Fw: Mirabilis

I suspect that fragrance is one of those variations that is somehow either genetically or environmentally linked to other conditions and characteristics of the plant and comes and goes with color, leaf size, soil conditions, light, temperature, etc. It reminds me though of a discussion years ago when I mentioned a Ribes which grew at the base of an old cottonwood along the banks of a canal along the Rio Grande river in Corrales, N.M. where we lived at the time. I always cut and brought indoors the beautiful long, sculptural stems of yellow, clove-scented blossoms in the spring. The arrangement could perfume the entire front of the house. People in the group thought its fragrance most unusual and talked about getting cuttings from that plant, as it must be some unusual sport of the yellow Ribes they knew. Then I discovered that there is a Ribes odoratum, not uncommon to the high plains and prairies of the Midwest, which this plant obviously is! So, who knows, maybe there is some fragrant forms of this plant too, and we just haven't identified it yet!

Karrie Reid
Folsom Foothill Gardener
Zone 9
----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard La Rose Boudreaux" <richardlarose@arsystel.com>
To: <sazci@hotmail.com>; <tomory@xtra.co.nz>; <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: Mirabilis


Here in the Girona region of Catalunya in Northeastern Spain Mirabilis grows everywhere. In the garden of my B&B there are yellow, pink and red ones and I've also seen the multi-coloured ones in the area. They self-seed and pop up everywhere including places where I don't want them to pop up. They tend to spread, get "leggy" and sometimes rob the sun from other plants. I've even seen them growing along the sides of country roads where they obviously don't get watered and have thrived through this year's near drought conditions. The lady next door to me waters hers and they have grown to a height of 5 or 6 feet and almost as wide. I've collected seeds of the same colour and planted them together the following spring only to get all the different colours on the next year's plants. And as for scent I only notice it in the early evening and only when a group of them are planted together. Some specimens have just started to bloom in the olive grove behind my house and the splash of colour between the grey green olive trees in the early evening is a lovely sight.

Richard La Rose

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----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Beer" <sazci@hotmail.com>
To: <tomory@xtra.co.nz>; <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: Mirabilis


Well, talk about coincidences; as I walked through a friend's neighborhood last night, I saw that all the Mirabilis planted on one stretch of street was multicolored - that is, with several different colored flowers on one plant. This I had never seen before. I am talking white, pink, yellow, white with a pink break, all on the same branch. It flies in the face o' mother nature, it does...

And right on the front of one building, was an all white one.

No especially strong fragrance on any of them, and no seed either. A little later we found a mostly white one with an occasional pink break that had a few seeds.

But I also found a bush (they are bush-like here; I don't remember them getting so big back in Iowa...) in front of one house with especially large flowers, they were the normal red-pink, but the centers were a clearer pink. I collected lots of seed.



From: Tony and Moira Ryan <tomory@xtra.co.nz>
Reply-To: tomory@xtra.co.nz
To: Medit-Plants <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Re: Mirabilis
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 10:19:23 +1200

Bob Beer wrote:
I've seen this reference to the "heavy scent" of Mirabilis jalapa many times, and chock it up to seed catalogue exaggeration. Istanbul is overrun with Mirabilis, it's around just about every tree in the city and front gardens are overflowing with it, but I never smelled anything unless I stuck my face right into it, then I can detect a light fragrance.

A white one does sound nice though!
They used to be petty common in Nairobi too, the municipal beds lining one side of a long public road were completely planted with them, but I never thought of them as scented.

I just wonder if just the white version might be more strongly secented. As we know many white flowers are moth pollinated and mostly smell quite strongly to attract their chosen helpers.

Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES AND DIAGRAMS ADDED 20/Feb/2005
















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