Why is it that the flowers of late
summer have such intense colors?
Is it perhaps because during this
warm time of year there is fierce competition for pollinators? Or
could it be because the flowers need to withstand the intensity of
the hot rays of the sun? For gardeners, the bounty of color is the
reward for their labors. It is certain that our love of these colors
has lead to their selection and production in the nurseries and so,
in a way, we too are responsible for the vibrant palette of our
gardens.
It is hard to resist the purples,
oranges, and reds of this time of year. One area of our own garden
that attracts the most attention is our Rudbeckia hirta patch. There
we have allowed open-pollinated seedlings to grow en masse creating
a surprising vision for the unsuspecting visitor who rounds the
corner of the path leading to this bed.
A little further along this same path
is our collection of hydrangeas. This year, despite occasional high
heat and many days of strong desiccating winds, we have had cooler
than average temperatures. And so, the flowers of the majority of
our specimens have held up well. Most of the flowers there are
deepening in tone. It would be hard to find a hydrangea with flowers
more sumptuous and dark purple than ‘Bottstein’. Even white flowered
‘Regula’ has taken on a light blue cast as it has aged. And those of
modest sized ‘Pia’ have turned a rich claret.
Throughout the garden the warm season
grasses are hastening toward their full heights and beginning to
send out bloom spikes. Panicum ‘Shenendoah’ has put on deep burgundy
highlights in its blue-green blades. The wonderful smokey tassels of
bloom on Miscanthus ‘Malepartus’ are just opening above 7-foot
stems. They will eventually fade in color as they age but for a
brief period of time they are very rich in color. The tallest grass
in our garden, Saccharum ravennae, is just sending up its purple red
bloom spikes. By the end of October, they will have reached 12 feet
before they unfurl their feathery inflorescences. The daily growth
of this grass is a show worth watching.
When you add in the penstemons,
buddleias, fuchsias, salvias and the dazzling array of composite
flowers, the garden displays an almost symphonic sweep of color and
texture at this time of year.
BLOOMING BAMBOO
This spring the Fargesia nitida in
our garden began to bloom. Our friend Dain Sansome from Bamboo
Valley was doing a workshop at the nursery and agreed to write an
article regarding this uncommon phenomena. The accompanying photos
show the Fargesia in bloom in our gardens.
My bamboo is flowering!
© Dain Sansome, Bamboo Valley 2007
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To many people flowering bamboo means
the end of a beloved screen or landscape element since the bamboo
may die. However, this is not always the case. There are some things
we know about bamboo flowering and some things we do not. Flowering
is a rare and spectacular event, sometimes once per century or even
more seldom. Flowering has been observed to begin all at once with
many types of bamboo of the same species regardless of geographic
location. What triggers this is yet unknown and when they will
flower is also unknown. An individual culm (cane) of bamboo has a
dramatically shorter life span once flowering has begun (usually one
season), and generally speaking there are two habits of bamboo
flowering behavior: the sporadic and the gregarious type (or local
and general). Sporadic flowering is when one single cane or a few
canes within a grove or clump suddenly go into flower and the rest
of the plant lives on as normal. This could be an indicator of
gregarious flowering in the near future, but does not necessarily
mean so. Gregarious flowering is when the majority of the culms put
out flowers instead of leaves, few or none of the culms put out
leaves and grow as normal, and the end of that bamboo grove as is at
hand. However, when viable seed is set a new generation is at hand.
Also, new varieties can quickly arise as seedlings may look nothing
like the parent.
Flowering is unmistakable once
underway. In spring as usual, the bamboo puts up what appears to be
strong healthy shoots, but instead of putting out leaves it puts out
bracts of flowers which resemble those of rice or wheat. This goes
on for a few years depending on the size and maturity of the
original plant. Some bamboos will last many years once flowering has
begun and some may last only a season or two.
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It is difficult to make
generalizations as to the type of flowering that will occur within
bamboo genera (e.g. Phyllostahys, Fargesia, Bambusa) since
individual species may have flowering patterns different from one
another. For example, in the 1990s Phyllostachys flexuosa and
P. aurea ‘Albostriata’ and 20 years earlier P. vivax
and P. bambusoides all flowered gregariously, but P.
edulis as far as we know has never gregariously yet often
sporadically flowers, and P. aureosulcata ‘Spectabilis’ and
P. praecox ‘Viridisulcata’ have been sporadically flowering
during the past few years. The clumping bamboos of the genus
Fargesia often gregariously flower and in recent years F.
nitida is flowering gregariously. The trend with Fargesia’s
gregarious flowering is to die off completely whereas the
Phyllostachys usually recover. Unfortunately F. nitida is
a very popular landscape bamboo and many of the old generation
plants which have been around since the 1880s will pass away.
However, the new seeds are being collected and grown by many people,
and from them we already have a new generation coming along nicely.
New seedling bamboos, including that
of F. nitida, are already on the market and show great
potential to replace their parents. If your bamboo is flowering,
appreciate it for you may never see anything like it again. You may
try to grow the seeds—most germinate quickly when sown in light
soil, kept moist and in bright, filtered light. The flowering of a
bamboo is exciting since you never know what you may get and any
space created gives way for something new.
PLANT INTRODUCTIONS (Continued)
In 2005 we released our only patented
plant. Eight years earlier, we had discovered three seedling
Miscanthus in our garden and planted them in our stock field for
evaluation. All of them were distinctly barred in gold, but of
different heights. One of them, which stood between 3 and 4 feet,
seemed ideal for a home garden. Its leaf blades were dense with
horizontal gold stripes – up to seven of them per inch. It was very
tightly clumping at its base and its blades were very stiff,
revealing its parentage in Miscanthus sinensis ‘Strictus’. We
counted the fact that its inflorenscences did not emerge until late
October as an asset because it suggested that it might never have
the chance to produce viable seed in places where Maiden grass has
become a problem.
At our nursery, visiting nurserymen
and customers alike were attracted to its luminous quality. We were
even offered money for it. Dan Heims, from Terra Nova Nursery,
advised us that we should patent the plant. We realized that we
could not profitably produce it at our small mailorder nursery. It
was through the graces of our friend David Culp that we were
introduced to Sunny Border Nursery where the grass was trialed for a
year. Sunny Border liked it and agreed to help us go through the
complex patenting process with the help of patent writer Penny
Aguirre. In 2004 we received our patent number for Miscanthus ‘Gold
Bar’ PP15193 and released the grass from the nursery the following
year.
In 2005, we also introduced a new
penstemon. The history of this particular seedling is somewhat
humorous. It was originally scheduled to be removed from our garden
with a crop of other seedlings because its color was too similar to
others. Fortunately, our propagator, thinking it was the same as
its neighboring plant, made cuttings of it while it was not in
bloom. Eventually three of those cuttings were replanted in the
stock field with the wrong name and only after they bloomed did we
realize the mistake. By then, the more mature plants revealed some
interesting characteristics. The flowers were immense, wider than
any others in our collection. Interestingly, the flowers formed a
one-sided raceme that was pleasingly deltoid in shape, giving the
raceme dramatic impact. We later traced the parents back to
Penstemon ‘Raspberry Flair’ and P. ‘Wine Kissed’ although we do not
know which was the seed parent. Soon after, we wedded those two
names together and called it Penstemon ‘Raspberry Wine.
Scappoose, OR 97056