in the past to encourage compact growth. I’ve started the bulbs under an adjustable growlight, keeping the lamps just a few inches above the tips of the flower stems and raising it as they grow. I’ve also planted them in a few inches of pebbles at the bottom of a tall glass container, so the sides of the vase support the stems.
 Photo: Flickr A few years ago, a new method for reining in floppy paperwhite stems was pioneered by Cornell University, that Ivy League bastion of higher learning. I’ve never tried it myself, but since it involves alcohol, it seems perfect for the holidays. Are you ready? Supply your bulbs with gin on the rocks. Or vodka, or rum, or whiskey, or any other distilled alcohol (i.e. stay away from beer and wine).
Seriously, you can read Cornell’s official report yourself, and it even has photos of the experiment results, but here’s a quick recap of it:
- Diluted alcohol stunts the growth of paperwhites, resulting in stems that are 1/3 to 1/2 shorter, with flowers of normal size.
- According to Cornell, you just plant the bulbs in pebbles or marbles and add water as usual. After they put out roots and have top shoots an inch or two tall, pour that water off and replace it with an alcohol solution. The ideal strength is roughly 5%, which you can accomplish by mixing one part of any 40-proof distilled spirit with seven parts of water.
- If you’re a teetotaler, you can use 70% rubbing alcohol from the drugstore, but in this case you’re going to mix one part alcohol with ten parts water.
And if pouring off the original water seems like too much work, I’m sure you could experiment with adding small amounts of alcohol to the mix – but be aware that at concentrations over 10%, it will be toxic to your plants.
Has anyone tried this? What kind of results did you get? Leave a comment!
By Hilda, on October 13th, 2010
 Is this ghost orchid creepy? (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Can plants be creepy? Okay, there’s the horror film version of giant, man-eating flowers, like in Little Shop of Horrors. But what about in real life?
I got a newsletter from Garden Design magazine the other day, inviting me to view a slideshow of “creepy, Halloween-ready plants” on their website, so of course I had to click through and see what was there.
The verdict?
Not so creepy.
The first slide in the series was actually a beautiful tropical flower. The caption tried hard to compare the shape of the blossom to bats, but I wasn’t seeing it. Here’s what it says (and you can click on the link to take a look for yourself):
If you’re fond of these winged nocturnal creatures, you’ll love the bat plant (Tacca chantrieri), a tropical plant from Southeast Asia with a sinister inflorescence and black fruits that hang in clusters like roosting bats.
For the most part the other slides also depict plants that aren’t all that scary or unusual, although they do have Halloween-ready names: besides the bat plant, there’s the tarantula cactus… and the ghost orchid, that elusive swamp flower made famous by author extraordinaire Susan Orlean in The Orchid Thief… and the entire Amorphophallus genus, which sports common names like “voodoo lily” and “corpse flower.” (You can read my post about corpse flower here.)
There was, however, one plant that I have to agree was downright startling in appearance — it has long, bright orange spikes lining its leaves! This is Solanum pyracanthum, also known as “devil’s thorn” or the “porcupine tomato.”
 Image source: jimross77, via photobucket.com I had never seen nor heard of this plant before, but a quick Internet search turned up plenty of photos. The flowers are typical of the Solanum genus, which includes such familiar plants as tomatoes and eggplant.
 Image source: jimross77, via photobucket.com If you want to grow this plant in time for next Halloween, you can order a packet of 12 seeds for $2.95 from Top Tropicals. It’s reportedly only hardy in zone 9 and higher, but if you have a greenhouse or sunroom, you could grow it in a pot for an interesting conversation piece — just watch out for the thorns.
By Hilda, on September 1st, 2010
Earlier this summer, someone on Facebook mentioned the Pollinator Partnership website, and I finally got around to taking a look at it. The first thing I looked at was the interactive section on planting guides. I clicked on my home state of Georgia, expecting to get nothing more than a list of native plants – but what a surprise! Instead, I got an instant download of a delightful and very readable report, in a PDF format.
I learned so much about the flora, fauna, and geography of the region I live in, which the Pollinator Partnership calls Southeastern Mixed Forest. It’s made up of 193,000 square miles that extend across 11 different states, and is dominated by forests of broadleaf deciduous and evergreen needle leaf trees.
I also enjoyed reading an entertaining and informative overview about the role of pollinators, why we should care about them, and how we can help them. Here’s an excerpt:
Pollinators travel through the landscape without regard to property ownership or state boundaries. Each of us can have a positive impact by providing the essential habitat requirements for pollinators including food, water, shelter, and enough space to allow pollinators to raise their young.
The pollinators in my region include bees, butterflies, moths, flies, bats, birds, beetles, and the wind. That last one is something you don’t think about much! And the graphic that I downloaded to post here (see above) shows that around the world, pollinators include flying squirrels, hummingbirds, lizards, moles, and even lemurs. I just had to google “lemurs and pollination” to see what that’s all about, and I found out that on the island of Madagascar, lemurs pollinate a type of palm tree.
The report went on to describe how flowers can differ greatly in shape, color, and fragrance:
These floral characteristics can be useful to predict the type of pollination method or animal that is most effective for that group of plants. This association between floral characteristics and pollination method is called a pollination syndrome.
A chart of the “pollination syndromes” then describes which flower characteristics are most attractive to different types of pollinators. For example, I think it’s common knowledge that red flowers attract hummingbirds. But I had no idea that bats are attracted to dull white, greenish, or purple flowers with a musty odor that gets stronger at night. And flies don’t care much about color at all, but are attracted to a putrid scent (see the post I wrote, as a guest blogger, about corpse flower!) Flowers that don’t produce nectar can’t attract pollinators, so they may rely on the wind to carry their pollen grains to other plants nearby or far away. The pollen grains of these plants tend to be “abundant, small, smooth, and not sticky” – it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Finally, the report for my region included landscape planting tips that can help out pollinators by providing them with food, water, or shelter. The tips are clearly written and for the most part are practical and within the means of the average homeowner or gardener. And, even if you only make one or two small changes on your property, it can make a huge difference, because:
Minor changes by many individuals can positively impact the pollinator populations in your area. The scale of your plantings will vary but it is important to remember that you are trying to provide connectivity to the landscape adjacent to your property. Don’t just look within your property boundaries. If your neighbor’s property provides an essential element, such as water, which can be utilized by pollinators visiting your land, you may be able to devote more space to habitat elements that are missing nearby.
Take a look at the Pollinator Partnership website, and if you learn something interesting about pollinators in the region you live in, please leave a comment below.
By Hilda, on August 23rd, 2010
 image source: stock.xchng
I personally hate the roar of power mowers so much that I’ve been known to daydream about adopting an adorable miniature goat to keep my front lawn neatly trimmed. (It’s not legal, unfortunately, to keep livestock where I live.) A few years ago I even published a short article in Audubon magazine describing how the city of Chattanooga was using goats to control the kudzu on steep slopes where it wasn’t safe to operate heavy machinery.
So I was interested to find this Wall Street Journal article, called Free-Range Landscaping, about using goats to clear large, overgrown areas. It’s a good read, and the website includes an amusing video of goats at work on the grounds of the Vanderbilt Mansion. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Recently, the patch of weeds behind Steve Holdaway’s Chapel Hill, N.C., home grew so unkempt that he hired outside help. For six hours, the crew’s members tackled tall grass and thorny blackberry plants and toiled without a break—other than to chew their cud, that is.
His workers: seven hungry—and carbon-emission-free—goats.
As more homeowners, businesses and towns seek to maintain land with fewer chemicals or fossil-fuel-powered machinery, a growing number are trying goats to get rid of unwanted vegetation.
Generally, companies truck goats to work sites (some gas required) where the animals munch inside portable fencing or electric netting, often powered by solar panels. Prices can range from $200 a day for a dozen goats to upward of $1,000 for larger herds of 100 or more. On bigger projects, animals may stay overnight supervised by the business owners or specially trained guardian dogs.
The article also made me think of an interesting property I saw on a garden tour earlier this summer. The homeowners had kept a neat swath of lawn around their home and planting beds, while turning the rear of the property into a natural wildflower meadow (photo below), foregoing the need for either goats or heavy machinery.
The meadow is separated from the manicured section of yard by a stone edging and an “arch” made of tree limbs. The person you see walking in the meadow is actually on a path — a narrow strip of mowed grass that bisects the meadow, allowing you to wander through it and enjoy the wildflowers and the steady hum of insects.
I’m sure a herd of goats could tame this meadow and turn it into a flat pasture in no time, but I really love the way it looks here, all wild and beautiful with the tall, swaying grasses and bright spots of color from wildflowers. Though I have to admit, I didn’t venture very far down the path at all — this city girl is far too scared of ticks to be completely seduced by the romance of a wildflower meadow.
By Hilda, on August 8th, 2010
If you’ve ever doubted that gardeners are the most innovative people under the sun, just look at the photos below. . .
I took this shot at the home of Atlanta landscape designer Paula Refi — that’s the side of her garage you’re looking at! A salvaged mantel piece was painted, outfitted with mirrors, and bolted to the outside wall. A stone “hearth” completes the illusion.
This next idea is also clever:
I’ve actually seen this chair-as-planter idea before, and once I even successfully duplicated the look at home.
Here’s how I did it: I paid a few dollars at the flea market for an old wooden chair that was missing its caned seat. Then I stapled black landscape fabric to the underside, to form a shallow planting area — I used the porous kind that’s meant to allow water to run through while it suppresses weeds. I filled it with a lightweight potting soil, added shade loving plants like ferns and impatiens, and placed my chair-planter on my front porch… until I got tired of keeping my creation watered during the hot Atlanta summer.
By Hilda, on June 7th, 2010
 I have never had a desire to grow gourds in my garden. They just don’t seem very useful to me, even though the Park Seed catalog sells seeds that could enable me to grow my own loofah. Yes, a natural loofah sponge is really a gourd — after you grow it, you just let the skin shrivel off, revealing the network of fibrous matter inside, then cut off the ends and shake out the seeds and it’s bath time.
But today I learned from one of my favorite blogs, Garden Rant, that there’s a group of guys in Virginia who grow gourds for the purpose of fashioning them into musical instruments. They call themselves the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra. Their website makes the following statements:
The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra resides in Richmond, Virginia, where members grow gourds, make instruments and create music. A band of musicians with dirt under their fingernails–they put the “cult” back into culture, and “culture” back into agriculture.
Original music played on handmade instruments made from locally grown gourds, the Gourd Orchestra plays its own brand of paleolithic lounge music – mixing past with present, rhythm with melody, and chaos with order.
The website also allows you to sample the Gourd Orchestra’s music, which is actually rather pleasant and catchy in an odd, earthy kind of way.
And let’s not forget the gourd-growing tips. I looked them over, and it seems as if the seeds should have been in the ground weeks ago, but if you have a long growing season where you live, it might not be too late to get started. And if you’re already a veteran gourd-grower, please leave a comment!
Loofah image, above, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
|
About
The Author
Hilda Brucker
 Hilda combines her
love of gardening
and passion for writing
in her blog entries.
|
