Plant Rant--Shopping for Native Plants

blanket flower, growing wild; aren't our natives spectacular!

Don't project your garden assumptions on me!

Gardening is, of course, like cooking; it is a skill many people learned from their families and not from professional teachers. So many doubtful ideas are circulating. I'm actually sympathetic to "because my father did it" as a reason for a garden practice, although that doesn't mean it is a sound idea.

However, answers from "experts" that assume what I want in my garden really annoy me.

Plant Story--Spiderwort, Tradescantia

Spiderwort, Tradescantia (spiderwort and dayflower family, Commelinaceae), is a native wildflower. The flowers come in shades from blue to white or pink (much color variation within species). Spider in the name refers to the visual effect of looking spidery, wort is an old word meaning plant.

Here it is looking spidery: 

                                 

Plant Story--More on Prickly Pear Cacti, Flowers and Fruits

Prickly pear cacti, genus Opuntia, are easily-recognized members of the cactus family (Cactaceae) with a very wide native range across the Americas. There are more than 150 species, native from southern Canada to Argentina and Chile. They are also called nopales (singular nopal).

Plant Story--Prickly Pear Cacti, Wonderfully Spiny

Cacti do not get a lot of appreciation. As a very visible, common cactus, that certainly applies to the prickly pears, Opuntia species. These plants are easily recognised, avoided and disliked.

Plant Story--Native Wildflower, Gumweed, Grindelia

Gumweeds, genus Grindelia (sunflower family, Asteraceae) are roadside wildflowers, most common in western North America but with a few species in the East and South. A gumweed is easy to recognize: note the funny spines around the flower buds (especially visible in the picture below). In addition, gumweeds are gummy--if you touch the buds or flowers, sticky stuff comes off on your fingers.

But there is a lot more to gumweeds.

Plant Story--Creeping Hollygrape, Berberis repens

It is spreading all over my yard, but I can't get its name right.

I'm used to calling it Oregon grape, but in fact, the one on the Front Range in Colorado is not really Oregon grape. The usual Oregon grape is Berberis aquifolia. It is Berberis repens that is common in Colorado. Common names for this plant include creeping hollygrape, creeping barberry, creeping mahonia, and creeping Oregon grape.

Plant Story--Sticklleaf, Mentzelia nuda

Mentzelia nuda, a short-lived perennial of sandy sites in the western plains, is called stickleaf and blazing star. My personal name for it was "quitting-time flower."

The white flowers are Mentzelia nuda stickleaf in the late afternoon prairie

Plant Story--the Prairie Sunflower, Helianthus petiolaris

They remind me of pinwheels

bright yellow flowers all along the highway. From western Nebraska and Kansas west across Colorado, they are prairie sunflowers, Helianthus petiolaris.

Plant Story--Wavy Leaf Thistle, A Pretty Native, Not A Weed

Wavy leaf thistle, Cirsium undulatum, is a native thistle of the plains and the west of North America (sunflower family, Asteraceae). Thistles are a weird group: some are rare and endangered, some are extremely abundant noxious weeds. Wavy leaf isn't currently protected, but it is closer to being rare than noxious.

Visiting Philadelphia--Mount Cuba Center

Gardening with natives, East Coast style.

On a Road Scholar tour of gardens of the Philadelphia area, we visited Mount Cuba Center. Located in Hockessin, Delaware, the site was the home and gardens of Mr. and Mrs. Lamott du Pont Copeland. Purchased over 70 years ago, the Copelands gradually transformed their home on the top of Mt. Cuba into sweeping vistas, beautiful woods and meadows and luscious gardens. Not only devoted to beauty, the Mt. Cuba Center has become dedicated to promoting gardening and landscaping with native plants. 

Garden Flowers, Gardening with Native Wildflowers

The garden flowers of the central U.S. are mostly not native.

The garden store was robbed:  it was a violet crime.

sweet violet, Viola odorata

Many typical garden flowers are from Europe, grown by Europeans for hundreds of years. Examples of these are bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanus also called cornflower), daffodils (Narcissus many species), and pinks and carnations (Dianthus many species). And violets. Violets are native all across the world, but the cultivated ones are almost all European. That includes pansies (Viola tricolor) johnny-jump-ups (Viola cornuta), the sweet violet (Viola odorata) and others.

Plant Story--Gaura coccinea, Oenothera suffructescens, Pretty Native Wildflowers

What is that little plant?

Across most of the United States you can find it growing on sandy, disturbed sites. 

It is Oenothera suffrutescens, formerly Gaura coccinea, scarlet gaura, also known as scarlet bee blossom, butterfly weed, scarlet butterfly weed, gray scarlet gaura, wild honeysuckle, waving butterfly and linda tarde. 

Scarlet gaura is native to central North America, from Manitoba south to central Mexico. In addition it has been introduced and has escaped from California to Maine (at least) that so it is pretty much continent-wide in North America. In California it is a noxious weed.