tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91323370681039211072024-03-05T21:17:51.984-04:00Missing my GardenA blog about gardens, colour, history and any interesting factoids I can find.Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-32245531652469223902018-05-18T12:24:00.000-03:002018-05-18T12:24:16.079-03:00How Luther Burbank Made the Shasta Daisy (Reblog)http://www.lutherburbank.org/about-us/shasta-daisySheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-84338978130284044532012-08-09T15:28:00.001-03:002020-05-24T15:59:04.652-03:00How Cliches Get That WayCary Grant said that cliches become cliches because they're true. Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' and aster 'M<span style="background-color: white;">ö</span><span style="background-color: white;">nch' or else 'Little Carlow' have become gardening cliches, or if you prefer a classic plant combination, because they work so well together. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MlTJXZRffL9FfXAhwQfBkuUaH3ajeHLO2MjRLj_cdxk9bUGIailr-dNiN3AqFhXNn2IOTQ5DzBx6jkAXiHX2O6IG6Uocwgv0mu4d0iEQ1pLNWBEq3QyMs-HiFkC31cbIr49EL0PwMpt2/s1600/800px-2006-07-25_Rudbeckia_fulgida2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Rudbeckia fulgia 'Goldsturm'" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MlTJXZRffL9FfXAhwQfBkuUaH3ajeHLO2MjRLj_cdxk9bUGIailr-dNiN3AqFhXNn2IOTQ5DzBx6jkAXiHX2O6IG6Uocwgv0mu4d0iEQ1pLNWBEq3QyMs-HiFkC31cbIr49EL0PwMpt2/s320/800px-2006-07-25_Rudbeckia_fulgida2.JPG" title="Rudbeckia fulgia 'Goldsturm'" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Rudbeckia fulgia var. sulliviani </i> 'Goldsturm', photo by Lukas Riebling</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_EmJq-UnjG8K5rrV0ecEj-nJk_P44wX9gSjeiWadfLfIPn78We0oGpAZjKbLy5W0bvuBPMRQmaWrMIQKp5JMxioxdGa6oo5t7gQXXxBS29PXH517MfaXlcXONpiGsUeZGxpxFN7ME_en4/s1600/aster+Monch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_EmJq-UnjG8K5rrV0ecEj-nJk_P44wX9gSjeiWadfLfIPn78We0oGpAZjKbLy5W0bvuBPMRQmaWrMIQKp5JMxioxdGa6oo5t7gQXXxBS29PXH517MfaXlcXONpiGsUeZGxpxFN7ME_en4/s320/aster+Monch.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Aster x frikartii ‘Mönch’'</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;"> The two work so well together because the aster not only looks good with the rudbeckia, its blue cooling the other's brassy yellow, but because it can stand up to the somewhat bullying demeanour of black-eyed susans, who tend to<a href="http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/997/#b" target="_blank"> run at the roots</a>. Although, having said that, 'Goldsturm' is pretty well behaved. It runs a bit, but not uncontrollably.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">They`re also both extremely generous flowerers, going on and on from about July to October. They coexist well in the garden too, each finding its way into the other's arms.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">They flower when blue is at a premium, while yellow is on discount. There must be some reason why there's so many yellow daisies around at that time of the year. I`ve always liked <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/3304598/How-to-grow-Rudbeckia-fulgida.html" target="_blank">Carol Klein`s comment</a> that if yellow is the colour of spirituality, then rudbeckia fulgida must be the most spiritual of all plants.</span><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;">Here's another picture I found online while researching this. Those who find 'Goldsturm' and similar rudbeckias too strongly coloured might want to consider this pairing. These green-eyed susans, such as 'Irish Eyes' have a subtler colour, and in zones 7 and 8, will overwinter. I used to try to grow these next to my yellow daylilies and <a href="http://missingmygarden.blogspot.ca/2012/07/kniphofia-not-so-scary-or-my-cold-green.html" target="_blank">green-flowered kniphofia</a>, but it was too shady, and they would end up flopping over on the grass. You can't help but love something that looks so cheerful and is so willing to flower, though.</span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoG4uXxtdyrPU4sd-BZzlLSlyp-DtB7Rc-twivW5bRkhqWG82rnGTgHAj3u3bDfV2DbbZxAWGqwrDF6LKxODoPrOPedK9Ku8K-U67Je_mSNu5EFQNVFkq6NcbEjH0iDBx_bb_C6O-APL6c/s1600/rudbeckia+and+stokes+aster" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Rudbeckia and Stokes' Aster" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoG4uXxtdyrPU4sd-BZzlLSlyp-DtB7Rc-twivW5bRkhqWG82rnGTgHAj3u3bDfV2DbbZxAWGqwrDF6LKxODoPrOPedK9Ku8K-U67Je_mSNu5EFQNVFkq6NcbEjH0iDBx_bb_C6O-APL6c/s320/rudbeckia+and+stokes+aster" title="Rudbeckia and Stokes' Aster" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rudbeckia and Stokes Aster by Melody Lee, Flickr</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I haven`t tried to grow <a href="http://www.gaygardener.com/gardenspot/peren025.phtml" target="_blank">Stokes`aster</a>, but it looks pretty in a powder-puff sort of way. It`s named for Dr. Johnathan Stokes, a 19th century botanist. They also flower from July to October. (And, I`m sorry to say, <i>Stokesia laevis</i> is not really an aster.) Another name for it is the cornflower aster, and the flowers do look a lot like <i>centaurea montana</i>.</span>
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<span style="background-color: white;">All the plants mentioned in this post are extremely easy to grow, and reward you with loads of flowers. So for once a cliche worth repeating?</span>Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-75228865717922027822012-07-31T14:13:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:00:15.109-03:00Eurybia divaricata (Aster divaricatus)<span style="font-family: inherit;">The white woodland aster, or eurybia divaricata, is a quiet beauty. It has sprays of white, starry flowers from June to October in England, from late summer through the fall in North America. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNPbdSxCaJgh0jogK5xi2cqlLDN92yaeQyCs0Mc41OzXEP5sxu0DuWP14FOR1x9j3E1Oc3qAoIXucQ1OI9L7zYdWvIM4uIGtzlkmqjyug2GJsXgtKtyjajNT9CQQF6NKBZojMee3pNvcEH/s1600/eurybia+divaricata.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="Eurybia divaricata Aster divaricatus" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNPbdSxCaJgh0jogK5xi2cqlLDN92yaeQyCs0Mc41OzXEP5sxu0DuWP14FOR1x9j3E1Oc3qAoIXucQ1OI9L7zYdWvIM4uIGtzlkmqjyug2GJsXgtKtyjajNT9CQQF6NKBZojMee3pNvcEH/s320/eurybia+divaricata.jpg" title="White woodland aster" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Eurybia divaricata, photo by Tom Potterfield, Creative Commons</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The leaves are heart-shaped, with a slight twist at the pointed end, as if someone had tweaked them. They also have a surprisingly spring-like fresh green to them all season long. The purple-black stems are twisty, with the flower sprays pointing this way and that. These stems are what give the plant part of its name, since divaricata <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/divaricatus" target="_blank">means</a> "straggly, sprawling, or spreading". The leaves and stems have also provided common names for the plant:<a href="http://www.paghat.com/aster.html" target="_blank"> Heartleaf Aster and Serpentine Aster</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is <a href="http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=EUDI16" target="_blank">native to eastern North America</a>, all the way from Ontario and Quebec down the eastern half of the continent, although it stops short of Florida. As you might expect from the name, eurybia divaricata is a woodland plant, favouring open, dry woods. It is a survivor, which sends down roots all over and sprawls its way into whatever sun is available. Tidy-minded gardeners deplore its sloppy posture and try to stake it, but the best way to handle it is to find a space where nothing wants to grow, and let it flop all over it. When you see how gracefully the leaves and flowers deploy themselves along the dark, twisting stems, you'll know you were right.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSPc2CpoeNnUOM50fXuwWRRzYyJs8wtyzdq6u-p8DrfX97wW4jQRUpm_bFxDqtAjN4HEFZwr3w7DDP3CLEYjB_9turrfSNylbMrTcPgTD3pifBWurjtVvhMgDxwUMPqBMGCv5poMaNJ5oK/s1600/7612922962_c6d96a9811.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSPc2CpoeNnUOM50fXuwWRRzYyJs8wtyzdq6u-p8DrfX97wW4jQRUpm_bFxDqtAjN4HEFZwr3w7DDP3CLEYjB_9turrfSNylbMrTcPgTD3pifBWurjtVvhMgDxwUMPqBMGCv5poMaNJ5oK/s320/7612922962_c6d96a9811.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Eurybia divaricata flowers, by eleanord43</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I had mine between my buddelia (butterfly bush) and the fence, an area previously colonised by weeds as little would grow there. The aster, and some red-leaved epimediums (barrenwort) filled in the space beautifully.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wood aster also has gardening guru Gertrude Jekyll in its corner. She used it with bergenias as path edging, the aster spilling over the leathery leaves. Apparently she found the contrast between the delicacy and cloudiness of the aster and the glossy solidity of the bergenias appealing. I suspect that Europeans have taken this plant into their gardens in a way that North Americans, who after all see it in the woods everywhere, have not. </span><br />
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New Name</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You may be thinking that it's time for a digression on plant names, and you would be right.The wood aster has fallen afoul of two different botanic quirks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first is that whoever named a plant first has priority, and their name stands. In this case, while Linnaeus referred to this plant as an aster, the wood aster has been shown the door, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_de_Cassini" target="_blank">Alexandre de Cassini </a>gets a chance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">His choice for the wood aster was eurybia, from the Greek<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1354409115"> </a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1354409115" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">ευρυς (</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">eurys</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">), meaning wide, and βαιος (</span><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">baios</i></a><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurybia_(plant)" target="_blank">), meaning few</a>. So when it was decided that all the North American asters were no longer asters, Cassini got his posthumous wish. (Small rant: the North American aster have been divided up amongst 10 different species, all of which have names like <i>Oreostemma </i>and <i>Symphotrichum</i>. Aargh.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">The second is that botanists are either lumpers or splitters. For a long time asters were lumped, that is, they were all put in the same group based on very superficial criteria. But now it seems that the splitters are in ascendant, and only Old World asters are still allowed to be asters. So our wood aster is now a eurybia.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw5nKT28po8WwCMrPObVeYWs_NT5Jb974lzF2Y9763F_DVeuaNJ9gnGFc0ZFA-WJK4PjbRtv9MBFiEo8uY4bku6G-zsTT5x8Q5x7FvDa-RJzNu9JHtY08bwl3Zi-njRgKjGsWSfK_Jz3b6/s1600/Aster_divaricatus_R0019871.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw5nKT28po8WwCMrPObVeYWs_NT5Jb974lzF2Y9763F_DVeuaNJ9gnGFc0ZFA-WJK4PjbRtv9MBFiEo8uY4bku6G-zsTT5x8Q5x7FvDa-RJzNu9JHtY08bwl3Zi-njRgKjGsWSfK_Jz3b6/s320/Aster_divaricatus_R0019871.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wikipedia Commons</td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But Eurybia was also a <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Eurybia.html" target="_blank">goddess</a>. Or, more accurately, she was a Titan, meaning she was among the first set of immortals - Zeus, Hera, Hermes and all the rest are their children. The story goes that Zeus (you may know him as Jupiter) rose up and overthrew the Titans, whose ruler was Cronos (Saturn). And so son defeated father and natural succession arose. But the truth is that the Titans introduced all the natural phenomena without which the cultural inventions of the next generation would have fallen on stony soil.</span></span><br />
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And Sea begat Nereus, the eldest of his children,<br />
who is true and lies not: and men call him the Old Man because he<br />
is trusty and gentle and does not forget the laws of<br />
righteousness, but thinks just and kindly thoughts. And yet<br />
again he got great Thaumas and proud Phoreys, being mated with<br />
Earth, and fair-cheeked Ceto and Eurybia who has a heart of flint<br />
within her. <span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 19px;">(Hesiod, <i>Theogony </i>233 - 39)</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And, you know, that may not be the worst name for a plant that is overlooked, but both tough and gorgeous. Like its Titan namesake, wood aster is unkillable, and sends up spray after spray of starlike flowers (one of Eurybia's children was Asterion), surviving even the most unpromising environment.</span>Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-21503785759805278472012-07-31T13:42:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:01:01.659-03:00What Colour is Alma?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh4-LydByqo8mWdsPPs7jJL3iOUgamv2TSi-i1hBWCy77Rr_vGhaLKRpJlx3XDhA-46_HzyAlR0t5auOi5Uo52QgoZlRvc2C5E5OvDz4su2V5Znq2b8QGYOGnFiDbua__NLV-2-3s8eLvf/s1600/Aster+Alma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Aster 'Andenken an Alma Potschke'" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh4-LydByqo8mWdsPPs7jJL3iOUgamv2TSi-i1hBWCy77Rr_vGhaLKRpJlx3XDhA-46_HzyAlR0t5auOi5Uo52QgoZlRvc2C5E5OvDz4su2V5Znq2b8QGYOGnFiDbua__NLV-2-3s8eLvf/s320/Aster+Alma.jpg" title="Aster 'Andenken an Alma Potschke'" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture by Joan Hall, Creative Commons</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When
I was first planning my magenta border, I knew that I would have to
have some asters to finish off the season. There are a lot of good ones
out there, and one in particular,<i> </i></span><span style="background-color: white;"><i>aster novae-angliae</i>
'Andenken an Alma Pötschke' sounded great. Both Sarah Raven and
Christopher Lloyd described it as 'magenta'. Nobody else did, but then
people tend to shy off that particular word. Everyone agreed it was a
great plant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;"> Fall rolled round, and the asters began to flower. Alma flowered, and she looked fine. Magenta, however, she was not. At the time I found it mildly disturbing, because I couldn't think how to describe the colour it actually was. All I knew was that it looked wrong. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Later, I would read Allan Lacy, who described it as "vivid, saturated cerise". Which, once I figured out what <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerise_%28color%29" target="_blank">cerise</a> was, seemed pretty accurate. Alma has a a very intense colour. Sequim Rare Plants, however, get the prize: they called it "<a href="http://www.sequimrareplants.com/Aster%20nova-angliae%20%27Andenken%20an%20Alma%20Potschke%27.html" target="_blank">vivid watermelon pink</a>".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You can see why it had to go. It's not actually a salmon-pink, whatever the RHS says, but it looked like it surrounded by purples and pinks and magentas. It looked strange. It's such a contradictory colour that Graham Stuart Thomas described it as "cerise-scarlet", two colours which straddle the blue - orange divide in the red zone.</span><br />
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It's funny how even now that vivid colours have come back in, I had a hard time finding out which flowers were actually magenta-coloured. I find it ironic that I should be complaining about a plant being labeled as magenta. But if you're not colour-theming your garden, I can recommend Alma: it has great flowers, it's got striking colour, and it keeps its leaves, unlike a lot of asters. But it's not magenta.</span>Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-57539492066116361312012-07-29T16:53:00.001-03:002020-05-24T16:01:37.768-03:00Spacing - Not an Exact ScienceEver had the experience of having to fill in space between plants? Maybe something died, or you hated it and hauled it out. (If it died, maybe it hated you. I should really write a post on plant suicide sometime.) Or perhaps you're starting from scratch and grappling with those wonderful books where they tell you how big and how wide your plants will get. They usually go on to tell you to map out your new garden on graph paper, using the measurements to figure out how many of each you need.<br />
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I don't want to knock the graph-paper method, but the problem is that once you've got the plants in the ground, they tend to have their own ideas about how big (or not) they want to be. There's only so much you can do about that.<br />
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There's also the nature of the plant itself to contend with. Some geraniums will spread and spread, which can be bad for any plants nearby. For example, I once had to fill in a space next to a fully-established geranium 'Patricia', and I decided on a group of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanbuckingham/6330800573/" target="_blank">lobelia 'Tania</a>'. These are very upright, narrow plants, with dark leaves and shocking pink flowers. I put out my babies, and soon the geranium was snaking around them. Fine, once they get big enough not to be smothered, but until then I had to keep cutting back. Nature does indeed abhor a vacuum, it seems.<br />
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It's probably best to plan around the behemoths right from the beginning, because when you first buy your plants, especially if it's by mail order, they're often in those 9 cm pots, and they all look tiny and innocent. It's only after they've put on some growth that you realise that your miscanthus, for example, is beginning to resemble a bamboo grove, and the rubdeckias are taking over the border. Oriental poppies are another one to look out for.<br />
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Some plants are just complete takeover merchants - <i>centaurea montana</i> or mountain cornflower is a good example, perhaps because I should never have put it in lush border soil in the first place.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEPepKHqS6ip1HhOxeiIxXd37kAJ5U_iXKBaEv-HMPfsnxq9_oCjU7REnd2Hr7UHB2gfrP8UqYhfUyDh14DPCp8YwFhzLfRgrxr7eDFO77u3n83svB-RYoRPbXaHedHZJ_e-V2dtcJlFJF/s1600/3721803246_469d9d51b8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="centaurea montana" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEPepKHqS6ip1HhOxeiIxXd37kAJ5U_iXKBaEv-HMPfsnxq9_oCjU7REnd2Hr7UHB2gfrP8UqYhfUyDh14DPCp8YwFhzLfRgrxr7eDFO77u3n83svB-RYoRPbXaHedHZJ_e-V2dtcJlFJF/s320/3721803246_469d9d51b8.jpg" title="centaurea montana" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Centaurea montana</i>, photo by Simon Ross</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The worst of it is, it regenerates from any tiny piece of root left in the ground, so I spent two years digging out its clones. (Free to Hollywood - never mind zombies, how about a monster that can reproduce from a sliver of claw, or skin?) In British gardening magazines plants like these are usually referred to as "thugs", which seems a little extreme. Frustrations boiling over, I guess.<br />
<br />
On the other end of the scale are the frail darlings that you may love, but can't stand up to any bullying from the others. My <i>iris chrysographes</i> was one of those.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNP9MOdBcknyr3_OY7vRN7Pa4WlmuSmofrpNpBKwhWCFdGsGxcI95JpENg-T319Ez9J1YYdPNvAZuYUHEDBajbHNvMKJHkEz04MKnAY_h99_CQ40QQ9g2rr7r2AKH-Bsb7JZgNApX8swqA/s1600/iris_chrysographes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="iris chrysographes" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNP9MOdBcknyr3_OY7vRN7Pa4WlmuSmofrpNpBKwhWCFdGsGxcI95JpENg-T319Ez9J1YYdPNvAZuYUHEDBajbHNvMKJHkEz04MKnAY_h99_CQ40QQ9g2rr7r2AKH-Bsb7JZgNApX8swqA/s400/iris_chrysographes.jpg" title="iris chrysographes" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Iris chrysographes, Creative Commons, by jacki-dee</td></tr>
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It's a really beautiful plant - it has flowers of darkest purple, almost like black velvet, with gold tracing all over them. They're very short irises, maybe eight inches tall, and I had planted them at the front of the border. The leaves of everything I'd planted to take over the show later kept trying to smother them. For most plants, I would have said to hell with it, smother. Not for these.<br />
<br />
Everyone's got their own favourites, who get pampered while the rest have to fend for themselves. Maybe that's why they get so big and brawny; they know in advance that there's no special treatment for them.<br />
<br />
In the same way, once you've had the experience of half your plants running amok and smothering the other half once or twice, you're on your way to understanding the science of spacing.Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-11698761306116209002012-07-26T14:28:00.001-03:002012-08-14T15:42:57.186-03:00Learning from Your Mistakes<span style="font-family: inherit;">As you've probalby noticed if you've visited this blog before, it's been redesigned. I ran it through a readability test, and failed. Too dark, too many colours, too confusing. (I would love to give you the link for the test, but I've lost it.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I read a few pages on blog design, and learned a great deal. No more than three colours, Keep it light, keep it simple. So the new version has a lot more white in it, and I've changed the font. I feel embarrased about how it looked before now - but what can I say, I love colour. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
Hope you like it, and feel free to let me know what you think.Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-68122617224763039962012-07-25T15:33:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:02:01.999-03:00More Impurity<span style="font-family: inherit;">On the subject of "impure blue", I saw the following discussion on <a href="http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/peren/2003025929023537.html" target="_blank">GardenWeb</a>, and enjoyed it immensely, although one sentence from Kirk Johnson really stood out:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Blue is one color and purple is blue with red thrown in. Why do all the gardening publications insist on calling purple "blue" when they don't call orange "red"? Why pretend?</span></blockquote>
Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-13675163949169638072012-07-23T15:18:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:03:27.448-03:00Kniphofia: Not So Scary? or, My Cold Green Poker<span style="font-family: inherit;">I always thought of kniphofias as red-hot pokers. You know, orange and yellow, tall, and ugly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaTM6PvIiR77BydNBWc9t1m_4O6vpSGZfW8in503R6nJZBQ9kZYx6l_qO1H9gg6JSk21N-mzSY5HUmdgMagKlLV4dMM1GMZmNVip64e517jTZqcT-7ktWHcS5MbG97dQ0Gfyimt3FmPLGl/s1600/5350142977_1c412485ae.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="kniphofia 'Green Jade'" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaTM6PvIiR77BydNBWc9t1m_4O6vpSGZfW8in503R6nJZBQ9kZYx6l_qO1H9gg6JSk21N-mzSY5HUmdgMagKlLV4dMM1GMZmNVip64e517jTZqcT-7ktWHcS5MbG97dQ0Gfyimt3FmPLGl/s320/5350142977_1c412485ae.jpg" title="kniphofia 'Green Jade'" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Kniphofia 'Green Jade', Creative Commons, photo by dracophylla </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I bought one. Not just any one, but 'Green Jade'. Which caused a problem, because what do I call it? My cold green poker? I've always liked the American name, torch lily, but that doesn't really apply either. So I'm back at the Latin name, which is the correct way to refer to it, except no one knows what I mean by it.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">To be fair, trying to spell or pronounce kniphofia can inspire a condition known as "fear of Latin names", or Latinophobia, a word I just made up, based on the ancient Greek word <i>Latinos</i>. The good news about kniphofia is that you have two <a href="http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3332/#b" target="_blank">choices</a>: <i>ny fo fee a</i>, or <i>nip ho fia</i>. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">German seem to prefer<a href="http://www.forvo.com/word/kniphofia/" style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">k-nip-HOF-ia</span></a>, which is probably correct given they were discovered by<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><a href="http://www.erfurt-web.de/Datei:Kniphofs.jpg" target="_blank">Johann Hieronymus Kniphof</a>. The end result is that, as Robin Lane Fox says, "I doubt if any plant name has been so seldom used." (183)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But it's worth getting over both Latinophobia and any other prejudices for this lovely plant. 'Green Jade' really only has green buds. Or, more accurately, chartreuse, which open out to a creamy coloured flower tube, with just the faintest hint of lime green. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They could be described as like pale jadestone. A more poetic way of describing its colour comes from a <a href="http://zephirine38.over-blog.com/article-quand-le-diable-a-la-jaunisse-57084235.html" target="_blank">French blog post</a>: When the Devil has Jaundice. Like all its tribe, 'Green Jade' has strappy green leaves, which form a day-lily like mound. It's about four feet high in full bloom.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white;">'Green Jade' was bred by</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://www.bethchatto.co.uk/" target="_blank">Beth Chatto</a><span style="background-color: white;">, who has also given us '</span><a href="http://www.bethchattoshop.co.uk/shop/10/395/index.htm" target="_blank">Little Maid</a><span style="background-color: white;">', which has the same colours but half the height at two feet.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Provided you remember that in South Africa, where they come from, they get a lot of rain during the growing season, they are easy. I'm always slightly dubious about dry gardens with pokers in them, but a gravel garden could work with good soil underneath. They need sun, but I grew mine next to an east-facing fence, so it didn't get much light in late spring, but as the summer got on, and it got bigger, it got more and more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They are very attractive to slugs and snails, even the flowers stems, so take appropriate precautions. The first year I had mine, it sent up one - one! - flower spike, the stem of which was almost chewed through by a snail one night. (That's <a href="http://blog.greenergreengrass.com/2012/02/26/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-slugs/" target="_blank">how slugs and snails eat</a> - they have teeth. Somehow the thought of slugs having teeth is unpleasant.) It was hanging by a small thread of stem that the little gastropod hadn't finished, and I cut the stem and brought it into the house, so all was not lost, but still... </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The story has a happy ending; every year after it sent up more and more flower stems and I get to enjoy them in the garden.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I liked 'Green Jade' so much that when I was filling in the orange section of my border, I bought another kniphofia, <a href="http://apps.rhs.org.uk/plantselector/plant?plantid=5012" target="_blank">'Tawny King</a>'. It's a yellowy-orange colour, about four foot high, and like 'Green Jade' is much paler in bloom than in bud. Still can't warm up to those red-and-yellow ones, though.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">__________________</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Fox, Robin Lane, 2010: <i>Thoughtful Gardening</i>, Basic Books, London.</span>Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-44862420826532169162012-07-23T10:32:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:06:19.935-03:00Silene Coronaria and Geranium 'Patricia'<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Rose campion and Armenian geranium make a perfect pairing.
The campion, with its fuzzy silver stems makes an upright contrast to the mound
of finely-cut geranium foliage spangled with dark-eyed magenta flowers. The
flowers on the campion are, if anything, even more vivid than the geranium’s,
almost a fluorescent pink. See them together <a href="http://josefinshage.wordpress.com/category/favorittplanter/geranium/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.clivenichols.com/cgi-bin/stephen_johnson/database/imageFolio.cgi?action=view&link=07k&image=007175.jpg&img=0&search=CORONARIA&cat=all&tt=&bool=phrase">here</a>.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBhsYbA1WphvrhUSoM_ZoIxdDEMLRPut-ExhlY5paOvTaD0VW7AdWPprV126H0KuadUJWsPEwZloAL4fIaSs6bbsZdNiWEfMNZQB_V1WrAq1Afjf6KfRqr6I7_gwe6ler-TVdV5rG0Pa5/s1600/Geranium_psilostemon2_ies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img alt="geranium psilostemon" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBhsYbA1WphvrhUSoM_ZoIxdDEMLRPut-ExhlY5paOvTaD0VW7AdWPprV126H0KuadUJWsPEwZloAL4fIaSs6bbsZdNiWEfMNZQB_V1WrAq1Afjf6KfRqr6I7_gwe6ler-TVdV5rG0Pa5/s320/Geranium_psilostemon2_ies.jpg" title="geranium psilostemon" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Geranium psilostemon, Wikipedia Commons, photo by Frank Vincentz</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The two come from the same part of the world, too. Lychnis
is native to <span style="background-color: white;">southern and central Europe and
central Asia, while geranium psilostemon comes from Armenia and the surrounding
Caucasian territories.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMoUgEvhX1t0ZlUpJ8rhTwsDnJTYzZhIc_jOSkRwqlxU0yHc8szWtzwX_TNdBtR1cx5yadjzxxgM8Y4EvuFG213OEiRCrWgpPNNYHiLL0Hy3SwuR9jBnTW24OFiQltBQiEzHIL-W9U0i1f/s1600/Lychnis_coronaria_Uppsala.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img alt="silene coronaria" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMoUgEvhX1t0ZlUpJ8rhTwsDnJTYzZhIc_jOSkRwqlxU0yHc8szWtzwX_TNdBtR1cx5yadjzxxgM8Y4EvuFG213OEiRCrWgpPNNYHiLL0Hy3SwuR9jBnTW24OFiQltBQiEzHIL-W9U0i1f/s320/Lychnis_coronaria_Uppsala.jpg" title="silene coronaria" width="240" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Silene coronaria, Wikipedia Commons, photo by Udo Schröter </span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There are those who would say that this is
a eye-hurting combination. The word I would use is “showy”, and who doesn't want a bit of pizazz in the garden?</span></div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Lychnis, as you probably already know, has
been relocated to the silenes, and is now known as silene coronaria. (See my previous post: </span><span style="background-color: white;">Ken Thompson says don't worry.) </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">If you
look at the shape of the flowers and buds on <i>silene dioica</i> (red campion) and
<i>silene latifolia</i> (white campion), they are very similar to the rose campion. Visual similarity
can be misleading, though, as in the great geranium/pelargonium muddle. In
addition to looking alike, the silenes share DNA, which settles it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Which is a shame, really, as it has been
known as lychnis since the times of the ancient Greeks. The name means ‘light’
and comes from the stems being used as lamp wicks. The Roman writer <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D21%3Achapter%3D33" target="_blank">Pliny</a> tells
us that the stems were also used for chaplets, being stiff. This is the origin
of the <i>coronaria</i> part, which I had
always assumed referred to the flowers. <a href="http://davisla.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/plant-of-the-week-lychnis-coronaria/" target="_blank">(<i>Cornonaria</i></a>
meaning a woman who makes garlands.) This was probably what inspired Linnaeus to rename it <a href="http://www.linnean-online.org/4274/" target="_blank">Agrostemma</a>, or "field crown" in his <i>Species Plantarum</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It is interesting that Pliny compares phlox and lychnis, as their flowers have a similar shape. Another writer, Graham Stuart Thomas, says that </span><span style="background-color: white;">"the rounded flowers are like good pinks..."(260) The stems branch this way and that, with flowers appearing at the end of each branch. The stems and especially the leaves are pleasant to touch, being fuzzy like lambs' ears (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stachys_byzantina" target="_blank">stachys byzantina</a>). Some find the subtlety of the gray leaves let down by the bright flowers, even going so far as to call it "<a href="http://www.perennials.com/plants/lychnis-coronaria.html" target="_blank">garish</a>". </span></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3QjMCiSIsHiqjGJegrWpuYHbV5fkT0hJlv-8Smo0mWDiiT3Kno7yoKX9sGyQoNSMLE9QNjGVTbwwwWkG1wXmQcIC7ufenjtnZNHVhVZGqo_DHdVCRtl_9ru6AVBxoKMpMAlhcilQt2OPi/s1600/572px-Lychnis_coronaria_C.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3QjMCiSIsHiqjGJegrWpuYHbV5fkT0hJlv-8Smo0mWDiiT3Kno7yoKX9sGyQoNSMLE9QNjGVTbwwwWkG1wXmQcIC7ufenjtnZNHVhVZGqo_DHdVCRtl_9ru6AVBxoKMpMAlhcilQt2OPi/s320/572px-Lychnis_coronaria_C.jpg" width="305" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Silene coronaria; photo by Wouter Hagens</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Lychins may have been a garden plant since
classical times, and ever since (medieval Christians called it <a href="http://oldfashionedliving.com/campion.html" target="_blank">Our Lady’s Rose</a>)
but geranium psilostemon is a more recent introduction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It was discovered in Armenia in 1867 by
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Edmond_Boissier" target="_blank">Pierre Edmond Boissier</a>, who named it geranium armenum. However, it had been
described before, by <a href="http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Ledebour,+Karl+Friedrich" target="_blank">Karl Friedrich Ledebour</a> in 1842, who called it psilostemon, meaning
that it had <a href="http://www.plantpref.co.uk/html/geranium_psilostemon.html" target="_blank">hairless stamens</a>. You have to be a botanist to think of something
like that. (The “p” is silent, by the way.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Both gentlemen have reason to be pleased
with themselves. GP is a great plant, with leaves as finely cut as a Japanese
maple's, and those vivid flowers, set off by the black eye in the middle of each
bloom. Graham Stuart Thomas describes it as a “foliage plant of excellence” (187) especially when
its leaves take on reddish hues in the fall. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/3342694/On-the-spot-Geranium-psilostemon.html" target="_blank">Noel Kingsbury</a> praises it for not
having lost the free habit and balance of flower to foliage that it has in the
wild. My favourite is <a href="http://www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk/margery_fish.htm" target="_blank">Margery Fish</a>'s description of how she loved it "at every stage of the game, from the moment it puts its little pink nose through the soil until it opens its wicked eyes". (Rice: 113)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">When I grew it in northern England it
flowered from June to August, benefiting from a cut-back every so often when
it got too many seedheads. This length of bloom meant that I could pair it with
a variety of plants, from other June flowers like lychnis and aquilegia, to the
late July show of loosestrife, monarda and monkshood. In fact, my old garden
diary records that both geranium and lychnis were still flowering in October
one year. (Although I grew the variety 'Patricia' rather than the straight species; it may flower longer to make up for being paler.) <o:p></o:p></span><a href="http://www.plantpref.co.uk/html/geranium_psilostemon.html" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;" target="_blank">Jenny Fuller</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"> points out that the flowers take on a bluish tinge in the low light of fall or evening. (See picture above.)</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Geranium 'Patricia' by Simon Ross</span></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Like most geraniums, GP is easy to
propagate. Dig up a big clump of it, and break it into smaller ones, with some
root in each one. You should be able to just pull it apart with your hands.
Replant each piece and keep them watered until they start making new leaves.
Geraniums are a gateway plant for us divideaholics – it’s hard to fail with
them, and you get over your fear of harming your plant. Once you get confident
ripping up geraniums, next it’s the daylilies and then nothing is safe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Lychnis, on the other hand, is best
propagated by letting it seed. It will always come true, and the seedlings don’t
seem to mind being moved, as long as they’re well watered before and after. The
soft, silvery leaves make seedlings easy to find, too. (And ensure that you’re
not nurturing some horrible weed.) This is best done at the end of the season,
since if you’re good and pick all the dead-heads off, you can keep your lychnis
in bloom pretty much all summer. It’s not as bad a job as it sounds, and the
squared-off seedheads are attractive, as well as snapping off cleanly from the
stem. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Both plants are easy-care, long-flowering, and have good leaves as well as flowers. I don't know what more you could ask for. Except maybe subtlety, but you're not going to get it.</span></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-83926941893530425782012-07-16T13:05:00.001-03:002020-05-24T16:06:35.793-03:00Ken Thompson says don't worry.<div id="fb-root">
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<span style="background-color: white;">Ken Thompson, a British botanist and writer, says that while plant names are all being changed around because of DNA, we shouldn't let it worry us. He thinks now they have it all sorted and the names won't change again. I'm not so sure, but it's a good article:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/8264847/Dont-judge-a-plant-by-appearances.html" target="_blank">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/8264847/Dont-judge-a-plant-by-appearances.html</a>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-248713314556993322012-07-11T13:42:00.000-03:002012-07-25T11:40:27.325-03:00Primary Colours: good or bad?<div id="fb-root">
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Many years ago, I planted out blue and yellow Dutch irises. When they came up in the spring, next to the geum, I was horrified.. I maintained you couldn't have all three primary colours together. My then husband thought it was great, and took this picture. Friends and family also thought it looked good. Was I being too precious?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8d_OyNku4DNqVDwW6V01H2A7_iJs0jDtDUvQ9UxIL0qkEjggLnf0N0_UR7bMXt25I-qJJXFxL8AlLVvm2swT8rSVrwXIkrFn37IxC5LtRk9_5rHdKUUvjuQNiS4qXnb4Lc5TGDXrdXh7e/s1600/geums+and+irises.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Dutch irises and geums; primary colours" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8d_OyNku4DNqVDwW6V01H2A7_iJs0jDtDUvQ9UxIL0qkEjggLnf0N0_UR7bMXt25I-qJJXFxL8AlLVvm2swT8rSVrwXIkrFn37IxC5LtRk9_5rHdKUUvjuQNiS4qXnb4Lc5TGDXrdXh7e/s320/geums+and+irises.jpg" title="Dutch irises and geums; primary colours" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Geums and irises. Photo by Simon Ross.</td></tr>
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<br />Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-63712161180300580372012-07-10T14:43:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:08:41.684-03:00Coreopsis<div style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
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I have to confess right away that the main coreopsis I have grown is pink. This puts me in a poor position for defending the yellow daisies. The one I grew was 'Heaven's Gate', a cultivar of <i>coreopsis rosea</i>, and it was such a perfect colour I was willing to keep buying it year after year, since it never survived winter in Northern England.</div>
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It was only after one year when I planted some out in front achillea 'Summerwine' that I really saw what it could do - the dark raspberry eye of the coreopsis matched the achillea perfectly - and on closer inspection, I noted that the flowers on the achillea were paler at the centre, like the coreopsis in reverse. Not planned - but satisfying. Their habits were a good contrast - the achillea stands in a clump, while the coreopsis is more wispy, with thin stems and leaves but plenty of flowers. (Like <i>coreopsis verticilliata</i>, below.) Unfortunately, no picture, but here's the two items in question, see for yourself:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Coreopsis rosea 'Heaven's Gate'</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxf-9HkxGg6QoZx6zCk541IjUY9BD8His174IOo-CuFqhpxNCFgmMoYL8KbqAoo-P0qy34ndCoUuWQ5uPNaDMIVfE5wUPrUlN7SmAcpnnvkPe_8MsfGLDPPzxAid-dN6J4WLm8X6vsYeLo/s1600/Achillea+'Summer+Wine'1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxf-9HkxGg6QoZx6zCk541IjUY9BD8His174IOo-CuFqhpxNCFgmMoYL8KbqAoo-P0qy34ndCoUuWQ5uPNaDMIVfE5wUPrUlN7SmAcpnnvkPe_8MsfGLDPPzxAid-dN6J4WLm8X6vsYeLo/s320/Achillea+'Summer+Wine'1.jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Achillea 'Summerwine'</td></tr>
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<a name='more'></a>I don't know why I couldn't overwinter this plant. It is a native of eastern North America, and can be found as far north as Nova Scotia. Apparently it likes damp, and grows on the edges of marshes. It's a mystery, although I do have to say that it flowered profusely for me each summer, and it's fun watching the tiny dots of the buds unfurl into the daisy flowers.</div>
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The botanic name for this plant is <i>coreopsis rosea Nutt</i>., which stands for Nuttall, after <a href="http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2210" target="_blank">Thomas Nuttall</a>, another British plant hunter. He seems to have discovered several species of coreopsis, including the annual <i>c. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreopsis_tinctoria" target="_blank">tinctoria</a></i>, which has a dark centre. It is the parent of modern cultivars such as <a href="http://www.thompson-morgan.com/flowers/flower-seeds/hardy-annual-seeds/coreopsis-tinctoria-roulette/8372TM" target="_blank">'Roulette'</a>, which is showy, although I think even the original plant is attractive, and would look good with heleniums:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMTlydbEKraEAWODFxN7-5zkx_vp8zty5I9yUcA02f5dIoja_MQddjYSSPaQUqjSV6A_J-aKmo18fagNVFBQHkqmIHphly4GNXkp0tJ7D48fZgxWeozvjRH036eeSyY7vJES8mXPl-Y9QM/s1600/Plains_Coreopsis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="coreopsis tinctoria" border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMTlydbEKraEAWODFxN7-5zkx_vp8zty5I9yUcA02f5dIoja_MQddjYSSPaQUqjSV6A_J-aKmo18fagNVFBQHkqmIHphly4GNXkp0tJ7D48fZgxWeozvjRH036eeSyY7vJES8mXPl-Y9QM/s320/Plains_Coreopsis.jpg" title="coreopsis tinctoria" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Coreopsis tinctoria</i>, photo by Cory Maylett, from Wikipedia Commons</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Another popular garden variety is<i> <a href="http://en.hortipedia.com/wiki/Coreopsis_verticillata" target="_blank">c. verticilliata</a></i>,
or the whorled coreopsis. It has small, fine leaves and smallish lemon-yellow flowers, and
the plant as a whole is very attractive. It also has the distinction of being
first described by Linnaeus, which means it can call itself <i>coreopsis
verticillata Linn.</i> From it we get such popular garden varieties as the pale
lemon coloured ‘Moonbeam’ and brighter ones like ‘Zagreb’.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coreopsis verticillata, Hortopedia Commons, photo by
<span style="line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Alfred Osterloh</span> </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Coreopsis, by the way, comes from the <a href="http://wisplants.uwsp.edu/scripts/detail.asp?SpCode=CORGRA" target="_blank">Greek words</a><span style="background-color: white;"> κορις (<i>koris</i>), meaning "</span>bedbug<span style="background-color: white;">," and </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">ὄ</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">ψις (</span><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">opsis</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">), meaning</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> "resemblance", referring to the shape of the
achenes or fruits.<span style="background-color: white;"> When you consider that the
common name is tickseed, because the seeds supposedly look like ticks, you have
to admit that this a plant with a PR problem.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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It doesn't help that coreopsis is, let's face it, yellow. <span style="background-color: white;">Of course, there are</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://transatlanticplantsman.typepad.com/transatlantic_plantsman/2008/06/new-hardier-coreopsis.html" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">all sorts of colours</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">of coreopsis now, ranging from "Limerock Ruby" (red, of course) to Creme Brulee (palest yellow). But why not take up the challenge?</span><br />
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You can go the tasteful route and plant the paler varieties, such as<i> c. verticillata</i> 'Moonbeam', which also has the delicate habit that its common name, thread-leaf coreopsis, suggests. <a href="http://www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/perennials/coreopsis-verticillata-moonbeam/classid.2000004957/" target="_blank">Crocus</a> suggests planting it with the grass <i>stipa tenuisssima</i>, which is delicate and lovely to run your fingers through, like silky hair. 'Moonbeam' is very free-flowering and easy.<br />
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Another way of managing the bright yellow might be to plant both a paler yellow like 'Moonbeam' and a bright sunny one like 'Zagreb'. At <a href="http://www.gardenvisit.com/garden/hadspen_garden_and_nursery" target="_blank">Hadspen</a> (a famous English garden) Nori and Sandra Pope used to do that in their colour-themed borders, the paler on one side and the darker on the other, to tone. <span style="background-color: white;">(See their book</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colour-Design-Planting-Contemporary-Garden/dp/1850299579/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341931860&sr=1-1" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Colour by Design</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">for pictures and inspiration.) </span><span style="background-color: white;">You could also include some bidens as an edging plant, since it not only has similar flowers but is a relative. </span></div>
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With the strong-coloured <a href="http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/prairie/plantx/large_coreopsisx.htm" target="_blank"><i>coreopsis grandiflora</i></a>, I would be tempted to say the hell with it and go for a blaze of yellow. After all, the varieties have names like 'Sunfire', 'Sunny Day', and 'Early Sunrise' - so put that solar power to work for you.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqNq-okidkCOtIvXAtEinS6cXwqP6_Nljda6KVjSWou5_SxDYWRgOTUd95XI8f7ZgqAOeDrMnyShDa3x19062xIK3q_8nDII6M-JUBT1sgwcLFRKFVlVwNhU1u0FdCElu6Rw7VGGijfif/s1600/coreopsis+grandiflora.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqNq-okidkCOtIvXAtEinS6cXwqP6_Nljda6KVjSWou5_SxDYWRgOTUd95XI8f7ZgqAOeDrMnyShDa3x19062xIK3q_8nDII6M-JUBT1sgwcLFRKFVlVwNhU1u0FdCElu6Rw7VGGijfif/s1600/coreopsis+grandiflora.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Coreopsis grandiflora 'Early Sunrise'</span></td></tr>
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'Early Sunrise' has double flowers like a carnation's, and 'Sunny Day' looks like a bright yellow cosmos, while 'Sunfire' is single with a splotch of purple at the bottom of each petal - ideal with <a href="http://missingmygarden.blogspot.ca/2012/06/gaillardia-saucy-flower_29.html" target="_blank">gaillardias</a>.<br />
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As you might expect from the name, all these have larger flowers than the verticilliatas, and are less delicate. In a border with rudbeckias, heleniums and some dark blue salvias and liatris, they should be fine. You could start with yellow geums until the coreopsis kick in mid-summer.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Or, for a real kick of sunny innocence, plant some
bright yellow coreopsis with the tiny white daisies of chamomile (anthemis),
green-flowered nicotianas, and yellow or orange crocosmias. Zingy enough for
anyone, and cheerful enough to make even the most hardened garden snob smile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-7801002170712712232012-06-29T10:11:00.003-03:002020-05-24T16:09:34.537-03:00Gaillardia: the Saucy Flower<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">It might seem a bit of a stretch from Richard the Lionheart to the humble <a href="http://www.barryfriedmanblankets.com/wool.html">blanket flower</a>, but it’s not as far as you think. Gaillardia were named after a French magistrate, Gaillard de Charentonneau. <i>Gaillard</i> in </span><a href="http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/dictionary/gaillard.html" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">French</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> can mean either “strong; lively, spritely” or else ”</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">a </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">strapping man”. One imagines Richard himself as <i>gaillard</i>, but his famous castle, <a href="http://historymedren.about.com/od/castles/ss/Chateau-Gaillard.htm">Chateau Gaillard</a>, was so named because it was, in Medieval French, “saucy” since he’d built it to spite the King of France, and also because it was so stoutly built it could not be taken.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">What struck me was that you could say the same of the flowers themselves – they are certainly lively and strong, as well as being stout stalwarts of the perennial bed. Whether they’re saucy or not I’ll leave you to decide.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: Georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify;">Gaillardia aristata</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify;"> by </span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/plant_diversity/" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Matt Lavin</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify;">; </span><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en" style="color: black; font-family: Georgia, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">creative commons</a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "verdana" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 26px; text-align: justify;">. </span> </td></tr>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">One thing for certain is that they are American flowers, appearing all the way from Canada to Argentina. Most garden varieties come from gaillardia x grandifolia, a cross between the annual </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> g. pulchella (from Latin <i>pulcher</i>, beautiful) and perennial g. aristata (from Latin </span><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">arist</span></i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">, bristle or awn). </span><a href="http://www.fnps.org/assets/pdf/pubs/gaillardia_pulchella_blanketflower.pdf" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Pulchella</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> is the red one with yellow tips to the petals, while </span><a href="http://em.ca/garden/native/nat_Gaillardia%20aristata1.html" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">aristata</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> is mainly yellow, although you can sometimes see red where the petals meet the disc. It’s hard to be precise with gaillardias because they vary a great deal. This makes them easy to hybridize, but has also caused a number of new species to be announced, only to be withdrawn later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">You won’t be surprised to hear that Kelways and Robinsons were at the forefront of breeding blanket flowers:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #282828; line-height: 16px;">100 years ago, the great Kelways nursery in Somerset was annually raising around 70 varieties of gaillardia and almost as many pyrethrums. It supplied off-the-peg herbaceous borders throughout the country.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">The <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/4792460/Gardening-news.html">article</a> I’m quoting from is mainly about the Hardy Plant Society’s millenium survey of its members’ favourite plants. Out of 12 000 members, only two mentioned pyrethrums or gaillardias. The <a href="http://www.wellandantiquemaps.co.uk/lg_images/The-Gaillardia-Fairy.jpg">Gaillardia Fairy</a> (yes!) is having a thin time of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">People in Britain may not be so enthusiastic about them now, but they were being grown for gardens very shortly after the resoundingly named August-Denis Fougeroux de Bondaroy first published his paper about it, in 1786. He had been sent seeds from <a href="http://www.discoverlife.org/20/q?search=Gaillardia+pulchella">Louisiana</a>, and had grown them on for two years. <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=X5tKAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA614&lpg=PA614&dq=%22Fougeroux+De+Bondaroy%22+Louisiana&source=bl&ots=CfdRWRQxEC&sig=Y8DoL5YaQrjSo4jfcjWrzXEnOH4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NBTrT4GvB8K16AGH-YHYBQ&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22Fougeroux%20De%20Bondaroy%">The Monthly Review</a> (vol. 81) published a translated version of his description:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">resembles the rudbeckia in some of its characters, and the helianthus in others; in compliment to M. Gaillard, a botanist of Charontonneau, it is thus denominated <i>Gaillardia </i>(pulchella)<i> foliis alternis lanceolatis semi-amplexantibus, floribus subsolitariis terminalibus purpureoflavis</i>. (1789: 614)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gaillardia pulchella, photo by Daniel CD, creative commons</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Bondaroy’s <a href="http://dare.uva.nl/document/196003">other important contribution to science</a> was finding out how the pigment <a href="http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/overview/naplesyellow.html">Naples Yellow</a> was made, which leads me to suggest crocosmia ‘Solfatare’ as a planting companion to your gaillardias – the crocosmia is named for <a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solfatare_(Italie)">a volcanic crater in Naples</a>, and Bondaroy’s purpose was to disprove the assertion that Naples Yellow was a volcanic mineral. Bondaroy died in 1789, but of old age rather than the revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">The other half of the equation, gaillardia aristata, was first reported by Lewis and Clark, apparently on dry hills in Montana, in 1806. The story of what happened next is tangled, but it seems that when they sent the seeds of gaillardia and many other plants back, William Barton, who was supposed to catalogue them, just sat on them and did nothing. Eventually a German botantist, Frederick Pursh, was hired to write up their notes and make drawings of the specimens, which he did</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">However, he fell out with Barton over money and who was to get credit for the work, and Pursh left, taking Lewis and Clark’s notes, his drawings, and all his own work. Pursh eventually fetched up in London, where he published his <i>Flora Americae Septentrionalis </i>in 1814. (For more of the various twists and turns, see</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"> </span><a href="http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=504" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">here</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">, and Elliot: 179-89.) You can read the <i>Flora </i>online <a href="http://www.botanicus.org/title/b11729004">here</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">The Scottish horticulturalist <a href="http://www2.monticello.org/twinleaf/peculiar.html">David Douglas</a> also found gaillardia aristata during his exploration of the Canadian and American west. He brought seeds him with him and distributed to them to members of the Horticultural Society. (He also brought back Clarkia, and the california poppy.) His path frequently overlapped Lewis and Clark's, and he too found his gaillardias in the Rockies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It seems appropriate that Lewis and Clark should be connected
to this plant, which is apparently one of three <a href="http://www.prairieoriginals.com/PIONEERS_PLANTS.pdf">prairie pioneers</a>, along with
rudbeckia hirta and Ratibida columnifera. They are the first to colonize disturbed areas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">All three are a cheerful yellow; but gaillardias come in many colours. Just how many may surprise you. Check out this link to <a href="http://definingyourhome.blogspot.ca/2010/03/pick-your-favorite-color-of-blanket.html">Freda Cameron's blog</a>, which shows them in red, yellow, orange - and purple! Even in the wild, they have a tendency to vary a great deal, doing all sorts of things like developing quilled or spooned petals, or being more or less bicoloured. After all, we know that Kelway had about 70 kinds. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">One of my favourites is a peachy-orange and lemon-yellow one with two rows of quilled petals, called 'Oranges and Lemons'. I used it as an edging for my "hot" borders.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Oranges and Lemons', photo by Captain-tucker<span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px;">,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> from creative commons.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 18px;"> Another, similar type is 'Moxie', which gets a good review <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Gardening/diggin-it/2012/0521/Great-garden-flowers-A-gaillardia-with-plenty-of-moxie" target="_blank">here</a>. If you want a really dark red, there's '<a href="http://www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/perennials/gaillardia-%C3%97-grandiflora-burgunder/classid.2000010211/" target="_blank">Burgunder</a>', which helpfully comes with some suggestions on what to plant with it. There are every kind of bicoloured one from almost all-red ones like 'Arizona Sun' and the shorter 'Goblin' ('Kobold') to the bright yellow 'Mesa Bright Bicolour', which has a mere ring of red around the central disc. Plant breeders have also played around with the petals, with results like <a href="http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/gardens-gardening/your-garden/plant-finder/plant-details/kc/d576/gaillardia-frenzy.aspx" target="_blank">'Frenzy</a>' where the petals have rolled themselves into tight rays.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 18px;"> The <a href="http://www.dallasplanttrials.org/gaillardia_torch.htm" target="_blank">double gaillardias</a> just look strange, though.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 18px;">One way to grow gaillardias is to do as William Robinson, the influential Irish gardener, suggested:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Where possible they </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">should be grown in bold groups, for they </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">thrive better if so placed than as solitary </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">plants in a parched border, and no plants </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">have a finer effect in a bed by themselves. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Which would certainly be striking, whether you used one colour or several together. Another idea would be to put it in a "hot" border like I did, and surround it with other orange, yellow and red plants. Heleniums would look good and echo the shape as well as the bricky-red colour, while achilleas would make substantial contrast. I would add some grasses to fountain up around them, as well. (I used panic grass in my border.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Another thought, especially in dryer areas, would be to set them up with other dry-landscape plants, such as agastache, salvias, and other<a href="http://naturalgardening.blogspot.ca/2008/09/rubeckia-agastache-and-gaillardia.html" target="_blank"> southwestern plants</a>. I was also inspired by a webpage showing Alberta' s native flowers, which led to thoughts of a blue, yellow and white scheme with small-flowered asters, tansy, goldenrod, bergamot and yarrow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Freda Cameron's blog also features a <a href="http://definingyourhome.blogspot.ca/2009/10/grape-salvia-and-gaillardia-favorite.html" target="_blank">stunning picture of a purple gaillardia</a> aestevis var. winkleri 'Grape Sensation' with a matching salvia greggi 'Diane' which is a perfect piece of planting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I think that I will give the last word on this subject to Lady Bird Johnson, who was a wildflower advocate long before ecology was a household word:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Another of my favourites would have to be the <i>gaillardia </i>called Indian-blanket or fire wheel (Gaillardia pulchella). The reason I like it is that it is a survivor - hardy, drought-resistant, and it thrives in poor soil. I like masses of flowers, and <i>gaillardia </i>makes masses. A striking tapestry of color, it can cover several acres of pasture. Another reason I like it is because it is easy to grow. You plant <i>gaillardia </i>and you get <i>gaillardia</i>, which is not the case with some of the more capricious, elusive flowers. (Johnson: 126)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Elliott, Charles, 2006: <i>More Papers from the Potting Shed</i>, Frances Lincoln, London.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Johnson, Lady Bird and Carlton B. Lees, 2000: <i>Wildflowers Across America</i>, Artabras (reprint).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Robinson, William , 1870: <i>The wild garden or,<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"> </span></i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><i>Our groves & shruberies made beautiful by the naturalization of hardy exotic plants</i>, Oxford University Press.</span></span></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-68713569801345070762012-06-21T11:08:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:14:23.042-03:00Painted Daisies<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In
1802 the Russian count Apollo Mussin-Pushkin set out on a scientific expedition
to Georgia and Mount Ararat. He brought with him a team of experts, including
the German explorer Baron Frederick Augustus Marschall von Bieberstein, who spent a long time in the region and eventually published</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <i><span style="background-color: white;">Flora taurico-caucasica </span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white;"> (</span></span><span style="background-color: white;">1808-1819)</span>.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> It was <a href="http://www.gardensplendor.com/harv/pe_tanacetum.html" target="_blank">Bieberstein</a> who was credited
with finding the painted daisy, although it’s not named after him. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> Mussin-Pushkin and Bieberstein found some other useful plants on that trip,
including<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://hortensisblog.blogspot.ca/2011/09/origins.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">achillea filipendulina</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, the parent of many modern varieties,
and the catmint<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www.alchemy-works.com/nepeta_mussinii.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">nepeta mussinii</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">, as well as the striped squill <a href="http://stonecrop.server265.com/cmpg/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=769" target="_blank">puschkinia scilloides</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It
was a pity that the daisies were not named after Bieberstein or even
Mussin-Pushkin, because they keep getting shuffled around. Currently, painted
daisies are in the tanacetum family, the same family as the common tansy or
feverfew. Before that they were in with the pyrethrums, and they've also spent
time as chrysanthemums and leucanthemums (the white daisy family). I tend to
think of them as pyrethrums still, but if you want your local nursery or garden
centre to know what you're looking for, ask for<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>tanacetum coccineum</i>. (Red
tansy, in other words.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When I think of tansies, I think of <i><a href="http://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/tanacetum-parthenium-aureum/881.html" target="_blank">tanacetum parthenium 'Aureum'</a></i>, which does have lovely yellow-green leaves, cut like a fern's. However, the down side is that you'll spend each spring picking several hundred of its babies out of your beds and borders. In light of such effort, it's not surprising that flowering takes all the good out of them, and the whole plant has to be sheared back for a new crop of fresh-looking leaves. (And as a form of birth control.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Painted daisies are much better behaved than their cousins. They're very pretty plants, with flowers ranging in colour from white through rose to cerise-red. They also have pretty, ferny leaves, which look like carrot tops when they first emerge. Tanacetums like a lot of sun, and they're good in dry areas. If you dead-head them, they'll flower and flower.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that the picture on the left of my blog is of a painted daisy, tanacetum coccineum 'Brenda'. It is a strong, dark pink and grows to about 18 - 20 inches high. (That's 46 to 50 cms for Canadians.) The only downside, as with all painted daisies, is that they can be floppy. I exploited this, and let them soften the edge of my stone path, but whenever I had to start stepping around them, they were sheared back. Never seemed to hurt them.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN5qw1e3khSzNsH5VKOMoVNlZxX_J0Hf1Vkk9_zeqi13Q8RU6VHFEg-7Btnc5lvEnn3mJnjX19nwWMttsYd_CxmR0Q-LyYyI_f3tluEjIdFJsRSWkTvpg9MIW1E4nviAV1p7I9mL0QgEVW/s1600/pink+daisy+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="tanacetum coccineum 'Brenda'" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN5qw1e3khSzNsH5VKOMoVNlZxX_J0Hf1Vkk9_zeqi13Q8RU6VHFEg-7Btnc5lvEnn3mJnjX19nwWMttsYd_CxmR0Q-LyYyI_f3tluEjIdFJsRSWkTvpg9MIW1E4nviAV1p7I9mL0QgEVW/s320/pink+daisy+2.jpg" title="tanacetum coccineum 'Brenda'" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Photo by Simon Ross)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My soil was probably a little too rich for them, as well. Like a lot of other daisies tanacetums do best in poor soil.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Besides 'Brenda', there are others that I can recommend. 'James Kelway' is a fine, bright red, as well as 'Robinson's Red'. There's also 'Robinson's Pink', which is lighter than 'Brenda'. 'Duro' is supposed to be darker, reddish-purple, and I can't wait to try it. For the more subtle, there are whites such as the double 'Aphrodite' and single 'Snowcloud', while 'Eileen May Robinson' is pale pink. The one you'll see most often is 'Robinson's Mixed', large-flowered, single daisies ranging from white to red. As with cosmos mixtures, you'll get mostly mid-pink flowers, but you can always propagate the ones whose colours you like.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinUKnh0xzQfuMrEE6b6jCeR437zQM3_qVpzL0TzIkzxFS87x5q3FsGxNo_nGjPY0DPLAbTuEb7LGI50K7bFfgmbN-4uO7gLKZHKUPaO7pZ0oKmjUpKt7swF_d_kAXhluPxaXkx2dGlI_sT/s1600/Tanacetum_coccineum__James_Kelway_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="tanacetum coccineum 'James Kelway'" border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinUKnh0xzQfuMrEE6b6jCeR437zQM3_qVpzL0TzIkzxFS87x5q3FsGxNo_nGjPY0DPLAbTuEb7LGI50K7bFfgmbN-4uO7gLKZHKUPaO7pZ0oKmjUpKt7swF_d_kAXhluPxaXkx2dGlI_sT/s320/Tanacetum_coccineum__James_Kelway_.jpg" title="tanacetum coccineum 'James Kelway'" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Picture from Bay State Perennial Farm)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/160-years-making-Somerset-s-masters-Chelsea/story-11321901-detail/story.html" target="_blank">James Kelway</a> was a Victorian nurseryman who developed many kinds of tree peonies and delphiniums, as well as working on pyrethrums. Janet Seaton, the official Kelways historian, says</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">They had been improving them since the 1880s,
introducing new varieties of both single and double flowers. Between 1859 and 1892 the RHS Floral
Committee awarded 23 certificates for different varieties of pyrethrums – all
but two were won by Kelways, and 12 of those were First Class Certificates.</span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></o:p></span><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kelways still
hold an RHS Award of Garden Merit for the dark crimson pyrethrum ‘James Kelway’
(<i>Tanacetum coccineum</i>) ‘Langport Scarlet’, introduced in 1908, was said to be an improvement on ‘James Kelway’.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;">You can find one of their old catalogues, </span><a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924000683445/cu31924000683445_djvu.txt" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;" target="_blank"><i>The Manual of Horticulture</i></a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: justify;">, online. It says that as well as their peonies, "Lupins and Pyrethrums [are] two other flowers with which the name of Kelways is indissolubly associated.'</span>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nor was Kelway alone in his fondness for pyrethrums, as they were then called. Forbes of Hawick offered 60 kinds of gaillardia and 120 pyrethums in their 1901 catalogue. (Thomas:12) As for Robinsons Hardy Plants, who were also influential in developing pyrethrums, I have not been able to find out anything about them, except that their nursery was at Rushmore Hill and is now owned by<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" target="_blank"><span id="goog_1264671948"></span> Coolings<span id="goog_1264671949"></span></a>.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I can't help but wonder if pyrethrums, gaillaridas and so on weren't the daylilies and hostas of the early 1900s. They became incredibly popular, everyone wanted to sell them, and then fashions changed or the market was glutted and the world moved on.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think that with today's focus on environmental gardening, pyrethrums could move back into the spotlight. They don't need much watering or feeding, and they're low-maintenance. Unfortunately, they don't really have a champion. You will have noticed that most of the popular varieties are still named after Kelway and Robinson - a compliment to their powers, but also a sign that no-one is trying to improve on them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">However, there are people out there who are getting inventive with them, and using them in plantings. The blog <a href="http://natureworksct.blogspot.ca/2012/05/painted-daisies.html" target="_blank">Natureworks</a> caught my eye with its combination of bright pink daisies with greater leopardsbane (</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Doronicum pardalianches</i>) behind it. The yellow daisy centres pick up the yellow of the leopardsbane, and it looks very contemporary.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another ideas would be to exploit both the historical and environmental associations and plant the daisies with achillea and catmint. They all thrive in a similar environment, and would flatter each other, especially a pale coloured achillea in yellow or white. Other plants found in that part of the<a href="http://www.mobot.org/mobot/research/russia/georgia.shtml" target="_blank"> Caucasus</a> include </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">
<span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">masterwort </span><i style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Astrantia biebersteinii</i><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"> (or <i>major</i>)</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">, elecampane </span><i style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">Inula orientalis</i><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">,</span> and the light-blue flowered <span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">pincushion-flower or scabious </span><i style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Scabiosa caucasica</i><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">. Lots of ideas there.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The Canadian gardener Patrick Lima is also very fond of painted daisies, and he uses them in his Rosy Border at <a href="http://torontogardens.blogspot.ca/2009/07/garden-daytrips-larkwhistle-bruce.html" target="_blank">Larkwhistle</a>, his garden in northern Ontario. There they grow along with meadow rue (<i>thalictrum</i>), catmint, the single peony <a href="http://www.hiddenspringsflowerfarm.com/mahogany-peony.html" target="_blank">'Mahogany'</a>, and siberian irises. He also suggests gas plants (<i>dictaminus fraxinella </i>'Ruber') as good companions for them. (Lima: 87)</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You won't be surprised to hear that I had mine in my magenta border, along with a geranium 'Patricia', an achillea 'Cerise Queen', and some dark-blue salvia 'Mainacht' to cool it down a bit. For contrast, heuchera 'Key Lime Pie'. Behind all this was an enormous euphorbia schillingi. I was inspired by Monty Don's idea of the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Jewel-Garden-Monty-Don/dp/0340826711" target="_blank">Jewel Garden</a> - lots of rich colour. I'm not sure if he would have been flattered by the result, but I liked it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So there y0u are - four different ways to use pyrethrums. No doubt there are plenty more. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lima, Patrick, 1998:<i> The Art of Perennial Gardening: Creative Ways with Plants</i>, Firefly Books, Willowdale, ON, Canada.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Seaton, Janet, 2011: </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Kelways Glorious: The History of Kelways Nursery</i>, </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Picts Hill Publishing</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(also pers.comm.)</span></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thomas, Graham Stuart, 2004: <i>Perennial Garden Plants, or the Modern Florilegium</i>, Frances Lincoln, London.</span></span></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-18155107205235791122012-06-15T10:32:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:18:41.541-03:00Erigeron<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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Erigerons (soft "g") are a group of plants, mainly North American, that grow in sunny, open places. There are a large number of species, but I'm mainly interested in the garden perennials. Their flowers resemble those of asters, but they open at midsummer, making them long-day flowers. The dried plant was supposed to repel fleas, thus the common name, fleabane. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erigeron" target="_blank">Latin name</a> actually derives from Greek, <i>eri</i> - early, and <i>geron</i> - old man (as in gerontology). This was probably suggested by the white hairs that surround the seedheads.</div>
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According to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/7894984/How-to-grow-Erigeron-Dunkelste-Aller.html" target="_blank">Val Bourne</a>, erigerons were popular about 50 years ago, but they're definitely out of fashion now. She claims that people found them too much trouble, and short-lived, but I never had any problems with mine. Still, if you read down through her article, you'll notice that the introduction dates for a lot of the plants she mentions are around the 1950s, although there are some German introductions from the early 1970s.<br />
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I’m
not sure I would have bothered much about them, except that I inherited one when I
bought a house. I was really impressed by it when it started to flower, putting
up its rayed daisies, petals several rows deep, with big yellow centres. It
took me a few tries to identify it, and I still don’t know what variety,
although I suspect it’s 'Pink Jewel'. It flowered for about a month, after which
the show was clearly over. (This may be just me; the <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Perennials-American-Horticultural-Society/dp/0756613434" target="_blank">RHS Encylopedia of Perennials</a></i> says that if you cut them back they'll flower again in August. I may have been too far north.)</div>
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Still, it was definitely one of the best things about
June that year. Later I moved in a geranium ‘Patricia’ and an achillea ‘Liliac
Beauty’ next to it. The achillea was not the one I’d ordered, but I kept it because the
three plants looked so good together. (Next year I swapped the achillea for ‘Cerise
Queen’, the one I had wanted, and that looked good too.) I copied this picture of 'Pink Jewel' from the <a href="http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/farnorth/" target="_blank">Far North Gardening Forum</a>, but I couldn't find the owner:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHWuepPSij-Whe_8NgR1BKa6yFq7VQF3Lgk7zbSUU091srLBqpwnpa-Nk_bH2Oljdv-l4q7WEKkxdspo_JGsDAhQzcsfqj8WprIFk4bEk2d_y7wIB57sYsOUdG0VZlO6-_c1-2TBUCdFa_/s1600/Erigeron+%27Rosa+Juwel%27.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Erigeron Rose Jewel" border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHWuepPSij-Whe_8NgR1BKa6yFq7VQF3Lgk7zbSUU091srLBqpwnpa-Nk_bH2Oljdv-l4q7WEKkxdspo_JGsDAhQzcsfqj8WprIFk4bEk2d_y7wIB57sYsOUdG0VZlO6-_c1-2TBUCdFa_/s320/Erigeron+'Rosa+Juwel'.jpg" title="Erigeron Rose Jewel" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Erigeron 'Rose Jewel'</td></tr>
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I should point out, in the name of accuracy, that since many of the best erigerons were bred in Germany, they tend to have German names. Strictly speaking, my plant was 'Rosa Juwel', I use the English form because that how you usually see it. But there are many others with the same name problem: 'Sommerneuschnee' or 'New Summer Snow'; 'Dunkelste Aller', or 'Darkest of All'; and 'Rotes Meer' or 'Red Sea'. </div>
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'Dunkelste Aller' also is slightly misleading, since it's been beaten by 'Schwarzes Meer' or Black Sea, bred in 1970. Still, both have lovely violet flowers, and would look fine in any border themed around <a href="http://missingmygarden.blogspot.ca/2012/06/impure-blue.html" target="_blank">Impure Blue</a>, as this photo from <a href="http://commons.hortipedia.com/wiki/Main_Page" target="_blank">Hortopedia</a> shows:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghMyMhMWKF99hYPLDD2LlxDI09lagHrD9YMINf-dceuqnoCy58p1a3dksv5A-9SfhimhKuaDr9Q6qR8DxnEt1gq8yOmbcG-kV9u2D6GZHjh8-twyh7-eGx7iQIdv0q9QbpJyy7mbYUGQJr/s1600/Erigeron_DUNKELSTE_ALLER_photo_file_611KB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Erigeron 'Dunkelste Aller'" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghMyMhMWKF99hYPLDD2LlxDI09lagHrD9YMINf-dceuqnoCy58p1a3dksv5A-9SfhimhKuaDr9Q6qR8DxnEt1gq8yOmbcG-kV9u2D6GZHjh8-twyh7-eGx7iQIdv0q9QbpJyy7mbYUGQJr/s320/Erigeron_DUNKELSTE_ALLER_photo_file_611KB.jpg" title="'Dunkelste Aller": Not the Darkest of them All?" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Dunkelste Aller': Not the Darkest of them All?</td></tr>
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Apart from the German varieties, there are older ones bred by Allan Bloom, an Englishman who worked with many different perennials. You always know one of his because their names all end in "ity". Alan Bloom and his propagator Percy Piper experimented with creating a longer-lived, improved erigeron, and finally selected 11 plants which seemed tougher and better than the rest.<br />
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Of these, only one, "Dignity", has an AGM, or Award of Garden Merit. There are five others out there, but they're hard to come by. While 'Dignity' is violet-blue, 'Gaiety', 'Unity' and 'Felicity' are all pink, and 'Dimity' is a smaller, also pink, variety.</div>
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Another one worth mentioning is <a href="http://www.art.com/products/p14368435-sa-i2912821/brian-carter-erigeron-quakeress-flowering-in-norfolk.htm" target="_blank">'Quakeress'</a>, named because its colour, lavender-white, was supposed to be the colour of a Quaker's dress. It's an older, taller variety and worth having for the curiosity value alone, but it's supposed to be a good plant as well, with a long flowering season.</div>
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As well as having flowers like asters, erigerons come in much the same colours. Like asters, they need other, structural plants near them like achilleas, salvias, and sedums.<a href="http://www.bhg.com/gardening/plant-dictionary/perennial/fleabane/" target="_blank"> Blue fescue</a> is another idea. The bluer ones would be good near old roses, the ones that bloom in June-July and then are over. My old rosa gallica was like that, and a few of the pale violet erigerons would have looked amazing with it.</div>
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One final note: erigerons also grow like asters, only shorter. so a little discreet staking is probably required. I used to put hoops around them early on and tuck in any escapee stems later.</div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-86770456128010494672012-06-15T09:02:00.001-03:002012-06-15T16:06:20.138-03:00<a href="about:blank">googlea9cdb6fa4dc28d37.html</a><br />
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<br />Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-44077729346152586342012-06-13T15:14:00.001-03:002020-05-24T16:19:06.032-03:00Neglected Daisies<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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For my
next few posts I’m going to focus on something a little different. I’ve been
thinking for some time about a series on “neglected daisies”: erigeron,
pyrethrum, gaillardia and coreopsis. Or, if you prefer, fleabane, painted
daisy, blanket flower and tickseed. I’ve used all four of them in my garden,
and they are wonderful plants, with the last three flowering for months.
Erigerons tend to do it all in one go, but it’s a great go while it lasts. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Some of the prairie daisies like helenium, coneflower, rudbeckia moved to centre stage when the <a href="http://dirt.asla.org/2010/05/11/piet-oudolf-leader-of-the-new-perennials/" target="_blank">New Perennial</a> movement took off in the nineties, with its emphasis on
structure and shape. (<a href="http://www.oudolf.com/piet-oudolf" target="_blank">Piet Oudolf</a>’s book had five categories of shapes: spires,
umbels, globes, plumes and daisies.)<br />
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Their enduring seedheads guaranteed them a place in a garden that needs to look good when it dies back. Other daisies, however, were not touched by
the spotlight of fame, and I think it’s time they got their moment to shine.<br />
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I hope that these posts inspire you to plant some, and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-60402353722166623362012-06-13T10:44:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:20:20.233-03:00Garden-of-Eden<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petunias - as we like them.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I'm quoting this from Margaret Maron's post <a href="http://margaretmaron.blogspot.ca/2009/09/thinking-of-thalassa.html" target="_blank">"THINKING OF THALASSA"</a> because it amused me. Maybe it should be "Magenta the Motivator" from now on:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">I remembered one of Thalassa’s shows in which she went
on a long rant about how her red hybrid petunias reverted to this same sickly
pinkish-purple. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Left alone,
petunias will reseed themselves and come back year after year, but seeds from
red petunias do not come up with red flowers. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>They come up purply. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Because so many hybrid flowers
of the red, pink and blue color range tend to revert, she and her mother
called the color Garden-of-Eden purple and amused themselves (and us) by
hypothesizing that all the original flowers must have been this color and that
it wasn’t until Eve got kicked out of the garden that the colors became more
varied.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOtZ9-qFUp2qa6XdR9Cm4bLty7FGK13I3VfSVa3v9vfFv_fnTuJ1Tc6LRK5UmRPhKoI00laW-i5cEAsk7ln15I1OgWX_ZwyYNIkn_N2bU70TIgA77UsB960sRA5NzTa7CeBgO0SbKUPCp0/s1600/self-seeding+petunias.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOtZ9-qFUp2qa6XdR9Cm4bLty7FGK13I3VfSVa3v9vfFv_fnTuJ1Tc6LRK5UmRPhKoI00laW-i5cEAsk7ln15I1OgWX_ZwyYNIkn_N2bU70TIgA77UsB960sRA5NzTa7CeBgO0SbKUPCp0/s320/self-seeding+petunias.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Self-sown petunias</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The picture of the self-sown petunias
is from<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.onlineplantguide.com/Plant-Details/1918/" target="_blank">The Online Plant Guide</a>. They have several
other pictures as well, all proving Thalassa Cruso's point.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-86740084617944004772012-06-11T09:40:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:24:59.308-03:00Indigo: Seventh Colour or Odd One Out?<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.22806234192103148" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indigo is the odd colour out of the spectrum. It has no complement, and it is really only in there because of Isaac Newton. He may have applied strict mathematical logic to the question of the planets’ orbit and their cause, but he also imagined that while gravity whisked the planets around in their courses, they produced the music of the spheres. Humans cannot hear this music.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.22806234192103148" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The seven planets, however, were thought to each have their own distinct note. Seven planets, seven notes in the Western major scale, so of course seven colours in the rainbow. Newton even felt that there were similar</span><a href="http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/library/universalharmony/newton.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">intervals</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> between colours and notes. (You can hear the tones and see their associated colours on YouTube:</span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDwhQJfr53w" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDwhQJfr53w</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.) </span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.22806234192103148" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Presumably indigo fitted in well between blue and purple, but most modern scientists who study light consider the spectrum to consist of six colours, the primaries and their complementary colours.</span></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.22806234192103148" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b><br /><b id="internal-source-marker_0.22806234192103148" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.winsornewton.com/products/water-colours/cotman-water-colour/colour-chart/indigo/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indigo</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a useful term, however, for those colours that hover between blue and purple, inky and somber as they are. Some have suggested, in fact, that indigo is the colour of blue ink. The colour of new Levi’s, indigo means jeans for most people. It balances across the purple line from magenta. If magenta is in-your-face Lady Gaga, indigo is like Lou Reed – unflamboyantly cool.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></b></div>
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<a name='more'></a><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dye we call indigo comes from a group of plants all grouped into the genus </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indigofera</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (meaning they make indigo). </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indigofera tinctoria</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> grows in Asia, while in Central and South America </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">indigofera suffruticosa</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is used. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately, most indigo plants are not only unshowy, but don’t have blue flowers. So much for the daydream of a brooding, dark blue flower that could produce a similar pigment. The place where the dye and flowers intersect is perhaps in their rarity value: blue is an uncommon colour in nature, and both flowers and dyes are all the more prized for it. Indigo dye has been big business for at least 2 000 years. It was first cultivated in India, a fact reflected in the name. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the blue dye came West to Greece, they called it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">indikón</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (ινδικόν, Indian). The Romans took the name and Latinized it to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">indicum</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which passed into Italian, and from there to English. The</span><a href="http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/indigo" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Oxford English Dictionary</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> says the colour name indigo entered English in the mid-sixteenth century, from Portuguese </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">índigo</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><br /><span style="background-color: #ddeeff; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has been suggested that Newton may have been influenced by the East Indian Company, which was bringing indigo dye back to Britain, where it was supplanting the native dye plant, woad. Both are sources of indigo dye, but woad has a much weaker</span><a href="http://www.maiwa.com/pdf/indigo_data.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">concentration</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and not surprisingly it was pushed out by the new colour from India.</span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">According to Ian Howard at</span><a href="http://www.woad-inc.co.uk/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Woad-inc</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where they grow their own: “When tropical indigo (indigofera tintoria) began to be imported from Asia in the 16" century, woad could not compete in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quality</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or more importantly </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Quantity</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the industry went into decline.”</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The importing of indigo was extremely unpopular with dyers and woad-growers. Both France and Germany had passed laws forbidding indigo importation, but Europe couldn’t keep out the better dyes forever. They did give it a good try, however, with several countries, including France, banning its importation, and an international union of Woadites, mainly dyers, banding together to keep out indigo.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Newton may very well have been aware of the new colour, and the controversy surrounding it. He wrote his treatise on optics in 1660, by which time the controversy over woad vs. indigo had been running for about 100 years, with the East Indian Company just the latest salvo.(A more mundane explanation of his seven-colour system is that he had extremely poor eyesight, and it’s hard to distinguish the bluer colours of a rainbow anyway.)</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I think of indigo flowers, the first thing that I think of is monkshood, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aconitum</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Their dark, brooding blue seems appropriate for a plant so deadly poisonous. If true blue is a rare colour in flowers, dark blue is even more unusual. There aren’t all that many that are a real, dusky blue. Some of the darker agapanthus, and the aquilegia ‘Blue Barlow’, along with salvias like ‘Caradonna’, spring to mind. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The advantage that monkshood has is that it started out dark, rather than being improved by breeders. Jacob’s Ladder or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Polemonium caeruleum</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, is another naturally dark-blue flower, which echoes the shape of the monkshood while being much shorter</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For height there are dark delphiniums, and clematis like ‘Prince Charles’ or ‘The President’. There is a herbaceous clematis species,</span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonross/3721007771/in/set-72157600339665534" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">clematis durandii</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which has flowers the colour of slightly faded denim, a good echo of the monkshood.</span></b><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="333px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/omvQc8URUyOMbgrHtCGkHlyM_HmMfFRV2X_5LlELobAhbQbQB75wMjLNCiUJk8HgObVtLRgUaX44MbFgb17KJ8LJTJ65dYod2bzDfpXtI6ux4se5Eg0" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="500px;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clematis durandii, photo by Simon Ross</td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for what to plant with your dark-blue flowers, you can go with the neighbours or you can go for opposites. As you’ve probably guessed from my other articles, I went the indigo – purple – magenta route. I used to have a stand of magenta phlox (no name, just a</span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonross/3773084742/in/set-72157600339665534" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mutt</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) with the monkshood Spark’s Variety next to it. Behind them, on wires along the fence, grew the clematis</span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonross/3721814406/in/set-72157600339665534" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Niobe</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (rich reddish-purple) and The President (purple blue).</span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="500px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Xwv04MVWVyhVg4rB6I5DAJhedt-do-GqdVoylUh8mc289LpwsnS6AP1ZYuvOZxWAz5GWbExvhDV7dGlk6OJs3hhXy6DWLpTg5cy5D5Yr6X8MMOA7ydw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="333px;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clematis 'Niobe', photo by Simon Ross</td></tr>
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or, for more contrast, you can go right across the colour wheel to yellow–orange. So, think brassy yellow, the sort that tasteful people abominate. (They really do use words like that.) You could add rudbeckias, yellow achilleas, and either solidago (goldenrod) or golden heleniums for height. Kniphofias and daylilies would work too, the brassier the better. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The grasses carex elata (Bowles’ golden sedge) and milium effusum (Bowles’ golden grass) could be used as well. Such a scheme would resonate well with what are called Venetian or Titan’s colours, most of which involve blues, golds and orange-reds.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a shady spot, or a calm one, you could go for a more harmonious look. A very cooling scheme would involve some whites, to light it up, and blue-greens, maybe in the form of hostas, to calm it down. It would be entirely suitable for a colour that apparently symbolizes</span><a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?Color-Symbolism-of-Indigo---Mounting-Royalty-and-Spirituality&id=2779698" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">spirituality</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and the</span><a href="http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/color-indigo.htm" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">heavens</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and in Hindu symbolism is the colour of the</span><a href="http://www.whats-your-sign.com/chakra-color-meanings.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sixth chakra,</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the third eye. From all this could come a very inspirational garden indeed.</span><br /><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FS3EjHT1pAovwBiU6qbK9rS4hmBq89nqEhQ7pC_OzXI7lptIRGg17c_mZRcsow41HOQryGs_kYYw-lm5gYOoqWShswxYlciycThtlQDKNz59KBrWdAL1zD2Lf1NxV_hIUOVjtLSG9TGL/s1600/monkshood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img height="320" indigo="" monkshoods="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FS3EjHT1pAovwBiU6qbK9rS4hmBq89nqEhQ7pC_OzXI7lptIRGg17c_mZRcsow41HOQryGs_kYYw-lm5gYOoqWShswxYlciycThtlQDKNz59KBrWdAL1zD2Lf1NxV_hIUOVjtLSG9TGL/s320/monkshood.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-49343243342015544082012-06-08T15:45:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:27:21.613-03:00The Battle of Magenta<div>
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.44521109596826136" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everyone is familiar with Gertrude Jekyll’s dislike of magenta – “malignant magenta”, as she called it.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many other writers of her period were equally dismissive, such as Alice Morse Earle, who said that as she glanced back through her writing on the subject, she felt the word “made the black and white look cheap.” (Kellaway: 93-5)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.44521109596826136" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://archive.org/stream/cu31924002827321/cu31924002827321_djvu.txt" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">E. A. Bowles</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> referred to certain geraniums as having, ”a pernicious habit of daunting that awful form of floral original sin, magenta, and rejoicing in its iniquity.” (Bowles: 98) Wilhelm Miller pulled no punches in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Garden </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, saying of discord: “One colour is responsible for nearly all the trouble, viz. magenta and the tones near it.” (Miller:156)</span></span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqlpSFla_jZ9-mV0ncxEoBs_K4QKUZ0BnuJslrjSEO65wcIhwmcWeiudR76QWYGSaQL2aUbS1W0UJVRH69b8mlK8W9t8QCrwgqt5ZXX_UchaRkkPg6nXxiEcxKyvnm4WC-M90b1nQAyK41/s1600/Patricia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><img alt="Geranium 'Patricia'" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqlpSFla_jZ9-mV0ncxEoBs_K4QKUZ0BnuJslrjSEO65wcIhwmcWeiudR76QWYGSaQL2aUbS1W0UJVRH69b8mlK8W9t8QCrwgqt5ZXX_UchaRkkPg6nXxiEcxKyvnm4WC-M90b1nQAyK41/s320/Patricia.jpg" title="Geranium 'Patricia'" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Geranium 'Patricia', photo by Simon Ross</span></td></tr>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This led to some controversy, as others, like the American writer Louise Beebe Wilder, argued in favour of “Magenta the Maligned”.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://thegardenstrust.blog/2017/03/18/clarence-elliott-garden-writer-and-alpine-specialist/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clarence Elliott</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, who owned the famous Six Hills Nursery in Stevenage, went further and criticized the avoidance of magenta, saying,” Some folk seem hardly to like to use the word “magenta," as though it were unclean, and resort instead to "rosy purple." This seems as bad as softening "cold bath" into “soapy tepid.” (Elliott: 603)</span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems odd that a colour which had only received a name 50 years before should be universally condemned, to the point where it needed defenders at all. Perhaps a colour named for a battle was bound to be controversial. Most people today would look blank if you asked them about the</span><a href="http://www.historynet.com/austro-sardinian-war-battle-of-magenta.htm" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Battle of Magenta</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but it was an important turning-point in the Second War of Italian Independence. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Magenta itself was a small Italian town, but it and Solferino were the turning points of the war. The Sardinian forces, along with Napoleon III’s troops, routed the Austrians there.(4th June 1895). The Austrians were forced to retreat, and Patrice de Mac-Mahon, who had fought in the war, was made the first Duke of Magenta by Napoleon.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the same year, Professor Auguste Wilhelm Hofmann was experimenting with aniline dyes at the University of London. These new dyes were more colourfast, and brighter, than the old plant-based ones, and his main discovery was a reddish-purple one which he named after the then-famous battle.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And this is where it went wrong for magenta. These new dyes were both bright and cheap, which meant that anyone could wear them.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> To add insult to injury, these new colours often appeared in floral patterns on cloth and wallpaper. No wonder Alice Earle, in a moment of candour, admitted, “it is really more vulgar than malignant,”(Kellaway: 95) thus putting her finger right on the sticky class issue involved. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As she goes on to point out, the purple of the ancient Romans was most likely a magenta colour. (In the book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (2003), Victoria Finlay describes finding “Tyrian Purple” cloth in a museum – only it was fuchsia colour: “I suddenly wanted to smile. I had an image of Roman generals holding up their arms in triumph beneath suitably triumphant arches – clad from victorious head to victorious toe in pink.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) Mrs. Earle points out that “Fifty years ago no one complained of magenta...” and Mrs. Wilder uses almost the same words to defend her colour.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another problem with magenta, as with many of the new dyes, was that they were made using arsenic. In the second half of the nineteenth century there was first a craze for arsenic products, and then a predictable backlash against being poisoned by your clothes, wallpaper, and just about everything else you can think of. You can read about this (if you can stand it) in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain Was Poisoned at Home, Work and Play,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by James C. Whorton.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fashion in the garden, like fashion in clothes, changes all the time, although it’s usually slower. The Arts-and-Crafts movement was certainly an influence in Britain, as Susan W. Lanman points out, with their dislike of industrial products and colours, a dislike that still influences British garden design and taste. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">American writers seem to have been just as averse to magenta, however, with Louise Yeomans King, whose book </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Well-Considered Garden </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(I915) had an introduction from Gertrude Jekyll, alluding to the “unmentionable” colour. The reaction against Victorian bedding-out, the brighter the better, was also a factor.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interestingly, after the Second World War, when Vita Sackville-West was making her garden at Sissinghurst, she included a purple border, which has a fair bit of magenta in it. Graham Stuart Thomas suggested that she included purple because Gertrude Jekyll didn’t like it, either. (quoted in Lord:63)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> He also thinks that the interest in silver plants which took off in the fifties with the work of Mrs. Desmond Underwood, who specialized in them, helped. They were reassuring to people who were still nervous about strong colours, taking some of the brashness away.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Magenta took it on the chin again during the pastel eighties, when Vita’s White Garden was the ultimate in garden style, but when the rich dark colours came back, with purple and crimson among them, guess who was in the baggage train.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You still often see garden books warning that magenta flowers “need careful handling” or “are difficult to place”, so it seems that it’s still the problem child of the border.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Some writers, like Christopher Lloyd, seemed to revel in this, placing it next to yellow or orange. One plant he particularly favoured was geranium ‘Ann Folkard’, which has bright yellow-green leaves and screaming magenta flowers. It is in your face, although actually the two colours are complementary, and shouldn’t be any more shocking than red flowers against green leaves. Somehow, it is.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Geraniums are the poster children for magenta, as lots of them have it. The brashest and biggest is geranium psilostemon, which has very fetching flowers, with dark centres like eyes. Others include children of psilostemon like ‘Ann Folkard’ and ‘Patricia’, as well as geranium x riversleaianum 'Russell Prichard’ and geranium sanguineum. Plant some of these next to some rose campion, with its fuzzy silver stems and strongly coloured flowers for a real show. (I used to grow Patricia next to them – very eye-catching. Gertrude Jekyll would have been sick behind a bush.) </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other obvious plants would include gladiolus byzantinus, purple loosestrife, the stronger-coloured phloxes, and liatris, the Kansas gayfeather. The petunia Purple Wave is another good example of a strong, bright magenta. Callirhoe or winecups is a good colour, with silky petals and a habit of winding itself amongst the other plants. I keep meaning to get one. (Clarence Elliott also endorsed it as being "true magenta" and praised its glowing colour. (Elliott:603)) </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In nature, of course, many plants are by nature a sort of washed-out magenta colour, which Thalassa Cruso called </span><a href="http://missingmygarden.blogspot.ca/2012/06/im-quoting-this-from-margaret-marons.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Garden-of-Eden,</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> because it seemed to be the original plant colour. Honesty and dames’ rocket are that sort of colour, and I don’t recommend them next to the stronger ones, it just weakens them. (There are stronger-coloured varieties of lunaria or honesty, such as</span><a href="http://www.rightplants4me.co.uk/?q=content/plant&PlantID=2191&Lunaria%20annua%20Munstead%20Purple" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Munstead Purple</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which are useful.)</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSSF2tcC2AkxOJNjVkxDdDYhxHuYiVbqPpFMEfZTaTr8BtPzhqAjLcorYdxPWHuuiyzctJNebHXwngpWzYPNbE2nPP4RqZZ1LlVGriamfC2UBZL0Wx7kqSg5zUl1bI0vZiK7-8PyflinVr/s1600/Callirhoe_involucrata-600px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSSF2tcC2AkxOJNjVkxDdDYhxHuYiVbqPpFMEfZTaTr8BtPzhqAjLcorYdxPWHuuiyzctJNebHXwngpWzYPNbE2nPP4RqZZ1LlVGriamfC2UBZL0Wx7kqSg5zUl1bI0vZiK7-8PyflinVr/s320/Callirhoe_involucrata-600px.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Callirhoe involuctra, photo by Stan Shebs, Wikimedia Commons.</td></tr>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you’re into shrubs, there are many good rhododendrons, spireas, and of course there’s bougainvillea. (When I lived in Santa Barbara they used to grow it over the chain-link fences put up on median dividers.) Azalea formosa is said to be a good colour as well.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As you’ve probably guessed by now, I have a fair amount of magenta in my garden, all introduced on purpose. It began when I was reading the familiar “careful with the magenta” warning, and something inside me snapped. I thought, why not put them all together, they can’t clash then. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was widening one bed in the garden, and I thought it would be ideal, since I already had some rose campions and two geranium Patricia. I was careful to get all the rest of the perennials I listed above, feeling that the more the better. Two euphorbia schillingii gave height and contrast with their yellowy-green flowers (technically “bracts”). For silver, there was rose campion, and some artemisia. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then I got some astrantia ‘Ruby Wedding’ and sanguisorba ‘Tanna’ for a darker colour, and some salvia ‘Mainacht’ and monkshood ‘Spark’s Variety’ for a bluish note. Th</span></span></b><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">e</span></span></span></span><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> last two may seem odd, but Louise Beebe Wilder recommends it, and I agree with her. Bluish-purple and reddish-purple are close colours, and flatter each other.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having invoked the colour wheel, I should mention that magenta has got itself embroiled in another controversy.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> If you got to the pop-science website</span><a href="http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/strange-but-true/profs-probings/colour_spectrum_magenta_complimentary_bizarre" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Null Hypothesis</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, you can find a discussion of whether magenta is a colour. Apparently there’s a whole argument about this, with the other side represented by </span><a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/02/yes-virgina-there-is-a-magenta/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ars Technica</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. So even when it’s just a lightwave magenta can stir passions. As far as I’m concerned, magenta had better be a colour. Otherwise my garden will be invisible.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">______________________________________________________</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Elliott, Clarence, 1915: “Magenta Flowers" in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Garden</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, LXXIX, Dec. 11: 603.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finlay, Victoria 2002: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Hodder and Stoughton, London.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Garfield, Simon, 2008 (reprint, originally 2001): </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Paw Prints, London.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kellaway, Deborah, ed. 1996: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Virago Book of Women Gardeners</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Virago Press, London.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lanman, Susan, 2000: “Colour in the Garden: 'Malignant Magenta”, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Garden History</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter, 2000), pp. 209-221.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lloyd, Christopher 2001: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colour for Adventurous Gardeners</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, BBC Worldwide, London.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lord, Tony, 1996: Best Borders, Penguin Books, London.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Miller, Wilhelm, 1911: 'Permanent Material for Your Garden', </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Garden</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, vols.13-14, April: 155-8.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wilder, Louise Beebe. 1990 (reprint, originally 1918): </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Colour in My Garden: An American Gardener’s Palette</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whorton, James, 2010: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Oxford University Press, Oxford and London.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></b>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-39321759643051529032012-06-08T10:32:00.000-03:002020-05-24T16:32:19.965-03:00Euphorbias I Have Known<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJRmwliethY8P5C9y-K2l1D6tjiN0bbZQ-wjLJs86uxpgUYvVizoZMw4S_9g91AI3pFZGV8SKCPg5HgAyeEYFGySjWeIr5ft9swMM5rPlphRy0eH6cW3k9RGhQSlOUt72OfIQqyG68M45/s1600/euphorbia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="euphorbia bracts flowers green" border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJRmwliethY8P5C9y-K2l1D6tjiN0bbZQ-wjLJs86uxpgUYvVizoZMw4S_9g91AI3pFZGV8SKCPg5HgAyeEYFGySjWeIr5ft9swMM5rPlphRy0eH6cW3k9RGhQSlOUt72OfIQqyG68M45/s320/euphorbia.jpg" title="Euphorbia flowers" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Euphorbia "flowers". Creative commons, Jarek Zok</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">Euphorbias come in a wide
variety of forms, everything from tiny cacti to poinsettias, but in this
article I’m sticking to the perennial varieties that you’ll find in most
gardens. And right up front I have to admit to something: I’ve only got experience
of one half of the euphorbia world. Because their world is divided, like the
Tories or 1920s America, into Wets and Dries. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">The Dries are the ones you see in
gravel gardens or in Mediterranean plantings. The Wets, thanks to heavy clay
soil, are the ones I’m more familiar with.</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/hyron/Documents/Sheena/Euphorbias.docx#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">
The minute I heard of euphorbia palustris (of marshes) I knew I would be
planting it. I too wanted green flowers,but without having to buy new ones
every spring.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">All the eurphorbias I’ve
grown are ones that can cope with wet and heavy soil. Euphorbia palustris, the
marsh spurge, gets to about three feet high, and flowers in early summer. Like
all euphorbias, though, you can just leave the flower heads all summer long. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">This is because technically they’re not flowers at all but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bract" target="_blank">bracts</a>, a specialized sort of
leaf that often is decorative in its own right. The actual flower on most
euphorbias is tiny, and the bracts may help to guide pollinating insects. I
have always been fond of the marsh spurge, and plant it in several places
around the garden. It goes well with most colours, and it doesn’t get too big.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">For a larger, bolder
shape, try euphorbia schillingi, which gets high praise from gardening gurus.
It needs a bit of space, because it gets to about four feet high, and tends to
splay out from the base. Discreet staking may be needed. The advantage that
schillingi has is that it flowers in July and August, later than most of the
spurges. Mine always made a fine display next to the monardas, phlox and
monkshoods. I just wish I had a picture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Another good one is
oblongata, which is very easy to grow from seed. </span><a href="http://www.sarahraven.com/shop/seeds/flower-seeds/view-all/euphorbia-oblongata.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Sarah Raven’s catalogue</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> says that it is actually a short-lived perennial, but
it flowers best in the first year, so she advises treating it like an annual.
I haven`t noticed a huge fall-off with
my older ones, but Sarah Raven uses her flowers for cutting, so hers probably
work harder than mine do. I might add that she recommends euphorbias as
greenery in flower arranging, asserting that their yellowy-green colour is
flattering to most flowers. The staying
power of the flowers/ bracts is an asset as well; once spring is well underway,
I have always been able to find some to use with any flowers I had cut or
bought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">For the ”hot” section of
my garden, I wanted a euphorbia that was more strongly coloured. I found a
plant called ‘Fireglow’, a form of euphorbia griffithi, which was tall enough
to stand up with heleniums and the grasses, and had lovely orange bracts in
spring that fade to dark yellow as the summer wears on. The stems are reddish as well, and the plant
has a faint suggestion of poinsettia about it. (Plant one instead of trying to
keep your Christmas gift. First, it’ll probably die on you, unless you live in
Mexico. Second, in the wild, poinsettias are about six feet high and nine feet
wide. The ones in pots are chemically treated with dwarfing compound, and it
wears off.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Another plus with ‘Fireglow’ is that is looks fabulous when it’s
sprouting; it sends up shoots like asparagus, which are vividly coloured in
reddish-orange. It looks great with tulips, too. I had ‘Gavota’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Abu
Hassan’, and good old ‘Queen of Night’ around my two, and if you look to the left of the picture below, you can see a stem of the euphorbia.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8TwdpZ9BiWCDT3cNQPn_6_ZS_wV2KW3MY6arlI9KdMkzrsmFmrh9_kVB_t4WKW-4mvHVQOD9C1vtip7qsLQw5YXSPRpm8jLidIILiBPqNjOyguoGysgRk9KsCIh-1yyg2cjEb8bMrUug/s1600/tulips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga8TwdpZ9BiWCDT3cNQPn_6_ZS_wV2KW3MY6arlI9KdMkzrsmFmrh9_kVB_t4WKW-4mvHVQOD9C1vtip7qsLQw5YXSPRpm8jLidIILiBPqNjOyguoGysgRk9KsCIh-1yyg2cjEb8bMrUug/s320/tulips.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Picture by Simon Ross)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Another one that I have
grown, but can’t seriously recommend, is euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae
‘Purpurea’. (Also known as wood spurge, by the way.) Apart from being able to
show off by knowing the name, I haven’t had much joy of this plant. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I may have
been fooled by the description of it as a shade plant, but the ones I grew
under my buddleia (butterfly bush) stayed squatty little things rather than the
ground cover I was looking for. They usually come with warnings about how much
they spread, and how they sucker, but mine never spread at all. The
dark-coloured leaves were pretty, but in the end I junked them in favour of epimediums.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">And then there’s the
mystery euphorbia. This comes up by the dozens every spring, sometimes quite
thickly, and it’s not quite like any of the others. I suspect that it is the
bastard child of oblongata and amygdaloides, but who knows. At any rate, it’s
a perfectly good euphorbia, with very
yellow bracts that are very attractive in the spring, and a reddish tint to the
leaves when they`re new. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I always leave a few because they’re perfectly good
plants, about two feet tall, that don’t get in the way of other things. When
they start showing their seedheads in August, everything else has filled in and
I can pull them out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">And that’s the funny thing
about euphorbias. At first they seem like the dullest plants imaginable, green
all over. But they can take hold of you. I`m a mild case, but there are intense
ones, like the man in England whose whole allotment is dedicated to
euphorbias.(An allotment is a community garden plot, usually dedicated to
growing vegetables.) His website is called <a href="http://www.euphorbias.co.uk/" target="_blank">http://www.euphorbias.co.uk</a>.
So don`t write them off too quickly. They have structure, they give colour and
interest for months, and they make a wonderful foil for all the richer colours
in the garden. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/hyron/Documents/Sheena/Euphorbias.docx#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></a>
For a good article on the Dry euphorbias, see here: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/22/gardens-euphorbia" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/22/gardens-euphorbia</a></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/hyron/Documents/Sheena/Euphorbias.docx#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></a>
See also: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2003/apr/13/gardens" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2003/apr/13/gardens</a></div>
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Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-28198176468520444542012-06-07T15:59:00.001-03:002017-05-24T19:55:56.343-03:00Impure Blue<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">There seems
to be a reluctance to admit that there is such a colour as bluish-purple. Blue
has rarity value, for sure, and I can believe that it sells better. But stop
trying to convince us that Siberian irises, phlox, or geraniums are blue. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Or
dianthus, as one blog famously pointed out in an article entitled </span><a href="http://cinticapecod.blogspot.ca/2006/07/true-blue-my-ass.html"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">True Blue, My Ass</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">. She was complaining there about
<i>dianthus amurensis</i> “Siberian Blues”; maybe they’re depressed in Siberia because
the best they can muster is a sort of washy magenta. Maybe the Siberians need
filters. If you look up “Siberian Blues” on Google, the images will dazzle you
with their blueness. Some of them are so
blue, they look fake even on first glance.</span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I had the
same suspicions when I bought the phlox “Blue Paradise” to sit between the
magenta and blue parts of a border. And I have to say it’s not too bad, really,
but it’s not blue. </span><a href="http://www.claireaustin-hardyplants.co.uk/product.php?id=1009"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Claire Austin’s page</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> has a good picture of it: a purple
flower, leaning towards blue-purple. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Another much-hyped phlox, </span><a href="http://www.mcgregorsdaughter.com/2008/07/amazing-color-morphing-phlox-nicky.html"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Nicky</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, apparently becomes </span><a href="http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1366&bih=653&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsfd&tbnid=8VmrWOCEcNXLUM:&imgrefurl=http://nextgenerationgardener.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html&docid=F7D6Qr_X4YeyoM&imgurl=http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4074/4859600416_9d9d"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">blue-purple</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> when the light is low, and </span><a href="http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1366&bih=653&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsfd&tbnid=JIBWi_TUUrbVaM:&imgrefurl=http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/167203/&docid=syac3UaFTg8mcM&imgurl=http://pics.davesgarden.com/pics/2007/09/15/shebs45/d291c6.jpg&w=80"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">magenta</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> when it’s sunnier. A neat trick, but
still not blue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Another
blog, </span><a href="http://carolynsshadegardens.com/tag/latin-plant-names/"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Carolyn’s Shade Garden</span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, provided the inspiration for this
piece when she explained why she uses Latin names:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And my
favorite: Gardener: “I didn’t like the iris I bought last year, when it
bloomed the flowers were purple.” Me: “You are right the flowers are
purple.” Gardener: “Then why do you call it blue flag?” I could
write a whole different article on the color I call “horticultural blue”, which
results from plant breeders’ apparent need to describe purple flowers as blue.</span><b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My own
personal theory is there is paranoia about trying to sell anything as purple or
purple-blue. Personally, I love these colours, but I seem to be in a minority.
I’ve loved Siberian irises since I first saw them, and their colour is still
gorgeous to me.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">It would
be fun to do a border or bed in Impure Blue. You would have lots of geraniums,
asters, campanulas, clematis and irises to choose from. And hellebores. And
roses. And....well, you get the idea. Now I have to think of similarly impure
plants to go with them.</span></div>
Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9132337068103921107.post-54037047121043831562012-06-06T14:25:00.000-03:002012-06-15T19:23:49.823-03:00Why the name?<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I'm writing this blog because I've just moved from England back to northern Canada, and while I'm still at roughly the same latitude, I've moved from zone 7-8 to zone 3. Also, I currently have no garden, just 15 years of insights and observations. Now that I'm not actually gardening, maybe I'll have time to share them.</div>Sheena McGrathhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15519436546509188497noreply@blogger.com0