Ink & Penstemon

For those who are on Twitter, I’m a guest host for a group called #seedchat tomorrow night. It’s a group that meets to discuss all things seed related on Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. EST. I’m discussing starting seed in seed blocks again, so please feel free to follow tomorrow if you are interested in the subject or want to stop by and say hello. Just search for the #seedchat hashtag. If you want more information about #seedchat, they have a blog at seedchat.com. They have a transcript of last year’s soil block discussion and will be posting a transcript of tomorrow’s discussion in case you can’t make it, but are interested in the subject. 

Warning: may induce boredom for those not botanically inclined.

I’ve been shopping for garden-worthy native plants again. I usually start my search by using local wildflower plant guides, and then search the internets to see if something that sounds amazing is available commercially.

Recently, I was drawn to our native wood Anemones. They are diminutive things, nothing like their monster Japanese cousins, but they are rare in the garden, and in their scarcity lies their appeal. In a guide to mountain plants issued by the extension service of Utah State University, there were only 2 Anemones described: Anemone parviflora, and Anemone quinquefolia. A. quinquefolia has the following description: “delicate white, or occasionally tinged blue, blossom an inch wide on a slender stalk which grows 6 to 12 inches tall. The leaves are thin, soft and vivid-green.” Sounds nice, but too slight for a garden. Pass. Onto Northern Anemone, A. parviflora: “one of the most beautiful of the anemones….” Okay, I’m interested. “It has sturdy, erect stems 20 inches tall, mostly with solitary flowers on each stem. The flowers are 2 inches in diameter and white to cream….” Not too short, flowers aren’t minuscule. Very good. “It grows in rich, moist soil at elevations mostly above 10,000 feet. In our area, it can be found in spruce-fir communities.” Montane, cool environment, just what I’m aiming for, so it’s worth a Google search, which led me to Wrightman Alpines‘ site and this image:

Anemone parviflora. Used with permission of Wrightman Alpines.

Now, I’m currently in love with all things Ranunculaceae, so I was definitely considering it. But I noticed that it appeared to be growing in a scree bed, in full sun. Not exactly what I would call rich, moist soil, and definitely not reminiscent of spruce-fir communities. Quick web searches on growing conditions continued to yield contradictions.

So I emailed Steve Hegji to ask if he’s seen it in the wild, and find out in what conditions it was growing. He hadn’t seen it, so he passed it along to another UNPS member and its former President, Bill Gray. Bill had only seen it once, growing up Big Cottonwood Canyon by a lake in a wet and marshy area. Bill remarked that it didn’t seem all that special or worth growing. Killjoy. But then there was his photo of it:

Uhhh….

It didn’t look very similar to the flower in Wrightman’s photos. So I questioned Bill as to whether it was really A. parviflora and not A. quinquefolia. He said that A. quinquefolia was not considered to be native to Utah! It’s not on the USDA distribution maps or in Utah Flora and Intermountain Flora (Vol 2A, in press) or mentioned even in synonymy. Then why is it in the the local extension’s guide produced by a nearby university with an herbarium?

I checked their herbarium’s online database; they didn’t have any specimens from where Bill found it; they found it in a different county and growing in—you guessed it—that gravelly scree. However, more searches through other herbarium’s databases did have it turning up exactly where Bill found it. Mysterious. Again, after more herbarium record searches, A. quinquefolia did turn up Big Cottonwood Canyon, but in a different location in the canyon. More mysterious. But then Bill remembered reading something from an unpublished revision of Flora of the Central Wasatch by Lois Arnow—that A. quinquefolia as found in Utah had been switched to A. piperi, which neatly restricted A. quinquefolia’s distribution to the eastern U.S. Better yet, the Arnow cited the botanist who found two colonies of A. parviflora and A. piperi up Big Cottonwood Canyon and took specimens of both, which gelled with the herbarium records.

So at this point, we’ve agreed that the Anemones in question are parviflora and piperi, neither of which Bill thinks is worth growing (I’m not un-sold yet; maybe for my future alpine collection), but given their rarity, they may be worth a botanizing trip just to find them. Bill is game to go find the A. piperi colony this summer.

And you think that you had troubles with “right plant, right place.”

Things are looking desperate. We’ve had no snow and no substantial rain all month. Last year at this time, we had a snow pack that stood at 150% of normal. Right now we have less than 50%. The weathermen say not to panic, as we get the bulk of our snowfall in January and February. Yet, they do concede that they are worried by the weather pattern. This is the driest December we’ve experienced since they’ve kept a record. The reservoirs are full, so it isn’t a complete disaster for next year, but weather like this comes in cycles, and given the last few years have been seen average to abnormally wet years, I’m afraid we may be entering some dry, lean years.

Maybe I wouldn’t be vexed by such a sense of panic had I not done a lot of transplanting this fall. The weather has been so mild over the last couple of days that I’ve been out doing spring clean-up in only a long-sleeved pullover. Some buds on the Magnolia ‘Daybreak’ appear to be swelling. I have hauled out the garden hose to water the newly transplanted trees, but in the last few days, as we’ve seen the mercury climb up into the 50-, even low 60-degree range, I’ve put on a lawn sprinkler attachment and have been watering whole beds to make sure newly dug bulbs will make it through, even though it puts borderline plants at risk from freezing as colder temperatures return next week. I will have to rely on the leaf mulch for protection, still piled high like it’s the beginning of November. It looks like using maple leaves as mulch and a soil improvement only works if there is snow to soak them and mash them down. So much for best intentions. Who knows what this spring will look like?

I should qualify that my sense of panic only applies to the more montane plantings in the back garden. The front beds have been planted out with Penstemon and other plants suited to this type of life of extremes. They even benefit from it. There are lessons to be learned here.

But I miss the snow. I’ve been so desperate for snow that we drove five hours north to our family cabin near Yellowstone for Christmas to find snow. Even there they only had a couple of feet. Still, it was wonderful to see. I even took some nice photos of it on the new camera I got for Christmas, which unfortunately requires that I upgrade my OS before I can post them here. But I will, so watch this space.

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter arrived home from school, rushing in to warn me that people were out raking up my leaves. Riding my ecological high-horse, I stomped outside and confronted a middle-aged woman and a 12-year-old boy. I asked them pointedly if they were raking up the leaves. With deer-in-headlight eyes they sheepishly said they were doing a service project. Annoyed at their ignorance in sending a lot of valuable humus to the dump, I told them in sharp tones that I don’t rake, that the leaves were there for a reason, and to please stop and to leave the bags they had raked up behind. They said “sorry.” I promptly went back inside.

I was annoyed. People shouldn’t be raking up leaves, especially mine. They should be walking around with mulcher mowers spreading that humus around and keeping our soils viable and healthy. I even called my husband to gripe about these people’s ignorance and to complain in general about altruistic, but counterproductive service efforts. 

After the phone call, I was still riding this wave of self-righteous pride, so I went back outside, picked up the bag they had raked full of leaves, and dumped its contents onto a front flower bed in defiance as they worked in the yard across the street.

Then I felt it: a twinge of guilt. These people, a mother and son, were providing community service on their own time to try help beautify the neighborhood as best as they knew how, and there I was, being an eco-jerk about it. So I crossed the street and duly apologized for being a crank. I did my best to explain away my leaf-hoarding; how I use the leaves like fertilizer on my lawn, acknowledging that consequently, my yard must look a bit messy. I went on to say that it wasn’t their fault as they didn’t realize I wanted the leaves there, and that I appreciated their generous efforts. The son seemed more forgiving than his mother, who, still feeling a bit protective of her son around the crazy woman, brusquely shrugged it off.

This experience now rests on that shelf in my memory I reserve for ignominious episodes that are educationally invaluable, but were gained at the cost of offending someone irreparably. So I pass this wisdom onto you gardeners who seek to spread the gospel of organic and other earth-friendly approaches to horticulture: In our stumping for people to stop wastefully irrigating lawns, dumping fertilizers excessively, and spraying pesticides over everything that moves, we should remember to not place these priorities ahead of intra-personal relationships. Nothing turns people away from a good idea than when it’s delivered with an air of pugnacious superiority. So what if someone comes and rakes up your leaves and hauls them away? The trees will make more. Yes, lawn mowers are terrible polluters of noise and emissions. So go over and offer your neighbor a drink. Get to know him; be friendly. Tell him about how you prefer your new-fangled push reel mower; offer your neighbor the chance to borrow it. Who knows, he may even end up getting one of his own.