Six on Saturday #82; February 24, 2024

Dark purple, double flowered hellebore flowers are covered with morning dew

We’re currently at the peak of hellebore season, so this Six on Saturday is a single-genus edition. I’m more than a little conflicted about Helleborus x hybridus, the old-style lenten roses. They are common garden plants for good reasons: they’re deer-proof, drought tolerant, long-lived, have long-lasting flowers, and bloom when color is desperately needed in the garden. They also spread vigorously by seed. Unfortunately, these desirable characteristics in the garden make them invasive when they escape into the woods. The newer Helleborus x iburgensis and H. x glandorfensis hybrids are generally sterile, so they are a much safer choice. They’re more expensive and slower to propagate than the fertile hybrids–you may have to wait several years to get one or two divisions–but they won’t choke out native spring ephemerals. As a bonus, the flowers of the new crosses are more likely to face out, rather than nodding like the old H. x hybridus, and H. x iburgensis clones often have beautifully marked foliage.

For now, I’m not removing all the Helleborus x hybridus from my garden, but I’m not planting any more and am weeding out excess seedlings. I also watch vigilantly for escapees into the natural woodland portion of our property–none so far. And all future purchases of hellebores will be the new sterile clones.

Anyway, here are six hellebores, old and new.

1. Helleborus x hybridus ‘Apricot Blush’

Helleborus_hybridus-peach — *Helleborus x hybridus* ‘Apricot Blush’

I really like the unusual color of this seed strain.

2. Helleborus x hybridus — an unlabeled dark, double flower

A dark red Hellebore flower with many small petals

Another vireya

bright orange tropical rhododendron flowers — unidentified vireya hybrid, possibly *Rhododendron laetum x javanicum*

This one is a hybrid that I received as an unrooted cutting in 2005. I previously showed a photo of this plant in my first blog post, back in 2017, but it is looking particularly good this year. It came with an obviously incorrect label, and I have often wondered about its identity during the past 19 years. I’m now reasonably confident that it is Rhododendron laetum x javanicum, and I suspect it may be the clone ‘Mount Pire.’ Whatever its true name, it’s a fantastic plant–like many vireyas it has a tendency to be “leggy”, but it is vigorous, heat tolerant, and flowers heavily in late winter or early spring and sometimes again in autumn.

A view of the entire plant with multiple flower clusters — The whole plant, as it was this afternoon.

The color of the flowers is somewhat variable. When blooming occurs in the greenhouse with a minimum temperature of 59-60 F (15 C), the flowers are the bright orange shown above. But when the plant flowers after it has gone outside in spring, with night-time temperatures in the low 40s (5-7 C), the flowers are a darker, richer color:

In this photos, the flowers are a rich, dark orange, almost red. — The same plant, flowering in April 2021

Red birds

A bright red bird with black mask contrasts with pale, twisted twigs around it. — male northern cardinal (*Cardinalis cardinalis*)

On Saturday, my wife happened to notice a male cardinal sitting in the large Harry Lauder’s walking stick (contorted hazel, Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) outside our living room window. Since the bird didn’t seem in a hurry to go anywhere, I took the opportunity to snap some pictures. I’m quite pleased with how these turned out, given that they were taken through not-too-clean double-paned glass using a 35x zoom.

The bright red bird, with feathers puffed until it is almost spherical, looks directly at the camera — The cardinal is judging your life choices.

Northern cardinals are quite common in the southeastern United States, perhaps more so than in the north, so one might be forgiven for wondering why they are “northern.” The answer is that the southeastern states are “south” only from a limited, parochial point of view. The other two cardinal species are from further south. Cardinalis sinuatus (pyrrhuloxia, desert cardinal) is from Mexico north to Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, while Cardinalis phoeniceus (vermillion cardinal) is from Venezuela.

Although cardinals are the only bright red birds in the garden during the winter, they are sometimes joined by another species during the summer. The summer tanager (Piranga rubra) is a migratory songbird which winters in central and south America. For several years, we have been visited by a pair–a bright red male and his more subdued yellowish mate–starting in late May.

A bright red bird stands on a horizontal board. A suet cage is attached to the bottom of the board. — Male summer tanager on a suet feeder

Tanagers are now classified in the family Cardinalidae, along with the cardinals, so this last photo depicts cousins of a sort.

Male northern cardinal (lower left) and male summer tanager (upper right)

Two vireya species

bright orange Rhododendron flowers — *Rhododendron verticillatum*

When I wrote yesterday that it isn’t the most exciting time of year in the greenhouse, I didn’t mean that there is absolutely nothing going on. Several vireya rhododendrons are currently flowering, including two species that I haven’t discussed before. Both were purchased in spring of 2021, so they have survived three North Carolina summers unscathed.

Rhododendron verticillatum (above) is a primarily epiphytic species from Borneo, where it grows at moderate altitudes (700-1500 m). In my hands, it is a relatively slow grower and forms a lanky, open shrub with long internodes between pseudowhorls of fairly large leaves. This the first time my plant has flowered, but the dark red color of stems and leaf petioles makes for an attractive specimen even when it is not in flower. And when it is in flower…the bright orange color is fantastic!

long tubular white flowers with five flared petals at the end. — *Rhododendron loranthiflorum*

Rhododendron loranthiflorum is built on a smaller scale than R. verticillatum. It’s an epiphyte from the Bismarck Archipelago and Solomon Islands, growing at altitudes of 180-2400 m. Some clones are described as forming compact mounds, but like R. verticillatum, my plant is long and lanky, with small leaves clustered near the ends of long stems. It flowers intermittently throughout the year but mainly in late winter and spring. The tubular, white, nocturnally-scented flowers of R. loranthiflorum suggest pollination by tropical sphinx moths.

Both plants are growing well in plastic pots with a mix of commercial potting soil and coarse perlite at a roughly 1:1 ratio. They are fertilized occasionally with DynaGro slow-release pellets.

Reference and further reading:

Argent, G. (2015) Rhododendrons of subgenus Vireya, 2nd edition. Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.

Six horticulture books with an interesting perspective (Six on Saturday #81; February 10, 2024

This isn’t the most exciting time of year in the garden and greenhouse, and it has been almost exactly three years since I have done a book-based blog post. So, for this week’s Six on Saturday, here are six horticulture books that each have an interesting or unusual perspective.

1. Darke, Rick (2002) The American Woodland Garden: Capturing the Spirit of the Deciduous Forest. Timber Press.

The cover of The American Woodland Garden, showing a flowering dogwood tree

This is an absolutely gorgeous book and one that should be of interest to any gardener who lives in the eastern deciduous forest, the vast and complex ecosystem that encompasses much of eastern North America, from southern Canada to northern Florida and west to Michigan and Texas. Darke is interested in the ecology and aesthetics of the natural forest and how that can inform garden design, either when editing a natural landscape or when building a garden from scratch with native plants. The book is structured around Darke’s lovely photographs from important public and private gardens, his own garden, and anonymous locations along the road or in the woods. One memorable chapter is focused on a spot along a woodland stream that Darke photographed repeatedly while commuting to work. The photos span 17 years, and they taught Darke (and by extension the reader) how to really see the woods and apply its lessons to gardening. I adore this book. 11/10 Would read again.

2. Magdalena, Carlos (2017) The Plant Messiah: Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species. Doubleday.

Cover of The Plant Messiah

No false modesty here, clearly. The Plant Messiah is the memoir of the Tropical Senior Botanical Horticulturalist at RBG, Kew. Magdalena describes his adventures tracking down rare plants in the wild and propagating them in the greenhouse at Kew. The reader is introduced to flowers pollinated by lizards, the world’s smallest waterlily species, and a desert bromeliad that lives about a century before flowering and produces an inflorescence so tall it is sometimes struck by lightning. This book is a lot of fun.

3. Holttum, R.E. (1954) Plant Life in Malaya. Longmans.

Cover of Plant Life in Malaya showing Dendrobium crumenatum

I found this book in a used bookstore in Chapel Hill and enjoyed it very much, even though the target audience is people living in peninsular Malaysia (Malaya as it was then), not gardeners in North Carolina. Holttum was Professor of Botany at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, and the book describes the plants that readers would see around their homes, as well as exotics deep in the forest (to me they are all exotic, even the common roadside pigeon orchids). There’s a chapter on ant plants and carnivorous plants, one on parasitic plants and saprophytes, and also chapters on less exotic (though still interesting) plants like grasses and ferns. All chapters are illustrated with black-and-white drawings. Half the fun of used books is finding traces of former owners; my copy of Plant Life in Malaya came with a stamp from a bookshop in Singapore and a greeting card for Eid printed in Malay on which someone has written a list of tropical fruit trees.

4. Meislik, Jerry (2019) The World of Ficus Bonsai. Friesen Press.

The cover of The World of Ficus Bonsai shows a bonsai ficus, of course.

Before opening this book, I found it a little difficult to believe someone could fill 300+ pages with information about using a single genus for bonsai. Is there really that much to write about Ficus bonsai? There is, and Meislik has done it. I am a complete novice and a mere dabbler in bonsai, but I found Meislik’s instructions to be very useful and his photographs inspiring. I’m currently attempting to train some small Ficus microcarpa and Ficus natalensis using Meislik’s techniques–inital progress seems promising.

5. Boyle, Frederick (1893) About Orchids, a Chat. Chapman and Hall, Ltd.

Screen capture from About Orchids showing the title and a color picture of Vanda Sanderiana

About Orchids is a Victorian gentleman’s guide to orchid growing, and as suggested by the subtitle, the author is an affable and humorous teacher with an informal style. If you are an orchid grower, I think you will particularly enjoy Boyle’s description of an orchid sale 130 years ago or his trip to an orchid nursery. A more general gardener might like his description of his garden with its flowerbeds built of “road sweepings” (horse manure and grit, presumably). You can download About Orchids free from Project Gutenberg.

6. Veitch, James H. (1906). Hortus Veitchii: A History of the Rise and Progress of the Nurseries of Messrs. James Veitch and Sons, Together with an Account of the Botanical Collectors and Hybridists Employed by them and a List of the Most Remarkable of their Introductions. James Veitch and Sons, Ltd.

Title page from Hortus Veitchii

That subtitle just about says it all. Hortus Veitchii is a history of one family and their plant nurseries, but since they were so central to Victorian horticulture, it is also a history of the heroic era of plant collecting and a description of many tropical plants that remain popular with gardeners to this day. I was most interested in the chapters on vireya rhododendrons, orchids, and Nepenthes, but if you grow tropicals, it is quite likely that there’s a chapter on your favorites, too. Hortus Veitchii was privately published and first editions now sell for several hundred dollars, but you can download it free from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Bonus: Here’s a review of Hortus Veitchii published in the Journal Nature in 1906.

Jim at Garden Ruminations is the host of Six on Saturday. Head over there to see his Six for this week and find links to the blogs of other participants.