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.

The Mt. Cuba Center's 10th Annual Wildflower Celebration

Last Sunday the Mt. Cuba Center held their 10th annual Wildflower Celebration. This has truly become an event I've tried to attend every year ever since I learned about the place. The gardens there are spectacular as always, however because of the long winter we had I feel that the general peak bloom of the place was 2 or 3 weeks behind. 

Fern-leaf Phacelia, Phacelia bipinnatifida, had only just started to open. And even the May Apples which are very abundant in parts of the forests there weren't blooming yet.

I was slightly impressed to find a Toothwort, Cardamine concatenata, still blooming from two weeks ago when I had visited before for the early spring blooming tour. Other plants I saw then like Hepatica, and Bloodroot were pretty much completely done flowering for the year.

There were more Trout Lillies flowering but most were past their prime. Even so, the flowers were interesting and pretty to look at.

The White flowering species must have also flowered after my previous visit and had since faded on the day of the celebration. That's kind of the charm of going every year though. Some years there are carpets of flowers all over the place, and others it's little hints of wildflowers you might not have noticed.

A Rhododendron. Bumblebees were working this but refused to stand still long enough for me to get a good shot.

Dutchman's Breeches, Dicentra cucullaria, get their name from resembling pants.

Turkey Corn, Dicentra eximia, because they're not really heart shaped enough to call them bleeding hearts. 

Green and Gold, Dicentra eximia. This is one of those wildflowers native plant gardeners like to gush about. Honestly it's never impressed me, though I read it has a very long bloom time. Maybe I'll plant it someday.

Anemone sp. 

Fraser's Sedge, Cymophyllus fraserianus, a flowering sedge that actually has showy flowers.

Rue, I think. This is wind pollinated but you can still occasionally find bees going after the pollen.

The ponds were extremely abundant with tadpoles this year. There were spots with so many of them that you couldn't see the bottom of the pond. I'm told something like 5 species of frogs use their ponds as a spawning pool. None of which were added, they all showed up on their own. 

Marsh Marigold, Caltha palustris, was abundantly in bloom around their ponds. This was the first year I saw this plant blooming at it's peak and the nonnative they have there not. The Mt. Cuba Center isn't totally native, partly because of the former owner of the estate. Her name was Mrs. Copeland (hope I'm spelling that right,) and while she was devoted to creating a wonderful native plant garden, a few of her favorite nonnatives still grow in the gardens. She had a saying I'm told that went something like, "If it isn't native, then it ought to be."

So on most years I'd see Japanese Primroses, Primula japonica, all over the pond area adding some vibrant magenta and pinks to the color spectrum. I have to admit they are pretty plants but not fitting with the theme.

I've been meaning to add Marsh Marigold to my pond at home, which can grow is fairly flooded conditions.

Swamp Pink, Helonias bullata, an endangered species (though only threatened in some states) was just starting to bloom in patches here and there. This is a nice pop of color but doesn't spread enough to be productive in the horticultural industry.

The one nursery I knew that was able to germinate the seeds found that they require an exact amount of cold hours, nothing more and nothing less to get the seeds to this plant to germinate.

I'm not 100% sure but I think this is Bog Blueberry, Vaccinium uliginosum. This was a blueberry shrub they had planed right in the flood area of their ponds, along side pitcher plants and bog sage.

Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica. This was the main burst of color on the forest floor this year. It's a wonderful perennial that forms a deep tap root. Some have said it's hard to get rid of once established and does spread freely by seed. Honestly though the gardeners there seem to keep it under control. I'd say the Woodland Poppy spread way more prolifically.

This was one of the few plants that bumblebees were actively working. Here a young queen (they're all pretty much queens this early in the year) is gathering nectar from one.

This would have been fuller looking had they held the event in two or three weeks. The Virginia Bluebells are peaking right now, but mixed in here is all Fern-leaf Phacelia and Woodland Poppy, neither of which is really flowering heavily yet. 

When you have this many of the same species growing in such numbers, variations are bound to show up.

Normally the flowers open up in a tone of pink but quickly turn blue once they open fully. Here is an individual that seems to lack any pigment at all.

The flowers are simply white.

Likewise, these two plants by their pond never turned blue at all, and yet the flowers are fully opened.

Around the ponds there are small patches of lawn separated by moss patches. I'm told the gardeners use tweezers to maintain this boundary. I've come to find mossy patches are the ideal place to grow one wildflower in particular. 

Bluets, Houstonia caerulea.

These are also called Quaker Ladies, though I'm not sure why. Something to do with the plant being small and unassuming except when they bloom. The corms to these plants are about the same size as the flower, and yet each plant somehow pushes out 20 flowers all at once. The foliage is a simple rosette of leaves, but even then the flowers take up most of the mass of the plant.

They bloom so thick at times that they must shade out the leaves below, though I've never known this to be an issue with an ephemeral. Many of them will produce only a flower and then after it fades push out some leaves. 

I was happy to find the moss garden full of Bluets this year. In years past, I felt the population here may have been dying out.

Before I knew what a Bluet was, I honestly thought there was a patch of snow up on the hill for some reason. You almost want to dive in and make a snow angle. This year the effect was there, though shrubs planted right before the patch ruin the surprise.

Even here there are unique individuals growing. One plant (yes one plant makes that many flowers!) had only produced white flowers. It stood out in a sea of pale blue flowers.

Beeflies were buzzing about pollinating them. You can sort of see one here, though they zipped around mostly in the middle of the patch and they frown on walking into the garden beds. 

I tried to grow bluets once. They over wintered just fine, and flowered the following spring, however, come summer they died off sadly. I believe growing them in moss is somewhat vital to their survival as they are delicate little evergreen plants. Considering the size of their root they're probably not drought tolerant in the slightest.

But the real highlight of the Mt. Cuba Center in the spring time has got to be the Trilliums. Many people were passing them by unaware of the glory of these amazing plants.

For starters it's unusual for a native plant garden to not have at least one species. These take two years from seed to germinate, producing a simple single leaf on the third year and that's all. Year four they may produce two leaves, and then three leaves on the fifth. Then sometime between year six and ten, they should flower. From there they can slowly divide more flowering shoots to very slowly form a clump. They don't like fertilizer, even the slow release stuff will diminish the size of the rhizome or kill them. They like to grow in full shade, and can tolerate partial to full sun, provided they're watered regularly once a week. Lack of sufficient water (whether in full sun or shade) can cause the seed pod to shrivel up and die. Seeds are coated in elaiosome, which is basically ant food! So your seeds can walk away on you if you're not careful. So in summary these plants are tricky to grow and take the better half of a decade to flower.

Trillium grandiflorum is probably the most well know and beloved of the Trilliums. It's the provenance flower to parts of Canada, and illegal to pick or dig up there. You can still find nurseries selling them but expect to pay something around $10 to $20.

As a side note I had always wondered why the Mt. Cuba Center had a section called the Trillium Garden, when it's clear to anyone that they have more Trilliums planted in big patches elsewhere in the gardens. But then I realized, this is where they keep all the cultivars and hybrids that have popped up over the years.

Trillium grandiflorum 'Quicksilver' is fairly true to the true species, however it supposedly spreads faster than the true species.

I didn't get the name of this one but it opened slightly pink. Normally they turn pink and magenta after a week of flowering white. It's not a huge difference but still a note worthy one.

Another cultivar they had opened as a more striking magenta.

This one doesn't have any reproductive parts at all. The flower is useless but this plant is still able to spread by an expanding rhizome which even divides every few years. 

Trillium erectum is probably the prettiest of the red flowering species.

Despite it's beauty, the flower smells like a dead fish to attract flies and carrion beetles to pollinate it. Thankfully one has to practically put their nose inside the flower to observe this fact.

Trillium cernuum is a neat one on par with T. grandiflorum. The flower is a bit more open though.

Trillium catesbaei. This is truly one of the prettier species to have, but harder to grow. They don't divide too often and it's even more difficult to get them to reproduce by seed.

The flower opens white but later turns a sharp shade of pink. 

Trillium simile. This is actually my favorite Trillium. The flower is almost a perfect triangle. A life goal of mine is to someday commission a piece of jewelry in the shape of this flower. Not sure what it would be called but something to pin above a breast pocket on a suit, or cufflinks perhaps?

Elsewhere in the gardens there was a patch that had been flowering a little bit longer. You can tell from the developing seed pod.

I was also thrilled to find a mutation! This one has four petals instead of three!

Up in the Trillium garden they had a variety that has slightly yellow petals. (A crossed with T. luteum perhaps?)

Trillium flexipes x erectum, this was a neat one to see. The flower resembles that of T. flexipes while the color is more in line of T. erectum... I didn't think to check if it smelled of dead fish like T. erectum. But it seems to bloom when T. erectum does because I don't recall seeing any T. flexipes open.

Trillium sulcatum x flexipes. Another flexipes hybrid. 

Another hybrid with T. flexipes, though this time most of the reproductive parts and color seem to come from T. sulcatum.

Trillium underwoodii.

I believe this was the only patch of this species growing there. I like the darkness of the flower and earthy tone of the pollen.

A patch of Trillium sessile. (I know because I read the label.)

Trillium luteum. This species is one of the only yellow flowering ones. It also smells like oranges, very pleasant. This is another easy to grow species.

Outside of the gardens they had food and activities about up near the main house. They still had a trial of Heuchera's going on in their trial garden. I was handed a flag and asked to pick the best one. I was the first to vote for the cultivar 'Tiramisu' and later when I went back I saw it was actually winning of what had to bee some 50+ varieties. I picked it because the amber and purple foliage ones didn't appeal to me, and I didn't like the red or lime green ones, so I found one that was just green enough but also with just the right amount of copper in the leaves. There was another cultivar right next to it that barely had any copper in the leaves at all.

The Round Garden sits directly beside the house. Delphiniums and tulips were the biggest splashes of color here. It's a more formal garden and Mrs. Copeland was fond of Delphiniums so they plant them every year in her memory. I think it's lovely, but frankly if I lived there, that pond would be converted into a hot tub so fast!

Also planted in this garden are the more formal and garden friendly cultivars of native plants, most of which flower over the summer.

Bumblebees were working the Delphiniums. 

They once again held a raptor bird demonstration. I only caught the tail end of the show this year....

and so did this small child apparently.

Who survived!

They did this great thing this year where they asked for a young volunteer with a camera to take a seat right by the perch for the Turkey Vulture. He probably got an amazing photo too.

When not preforming, their birds were perched out for all to observe. I'm not really a bird person but I know this is a screech owl.

Peregrine Falcon? Some type of falcon?

A bird... (or plane) of some sort?

Red Tailed Hawk?