Wildflowers Coming Soon

Spring Beauty, Claytonia virginica. It's actually started flowering here so let's start there. The thing is, only one or two of them are blooming and the patch now is turning into it's own sort of lawn. So better photos will be on the way instead of this edited one. It's a small grass-like plant right now but each of these strands continues to grow and unfurl through the garden/lawn and produce lots of little flowers along the way.

Fernleaf Phacelia, Phacelia bipinnatifida. I have finally gotten this god dam plant somewhat established in my yard! This is a biannual that only flowers on it's second (and last) year of life! Also they have to cross pollinate from a plant that wasn't related to their parent. Between driving to Delaware each spring and dealing with what has to be one of the worst online nurseries on the internet I'm glad to see these coming up on their own.

Giant Waterleaf, Hydrophyllum appendiculatum. This plant lived up to its name the first year I planted it growing a good 3' tall and wind. Subsequent generations though have either been annual or biannual growing only a few inches tall, flowering and then death. They keep coming back though.

Hydrophyllum virginianum, more of a late spring bloomer. It's just a little tuft of leaves now but the patch quickly expands to fill up the garden.

Golden Alexander, Zizia aurea. This is a native carrot though I don't think the roots are meant to be eaten. I think it's a biannual too but I'm not certain. Some years the patch is lush and full with plants but others there are bare spots. This is a host plant to the Black Swallowtail but I've found they only lay eggs on the flowers in the spring time, and plants are largely ignored over the summer in favor for non-native like Parsley and Queen Anna's Lace.

 Jacob's Ladder, Polemonium reptans. This plant is semi-evergreen, maintaining a rosette of leaves all winter. Light blue is more true to their normal bloom color.

Roundleaf Ragwort, Packera obovata. This plant suffers from having one of the worst common names ever. It's actually one of the more striking yellow flowering plants of spring.

 Wild Hyacinth, Camassia quamash, a native bulb that should be planted along side Easter Flowers.

Woodland Phlox, Phlox divaricata. I think this is a cultivar with thicker petals called 'Blue Moon' but I'm not certain anymore. Patches of this plant only come back when there's no mulch or barely any leaf litter. Originally the plant was fragrant but for the past few years I haven't noticed any fragrance, making me think the original plant has died out and these are all seedlings.

My Garden on Easter

Easter is conveniently happening at the peak of wildflower season in my yard. Lots of wonderful colors to look at that are all on theme with the holiday. It's a shame my family doesn't gather at my house for this holiday but in a way it's a blessing. So many non-native bulbs though they certainly serve their purpose. The thing about Tulips, Daffodils, Hyacinths, and "Easter" Lilies is they thrive best in full sun. Almost all our native ephemerals are shade plants. It's a shame they're not sold in as much abundance or bought with the same enthusiasm.

I rarely get to show off my garden to family members I don't live with. Often the holidays they do come over my garden is transitioning from one season to the next and lacking in flowers. Despite the diversity in my garden few of the species bloom with any abundance. They don't always demonstrate their usefulness either.

My camera doesn't capture the detail it should in this photo.

Second attempt wasn't much better I should probably stop trying such wide photos of small objects.

Trees are probably the best way to entice pollinators into the garden. This beefly is a little late to the party but cooperated for a photo on a cool day on the new Witch Hazel I've added to the garden. On warm days I've seen it (more likely others) flying around on the Native Plums when they flowered then a day before those blooms closed up onto the Beach Plum tree and now onto the Apple Tree which started flowering this weekend.

Beeflies are important pollinators for certain plants like Woodland Phlox, Phlox divaricata. Long tongued bees and flies are the only insects that can reach the pollen anthers hidden deep within the tube-shaped flowers. Without them populations of these flowers diminish in size or blink out entirely. Unlike creeping phlox, Phlox divaricata is a short lived perennial. When pollination occurs though they are abundant seeders and spread far and wide.

But the other thing about beeflies is that most of them are parasites of Bumblebee hives. They invade the nests, lay a few eggs and the maggots eat the wax. Bumblebees don't really pollinate phlox though, so in order to have the pollinator of this Phlox species you need enough wildflowers and trees established to support a few bumblebee hives. 

As an aside, I did a google image search for "Bumblebee Phlox" and almost all the images that come up are of Carpenter Bees which chew holes in the sides of the Phlox flowers to gain access to the nectar and probably don't pollinate the flower. Bumblebees do visit Phlox but of the images taken I only saw the summer flowering species. Not Phlox divaricata. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it seems rare if it does.

Our ephemerals get away growing and flowering now because most trees have yet to leaf out. When they do though they secrete a small amount of sugary sap. Here a Nylanderia faisonensis worker is exploring a few leaves on the sapling I planted last year. 

Sap isn't always a good thing though. The flower buds to our Flame Azalea, Rhododendron calendulaceum, are so sticky with sap that insects that land on them get stuck. This is probably an added way to entice humming birds to visit the flower but I don't think it's always successful. More likely it's a method to prevent ants from crawling into the blooms when they open and stealing all the nectar to them selves. (I've actually found opened Flame Azalea flowers that had ants all stuck to the stems of their flowers). Whether it's intentional or not, it's probably still to the humming bird's benefit should it chance up on one.

These types of flies are becoming more abundant in my yard too. I've caught them visiting more than a few of my Trillium species. I had assumed all the large white flowering Trilliums were pollinated by bees but this photo tells another story. The pale yellow/white dots on the fly here are actually pollen. 

These are Trillium flexipes, note how fat the petals are to form a triangular shape overall and how the pollen is pale in color. 

This is Trillium grandiflorum, note the bright yellow pollen and how the petals are ruffled along the edges. The petals aren't as wide either.

I know for a fact that Honeybees and Bumblebees will visit these flowers but only when the patches are in abundance. Maybe ~25 plants all flowering within a few feet of one another? My plants aren't quite there yet but given time they'll get there.

I've found our native Jacob's Ladder, Polemonium reptans, makes a beautiful companion plant for them. They're just short enough to fill in all around underneath the Trilliums and the blue flowers are a nice addition.

I bought a nice big flat of these from New Moon Nursery a few years back. They were a pain in the ass the rip free from the plastic flat. The roots seem to push outward all the way up the plastic. I was ripping the foliage clean off the top of them and probably did that to most of them before I figured out a good method. Pushing up from the bottom worked but required a lot more force than expected. They really didn't want to come out of there!

Fernleaf Phacelia, Phacelia bipinnatifida, has FINALLY started to establish in my yard! Of all the spring ephemerals in eastern North America, this is probably one of the best ones to plant for honeybees... a shame I don't have hives anymore. I've been trying to get this plant to grow in my yard for probably the last 8 years now.

The issue with it is that it's a biannual and the only place selling it online basically has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. I bought from them once and they sent me Watercress by mistake, yes that little invasive lawn weed with exploding seed pods everyone tries to get ride of... This place Sells that... to people... for money... and they pay them to do it apparently...

I called them about the mistake and they refused to help me until I had sent them pictures to prove they had made the mistake and then demanded the plants back at my cost! About a month later I received a trash bag in the mail of Fernleaf Phacelia roots that were lacking any green growth to them. This was in May so the plants had already flowered which they do at the end of their life cycle... So they sent me a bunch of dead plants.

So in order for me to obtain this species I have to drive to Native Plant Sales in Delaware and Pennsylvania (I'm in NJ) and hope they happen to be selling this species.

I fell in love with this stuff at the Mt. Cube Center in DE where it grows in huge abundance on some years. One time during their annual Wildflower Celebration I was telling one of the gardeners there I'm friendly with how I wish the species were more available to sale, especially in seed form. You'd think someone would sell it in seed form given that it's a biannual or at the very years recently germinated plugs. The Gardener couldn't believe no one was doing that and then told me, to my horror, that they actually cull the stuff there every few years! They fill up huge trash bags with it.... I wonder if that awful online nursery I bought from was stealing from their garbage?

Anyway, as you can see my efforts to get this plant started has come along. It's growing nicely beside some Jacob's Ladder. Several years of planting 1 quart sized pots of it have started something of a seed bank. The only thing holding it back now are the rabbits which have a real liking for the stuff. One year I had a great big plant growing a good 3' across and then the next day it had all been nibbled down into nothing.

Virginia Bluebells are another one that's supposed to spread like crazy. So far my plants have only enlarged in size each year. I'm not seeing any seedlings at all. It's another plant the gardeners at the Mt. Cuba Center occasionally have to weed out when they get too aggressive.

Woodland Poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum, has spread like a sort of weed though not in the direction I'd like it to. I stared with maybe 6 plants of this one year and they've spread quite a bit, but died out where I initially planted them. They seem to like growing away from other plants instead of next to them though I do like that they're spreading.

This species is also called the Caladine Poppy, but I hate this name because I have no idea what a Caladine is besides a different plant. Webster's Dictionary says it's basically a yellow flower scientifically known as Chelidonium majus, which is an invasive weed in America often mistaken for Stylophorum diphyllum. So it's common name refers to a species that it isn't... What? Is the dictionary wrong? It seems to be implying that the Calandine Poppy is the Calandine Poppy but not that Calandine Poppy, rather it's this Calandine Poppy over here.

If you google Calandine Poppy it certainly gives you Stylophorum diphyllum. So someone stole a name somewhere or is wrong.

The Eastern Redbuds in my yard are now all very well established and the perfect overlay to the ephemeral garden plants beneath them. Eventually the red/pink petals will drop from the tree and sprinkle the color to the display below. 

I had assumed the Spring Beauty, Claytonia , would be pinker before I planted it. That was the intent anyhow. I tried planting a pink flowering Phlox stolonifera which I read is aggressive spreading and one of the hardest phlox species to kill... well it died out.

Right now the only pink under the tree are the shriveled up petals Trillium pusillum. Interesting thing about this plant, I bought them from a nursery selling them as Trillium catesbaei. At least I think that was this nursery. I don't keep good records of all the plants I buy and from whom but given how much of this I have coming up, I would have had to have bought a flat of them. They've taken this long to ID because this is the first time one of them has flowered.

 Trillium viridescens, looking handsome as usual.

This is by far the most successful Trillium species in my yard. Each late afternoon they produce a faintly pungent scene of rotting apples and get swarmed by vinegar flies which transfer pollen from one flower to the other. They all started as just three plants, but that's become three large clumps of flowering stems with patches of seedlings all around them and then strays like the one photographed here coming up in other places.

 I'm gonna have to start giving them away as gifts.

More Jacob's Ladder doing well. I planted so much of this because I'd given up on Fernleaf Phacelia and wanted to move onto something easier to grow. Despite having such a good year with Phacelia, ultimately because it's a biannual I have no idea where it will come up next year, unless I collect seeds.

Round Leaf Ragwort. This would be having a good year but isn't. Basically the past two years, a female rabbit used the patch to have her babies in. She cleared out a nest in the middle. Then this year we got a puppy... (I'm amazed my Trilliums are holding up as well as they are.) She's has also decided to make this spot in the Ragwort patch her little spot to lay and chew things like plant stem. 

Trillium cuneatum growing beneath one of my few non native plants. The non native Bleeding heart was a mistake on my part. Back when I started gardening they were in the same genus as the native ones. So I have this gigantic bleeding heart plant I've started dividing and spreading about.

I didn't know Trillium cuneatum, was so amazingly fragrant until last year when a different one started flowering. While T. viridescens smells like rotting fruit, T. cuneatum is much more like fresh apples. Oddly though it doesn't seem to get anywhere near as many pollinators to it. I've yet to see anything land on them actually.

Another of what I'm calling T. cuneatum though I suspect one or the other is a different species. These are flowering for the first time and relatively short. They're newly planted this year so the stems might not be so short in future.

I have another one that's just as big as the red flowering one (two pictures up) but with flower petals in this shade. They all smell the same but that might be coincidence. We'll see what they do next year. 

There are Trillium species that remain this short though.

I've been finding Trillium growers (even reputable ones that don't steal from nature) have difficulty distinguishing some species apart. Lots of reasons for this. Growing them from seed they require 2 years to germinate, produce a single leaf of foliage for the next 2 to 3 years and then all look fairly identical until flowering. Take into account having to move flats around in a green house and it's easy to see over even just a 5 year period how things can get mixed around. Likewise Trilliums are prone to hybridizing with some frequency. 

Trillium luteum is another one I've had for a long time. They've mostly started to divide like my T. viridescens, but I've noticed when they do that they don't flower as much. I've never gotten them to produce seeds, nor seen anything visiting the flowers, even though they smell nice and lemony. Hopefully as the Trillium patches continue to grow in size I'll get more of the flies, beetles, and bees that pollinate them taking closer attention.

Red Trilliums I've been finding very tricky to ID. I'm going with T. vaseyi because that's what the nursery said they were, but I'm not certain how they ruled out, T. sulcatum, or T. erectum. Actually I can kind of see how it isn't T. erectum which I assume would have a larger flower with slightly longer petals. T. vaseyi and T. sulcatum seem to differ only in whether they stick the flower above or below the leaves. Mine just opened today so and have the flowers above the leaves suggesting T. sulcatum  ... but they might hang under the leaves in a day or two...

Whatever the case, I'm happy to see they're at least getting pollinated both by vinegar flies and some sort of pollen beetle.

 

 Maybe I should cave in and plant more tulips; no one cares what pollinates those.

Mt. Cuba Center 2017 Wildflower Celebration

I was once again delighted to visit the Mt. Cuba Center for their annual Wildflower Celebration. This is an event I look forward to every year. Their gardens are probably 50 years old and their woodland plant collection is top notch. However I've learned that this doesn't always guarantee for a good show.

Plants are triggered to flower from a lot of different things. Some are slowed down dramatically by the cold or rain, while others don't care at all. Lots of little factors can throw off the blooming of certain species. So this can all vary form year to year.

Often by the time the Mt. Cuba Center has their Wildflower Celebration plants like Hepatica, Twinleaf, Trout Lily (both white and yellow), Snow Trillium, and Trillium pusillum have all finished flowering. This year, though, these were all flowering, but most of the non Trillium ephemerals hadn't opened as much. Often the forest floor to their woodland gardens are covered by a mixture of Virginia Bluebells, Fernleaf Phacelia, and Woodland Poppy, which all spread almost thuggish in the gardens there.   

A few years back all the stars aligned and pretty much every spring ephemeral was in full flower. The Snow Trilliums, Twinleaf, and both Trout Lilies were all bloom in good number along with vast carpets of Phacelia, Bluebells, and Poppies to the point that the forest floor could not be seen. Creeping Phlox, Foam Flower, Bluets, Ragwort, multiple species of Spring Beauty, a variety of trees including Redbud, Witch Hazel, and Dogwoods were all in full bloom as well. And this wasn't just a few patches here and there as it often is; it was everywhere! This was also the year I saw Wild Camassia there, a native bulb no one seems to recall planting and have either died out or been removed from the gardens since. I have an awful picture of them somewhere so I know I'm not crazy but none of the gardeners there seem to recall the species ever having been planted. (It was likely removed because Camassia is more of a midwestern plant).  

This year's display wasn't as grand as that golden year. It's important to remember this isn't a flower show where plants are grown and timed in green houses and planted at the moment of perfection. These are plants left to grow in the ground all year so their flowering is largely effected by the weather. I would never say it was a disappointment to go. There are always tons of wildflowers in bloom just not in abundance throughout the gardens. And as always it's worth going for the Trilliums alone. 

So here are a few highlights that I enjoyed seeing.

Eastern Redbud, Cercis canadensis. Also available in white.

And Red! I've always found it odd how plants with colors in the name often aren't that color. I don't know what cultivar this is but it's certainly a centerpiece. Beside it is a Dogwood, Cornus florida. It's  a good combination but I feel like the red version Cornus rubra, or Native Wisteria Vine (not grown on the tree!) would make for a better pop of color.

Cornus florida have deceptive flowers. All the flowers in this photo actually aren't open yet. Those greed buds in the center here are actually the flower which will have tube-shaped petals. Surrounding them are white colored bracts, which are modified leaves designed to draw attention to the flowers instead of photosynthesize. 

Rhododendron vaseyi. Normally I don't go for Rhododendrons but this one was a cute color. They're very sparse with flowers compared to other species though. Normally I gush over Flame Azalea, Rhododendron calendulaceum, and their bright orange flowers but I don't think any were flowering there yet.

Fernleaf Phacelia, Phacelia bipinnatifida. The Mt. Cuba Center is where I first learned about this plant and I've wanted it ever since. Who knew an aggressive spreading, biannual, that's swarming with pollinators, and turns forest floors into cloudy carpets of purple would be such a tough sell to the nursery industry. No one sells this species except for one awful nursery online that only sells it in bare root form, and the occasional native plant sale. I have to drive all the way to Delaware to a place just down the street from the Mt. Cuba Center to buy this plant and hope and pray that it reseeds itself in my yard. Please someone, just sell the seeds to this plant online.

This was an awful year for Bluets too!

I won't pretend to know anything about growing these or how they manage the moss patch at the Mt. Cuba Center. But in years past the whole moss patch was glowing thick with Houstonia caerulea. This year it was mostly just this one sliver of the patch in flower.

 I've tried to grow these too and they're tough to establish. The roots are extremely tiny and prone to drying out or rotting away or getting eaten. Everyone who sells them gives me conflicting reports. Dry shade, full sun, damp moss but only on a hill with well drained soil? It's confusing.

I'm reasonably sure the Mt. Cuba Center occasionally harvests the plants from the patch to use elsewhere in the garden. I've started seeing them growing in patches along the pond and in other moss rich parts of the garden. 

Yellow Lady Slipper, Cypripedium pubescens. One of our rare native orchids. Well, more uncommon. They tend to only grow where trees have fallen in the woods and certain types of beneficial fungi have taken root first.

Wild Geranium, Geranium maculatum. 

Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica. Both the typical blue form that is so common and a very rare red form. Normally these start to open up red and quickly change to blue when they fully open. The flowers stay that way a few days before falling off. With the red form though the flowers never turn blue.

The Mt. Cuba Center also has a white form which has spread a bit since I first saw it there. The red form is still just that single stalk but the white here were pushing out a dozen or more.

Both fall in comparison to the blue which I've seen dominated the forest floor in years past.

Turkey Corn, Dicentra eximia.

Iris spp.

Trout Lily, Erythronium americanum. While I don't always see this plant blooming at the Mt. Cuba Center every year, when I do see them I normally see it flowering in large patches. This year though this one plant was the only one I noticed... odd. 

Trout Lilies are notorious for not flowering though. They spend too much time spreading by horizontal roots to form new bulbs. Each bulb then works on sending roots deeper in the ground but they only flower after reaching a certain depth, which can take forever. The result is a huge patch of leaves but no flowers every year. I'm told though that planting them in pots or adding stones a few inches under the bulbs will help stress the plant into putting its energy into flowering. I have yet to try this trick out. 

Swamp Pink, Helonias bullata. This is an endangered species I'm happy to see they still have there. On some years they have a dozen or so plants all blooming around the ponds but this year I only noticed this one. 

Some nurseries have found out how to germinate this species in captivity and are making it commercially available. I've tried to grow it in my gardens though but found it too finicky to survive here. I suspect it's not drought tolerant at all and requires constant moisture year round which I wasn't able to give them. 

Trillium grandiflorum.

After flowering for just shy of a week the flowers turn pink and eventually go full magenta before they finish flowering. 

When grown in mass they put on quite a show. All the white flowers look great growing together and then a week later you're treated to all the varying shades pink, red, magenta and so on.

The Mt. Cuba Center has a whole garden featuring hybrids and unusual cultivars. Here is a red form of T. grandiflorum. Instead of opening white they open up red and stay that way the whole time they're flowering.

Same plants but in slightly different light.

Trillium erectum is normally red as seen in the background here. This clump though was mostly a white form of the plant.

Trillium simile has always been a favorite of mine. The dark center sets it apart from the similar looking Trillium flexipies. I've been meaning to commission this flower into a piece of jewelry; a button or pendant perhaps?

Here they are growing in mass. Sadly unlike T. grandiflorum I think the petals just fall off instead of change color. 

Trillium pusillum. Normally this one is finished flowering by the time the Wildflower Celebration is held each year. Even this one is past its prime. They do open white but turn pink before the petals fall off.

Despite having all the fun qualities of T. grandiflorum this plant doesn't create such a sweeping effect. They're much smaller plants and the flowers are no where near as large.

Oddly enough after the petals fall off the three leaves just underneath give the effect that they have green petals.

Twisted Trillium, Trillium stamineum.

This is a fun one that's really easy to identify because the petals twist around.

I've been wanting to grow this in my garden for a number of years but no one seems to sell it online.

The Mt. Cuba Center makes growing this plant look easy because they seem to have a lot of it. Just down the road there's a farm that holds a native plant sale every year and I've seen plants provided by the Mt. Cuba Center sold there before. There was a sign for this species there but sadly they were sold out by the time I noticed it.

Trillium lancifolium. I've seen commercially available before but not often. It gets its name from the petals being so erect up into the air like a series of lances aimed up high.

Trillium oostingii. An odd species I only ever see there.

They had tons more Trilliums and variations there of growing in their gardens but I wasn't able to photograph it all as I've done on years past.