Tangled Branches: Cultivated

happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Nong Nooch

This is too big a coincidence to ignore. Earlier in the week as I leafed through a stack of old magazines headed for the recycling bin, an article about Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden captivated me enough that I tore out the page, intending to look it up on the internet sometime. Then yesterday morning, I discovered the beautiful travel photographs of Vladimir on Picasaweb. Guess where he visited?

Located near Pattaya in Thailand, this is an amazing garden if you like the tropical look. Or even if you don't. They have a replica of Stonehenge, for example, and some European statuary. But it was the tropical topiary and parterres that caught my attention. A world away, literally and figuratively, from my scruffy naturalistic patch of temperate zone woodland and meadow.

My meadow:

Nong Nooch:
From Wikipedia: Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden

See the difference?

But both have butterflies. I spent some time yesterday afternoon stalking butterflies through the meadow and garden, but haven't edited all the photos yet. Next post!

Labels: butterflies, public gardens, wildflowers

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Ghost Plant

And it does look ghostly.

Monotropa uniflora is blooming again, in the exact same spot where I first saw it two years ago. Re-reading the post I wrote at the time I don't think I can improve on it, except to say that I didn't see the Ghost Plant last year. Too dry? We've had a very wet May and early June this year, but I think we're in for some drier weather now.

Labels: wildflowers

Friday, June 05, 2009

Whorled Things

I've always liked plants with whorled leaves. Something about that neat orderly arrangement is attractive to me. The botanical definition:

courtesy of Gray's Lessons in botany and vegetable physiology illustrated by over 360 wood engravings from original drawings by Isaac Sprague : to which is added a copious glossary, or dictionary of botanical terms By Asa Gray, Isaac Sprague

I didn't realize that verticillate was a synonym for whorled. I always assumed verticillate meant needle-like, as in the leaves of Coreopsis verticillata.

Some of my favorite whorled things belong to the genus Galium.

Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum)

I never believed that this plant really had a sweet fragrance until I dried some of the leaves a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it does smell sweet when dried, but I'd quibble with calling the scent vanilla-like, as it is so often described.

Galium 'Victor Jones' (behind the Echinacea)

I'm not sure of the species on this one, and I'm not sure if the seller (Bluestone Perennials) is sure either. So they just called it 'Victor Jones' and left it at that.

And my new infatuation, Galium verum or Yellow Bedstraw

I neglected to take a picture of just the leaves, but if you click through, zoom in, and pan to the bottom of the photo, you should be able to see that they are indeed whorled. This is a wildflower (or nasty non-native weed, depending) in the meadow at Tangled Branches South. I posted a picture of it last year after I finally identified it, and it was past its prime then. This is a much better picture of the pretty, fluffy, yellow flowers. I'm thinking of digging up a piece of it and moving it to the cultivated side of things.

One more whorled wildflower, this time a real one (native plant, I mean, not an import), and just beginning to bloom a week or so ago, is Lysimachia quadrifolila or Whorled Loosestrife.

Labels: botany, wildflowers

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, September 19, 2008

This 'n' That, Mostly Wildflowers

This started out to be a belated Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post for Tangled Branches South, but really there are only 2 cultivated plants newly blooming since last month's GBBD. I just don't have many perennials planted here yet and the annuals are looking tired. So the two newly blooming plants are a pale pale yellow Chrysanthemum and a purple Aster. I don't know the names of either one. And I had forgotten all about the Aster - the rabbits ate it down to nothing and I never even noticed that it had resprouted until I saw it blooming this morning.

The wildflowers make up for the lack of cultivated flowers. The meadow is gold and white and blue now with Goldenrod (Solidago spp.), Asters (Symphyotrichum spp. if you insist), Blue Mist Flower (Eupatorium coelestinum, now renamed to something I've forgotten), and Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica).

There's an interesting plant blooming in the woods now. I feel fairly sure that it's Aureolaria flava or Smooth Yellow False Foxglove, but ID is somewhat difficult owing to the fact that it's lost all its lower leaves. See the thin stems with yellow blobs at the end? That's it.

The flowers are quite pretty, but they don't last long and also the deer nibble on them.

There are several Aureolaria species in Virginia, but apparently all have some type of relationship with oak trees. All the online references I find call it parasitism, but this is a plant with green leaves so I'm perplexed by that. It is growing under some tall oak trees.

Something else that's been nibbled on is this mushroom.

I'd love to know whether this is edible, but my mushroom identification skills are nonexistant so I won't be trying it unless some expert shows up here, eats it while I watch, and stops by the next day in good health.

We haven't tried any of the homemade Inner Beauty sauce on mushrooms, but we've had it on pork chops and chicken wings. I wrote up my lab notes for Batch One over on my food blog. I didn't use any of these 'Yatsufusa' peppers in the sauce, but they probably would be a nice addition. This the prettiest pepper plant in the garden today.

Labels: in bloom, mushrooms, peppers, wildflowers

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

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Wild Things

Some wild things I photographed this afternoon. This is almost a pictures-only post, except for one question. Do you recognize the plant in the first photo? I'm stumped.

Labels: butterflies, dragonflies, insects, rhexia, wildflowers

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Wild Mimulus

As I was headed back to the house from the vegetable garden last Sunday, a flower stopped me in my tracks. Not because it's immensely showy, but because I hadn't seen it before.

Just beginning to bloom is Mimulus ringens or Allegheny Monkey Flower. How many monkeys have you seen in the Alleghenies? Furthermore, it appears to be distributed across most of the US. I think I'll stick to the Latin name for this one. In the last few years, I've grown some of the tropical Mimulus hybrids from seed, but neglected to start any this year. And now I find this wild cousin blooming. A mystic sign or a coincidence?

It's quite a bit taller and rangier than its cultivated cousins. Last year it was probably weed-whacked by the spouse and that's why I didn't see it. This year he's not been so diligent and it's been a good thing.

Labels: mimulus, wildflowers

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Mid-July Wildflowers

Are you bored with the wildflowers yet? I'm not, so here's a sample from the meadow and woodland edge at Tangled Branches South.

First up, we have the lovely Maryland Meadow Beauty, or Rhexia mariana. The Virginia Meadow Beauty is not yet blooming here. When it does, I'll point out the differences between the two, but for now let's just admire. I got a little carried away with the photos after seeing Ki's Virginia Meadow Beauty.

The state flower of Maryland - the Black-eyed Susan - appears with the Maryland Meadow Beauty in that last photo.

How can there be goldenrod blooming already? That's my end-of-summer indicator. I believe this may be Early Goldenrod (Solidago juncea). I sure hope so anyway.

This next one is called Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia). Supposedly the seed capsule is a perfect square box. I'll have to check on that later on. The flowers are a bit sparse on a rangy plant, but pretty up close.

Narrowleaf Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum tenuifolium) had me baffled for a long time. A casual observance of the plant doesn't suggest to me at all that it could be a member of the Mint family. I kept trying to make it into some kind of Aster family member until I looked more closely at the flowers. Even then it doesn't look much like a mint, but at least it got me out of the Aster section of the field guide.

Wild Potato Vine (Ipomoea pandurata) is said to have a large edible tuberous root, but I'm not about to dig it up. For one thing, it's in the midst of a huge patch of Poison Ivy. I think the large flowers are as nice as any cultivated morning glory.

Lastly, we have Common St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum). Not a native, but I still like it.

Stay tuned for the story of the persimmon and the poison ivy. Don't worry, it's a short story, but I'm out of time for posting today. Got to go deal with the 3 or 4 dozen garlic bulbs I dug up yesterday.