Bookish Gardener

Shine on, you crazy diamond

True confessions: I'm not a Pink Floyd fan, nor a Pink Anderson fan, nor a Floyd Council fan. But I am a fan of this amaryllis: 'Pink Floyd', bred by Herbert medalist Fred Meyer. The flower is smaller and more delicate than the usual amaryllis, colored a deep pink, perfectly complementing the chartreuse eye. Its fragrance is subtle and unusual: a combination of wheat grass and...Froot Loops.

Uncommonly beautiful poem

Common names of plants are evocative and beautiful in their own way, and all the more so in this poem, titled "Blodeuwedd", from Awake at Dawn. Please, read the whole thing.

My thanks are overdue to Alicia at Twilight Cafe for turning me on to Awake at Dawn a fortnight ago, on Blogging It Forward Day.

Cantatrice

I'm having my own little variety of religious experience these days, courtesy of Henry Mitchell. As promised (threatened?), I have been happily, hopelessly devoted to Henry Mitchell On Gardening these past few weeks. If you're of genteel sensibilities, you might say I've been luxuriating in it; otherwise, it might be more accurately said that I've been wallowing in it, like the proverbial pig in its preferred ecosystem.

As with his other books, there is more than can be digested and appreciated in one read, and as with his other books, how I look forward to dipping into this one over and over again. One thing I'm taking away from this go-round is Henry Mitchell's love of Brazilian morning glory, Ipomoea acuminata, a recurring guest star throughout the book. The several mentions of this flower don't strike me as repetitive, but rather endearing, as if to say, "by the way, you really ought to check out this plant", and again, "did I mention that you really ought to check out this plant?". I guess I really ought to check out this plant.

There's a piece in the book that I've already begun returning to, nearly daily. It's wedged in the middle of the pieces in the "April" chapter. Its unassuming title, "Budding Romance", bears a tinge of the irresistible garden pun, with scarcely a sign of the matters of which it is about to speak.

The daffodil 'Cantatrice' is the icon here, a favorite daffodil of Henry Mitchell:

Just the other day I sneaked out to see if that white flower out there was not the pretty old trumpet daffodil 'Cantatrice'. As if I wouldn't know it out my window a mile off. And what a pleasure to see it once again, and what a great glow of having put one over on Fate, because although this flower has grown like a weed in this scrawny cat-run of a garden for so long now, there were whole decades in which I could not grow it at all. Couldn't keep it even for two years in my former garden a thousand miles from here.

But this piece isn't really about successes and failures in the garden. You realize that it's really about something else, by sheer dint of the great pains taken by Henry Mitchell to seem almost off-handed about it:

When I discovered I could grow it here -- I like to say any jobbernowl can -- I was as pleased as a dog with two tails. Or a pilgrim in sight of Jerusalem.

And then open the floodgates, spilling the beans:

A cantatrice is a beautiful singer, the kind, I suppose, that sits on rocks and lures sailors to their doom, or maybe something not so grim. Any gardener, once he gets set in his ways, will find a few flowers that work like talismans or magical beasts. I have even known gardeners who choked up at clover fields or geese chomping Johnson grass in the cotton. They don't say so, but when they see the field or the flower they know they are on holy ground.

There is nothing wrong with that gardener's head. Except no mortal is strong enough to absorb what you may call 100-proof infusions from the farthest galaxies, not strong enough to bear the surge from the farthest core of life. He may pretend he has not known it, but it does him no good. He has known. Right there in front of him was the blessed cantatrice and he was not the same as he formerly was.

Then, on the off chance that one who had read thus far would need further convincing, he brings in Plato's Symposium. The 1958 Encyclopaedia Brittanica's thumbnail description of the Symposium is accurate, dry as dust, and dead as a doornail:

The immediate object of the dialogue, which professes to record the discourses made in eulogy of Eros by a group of eminent speakers at a banquet in honour of the tragic poet Agathon, in the year 416-415, is to find the highest manifestation of the "love" which controls the world in the mystic aspiration after union with the eternal and supercosmic beauty; to depict Socrates as the type of the aspirant who has reached the goal of "union"; and to set in sharp opposition to him the figure of Alcibiades, who has sold his spiritual birthright for the pleasures and ambitions of the world.

Leave it to Henry Mitchell to bring the dialogue and its true import to life, in a few spare paragraphs, in a gardening column, on newsprint:

...that sketch of a Greek party long after the age of heroes where a roaring drunk crashed in -- the golden Alcibiades, divinely smashed and unable to join the rest in their arguments about the nature of love. The wine scoured his poor brain, leaving only a direct perception of godly beauty in the person of that difficult and irritating philosopher Socrates. The drunk, famous for his beauty, saw himself as ugly when confronted by a philosopher whose body was no handsomer than a toad.

Sometimes he had to shut his ears when Socrates was talking, he blurted out. Otherwise the beauty of the old teacher would so seize his soul that he would grow old just sitting at his feet. The great thing here was that even a golden boy (not much admired by boys in school) when properly medicated could see a divine beauty far greater than his own, and could see the proper response to it. Divine beauty is where you find it probably. There is authority for the notion that God once spoke through a jackass, a real one with furry ears. But another time perhaps through a toad-faced philosopher? And beyond doubt, sometimes through a weather-defiant flower.

Now, how does one talk about the numinous, without making it sound like something that's only good for writing a paper on, or falling into the commission-driven patter of a soul-saving salesman? In a divinity school class over twenty years ago, the theologian Martin Marty told us about his impulse as a four-year-old child, dumbstruck at the idea of unbelievers, to erect a giant, glowing neon sign bearing the word "God", so that they too could "see" what he had seen. And I suppose that's the natural impulse of those who have heard the song of the cantatrice and seen, if they dared to look, the vision toward which she beckons. It's a relief, then, to find Henry Mitchell at the end of this piece, finally comfortable enough with us, and perhaps trusting by then that we are comfortable enough with him, to tell it like it is:

What the right flower can do, with luck, is heal the gardener, making him fit (more or less) to love, by steps however slow. Growing old, still in awe, still sitting at her feet.

All of which now means that I'll have to track down the narcissus 'Cantatrice' and find a place for it in my garden. Not as idolatry--for the worst thing would be to mistake the flower itself for what it's meant to merely be a reminder of--but for the chance to gaze upon this flower again and again, each time to be reminded of Socrates, Henry Mitchell, and the matters of which they spoke.

Rockers and gardens don't mix...again

First, Ronnie James Dio; now, Brandon Boyd of Incubus...victim of yet another "bizarre" gardening accident. (Or, I should say, "a Brandon Boyd of a rock band named Incubus", since I've never heard of him or them, much less any of their songs, even though they're about to come out with their fifth album. Yep, I am now officially an Old Fogey.) Coincidence...or a trend?

I say clem-a-tis, you say cle-mat-is

In a moment of serendipity, I flicked on the TV the other day while getting dressed for a meeting, just in time to happen upon a segment of Martha Stewart's daily show which featured Dan Hinkley of Heronswood Nursery. One of these days I'll order the Heronswood catalog, primarily to see the plants he's introduced from Korea (the flora of Korea being an interest that's gently simmering on the back burner...for now). My mental picture of Dan Hinkley is constructed from Jamaica Kincaid's descriptions in My Garden (Book): (pub. info. here), in which he appears as a friend and companion traveler on a seed-gathering expedition in China. I don't know quite what I expected, but I remembered this image from the book:

...but I could not keep up with Dan; he bounded up the mountain like a four-footed furry mammal (a bear) and disappeared. I only knew how to follow him by seeing the trembly branches and flattened undergrowth that were left in his wake.

On TV? Definitely not the wild-eyed, sunburned explorer...rather, a mild-mannered regular guy, wardrobe inspired by Mister Rogers (albeit with v-neck sweater instead of cardigan), who clearly has done a good job of remembering to use his sunscreen. He and Martha chatted about seed gathering and seed exchange organizations, and did a little "show-and-tell" on seeds collected from their respective gardens.

So, Dan Hinkley pronounces clematis "clem-a-tis". I myself bounce back and forth, but mainly settle on "cle-mat-is". This dictionary accommodates both. But I like Lauren Springer's attitude in her plant portraits' pronunciation guide in The Undaunted Garden (pub. info. here):

The pronunciation guide is not meant to be a rigid put-off--it is a guide, nothing more. There is no wrong way to pronounce a botanical name unless the syllables are out of order or a person's name is mangled in the process.

(By the way, Lauren favors "clem-a-tis".)

The pronunciation guides in the back of Horticulture magazine are also of interest, and helpful in using phonetic spelling ("KLEM-uh-tiss") as the guide instead of those symbols that I haven't thought about and can't remember since eighth grade. (Quick...what's the schwa sound...and the symbol for it?) I loved, in the way that only a true geekazoid can, this footnote in Horticulture's November/December 2003 issue on the pronunciation for Agave:

The pronunciation uh-GAH-vay, whether as a common name or a generic epithet, is nearly universal for these plants. The origin of the word, however, is not Spanish (which the common pronunciation might lead one to expect), but rather the ancient Greek agauos, meaning illustrious or noble. When agauos is Latinized as Agave, the rules of pronunciation for botanical Latin require a long a sound in the second syllable, hence uh-GAY-vee, which is favored by several authoritative sources. Of course, readers are free to regard this as nonsense and pronounce the word as they darn well please.

However, my faith is sorely shaken by Horticulture's prescription for anemone (September/October 2003 issue): an-ih-MOE-nee. Really? Have you ever met anyone who pronounced it that way, instead of ah-NEM-on-ee? Dictionary.com lists only one pronunciation (hah! the right one).

Then there are the blasted botanical family names, all ending in "ceae". It's been quite a trial, going from high school Latin pronunciations to Anglojurisprudential Latin pronunciations to, now, botanical Latin pronunciations. (Wish I'd had this, which is both a handy cheat sheet as well as an interesting historical guide to competing ways of pronouncing words in Latin.) It was hard enough figuring out in law school that "res" ("the thing" in Latin) wasn't to be pronounced "ress" anymore (as in "quae res et cibi genere et cotidiana exercitatione et libertate vitae" from the fourth book of Caesar's The Gallic Wars, not that I ever read that far), but "reese". Now, when I want to say Malva-ceae, or Ranuncula-ceae, or Lilia-ceae, the rules of botanical Latin seem to augur against the more mellifluous "see-aye" (without a glottal stop), and, instead call for "see-ee" (impossible to say without a glottal stop). Hard to pronounce without feeling like Nicolas Cage at the payphone in Honeymoon in Vegas, tripping over native Hawaiian ("is that 'Ka-pu-ah-ah' or 'Ka-pu-ah-ah-ah'?"). But here's another problem--wouldn't the purist call for the "C" to always be pronounced as a hard "C"? (Nar-KISS-us instead of Nar-SISS-us?) Thus, not "see-aye", and not even "see-ee", but "kee-ee"? Forget it. I'll do in Rome as the Romans do, once the Romans figure out what they're doing.

I saw a black crow dining, under blue skies

First, apologies to Joni Mitchell. Second, bunny lovers will want to skip this post.

(But, after all:

Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes,
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses.

Right?)

Yes. There was a black crow feasting on some initially unidentified roadkill, a flattened blur of grey-brown fur and (sorry) pinkish guts. I slowed down to check (because I always have to check). Squirrel or rabbit?--Cottontail. And Bookish Gardener said: YESSSS.

For more a more literary (and cathartic) exposition of how I really feel about these varmints, here's Louise Beebe Wilder:

In a single night a foraging bunny will eat your Crocus patches clean, ignoring utterly the fresh lettuce leaves that have been left temptingly about. [....] Cats are a help, but here, unhappily, we have been obliged to resort to a rifle after losing our Crocuses for several seasons in succession. [....] It is easy to see to what a rabid state of mind the gentlest and most humane of persons may be brought by the destruction of his beloved Crocuses. The gun in a sure hand is the most unfailing weapon.

Adventures with Hardy Bulbs. Louise Beebe Wilder. Colliers Books (1990 edition). ISBN 0-02-040840-4.

Worth a look: Wildseed Farms catalog

Uh, I never said I was done, now did I?

A new seed catalog arrived today: Wildseed Farms' "2004 Reference Guide & Seed Catalog", specializing in wildflowers (annual, biennial and perennial), "exotic garden varieties", herbs and native grasses.

It's slender in size with modest production values (definitely not one of your fency-shmency numbers--all the better, in my book). It is packed with information. There's a page with the current USDA Plant Hardiness Map (actually legible!) accompanied by a detailed, color-coded table with spring and fall planting and sowing date recommendations for each zone. Its several pages of information on raising wildflowers cover each step of the site preparation-seed starting-planting-cultivation-seed collection life cycle in such detail that I'm tempted to laminate and bind the pages and add them to my library. The catalog listings are well-organized and, again, include more information than often found even in dedicated plant "manuals": the plant's common name, botanical name, and botanical family; a well-written paragraph description of the plant; and the following plant stats: average planting success percentage; height; days to germination; optimum soil temperature for germination; sowing depth; blooming period; average seeds per pound; seeds per packet; seeding rate per acre; coverage area per ounce; suggested use; and miscellaneous (but useful) notes [for example, on african daisy (dimorphotheca aurantiaca): "The genus name, Dimorphotheca, means 'two shapes of seed' relating to the fact that the plant produces two non-identical seed forms"; on arroyo lupine (lupinus succulentus): "The most water tolerant of all Lupines"; on catchfly (silene armeria): "The stem exudes a sticky sap that captures small insects that try to steal nectar without pollinating the flowers"].

But wait--there's more! Each listing also includes a photo of the flower, an icon for its flower type ("P" in a red box for perennial; "A" in a blue box for annual; "B" in a yellow box for biennial); a map showing the geographic range (continental U.S.) in which the plant naturally occurs or has become adapted; seed price by the pound, quarter-pound, ounce and packet; and (this is my favorite) a photo of the plant in seedling form--the purpose, diplomatically put, being "to enable you to distinguish your wildflowers from unwanted vegetation during the establishment period". Or, er, a helpful guide for us at the lower end of the weed-identification learning curve. I need this guide, if nothing else to avoid the close call I had last season with the dramatic, four-footer that shot up in my annual bed. It was so vigorous, so green, with interesting foliage. What could it be? When flower buds started forming, I became suspicious...they were small, about the size of a BB. A little research and...holy hay fever, Batman! Ragweed, ready to bloom. No doubt I'll see this one again; all my digging and tugging extricated most of a taproot the size of a daikon radish (well, give me license for a little fisherman hyperbole here), but not quite all of it.

It looks like the catalog editor let a frustrated stand-up comedian get his (or her) ya-yas out in the section called "The Cosmos Collection". The tagline: "For the Gardener who Procrastinates!" The plant stat section is labeled "Cosmos Information Overload." Dwarf cosmos are called "The Vertically Challenged Cosmos". And a helpful tip: "If you have trouble growing Cosmos...take up golf!!" Ba-da-boom. Boy, I'm about up to my neck in cosmos, but...but...but how can I not try "Cosmos Psycho White"? I'm pretty certain this is not a typo for Psyche cosmos, because these don't look like Psyche--they look like Purity with serrated-edged petals. Only $1.50 a packet; 100 seeds in a packet. How can I say no?

And what else? I have been looking for a windowbox petunia to replace last year's Frillytunias -- Wildseed Farms has a petunia x violacea 'Laura Bush' (exclusive to them, they say) with reported heat and cold tolerance, violet colored flowers, and fragrant blooms. ($1.50 a packet; 200 seeds in a packet.) Sold!

The catalog's shipping charges are modest when the seed prices are factored in. Its ratings on Garden Watchdog are not voluminous in number, but all are positive.

Time to update the spreadsheet.

We got a thing...It's called 'Radar Love'.

A little bicarb, please. I've bought a few seeds, just a few. How many packets? I'm too embarrassed to tell, but this may give you a clue...so many that it prompted my husband to lament to a colleague: "she's got all these seeds! And she says she's planning to get more!" Responds the colleague (wise, wise woman!): "You should just be happy they're not Beanie Babies". Heh. Indeed.

I've been making myself feel better by reading Kathleen Purdy and her compatriots at A Cold Climate Gardening Journal, with beaucoup posts these days on seed shopping (and the human psychology thereof).

So...here are some (just some) of this year's coming attractions:

Impatiens balsam. I found this easy to start from seed last year, and loved it as a plant (until it was felled by spider mites).

Snapdragons, the really tall ones. Another success story from last year, and they just kept blooming even past the early frosts. I expect to see some self-sown "children", but I want to be sure that they're plentiful and prominent in the annual bed. I fear the day that snapdragon rust comes to visit, though. Anything for that other than voodoo spells, or "crop" rotation?

Cosmos (both bipinnatus and sulphureus), zinnia elegans, and calendula. These did well sown in situ last year, and I'll be counting on the calendula to keep on keepin' on after frost.

Papaver somniferum. I wonder whether the DEA has (sensibly) clarified that growing "lettuce"/"breadseed"/"opium" poppies in your home garden doesn't make you a narcotics perp...because many catalogs seem to have them this year.

Amaranth and its cousins: Hopi Red Dye, green love-lies-bleeding, a few celosias, and a globe amaranth. My husband's favorites.

I'm venturing into trying perennial seeds for two clematis: Clematis 'Radar Love' (which I am hoping will grow successfully in a container with my overwintering Carolina jessamine, and pick up blooming in yellow when the jessamine leaves off), and a bicolored clematis integrifolia. Wish me luck, y'all.

Then, of course, there are the ones that I decided I just had to try after reading about them:

From Dean Riddle's Growing a Beautiful Life (pub. info. here): Petunia integrifolia; kochia.

From Lauren Springer's The Undaunted Garden: Papaver somniferum 'Lauren's Grape'; alcea rugosa; red orach; perilla.

From Amy Stewart's From the Ground Up: Pinwheel marigold.

From Graham Rice's Discovering Annuals (pub. info. here): Alcea ficifolia (fig hollyhock).

As for the rest? Let's just say I'll be busy entering them into a spreadsheet to keep track of sowing dates, hardiness, planting locations, and the like...technology being, best of all, a refuge for the panicked and overwhelmed. Just send out the men in the little white coats if you hear me talking about making it a PowerPoint presentation.

The Undaunted Garden: Planting for Weather-Resilient Beauty. Lauren Springer. Fulcrum Publishing, 2000 edition. ISBN 1-55591-007-6 (paperback).

From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden. Amy Stewart. St. Martin's Griffin, 2002. ISBN 0-312-28767-4.

Paperwhite 'Omri'

Well, aren't these bloomin' lovely. If you're looking for instant gratification in the dead of winter, paperwhites are a better bet than a Chia pet. Alas, the fragrance of the readily available 'Ziva' tends to give me a headache like those induced by petroleum distillates, so I was happy to have the chance to pick up a different variety, 'Omri', at an end-of-season bulb sale in mid-December. These have come up tall and straight, with multiple blooms on a stem, and multiple stems in a bulb.

Behold: the delicate cream coloring of the six perfectly formed outer tepals (anagram of "petal"), harmonious with the pale yellow of the corona, which might otherwise be a mundane combination but for being taken to a new level by the turmeric orange of the three inner stamens. The fragrance is pleasingly noticeable when just entering the room, with the sweetness of tuberose, without being oppressive.

I forced these bulbs in gravel and water, but will try something different next year, having since read Thalassa Cruso's piece on "Paper-Whites" in The Gardening Year. In this chapter, she experiments with a number of different ways of indoor forcing. She describes her methods, the variables, and the results, with a literate precision which predates, but is reminiscent of, the recipe testing at Cook's Illustrated. In short, the problem of forcing in pebbles in water is that the growth takes the "aggravating course of rising on stilts formed by their own roots [...] with the bulbs twisted about lopsidedly on their elevated root systems." Cutting to the chase, Cruso's recommendation (which she reports as having been repeated with success in subsequent years): use an undrained container, with 3 inches of "roofing pebbles" at the bottom, topped with an inch of "rough half-made compost", with the bulb set in the compost, and covered loosely with more compost up to the bulb's neck. Ta-da: "The bulbs all flowered at the same time and at the same height without need of staking, and looked like an advertisement for paper-whites, an effect I rarely achieve."

And after they're done blooming? I think I'll leave them up for a little while, finding beauty even in the dried blooms as Rob Proctor does in Passionate Gardening: "As they dry, the petals of paperwhites resemble parchment--rather nice against gauzy curtains."

The Gardening Year. Thalassa Cruso. Lyons & Burford, 1990 edition. ISBN 1-55821-082-2 (paperback).

Passionate Gardening: Good Advice for Challenging Climates. Lauren Springer & Rob Proctor. Fulcrum Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1-55591-348-2.

All het up.

I love annuals, and only regret not having planted more of them last growing season. So I'm turning to Graham Rice's Discovering Annuals once again, as I did this time last year, for information, inspiration, and, last but not least, entertainment:

On cleome:

Four petals like the ears of a demented pantomime rabbit stand up from the end of each stem in the head of flowers, with the four thread-like stamens hanging below and a rocket-battery of darker buds standing upright in the top of the spike. The effect is unashamedly exotic.

On godetia:

The satiny sheen on their petals is unrivalled; even on dull days it shimmers and flickers, and as you look into the flower with its slender stamens and divided style, it's as if a ballroom dancer had fallen on her bottom and kicked her legs in the air (allowing for some license in the details of human anatomy).

On lavatera:

The satiny sheen on the petals of a mallow is unique among annuals; sheer and tempting, open to delicate caress, apparently fragile but reassuringly tough -- like a flapper out on a date. Few annuals mix such allure with such easy availability!

On morning glory:

Sorry, I must sit down...it makes me go weak just to think about the silky sheen on those delicate petals...like caressing... . 'Heavenly Blue' ipomoea is essential; no one with a soul can resist it once seen. Like the most captivating of lovers it's not perfect but is nevertheless both irresistible and deeply satisfying -- the perfect combination.

Discovering Annuals. Graham Rice. Timber Press, Inc., 1999. ISBN 0-88192-465-2.