Medicinal Plants

Ctenium aromaticum

Toothaches, anyone?

Ctenium aromaticum, or toothache grass, is a native ornamental grass, found naturally in acidic moist flood plains and savannahs from Coastal Virginia south to East Texas. This clump former has thrived in our bog garden here at JLBG, producing a tight evergreen 6″ tall x 1′ wide clump, topped, starting in early June with 3′

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Who Called a Cop-tis?

We love the miniature Coptis japonica var. dissecta in full seed now. This dwarf, evergreen, woodland-growing member of the Ranunculus family (Clematis, Helleborus), has small white flowers in the winter, but we adore the seriously cute seeds heads that are adorned in March and April. Not only is this Japanese endemic a cool garden plant,

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Hacking Characias

If you’ve driven through the any of the Mediterranean countries in spring, you are undoubtedly familiar with the common Mediterranean spurge, Euphorbia characias (ker-ack-iss). For years, I admired this in virtually every English garden book, but always failed in my attempts to keep it alive in our garden. Years later, it finally hit me what

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Thyme Flies, Thymophylla Flowers

We are in love with the long-flowering Thymnophylla pentachaeta var. pentachaeta ‘Laredo Gold’, which graces us with masses of gold flowers from spring through fall, in our sunny, dry rock garden. This Patrick McMillan collection comes from a population in Texas. Not only is this short-lived, southwestern US native reseeding perennial great in flower, but

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From Siberia to Raleigh

There aren’t a huge number of Siberian native plants that thrive in our heat and humidity, but one that has been outstanding for us is Angelica dahurica. For those, who have traveled the world, the specific epithet “dahurica” means, from Davuria (Dahuria), a region of south-east Siberia and north-east Mongolia. Angelica dahurica is a widely-cultivated,

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Four favorites flowering today in the garden

  Epimedium ‘Pink Champagne’ is dazzling today in the garden, both for the great foliage and floral show.   Euphorbia x martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’…WOW.  Variegated foliage and very cool flowers.  The key to growing this well is good drainage and immediately after flower, cut it back to near the ground.   Clematis ochroleuca is an

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Epimediums on Parade in the Garden

What an incredible week for epimediums here at Juniper Level.  The first photo is our introduction, Epimedium ‘Songbirds‘…an insanely heavily flowered yellow selection. Epimedium wushanense ‘Starlite‘ is our selection of the amazing Chinese species, which boasts large terminal inflorescences on a plant that approaches 2’ tall.     Epimedium zhushanense is another incredible Chinese species

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