Ink & Penstemon

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.”