Spring blooms, especially orange, blue and yellow!
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Spring blooms, especially orange, blue and yellow!
- From: d* f*
- Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 11:04:41 -0800 (PST)
After this bout of warmer weather recently, my own
garden has just exploded into bloom. It is incredible
to see how the plants I have seem to respond to the
warmer temperatures in the same way I do! Some of the
things that are looking most impressive at the moment:
Iris confusa 'Chengdu'- like clouds of blue
butterflies hovering on the tops of 3 foot tall
branched stems, which look like a dwarf bamboo when
not in bloom. Up to 50 flowers per stem, and looking
more like miniature orchids than your typical iris.
Also combines very well with the groundcover of paler
blue Ipheion uniflora at its feet.
Gnidia polycephala-NCN-a very free flowering small
shrub 3-4' tall, with masses of pale yellow flowers
which completely cover the plant for at least 6 months
of bloom, on a small shrub with foliage resembling a
Coleonema, except slightly pendulous, and very drought
tolerant and easy to grow. Also slightly fragrant in
the evening, but not very commonly grown. (Try
Baylands Nursery in East Palo Alto if interested in
this).
Sedum dendroideum- a great small shrubby/succulent
groundcover(2 to 4 foot tall) for dry shade or full
sun, and in brilliant yellow bloom with glossy green
foliage, and contrasting nicely with an adjacent Aloe
ferox which is in spectacular deep orange bloom right
now. Aloe plicatilis is also blooming fully now. The
Bulbine frutescens var yellow amd var
'Hallmark'(orange), are also starting to bloom
heavily, and make a massive display of flowers for 3
to 6 months, and a quiet unassuming mass of succulent
grass like foliage the rest of the year. Also in this
mix is a hybrid Beschorneria cross received from
Martin Grantham, which is sending up a bloom spike of
a 4 inch caliper, and looking like a giant spear of
asparagus at the moment. This is growing about 6
inches taller every week now, and should probably
reach 12 to 14 feet tall before blooming. I hope it
survives the neighborhood kids, as it is located in
the parking strip, where the adjacent Kniphofia
uvaria/Yellow Poker Plant blooms are always just too
tempting to the kids, and most get broken off while in
bloom. I am hoping the immense size of the stem will
be enough to protect the Beschorneria from similar
damage.
Tabebuia chrysotricha/Golden Trumpet Tree is just
starting to bloom, and the daffodil yellow flowers
really light up the garden, especially as the tree
blooms while bare of leaves.
Abutilons of all sorts,(red, yellow, orange, pink) are
in full bloom now, the pale orange of A. 'Victor
Reitor' is particularly nice, as they are wide open
and face out so they can be seen well, and the flower
color nicely picks up the apricot new leaf color of
the adjoining Gordonia axillaris, which has just
finished blooming. The leaf rosette of a hybrid
Aechmea recurvata is flushed bright orange as well,
and sets a nice foreground groundcover with these two
shrubs, and also combines well with the orange to red
foliage of the Euphorbia tirucalli 'Sticks on
Fire'/Pencil Euphorbia, which frames the view just
outside my back door.
Leucadendron cordifolium/Pincushion Protea and
Echeveria agavoides continue the orange theme at the
moment, and give soft orange highlights to the
sunnier parts of the garden. All of these are good
oranges to work with if you usually don't like orange,
as they don't last too long to clash with later spring
blooming things, but give a real lift in early spring,
when a dash of vibrant color is a nice antidote to
winter.
Brugmansia 'Charles Grimaldi'/Angel's Trumpet is just
starting to come back into full bloom again, and never
really went into a dormant/bare period this winter, as
it stayed so mild. It will take another month or two
for it too reach above the adjoining Hedychium
flavescens/Yellow Ginger, which are already 5 to 6
feet tall this spring, as they didn'y get zapped by
any frost this winter. A pale yellow Cymbidium orchid
with at least 10 spikes is in full bloom and completes
this corner. Below the orchid are two varieties of
bromeliad; one a variegated yellow Aechmea ornata var
nationalis below(looking very much like a dwarf
variegated Yucca). The other is a very prolific
clumper from Santa Catarina, Brazil, called Aechmea
kertesziae, with 16" tall spikes of narrow red with
clear yellow petals. This one keeps the red coloring
of the spike for another 6 months, and remains very
showy in the garden, even after through blooming.(and
these both handle frost down to 25F w/o damage).
These bromeliads are sitting within a sea of Oxalis
spiralis var volcanicum, also with small yellow
flowers and attractive red stems, and forming a low
spreading mat of groundcover.
A Metrosideros carminea- a vining metrosideros which
clings to walls and will do quite well in shade, is
blooming for the first time this spring also, with
deep red typical flowers full of stamens, and makes a
nice trailing plant for containers. Another good
container plant which is starting to bloom now is
related to our local native herb called miner's
lettuce. This Claytonia siberica is trailing with
succulent foliage, and sends out long stems which
contain many small deep pink 1/2" flowers. The
foliage is a small rosette of green leaves, only 4
inches tall or less. I like this plant because any
piece of it will root and form a new plant, and it can
be divided and replanted right before blooming without
upsetting it, or damaging the blooms,(similar to
Ipheion), and is an attractive foreground planting for
damp shady spots. Not really invasive in our summer
dry mediterannean climate, but may not be as well
behaved in higher rainfall areas.
There's lots more blooming at present, but these are
some of the showiest, and perhaps lesser known plants.
For those faced with less than full sun and milder
microclimates, these will all do well here in the Bay
Area and other areas where it doesn't frost very
heavily.
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