Linden Landscape Design Landscape Design and Garden Coaching

Today’s plant is a cultivar of the Mexican Columbine (Aquilegia skinneri).  It’s got a very colorful name to match its gorgeous appearance, Tequila Sunrise.  Here’s a pic: 

This flower stopped me in my tracks as I was looking for plants for a client’s new garden.  The garden is in a lightly shady area near a gazebo and surrounded by evergreen plants.  I’m installing plants to light up the area and this color was perfect to mix with the fantastic foliage colors in the palette.  Some other plants in the garden are an upright Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum), Summer Gold that’s supposed to have nice golden summer foliage.  It looks great now, but I’m anxious to see how the color holds.  I’ve also included some Hostas; a golden one called Zounds and a blue one called Big Daddy.  The plants that will really echo the color of this columbine are some Heucherellas (intergeneric hybrids of Tiarella and Heuchera) called Stoplight and Alabama Sunrise.  The Heucherellas I’ve been watching at the JC Raulston Arboretum have been looking great year round.  I’ve also included some green plants to show off those colorful plants.  I can’t wait to watch this garden fill in.

Columbines have an interesting shape with nectar “spurs” in the back.  This pic shows how elegant the spurs are: 

These spurs differ quite a bit among species and correspond to specialized pollinators.  Pollinators have to reach way in to get the nectar.  Of course, the plant charges for the meal, pollen from the long stamens gets on the diner to be spread around to other plants and facilitate cross pollination.  I wonder what the hummingbirds in this garden will think.

The genus is more diverse than I thought, check out this UCSB scientist’s research on the evolution and diversification of species.  Our own native species is C. canadensis with smaller red and yellow flowers.  The spurs on these are much shorter.  Most columbines seed around nicely.  My mother has some lovely blue ones naturalized in her garden–she does help them along by spreading the seeds around a bit.  I wouldn’t expect this hybrid to come true from seed, but I won’t be disappointed if it seeds around.

I realize it’s really Saturday, but pretend with me a bit.  I missed two weeks of FF because I couldn’t post (I needed a software update) and don’t want to miss another.  So here we go:

This is an easy to grow terrestrial orchid.  We have other terrestrial orchids like Lady Slipper Orchids for US gardens, but this one isn’t native and there is no worry about plants you buy being wild collected.

Bletilla striata or Ground Orchid is a lovely little treat for the spring garden.  Look for one, plant it and soon you’ll have a colonly of the purple butterflies.

I’ve got two plants again today.  Both the same genus, but very different species.  One evergreen, one not; one native, one not; one small growing, one not.

Many azaleas are ubiquitous in southern gardens (too much in my opinion).  But when they bloom they are dramatic and people love them.  Did you know that azaleas are Rhododendrons?  All azaleas and rhodies share the same genus, Rhododendron.  Azaleas belong to a couple of subgenera in the rhodie genus–OK that might be more taxonomy than you’d like to know, see below for more. 

So, let’s get to the pics!

This is one of the typical garden azaleas.  Rhododendron x obtusum*.  This is a Kurume type (there are quite a few “types” of azaleas).  I’m not sure what cultivar** it is.  The Kurumes are one of the earlier blooming azaleas.  It has small flowers and a dense habit.  They usually grows about four feet high and wide.  This poor plant is continually sheared into a rectangle (something which in the right setting, might be appropriate) because it’s too big for it’s space.  But it’s simply covered with blooms right now.

This beauty was found on a Cary, NC greenway.  It’s a native azalea, probably Rhododendron periclymenoides but could be Rhododendron canescens.  They are very similar species.  These azaleas lose their leaves in the winter and the blooms come out before the leaves.  The effect is of a tiered candelabra enhanced because the plants can get 10′ high or more.  The plants grow in woodlands and are usually found near water.  Many of these native species are wonderfully fragrant–this one had only a slight fragrance.  There are several natives and cultivars of natives available to gardeners, one very similar to this one is Rhododendron canescens ‘Varnadoes Phlox Pink’.

Taxonomy and plant nomenclature lesson:

*The  “x” in this name indicates the plant is a hybrid between species.  A large “X” is sometimes seen at the beginning of the name which indicates the plant is a hybrid between genera.  The former is quite common, the latter not so much.

**A cultivar is a “cultivated variety”.  That is, a plant that has been selected in cultivation and propagated so that all the plants labelled as such are the same.  The name is shown in single quotation marks after the species name (which is underlined or italicized).  A natural “variety” is written after the abbreviation var. and is not in quotation marks, italicized and usually not capitalized–like Rhododendron minus var.  Chapmanii.  This one is capitalized because the variety is a form of a proper name (likely the patron of the person who named the plant).