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Archive for the foliage tag

Janet’s Journal: Observe and appreciate your plants’ flip side

April 25, 2014   •   1 Comment

Learning the flip side of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) means employing a tactic that also tends to save the plant in the long run. Dividing bloodroot reveals its secret and yields divisions to carry on even if the mother clump falls to fungus.
Learning the flip side of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) means employing a tactic that also tends to save the plant in the long run. Dividing bloodroot reveals its secret and yields divisions to carry on even if the mother clump falls to fungus.

 

Do you give your garden’s flip side any attention?

For those raised entirely in the age of the MP3 and CD, a brief historical side trip is in order. Recordings of popular songs were once sold individually on 45 rpm “singles.” Buyers usually sought a “45” for the song on the “A” side, receiving the lesser ditty on the “B” side or the “flip side,” only by default—Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” was the “A” accompanied by a flip side “Elderberry Wine.”

The flip side of pearly everlasting culminates in a show of lovely orange butterflies marked black, blue and white. Its caterpillars give a preview of the color that will come, if only the gardener is tolerant of their presence and some tattered foliage.
The flip side of pearly everlasting culminates in a show of lovely orange butterflies marked black, blue and white. Its caterpillars give a preview of the color that will come, if only the gardener is tolerant of their presence and some tattered foliage.

Most of the time the flip side got little play. However, the song on the flip side of a 45 was ocassionally a delightful find.

Plants and gardens are that way. Although we buy or grow for an “A” side—that certain shape flower, a particular fragrance, or a rich fall color—we ought to give flip sides a play or two. They’re good for a laugh and sometimes for longer term enjoyment, but even if appalling they are enlightening.

Pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) is a sturdy native perennial of sunny, sandy places that opens white nubbin flowers in dense clusters in August. The flowers dry in place—thus the moniker “everlasting.” The plant’s downy gray foliage gets little special attention, except when invaded by tiny “worms” in May. These knit together and despoil the leaves at the tips of stems, alarming and disgusting most gardeners—unless they’re given a bit longer play.

If you hold off on the insecticides, the “worms” can be quite entertaining. Small, dark and creepy at first, as they grow they become recognizable as the larvae of the American painted lady butterfly. Experience teaches that they will finish feeding sometime in June and depart to pupate, at which point a well-established pearly everlasting will grow over its tattered tips and bloom without concern at its normal time.

Given their long evolutionary gig together, it shouldn’t be surprising that insects are often present on a plant’s flip side.

View pine sawfly as a disgusting flip side to mugo pine and Austrian pine, enjoy their lively dance routine.
View pine sawfly as a disgusting flip side to mugo pine and Austrian pine, enjoy their lively dance routine.

 

Pine sawfly on a mugo pine is a “B” side that can disgust a gardener. Given just occasional play, though, sawflies have a certain charm.

First, there’s the way they emerge from the eggs on the needle, a perfect row of bumps on the needle’s underside. Sometime in May the caterpillar-like sawflies pop out in close-coordinated sequence. The needle becomes a stage for a chorus line of tiny acrobats which first hang down, then flex and flip themselves topside to begin a few weeks of feasting.

If not blown away by a forceful stream of water or insecticidal soap during their debut performance, they grow to show the tolerant observer yet another dance number.

By mid-June a sawfly gang is clustered below the new growth, each member as long as and colored much like the needle on which it feeds. Even the preoccupied gardener notices the act at this point and pauses to look more closely. The colony’s response to this close inspection is a uniform twitch and freeze.

There is no way to save or replace the needles by this time. Once the needle-imitating sawfly larvae depart, plummeting to the ground to pupate in the soil by next spring, that stretch of stem will be bare. I usually squash the group and clip the affected stem back to a side branch, but not until I’ve given the group my eye and a bit of direction, moving my hand close and then away to choreograph the twitching motion. I wonder that someone hasn’t videotaped and exploited this performance—it’s just begging to be set to music.

People and plants have a long history, too, so that human interaction with a plant becomes part of its flip side. Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is understandably well known for its charming “A” side, brilliant white flowers at first protectively folded into and then proudly displayed among mitt-like gray green leaves. Its flip side somehow escapes notice. Next time you divide a clump of bloodroot—you should do this every few years as a defensive tactic because clumps are known to succumb suddenly and totally to root- and crown-destroying fungi—break a bit of root and you’ll see the flip side in the orange sap that oozes out.

Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) is a showy addition to a shady garden, with a sappy flip side.
Celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) is a showy addition to a shady garden, with a sappy flip side.

The sap of celandine or wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) is a flip side too. It’s valued for its “A” side in a shady garden, bright yellow flowers in spring and early summer. Its “B” side is there to be discovered all season—a plucked stem can yield enough bright yellow-orange sap to write out a word or two. Harmless, temporary dye. It’s said that the great garden designer Gertrude Jekyll would write notes to herself in celandine sap.

The “A” side of prairie coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) is apparent in July – a wind-generated bobbing and weaving of its yellow-petalled flowers that might be titled “Dance of the Golden Shuttlecocks.” The flip side should bear the name “Lean on Me,” since that’s the act that follows when the plant is placed as nature intended, among tall grasses. Without the accompaniment of grasses or other sturdy neighbors, the flip side can be a bother, however, requiring tall, carefully placed stakes.

I’ve seen the flip side in a different version though, one so arresting that it literally changes the “A” side. Knowing that the 4- to 5-foot stems will splay in July but wanting to avoid staking, a gardener can play that flip side early and to advantage. In May, pull the stems down and away from each other and use bent wire to staple them to the ground in a sunburst pattern. The stem ends and the side branches will all turn upward then, growing to produce a spoked circle of half-height, self-supporting shuttlecocks.

Providing other plants a strong shoulder to lean on, ornamental grasses play a “B” side that should be a hit in any garden.
Providing other plants a strong shoulder to lean on, ornamental grasses play a “B” side that should be a hit in any garden.

Few plants have such a supportive nature as ornamental grasses. They provide neighboring plants with a windbreak in summer, and perform the same service for birds in winter.
Few plants have such a supportive nature as ornamental grasses. They provide neighboring plants with a windbreak in summer, and perform the same service for birds in winter.

 

Ornamental grasses have quite a motherly tone to their flip side. Besides acting as support for tall prairie flowers, they serve as windbreaks for other plants and animals too—pay attention and you’ll notice butterflies and birds taking shelter on the lee side of a dense grass on blustery fall or winter days.

It can’t be denied that butterfly bush’s showy flowers and accompanying butterflies belong on the top ten list. But its “B” side as a natural staking system ought to get more play.
It can’t be denied that butterfly bush’s showy flowers and accompanying butterflies belong on the top ten list. But its “B” side as a natural staking system ought to get more play.

 

Butterfly bush’s (Buddleia davidii) flip side is supportive too. Delphiniums or cosmos grown within its spread can take advantage of this to thread their way up and then stand securely between the stiff branches.

Romantic blue monkshoods (Aconitum species) are certainly sinister on their flip side. It pays to know that eating even a little part of the leaf, flower or root can be deadly. It seems to have been part of some Roman armies’ scorched earth tactics to poison water supplies with monkshood, preventing enemy use of those resources.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) has a playful flip side. The foliage is well known as Monarch butterfly caterpillar fodder and the hemispherical clusters of pale purple flowers add color and fragrance to a wild garden. But watch a butterfly sipping nectar from an individual flower in that purple globe. Notice that the close-set ring of upward-facing petals parts easily and the butterfly’s foot slips in. The ring then closes tightly, forcing the butterfly to yank-step, as we might labor to reclaim our foot from deep, sticky muck.

All of the milkweed plants play this game. I can’t help but think there were other ways to insure that a pollinator’s foot came into contact with pollen, but this group of plants have a character that prefers to work by practical joke.

The “B” side of every plant is there to be observed, or it can be discovered while exploring plant encyclopedias for word of your garden favorites, or you might just piece it together over time from conversations like this between gardening friends. Dig a little deeper into your garden’s flip side this year for the fun of it, for a mind-expanding game, or to learn more rewarding ways to grow and use your plants.

Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.

 

 

Filed Under: Janet’s Journal Tagged With: bloodroot, Butterfly bush, foliage, Janet Macunovich, ornamental grass, Pearly everlasting

Janet’s Journal: Look beyond flowers to foliage

December 27, 2012   •   Leave a Comment

pink-tricolor-beech
Pink tricolor beech foliage, chartreuse mounds of cushion spurge (Euphorbia epithymoides) and the grey leaves of scotch thistle steal the thunder from April’s pink creeping phlox (Phlox subulata).

By Janet Macunovich / Photos by Steven Nikkila

Much can be said for standing on one’s head. Surprising discoveries await for anyone who will take the time to take a different perspective.

Take garden design for example. “Spring flowers” is a cliché that colors our lives from children’s books to classic literature. So we go into garden design with an overwhelming bias toward flowers. Designs start and sometimes end with pairs made solely for bloom — red tulips (Tulipa ‘Red Riding Hood’) that will bloom with basket of gold (Aurinia saxatilis), blue ajuga (Ajuga repens) with pink species tulips (Tulipa pulchella).

Astilbe 'Glut' red stems and bronze foliage shine in April and May. It's almost anticlimactic to see them change to green and sport red flower buds in early June.
Astilbe ‘Glut’ red stems and bronze foliage shine in April and May. It’s almost anticlimactic to see them change to green and sport red flower buds in early June.

Now try that headstand. Change something, radically. Assume, for instance, that all flowers are invisible. See what happens? Notice anything new? Flowers are, in fact, invisible during the early part of the season. Once the search for flowers ends, we notice that April is full of glorious foliage. Gardens are beautiful regardless of the flowers.

We see leaves, stems, and buds that are fresh, crisp, saturated, unmarred blue, chartreuse, gold, maroon, silver, and other hues intense beyond description. The tones change by the hour and the day, like the very best sunset, so rich and glossy it might be oil on canvas not yet dried. At least once in every lifetime this spectacle grabs the eye, arrests thought, and makes us dewy-eyed about spring.

Then we become jaded. If it doesn’t have or can’t be made to look like it has a big, bright flower, preferably one that looks like a rose, we don’t even see its other qualities.

Think about a favorite garden plant. Now, name its early spring color. Can’t put your finger on it? Maybe your view has been muddied by the “floral perspective.”

Golden ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Aurea') is worth its weight, especially in spring.
Golden ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Aurea’) is worth its weight, especially in spring.

Epimedium sulfureum
Epimedium sulfureum

What’s more, we’re often still indoors when spring foliage charm takes the stage. Anchored by our winter weight, looking solely for “the first flower,” we miss spring’s entire opening act.

It’s an act that begins long before the flower garden becomes a feature in the landscape. It’s a toe-tapper, guaranteed to overcome off-season inertia and renew one’s faith in the natural world. Make an effort to see it, design for it, and be there.

Take this different, non-floral view as you start into a new design or plan a new perennial, shrub or groundcover combination. Spark the burgundy foliage of emerging peony with the gold of lemon thyme. Reflect the peeling bud caps of quince in the brick-red edge of epimedium leaves. Have some fun and get an extra month from your garden design.

Don’t be surprised if you stop caring about the flowers and they become the surprise.

Zebra iris (Iris pallida ‘Argentea-variegata’) is white light streaming up.
Zebra iris (Iris pallida ‘Argentea-variegata’) is white light streaming up.

Bergenia (Bergenia cordifolia), begins with big, rich maroon leaves in spring.
Bergenia (Bergenia cordifolia), begins with big, rich maroon leaves in spring.

Some starters:

A climbing rose with foliage that opens bronze-red (‘Henry Kelsey’ is one), against the white peeling bark and lime green leaf buds of seven-son shrub (Heptacodium miconioides)

Blue hostas (like Hosta ‘Blue Cadet’) with Irish green sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum).

Glossy maroon new foliage of Bergenia cordifolia with the silver blue fiddle heads of Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum ‘Pictum’).

‘Red Carpet’ Sedum, intensely scarlet at the feet of furry, grey-green large-flowered comfrey (Symphytum grandiflorum).

The deep violet foliage of shrubby Clematis recta ‘Purpurea’ leaning against the supportive stems of Ural false spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia), simultaneously leafing out an indescribably rich, red-edged green.

Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.

Filed Under: Janet’s Journal Tagged With: astilbe, bergenia, foliage, Janet, macunovich, ninebark, tricolor beech, zebra iris

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