Re: Sedum Autumn Joy
Lorraine:
My plants are sturdy and healthy-looking (although, like Paul, I have had
occasional infestations of aphids), and I like their unique form. It's nice
that they come back every year and that they're so easy to propagate. Other
than cutting them to the ground every year after they die, they take
virtually no care. I think they're worthy of a place in the garden, and I've
even shared them with friends. I just haven't been that impressed with it.
Mine has never resembled the pictures you see of it in catalogues. There,
the flowers are always a beautiful brick-red that deepens to a cinnamon-brown
as the plants age. For me, the flowers are a mousy, pinky-brown that darkens
to plain brown as the foliage yellows. In other words, not that attractive.
As we have been hearing from other members, there are so many other things
that bring real joy to an Autumn garden in California, it seems a shame to
recommend such a non-entity. Right now, I'm loving my Brugmansia x insignis
"Pink," which has 20 huge, beautiful flowers on it and many more buds just
beginning to open. I was in San Francisco 2 weeks ago, and saw a specimen of
what I believe was Brugmansia "Charles Grimaldi" in front of an old Victorian
near Aquatic Park. The flowers were enormous--a foot long and 10 inches
across, and of a luminous, golden-orange color. I rang the doorbell, to see
if the owner would let me have a cutting. No one answered, and it took all
my will-power (not to mention the guilt that my mother so carefully instilled
in me as a child) not to take a cutting "on the sly." I've been consumed
with jealousy ever since. Another favorite fall plant is Osmanthus fragrans.
There is a huge old specimen at the University of the Pacific here in
Stockton that blooms in October. Although the flowers are tiny and don't
make much of a display, the fragrance is out of this world, and carries for a
good city block. People often remark on the wonderful fragrance and wonder
where it's coming from. There is a smaller specimen of the orange-flowered
variety in the front yard of an apartment building near the university, and I
think its flowers are even more fragrant, if that were possible. These
flowers have the unusual quality that, after you've smelled them a couple of
times, you lose the ability to smell them until you've held them away from
your nose for a few minutes. I wonder that more people don't grow these
wonderful plants.
Kurt Mize
Stockton, California
USDA Zone 9
