Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Friday, July 10, 2009
Petunia Observation
If you've been hanging on my every word reading this blog for a while, you may remember that I have been seeking a couple of lost petunias for several years. This year I think I found them.
The first petunia I loved and lost was Burpee's California Giants. I grew them from seed one year when Burpee was offering their own heirloom seeds (at least that's what they claimed). Huge ruffle-y flamboyant flowers on large vigorous plants. I bought the seeds again a year or two later, also from Burpee, but the flowers were not like the first. Then they disappeared from their listings.
I turned next to Select Seeds. They claimed to be selling 'Giants of California', but that also turned out to be something quite different from the catalog description. Different than what I expected, but a serendipitous discovery of the fragrance of old-fashioned petunias. I think I wrote it better then than I could now.
After that event, I scoured the seed catalogs for old-fashioned petunias hoping to recapture that lovely fragrance, while also searching for a replacement for California Giants. In 2007, I tried Chiltern's Giants of California. No luck. Last year, I tried Select Seeds Balcony Petunias, thinking those might have been the fragrant flowers in their Giants of California seed packet in 2006. Again, no. They were lovely satiny flowers, but not fragrant.
Then last year, I noticed that Thompson & Morgan were offering a Petunia called 'Superbissima'. The catalog description sounded right. "The largest Petunia flowers we have ever seen, bred on from those available over 100 years ago! Robust plants produce huge 10-15cm (4-6in) wide exotic looking frilly blooms, in an attractive mixture of pinks, reds and purples, each with rich veining and attractive dark eyes. An eye-catching addition to borders or containers." I bought the seeds last year and sowed them indoors this spring and you can see the results above. The flowers are pretty much what I remember from the old Burpee seeds although 4-6in is catalog hyperbole; they might measure that if you flatten them out first. However, the plants are short in comparison to the long-lost Burpee petunias. Well, a shorter plant is not so bad.
But how is it that these seeds just surfaced recently after being missing for several years? More internet searching. Ta da! I think I may have found the producer of these seeds - Cerný Seeds in Czechoslovakia. Their web page describing Petunia hybrida grandiflora superbissima nana sounds and looks just like what I'm growing this year. The plant is said to be a tetraploid, which would account for the huge flowers. And there are a few slightly double ones, as the catalog describes.So, happiness at last on this one.
If you can manage to take your gaze off the ruffled flowers in photo above, you'll see there's also a smaller pinkish-purple one. That one is from the Old-Fashioned Vining Petunia seed I bought this year from Seed Savers Exchange. The first flower that opened had the fragrance I've been missing. Happiness again. But not every plant has that fragrance. The flower in the picture, for example, has very little.
Which brings me to an observation. All the petunias have very little fragrance during the day. The magic happens in the early evening. But some petunias have a fragrance that is just unpleasant. After I photographed the tiny vase of flowers outdoors, I placed it indoors. And last evening, I noticed an odd smell. Coming from the vase. Those big ruffled flowers thought they were outside attracting insects instead of indoors repelling me.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Flowery Interlude
Are you tired of reading about vegetables here? How about flowers and butterflies for a change?
The meadow below the vegetable garden has turned gold with these exuberant Tickseeds (Bidens sp.). What you can't see from that photo is the huge number of tiny skippers flitting about them.
The flowers have an attractive honey-sweet fragrance too, but you'll just have to trust me or find some and do your own sniff test.
One of my favorite fall wildflowers is Ironweed (Vernonia sp.). I don't have many of these and I wish I did. It takes a lot of them to make an impression.
The one above is past its prime, but the flowers are pretty close up. The photo below shows the individual fringe-y florets, but if you want a good look, click through and magnify the image (button will be above the photo, right corner).
Near the Ironweed, you can clearly see the path the deer made through the meadow between the woods and the vegetable garden. But I'm not going to talk about vegetables today.
My mystery wildflower continues to bloom. I've looked through several wildflower books and websites and I'm still stumped. It's about 8 inches tall with thin opposite leaves. There were 3 plants scattered in various places at the edge of the woods, but 2 of them vanished during the August drought. The survivor was the largest of the 3. I don't remember seeing this flower last summer.
This Cloudless Sulphur butterfly is a big one, much larger than the more common Clouded Sulphur. I've seen them a few times this summer and always on these pale orchid-purple petunias, where their color is complemented perfectly. According to Butterflies through Binoculars, they have the unusual habit of migrating north in the autumn.
And just like caterpillars into butterflies, pepper flowers turn into fruit! More later about my cooking experiments with Ají Dulce and associates.
Labels: butterflies, critters, peppers, petunias, wildflowers
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Shimmery Flowers
I'm such a pushover for shimmery flowers. My oldest daylily, 'Medallion', is one that has a nice sparkle to it.
You can see the individual sparkles if you look closely. (Click through and zoom all the way in.)
But lately I've noticed a shimmer where I don't remember seeing one before - on petunias. Some of these 'Balcony' petunias have an interesting satiny sheen. I grew them from seed and planted out 20 or 30 seedlings. Not all the flowers have the shimmer - some are what I would call "ordinary" petunias and some are very velvety (like the burgundy one at the top center of the photo).
I despaired of getting a good photo of the flowers in place, so finally snipped a few stems and placed them in the sun where I could get the camera at the proper angle. A closer look at the petals here reveals a light reflection similar to the daylily, except more finely textured.
People get paid to study this stuff. I'm in the wrong career.
