Gardening Goals and Achievements

 

When I first started gardening my initial goal was to provide nectar sources for my honeybees. Early attempts were an abysmal failure as I relied upon plants that simply looked pretty from a local nursery. The issue of course being that most nurseries sell cultivars with looking pretty in mind, instead of plants that are pretty useful. They do sell some useful plants but not as many as they should.

Realizing I would have to do some research, I started to set goals of what I wanted to get out of the garden. Along the way my focus changed from simply providing nectar fro my bees towards seeing what ecological effects my garden could have. I wanted to see how much biodiversity I could fit into one acre of land. Nothing was measured scientifically (I'd likely need at least 30 yards to make any conclusions,) but my achievements are as follows.

Probably the simplest achievement with gardening came in the form of a simple pack of sunflower seeds. They're the favorite food of the Eastern Goldfinch (The state bird of NJ) and their beaks are actually the ideal size and shape to dislodge a sunflower seed from the flower disk. Planting $5 worth of seeds not only brings in the pollinators but also a very attractive bird as well.

The next major milestone for my garden really had all the stars aligning perfectly. I met a fellow beekeeper who was really into native plant gardening but also advocated nonnatives like Catmint and Salvia. One of the plants that really caught my eye was his clump of Butterfly Weed which he grew along side an impressive clump of Lavender. I wanted to copy his garden as much as I could but chose a different species, Asclepias incarnata, Swamp Milkweed, or Fragrant Milkweed as I like to call it. I had no idea at the time, but Monarchs favor laying their eggs on the plant. The leaves are less tough than Common and Butterfly Weed, and because it tends to grow in moist soil the humidity in the air is more favorable to insects in flight. What's more the first chrysalis I found was on the host plant, which is uncommon. Normally the caterpillars abandon the host plant to get out of the way of the next generation. And again 10 days to the hour I first found the chrysalis I watched as it hatched into a beautiful butterfly.

Over the past several years now I've started to go after some of the more obscure natives that not a lot of people grow. For example, I'm the only person I know who has a Button Bush, and I'd love to grow more of them but I just don't have the space.

Purple Milkweed, while commercially available, doesn't seem to be grown by a lot of people. As I've discovered though, that's probably a good thing. Unlike Butterfly Weed, Swamp Milkweed, and Common Milkweed, this species requires cross pollination in order to produce viable seed. Individual plants don't produce as many flowers as other species. And tragically, the wildlife people grow milkweeds to attract target the flowers and seed heads first! You basically need to remove Monarch caterpillars, Milkweed Beetles, Milkweed Seed Bugs, Four-eyed Beetles, and keep the stems completely free of Oleander Aphids for this plant to do well! Of course it doesn't help that when it does successfully flower ants come and steal the nectar!

Purple Milkweed still grows in my yard but I've not been able to get it to flower again because pests keep eating it!

Rarer Still, I tried growing the true Red Milkweed, Asclepias rubra. I call it the true Red Milkweed because one of the major mail order nurseries has started calling Asclepias incarnata, Red Milkweed. They're wrong of course as is whoever came up with the common name for this species. The flowers are clearly a shade of pink! The plants I bought (and suspect were dug out of the wild) grew well the first year and flowered but have yet to emerge again. The roots are still in the soil, still slightly green or white if you cut into them, still fleshy like an ordinary rhizome but for some reason they don't produce any shoots or green growth of any kind. Very odd. If I locate them again I'll move them to an even wetter spot of the garden. I'm pretty sure they're a bog species.

This is an achievement for me in that I got to photograph it flowering. I have no plans of trying to grow it again as all the sources for plants at this time I suspect might be from plant poachers.

Aquatic Milkweed, Asclepias perennis. This is you can buy on the internet easy enough but it didn't do well in my yard because all the wet bog-like places are already have lots of weeds and plants growing in them. It's a small species with some of the smallest flowers in the genus too. I was hopeful that it would be successful in my garden but it wasn't. I may try planting more of this again in a true bog garden some day, but for right now, I'm just glad I was able to photograph it flowering.

Discovered Flame Azaleas are semi-carnivorous. Actually they're not carnivorous at all but to protect their flowers from nectar thieves, their stems have hairs on them that dispense a type of glue to stop ants dead in their tracks. Now when the hummingbirds come to feed at the flowers they can find an added tasty treat clinging to the stem.

Red Flowering Raspberry. This plant was a huge surprise. The flowers are as pretty as our native roses, though they're also a poor replacement for a rose. You can't really use them for a cut flower, and they're short lived. The stems lack any prickers and instead have a sticky feel to them. They have yet to produce fruit but I believe that's a cross pollination issue I'm hopefully fixing in the coming year. I've planted three more specimens that should flower. If they don't produce fruit then I'll likely move them some place else so I can plant things that are more productive. But man, look how pretty that flower is!

Companula americana. This is a biannual I decided to try one year and it's easily my new favorite plant for dry shade. It grows in bone dry soil, in full shade conditions! The first one I got growing grew 7' tall and flowered robustly from June to frost. It got to the point where it was making bloom and buds on existing seed pods because the stem had become so overcrowded with flowers. I've never seen anything like it. The following year's plants weren't as great, but they're biannuals so they take an added year. Then on the year past we had new windows installed, and one of the workers took a rake to the garden and got rid of all my plants while cleaning up! Good to know they're easy to control if they get out of hand but I was hoping for a whole backdrop in the garden of 5 to 7' tall spires of blue flowers. Hopefully I'll get to see that happen this year because I emptied a pound of seed or two in the spot.

A lot of the ephemeral plants I grow disperse their seeds with the aid of ants. I'm overjoyed that I was able to not only grow a few species of Trilliums and other plants that have elaiosome on their seeds but also able to witness the behavior in my own backyard. And I've also realized I'm probably the only person in North America who's bothering to photograph this behavior!

Very recently I was approached by a museum about using one of my photos for an exhibit. Unfortunately I'm not a professional photographer (Yet!) and don't normally save images in as high a resolution as their project required. Still, to have been asked was an honor!

Roughly 40% of our native ephemeral wildflowers disperse their seeds this way and most gardening books treat the topic like a cliff note... There isn't a whole lot to tell, but I've found certain species of ants favor certain plant species and some are better about dispersing them a greater distance than other.  

Getting Wildflower to reproduce, and ephemerals at that! This is huge because some of these plants I buy cost $25 each, and they're not always successful! Knowing that the plant is happy enough to do what it would normally be doing in nature, in my yard, it the best compliment a plant can give you. (Or the worst if it's invasive.) Now if my rare Trilliums would just stop reseeding in the lawn I'd be in business.

Getting my Paw Paw tree to flower. For years I'd been planting saplings of this species all over my yard and for one reason or another they just couldn't survive the winter. It's annoying! Finally I found a spot where they get enough water in the summer and don't burn up in the heat, and are sheltered in the winter enough to survive. And I immediately planted a second one right next to it. So one tree is of a flowering age, now I just need the second one so they can cross pollinate and maybe I'll get some fruit.

Dutchmen's Pipe. I've had this vine growing for a good 7 years at least and it finally decided to start flowering... Not the prettiest things but I had a theory that the seeds to this plant have elaiosome on the seeds so I'm eager to see if that's true. Unfortunately they seem to require cross pollination, so I won't know that until several years later when the vine's counterpart I planted finally reaches of age.

I planted this as a host plant for the Pipe Vine Swallowtail and I'm still waiting for them to find it. :( though this seems a common problem among butterfly gardeners.

Yellow Passionflower, Passiflora lutea, is another species I'm proud to say I grow. Unfortunately it seems I don't grow enough of it. This is a plant they tell you to grow in the shade and let it grow up the stems and branches of another plant. There's nothing wrong with that, but the absolutely charming leaves, flowers, and fruit get completely lost in the foliage. I have a vine of this in my garden still, I think. But now that I've seen it growing at the Mt. Cuba Center, clearly I'm growing it wrong. It still gets lost, but they have it growing right on a fence in full sun where it thickly covers the fence almost like an ivy. It's a great little vine that doesn't get out of hand, and I'm curious to see if Fritillary Butterflies use it as a host.

Georgia Aster, probably the last plant in temperate North America to stat blooming aside from Witch Hazel and Heathers. This is a plant I look forward to every year now. I've only been growing it for three years, it's flowered the past two. This year I collected seeds and hopefully I'll get a lot more of it to grow. The flowers are nice and large, and the purple is a great contrast of the leaves from fallen trees, which are shades of yellow, red, or brown.  

Discovering that Black Swallowtails do use Golden Alexander as a host plant was sort of a happy accident. I planted these as a host plant but later learned they rarely use it! Seems they heavily favor Parsley. But I've noticed that Golden Alexander has more foliage to offer early in the year before Parsley really gets going, so it's likely used as one of the earliest hosts then they switch over to Parsley with subsequent generations.

Adding all these native plants of course had an effect on the insect life. More herbivore insects means more sources of nectar, protein, and seeds. The increase in resources caused the colonies of Formica incerta and Formica pallidefulva to expand and get even larger than before. That got the attention of a slave making member of the genus, Formica pergandei. Seen above a colony of F. pergandei (bicolored) has invaded a colony of F. pallidefulva (copper tone).

Formica pergandei, is one of many slave making and parasitic species in the Formica genus, the largest ant genus in North America. They are completely devoted to maintaining their Formica hosts to maintain their own colony. F. pergandei workers don't forage at all. They spend their time raiding other colonies of Formica for brood and often do a complete invasion where the whole F. pergandei colony moves in and kills the host queen(s) and reproductives. They take over the current work force, and all the new workers born into their nest become part of their colony. The host species do all the foraging and nest building but eventually die off, so the F. pergandei workers are always looking to invade the next nest.

It's hard to say that F. pergandei wouldn't have found the colonies in my yard eventually. But in all the years I've lived here never noticed the species. They may have eventually come and moved on, as they did, but I believe the increase in resources made the F. pallidefulva and F. incerta colonies a bigger target. 

New Jersey Tea. This is one of those plants they're always touting for all its benefits but no one ever grows. Part of the problem is it seems to only ever be sold in plugs.... Why? It's a shrub. It should be a large or medium sized pot at least. I planted dozens of these over the years and ran over all but one of them with the lawn mower. Well I'm happy to say that after several years, it's now flowering robust enough to get honeybee attention.

As an added bonus it's a host plant to Spring and Summer Azures. And.....

I found that Sourwood trees are also a great honeybee plant. Which....

Is also a host plant for Spring and Summer Azures. And the caterpillars to this group of Butterflies are tended by ants for protection.

And I raised the caterpillar in captivity to see what it would become. Sure enough it's an Azure.

Early on in gardening I had dreams of sweeping meadows full of Lupins to see this behavior of ants, plants, and butterflies. I'm happy I already have plants doing this for me. As I've found out Lupins require full sun and basically want to grow in 80% sand.

Lastly, my yard is becoming something of a hummingbird hot spot. Not year round though, we usually get one or two of them flying about intermittently over the summer, and then several of them consistently for a full week... presumably fledgling birds following their parents around.

Also Flowering at the Mt. Cuba Center

With the majority of summer blooming flowers going to seed or fruit, there's now a new cast of flowering plants coming into bloom. And the Mt. Cuba Center is nothing if not inspiring to see what's flowering and when. I strain to think of species they don't have growing somewhere on their property; Campanula americana comes to mind but really few others. In fact I'd say going there has broadened my knowlage of plant species. At times it feels as though I'm walking through Donald Leopold's "Native Plants of the Northeast" which few other gardens can do.

I've been to Longwood Gardens several times and they should really change their name to Long Lawn Gardens. They have long pathways that go on quite a ways with flowers lining the side, but the trouble is it's the same 5 to 10 species or cultivars repeated over and over again, making it about as exciting as watching a copy machine pump out page after page. Their green house has an impressive collection of plants but are setup like museum dioramas without the fake cave men and stuffed animals. Their meadow is the only real highlight I'd say worth going to because of the wildlife factor which at times even out shines the Mt. Cuba Center.  

At the Mt. Cuba Center meadow there's still plenty of wildlife flying around but mostly in bug form.

The natural approach looks better, though I know lots of people won't like this. I just love the sweeping effect of color and the movement of the grass as the wind blows over the field. They do have sections where they specifically put in a plant so when they do tours they can show it front and center.

The late Mrs. Copeland strongly believed that a meadow should primarily be made up of grasses. I do see the beauty in that, but frankly I find such meadows to be boring. Grasses are almost exclusively wind pollinated so you don't get the bees and butterflies that you get when incorporating wildflowers.

At the top of the meadow is the wildflower bed, which you can't see from the bottom. Beyond that line of tall grasses is a hill that gradually slopes down to the ponds where there is a gazebo for sitting. The meadow looks wonderful from that spot, and they try to maintain the primarily grass feel of it down there.

Upon closer inspection though it becomes obvious that several wildflowers have crept down the hill. Black-eyed Susan primarily but also a small amount of Butterfly weed. Both of which I believe were intentional.

Pearl Crescents, common in some gardens, rare in others. These are one of the few butterflies I find drawn to Black-eyed Susans. They host on an assortment of Asters. I believe they're in the habit of laying a single egg here and there, thus it takes a lot of Asters scattered around a forest edge to get them to flourish.

The Mt. Cuba Center was where I first learned what a Leather Flower was. Turns out our native Clematis are rather pretty-looking. They're almost like a fat honeysuckle, and they're good about growing through other plants. Unlike a lot of vines, I believe they die back to the ground each year.

Jewelweed grows like a weed all along the roadsides of that part of Delaware. They include a few plants in their gardens, but I'm sure they also must weed a fair amount of it out.

They make Southern Blue Monkshood look so easy to grow. Aconitum uncinatum, is another vine that dies back to the ground. They have it growing in patches and individual specimens, each time though the foliage is usually hidden with whatever plant they're growing up, through, or laying on. It's only after the plant flowers that anyone really bothers to notice it.

The plant I have in my garden is maybe a single stem with a single cluster of flowers at the end of it. Here though, they have plants that send up dozens of stems that spread out and climb up other plants to bloom all over the place.

This is also one of those deadly plants native Americans used to poison their arrows with so maybe it's good that it's not growing in big patches in my yard.

Yellow Passionflower, Passiflora lutea. This plant has the most charming little leaves I've ever seen on a plant, and the flowers are so tiny compared to other passion vines. This could be replacement for English Ivy in some scenarios.

I had a Yellow Passion plant in my garden that would come up as a single stem, make a few flowers and die off. The Mt. Cuba Center though has one that's taken over the corner fence of their Trial Garden and is loaded with blooms and berries.

September Wildflowers

New England Aster, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, is an autumn (late summer) highlight as always. And has only recently started spreading like a weed, presumably because it's not able to pollinate itself, but two or more plants will. Plants can also be divided.

Narrow-leaf Ironweed, Vernonia Lettermannii, curiously enough the flowers this year are pink, last year they were purple. I'm not sure what caused the change. Supposedly this is the cultivar 'Iron Butterfly' though I'm not sure what's so special about it.

Showy Goldenrod, Solidago speciosa, has petered out a bit in my garden, but new seedlings are at that flowering age now so hopefully it hangs in there. This isn't the best example because usually there are way more flowers, but they always produce a compact amount of them at the top of each stem.

Yellow Passionflower, Passiflora lutea, is a timid member of this aggressive genus. I'm not sure if it's hardy here in zone 7 (previously zone 6 as of a few years ago), so hopefully it survives. Calling it a "Passion Flower" isn't entirely accurate because the flowers are not very showy and simple by comparison to other Passionflowers. I have yet to see the flowers open fully too, presumably they close by the afternoon or require full sun to open. Fruit-wise it's said to be inedible, with sources saying it's better used in the production of ink... yuck.

White Turtlehead, Chelone glabra, is not a particularly showy plant but it's good if you have a wet spot in partial shade to full sun in need of some late blooms. This is the host plant to the Baltimore Checkerspot, a locally threatened species of butterfly with an odd life style. Basically the caterpillars form a communal net on the plant and over winter inside it. Come spring they emerge still as caterpillars but are less picky about what they consume. Their host plant, Turtlehead, probably hasn't broken ground yet for the year so they turn instead to other plants like Monkey Flower (which I have yet to grow successfully).

Tall Coreopsis, Coreopsis tripteris. This is kind of a deceptive photo because it's taken at eye level. I'm about 5'7" and that's where this plant gets its name. They can grow to be 10' tall though individual plants often stick to a max size each year, which makes cultivars easy to pick out because they can selected to be a specific size.

Summer Phlox. Don't know the species, don't really care either. Years and years ago I planted this in the front garden where it was too shady for it to flower. Now that we took down a street tree that seems to have opened up enough light to give what I honestly thought was a Bee Balm for the longest time to flower.

Most impressive of all is this Northern Blazing Star, Liatris borealis. The flowers are almost twice the size of Meadow Blazing Star, L. ligulistylis. The height is easily 5' tall also contrary to what the nursery I bought it from (and others!) said it only grows to 2' tall. Granted this is an enormous bulb almost the size of a baseball and it sent out three canes, two of which fell over, but the main one in the center is pushing strong. Note how the flowers extend away from the stem some on their own stalk, well this is the only Liatris species I've seen that will put more than one flower head on those! It's putting the New England Aster next to it to shame at this point. I'll post more pictures of it later.

Passionflower Sugar Fest

Finally! I have finally seen a bee pollinating the passionflowers. However, this one is a little to short to do it properly.

Thankfully the bee had enough sense to jump up and start kicking her feet to collect pollen. Really cute to watch.

I've been seeing way more ants on this plant than anything really. What's odd though is not only are ants stealing nectar from the flower but...

The plant also has pores that produce extra floral nectar. Traditionally this is what pores that produce nectar are for outside of the flower, but wow no wonder Passionflower pollination is so hard. The plant might as well be bleeding sugar.

Maypop May Surprise

Of these three passionflowers only one is native to the US. Take a moment and see if you can guess which. You're options are Purple, Blue, or Red. The two nonnatives are commonly sold at nurseries as annuals. This might be one case where that's a good thing. As far as I can tell all Passiflora species are noxious weeds. They come up all over the place by root suckers and tangle around existing trees, shrubs and fences. That includes the native one too.

What makes this worth growing though is that they're fruiting vines. Growing them up a latices or series of polls surrounded by regularly mowed lawn can help keep them under control. Otherwise weeding will be needed. Passion fruit is sold with some frequency in stores. I've never tasted it myself but I'm told it's similar to Hawaiian Punch... which it is also used to flavor. Though oddly enough it's illegal to import any plant from this genus to Hawaii.

The answer to the question is just one paragraph away. Place your final guesses now.

Growing into a massive vine might actually be a strategy to help pollination. The flowers are so intricate in design that they require the anthers to curl down onto the bee's back while working. From there the pollen has to brush up against stigma to another flower to another plant. This isn't commonly done though so growing into a monster of a vine loaded with flowers helps the plant become a better sources. Hand pollinating with a small paint brush or your finger also works.

If you said Blue or Red, you guessed wrong. The correct answer was Purple, and in my opinion this is also the showiest.

This is Passiflora incarnata, aka Maypop. I got mine from a women just 20 minutes south of where I am. She had it growing in full sun, in loose sandy soil, and boy was it taking over. She had root suckers tangling their way up the goldenrod she'd planted, and it was coming up all over. She was more than happy to give me some.

You may notice that New Jersey (where I live) isn't in it's native range. For food plants I make the exception to plant nonnatives. There are so many weeds in this country that are completely edible but because we're not a starving nation so they go unchecked. Imagen if apple trees were invasive how easily that problem would be solved. I'll also point out that various butterflies that use this plant as a host are found occasionally well beyond it's range. See Gulf Fritillary.

The flowers are unfortunately short lived. I believe they only open for a day (two tops) and that's it, they're done.

The anthers and tips of the stigma are nicely spotted too. This is a fine detail you don't see in to many of our natives. 

Here, some type of small bee or fly is stealing nectar. Pollination requires the attention of much larger bees.



To learn more about Maypop, here's a video from Green Dean. Eat The Weeds is such a wonderful series and the world is better for having it.