Bloom Day, February 2009

I've been doing this for over a year now, and since gardening is cyclical, is stands to reason that there would be numerous repeat appearances in a blog post such as this. I'll try to avoid some of the more obvious suspects that are blooming right now, although they are incredibly welcome. Narcissus 'Peeping Tom' (a cyclamineus hybrid) and 'Rijnveld's Early Sensation' are fully open in clumps all over the yard, and I'll try to restrain myself from posting too many Helleborus x hybridus, although I counted nearly 100 plants in full bloom yesterday with lots more in bud. Above is Camellia 'Debutante', which, along with Magnolia soulangeana, stands as one of the very finest of the brown-flowering woody plants in our area! We had bathroom wallpaper festooned with very similar flowers in the early 70's, so there's something oddly attractive to me about these blooms, even after they've been trashed by a freeze.
Chaenomeles japonica, another remnant of my grandparents' garden, and badly in need of thinning and pruning.

Aucuba 'Gold Dust' has produced its first berries ever, which surprised me, since it's a female clone and there are no males that I know of in the neighborhood. Les has promised to hook my single girls up with "stud service" via a male known as 'Mr. Goldstrike' later on this spring.

Arisaema urashima started breaking dormancy in the garage, so had to be brought inside to flower way ahead of schedule. I hate taking pictures (and growing plants, too, for that matter) inside!

I think this is Crocus tomasianus, which is ubiquitous, but with good reason. I like the way it pushes up through this clump of Christmas fern every February.
After years of trying, I'm finally having some success with Cyclamen coum, but only in very large, well-drained containers. I've partnered them with tree peonies, to which excessive summer watering is also anathema. While hederifolium does fine in the ground, this one, with its very desireable flowering season, rots away with the least bit too much moisture here. It's encouraging that these tubers have begun to reseed themselves. This one is almost unphotographable, but it's the more common crimson color variant of C. coum.

Daphne odora is another great plant which makes one wish for a "scratch and sniff" computer screen, but responds to poor drainage by kicking the bucket (watering can?) immediately.

Speaking of scents, that of Euphorbia characias 'wulfenii' is an acquired taste - pretty similar to skunk in an enclosed area. It's another plant that requires better drainage than I can provide in the ground, so its huge clay pot gets hauled into the garage on nights when the temps go into the teens. I have to admit to sort of enjoying the smell, but then, according to scientific studies, there are those who become stimulated by the aroma of sweaty male baseball players, so who knows which olfactory receptors this Euphorbia is causing to fire off in my increasingly befuddled brain? Probably best not to go there.

If I could bring myself to shell out $145 for Snowdrops: a Monograph (not that I haven't seriously considered it...), I might be able to do a better job of sorting out my Galanthus species and varieties. This one came to me as elwesii, so I guess that'll have to do for now.

The snowdrops below are distinct from the others I grow in having shiny, green leaves. I've had them forever, and don't remember the source. Perhaps ikarae or plicata? Any ideas appreciated!

Just a couple of Hellebore pictures - these really are my favorite plants, hands down, and I did an extensive post on them last year about this time or a little later. This one is close to something I've been working on - a chartreuse base color with picotee edging. If it were a Cattleya hybrid, it would be classified as an "art shade."

I'm not as crazy about the doubles as some are, but this is a nice, pure pink, probably from Pine Knot stock originally.In recent years I've gotten more and more excited about H. niger and its hybrids. Container or raised bed culture seems to eliminate problems with drainage and humidity tolerance. The first below is "Winter Moonlight", a tissue culture of a form developed by the Tylers at Pine Knot Farms (which is where I'm hoping to be for a while in about two weeks.) Judith says it originated from a failed hybrid between H. niger and argutifolius, which normally produces H. x. nigercors, another very garden-worthy grex for this area - those are spent blooms from a clone of it in the background of this photo, as a matter of fact.

This is a plant I've had for about ten years, supposedly descending from the famous

'Potter's Wheel'. The size of the blossoms supports this connection, and the best thing is that it tends to rebloom in May, when the flowers are less likely to become spotted due to the interaction of cold temperatures and moisture.
The first bloom of a plant originating in New Zealand, I think, called 'Winter Magic'.

Here's a "color echo" for you - Paphiopedilum 'Mem. Larry Heuer' blooming in front of a Mahonia in full bloom. Okay - it's a cheat - I just couldn't get a decent photo of it in the kitchen window. It's a primary parvisepalum hybrid, combining emersonii and malipoense.

Not yet in bloom, but grown mainly for foliar effect anyway, is Trillium underwoodii. It amazes me how early these break dormancy every year, yet seem to revive completely after every hard freeze they endure. In the greenhouse are lots of begonias, orchids, and gesneriads in bloom right now, but that's probably not the point of this exercise. Not much to report right now, so I'm headed out to tackle some serious pruning chores; I've done one rose ("Graham Thomas"), one Hydrangea, and one Arbutus so far - only a few dozen more to go. It beats working on taxes, which is really what I should be doing right now. All I can say is that I sure am glad it's February; it's amazing how much a couple of hours of sunlight (even if it's chilly out yet) can do to ameliorate the symptoms of my seasonal affective disorder, aka "cabin fever"!