Re: Was re: Oleander, now best and worse
At 11:39 AM 11/25/00 +0200, Karen wrote:
>Oh Susannah, I am hurt about the photinia. I quite like the cute little
>sprays of cream flowers and their coppery coloring habit that matches so
>nicely (in an offhand way) with clay pots-if the davidii is the one I have.
>And the fact that they need no care scores big with me, too.
Oh, you know how it is -- something may be interesting and special if it's
unusual, and nauseating once you see the millionth one... I for one can't
imagine what's wrong with Oleanders :-), but I'm not I'd even recognize
one if I saw one!
The best/worst thing depends on climate, too. Up here, Photinia grows 20
feet tall (when mature), and so never appears in or near a clay pot. It
does, however, present an enormous (and, to me, repellant) combination of
dark-red and dark-green leaves, cast a dense shade so nothing but
bark-o-mulch can grow under it, and, when grown near a house, create a
perpetual depressing twilight indoors (not helped by our cloudy rainy
winters).
A punk neighbor of mine once decided that she wanted to plant a sort of
nightmare-garden in her front yard (all the flowers would be black...).
This was partially to irritate the neighbor across the street from her, who
she was fueding with at the time. Anyway, she asked me, "What's the
ugliest plant you know?" Without hesitation, I pointed to a 30-foot
Photinia.
>My own pet peeve is a tree I don't even know the name of...maybe someone out
>there knows. It is a shorter, conical fast-growing evergreen thing commonly
>used as a street tree here in Athens. It has a revolting greenish tinge to
>its trunk and limbs and an abundance of ghastly blackish seed pods which have
>irritating-to-sensitive-skin fibers inside. The leaves have three points I
>think, and if the tree were deciduous, it would possibly look even worse.
>The features I hate the most is the tapering trunk and the lollipop look of
>it. Yuck ick. Get the chainsaw!
Why, it sounds lovely! <cackle>. (I seem to be one holiday behind, and in
a sort of Halloween mood today.)
-- Susannah
