Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Things Arvensis
...or cultivated...
This should be right up my alley, no? Arvensis as a botanical epithet is variously defined, but I like this definition arven-: referring to cultivation (arvensis). You often see arvensis as the species name of garden weeds, and I've gone on about one of my favorites, Viola arvensis, in previous posts (1,2). Now, meet her neighbor Veronica.
Veronica arvensis is a tiny little plant with very tiny flowers of clear intense blue. But they're so small, you could easily overlook them.
The Encyclopedia of Life says that Veronica arvensis is native to southern Europe and southwest Asia, but naturalized over most of the world. A good plant for Earth Day. You can regard it as a symbol of the destructive activities of humans in distributing invasive species across the globe. Or you can regard it as a symbol for the resilience and adaptability of life.
...Viola and Veronica chatting in the garden...
Labels: weeds, wildflowers
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Subtle Things
Or maybe this post should be titled On Closer Inspection. 
Most of the time moss makes a nice green carpet in the woods, but lately it's sprouted hair. Well, not really hair, but that's how it looks. And when the light shines through it, it glows.
These are spore-bearing structures, and if you'd like to know more the Ohio Moss and Lichen Association has a nicely illustrated page explaining how mosses make more mosses.
At the edge of the woods we have clumps of bluets (Houstonia sp.). They're small flowers on small plants, sort of a pale indistinct blue in color. Up close, the tiny flowers have a tiny yellow star in the center, which I think is charming.
Throughout the woods are various species of wild blueberries (Vaccinium spp.). This one grows quite tall, and is one of the first plants to flower in the woods. Again, these flowers are small and not especially showy, but apparently very attractive to insects. If you click through to the picture in Picasaweb and zoom in, you can see tiny holes in the flowers.
And lastly, dandelions are so common that I think not many people ever look closely at one. The feathery achenes are arranged in beautiful symmetry...
...and shimmer in the sunlight
Labels: mosses, weeds, wildflowers
Friday, March 27, 2009
Violas and Alliums: Wild and Cultivated
Yikes, I started this post last Sunday and here it is Friday and I haven't finished it. Seems most of the week was taken up by weeding and that's part of the subject matter here, so it's still current. But let's look at something nice first. Here's the first bloom on a self-sown viola. One of the children of last spring's planting of Historic Florist Mix violas.
Now for it's weedy cousin. Even though it's a weed and even though it's threatening to take over the vegetable garden, I love this tiny little Johnny-Jump-Up-like flower. If it's growing where it isn't in the way, I just leave it. I'll probably kick myself someday.
Its Latin name is Viola arvensis, meaning Viola of the fields, and is native to Europe. Apparently it was once considered a subspecies of Viola tricolor, the ancestor of our Johnny-Jump-Ups. You can see the resemblance.
If Viola arvensis is my favorite weed at the moment, then Allium vineale is my most hated. This wild Allium, aka Wild Garlic, is another European import. Sources disagree on whether it's edible but if it is, I'd have plenty of Alliums to eat even if I never planted another one. This stuff is coming up everywhere and it has to be dug out to get the bulb and the roots. If you just pull on it, you only get the top. Here's a picture of it infesting a clump of thyme.
But there's good Allium news in the garden too. The garlic I planted last fall is growing vigorously now.
This is 'Red Toch'. Never grown that variety before, so I can't say much about it yet, except that it's the largest so far.
The Evergreen Bunching Onions planted last fall are growing very well also, and I've been sampling them over the last few weeks. I think I'm supposed to leave them alone to make bigger clumps, but so far I've been digging up clumps, peeling off the largest stalk from the clump and replanting the rest. I have more bunching onion seedlings coming along so I should have enough even if I get too impatient and eat these before they multiply. The other multiplier onions I planted last fall (Egyptian Top Set and Yellow Potato Onion) are sprouting sporadically.
Is anybody interested in a short tutorial on growing and using green garlic? Or...? I have several blog posts in draft form and need help deciding what to post next.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
When Life Hands You Weeds...
...make bouquets.
See the little white flowers? Don't they make a nice filler? That's Cardamine hirsuta aka Hairy or Hoary Bittercress. I haven't been bold enough to try it in a salad yet, but at least the flowers will not be leaving seeds in the garden.
I spent all afternoon weeding the kitchen garden. The worst weed at present is wild garlic. It's coming up everywhere - even the paths made of a layer of newspaper with wood chips on top. I was not inclined to take a picture. Maybe after it's all cleaned up.
The other plants in the bouquet, by the way, are Narcissus 'Tete-a-Tete', Chionodoxa sardensis, Lycopodium obscurum (from the woods), and some Maple and Blueberry twigs.
If you'd like to see some really cute tiny bouquets, visit Donna at Mother Nature's Garden. Her garden is a little further along than mine, but I plan to copy her ideas when the tulips and muscari are in bloom. (Thanks, Donna!)
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Garden Bloggers' Hoedown
There is an embarrassing lack of hoes at Tangled Branches. Well, I do have one, but it's stashed behind some other unused tools and I didn't feel like digging (sorry) it out.
That doesn't mean the garden is total weeds though. I just like to get personal with my weeds - face-to-face sort of thing. So, to join in Carol's Garden Bloggers' Hoedown, let me introduce you to my weeding tools.
Clockwise from top-right, we have a cultivator-mattock thingy (Does this have a proper name? I don't know it.); an asparagus knife, aka dandelion digger (The catalog called it an asparagus knife, but this one is very different.); my old trusty trowel; and my new favorite, the Hori-Hori knife. My biggest weeding tool covers the background of the photo - mulch!
Now, a good gardener would have taken one of those tools in hand and dispatched that poor dandelion immediately. Me, I went in the house to see how the pictures turned out.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
How is a Maple Tree Like a British Soldier?
British Soldier Lichen, that is. Give up?
They both wear red hats in the spring.
I thought I had no wildflowers at all to show for Week 8 of Wildflowers in Winter, but how about if we broaden the definition a bit? This maple tree is 1) wild, and 2) flowering. So it's a wildflower.
Calling the British Soldier Lichen a wildflower is more of a stretch, but I think the bright red fruiting body is pretty. Just about a year ago - the first time I saw it - it took me by surprise, but now I know where and when to look for it. This one is growing next to the frog stream and I found it while looking for the source of the very loud frog songs. I never did find a frog, despite hearing them very close by.
Or could we count dandelions as wildflowers? I found the first one of the season yesterday.
Thanks to Elizabeth Joy of Wildflower Morning for this pleasant diversion from winter.
But stop by here in a few weeks and I should have some more-traditional wildflowers to show. I just saw an entire hillside covered with bluets this afternoon. Well, I think they were bluets - it was hard to tell at 65 MPH. I pointed them out to the spouse, but he didn't volunteer to stop.
Labels: lichens, maples, weeds, wildflowers
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Passalong Plants / Garden Bloggers' Book Club
I was pleased as could be to learn that the April/May selection for the Garden Bloggers' Book Club was a book I already had on my shelf - Passalong Plants by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing. I started reading about a year ago and just finished a few days ago. Not that it's thick and tedious to read, not at all. It's the kind of plant encyclopedia I wish there were more of - each entry comes with a story. Why would anybody want to grow this plant? How did the author learn of it? Any reason not to grow it? The kind of conversation you might expect from a friend who's just handed you a division or a seedling. But, most people don't sit down to read an encyclopedia from cover to cover. I'd say this is a great browsing book, especially if you're not a plant snob and if you live in zone 6 or better. Or maybe even if you are a plant snob, because some plants only need a new generation of gardeners to make them fashionable again (like Miz Friedman's Montbretia, p. 56).
Felder Rushing has been a Garden Hero of mine ever since I read a profile in the NY Times. There was a quote from him to the effect that his garden was a Southern Old Lady's Garden - she puts what she wants where she wants it, and if you don't like it, you can go home. But I always assumed that his books were not for me, being focused on the Deep South.
So I was surprised at how many of these plants I have. Four O'Clocks, Sweetshrub, Lily of the Valley, Cosmos, Cleome, Money Plant, Spiderwort, just picking a few out at random. And some I used to have, but no longer - Balsam, Hedychium, Bletilla, Moon Vine, Crinum, Tuberose. Did I choose these because they're old-fashioned or because they're easy to grow (in some places) or because everything old is new again? But I chose them all, and I paid for them all. Didn't acquire a single one via the passalong method. And I'm wracking my brain trying to remember if I've ever had any passalong plants. Well, yes, there have been a few houseplants (spider plant comes to mind). And I'm growing some tomatoes this year from seeds my dad saved a couple of years ago (Kellogg's Breakfast, to be specific). But many years ago (over 30), and not in my garden, but in my parents' and grandparents' yards, there grew some plants that spanned 4 generations (if you count me).
My great-grandmother was a collector of a sort - she saved everything. Several months after she died, the family held an estate sale. As I recall, it took place in a long-ago early summer at the house where she spent most of her adult life. This was in central Ohio, and we lived far away in northern Illinois but we had come out to help. Near her front porch grew a large Japanese honeysuckle. 
Yes, the same one that's now on every Invasive Plant hit list. Well. It was blooming and I had never smelled anything so wonderful in all my young life. I got the bright idea that growing a bit of Grandma Gordon's plant would be a nice remembrance and so I suggested that we take some cuttings and grow them at home. Somebody else got the brighter idea that it would be easier and faster to just dig some up. So we did. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else in northern Illinois had a Japanese honeysuckle. I had certainly never seen one. It grew and grew and my parents whacked it down and it grew back and grew and grew and.......I think they finally pulled it all out one day. Just too much trouble to keep up with it.
Now, of course, I know what a common plant it is (but I still don't know if anybody is purposely growing it in northern Illinois). And here in northern Virginia, I've dutifully ripped it out of the woods behind the house. It keeps coming back. 
Maybe this is why:
The neighbors didn't see any reason to get rid of theirs, and at this time of year, I'm glad they didn't.
I'll try to waft a little fragrance your way....
Thanks, Carol, for graciously hosting the Garden Bloggers' Book Club.
