Hypericum lloydii has looked great in the garden for the last few years. This little-known, imperiled (G4 rank) Southeastern US native, has shown excellent potential as a garden plant. In the wild, it’s found in dry open woodlands and woodland edges in well-drained soils in a narrow band from Virginia south to Alabama. In the
Lloyds St. John’s Wort Read More »
Looking lovely in the garden now is the woodland perennial, Actaea pachypoda, commonly known as doll’s eyes. Most of the commercial material available in the trade comes from much colder climates, and will not survive our summers. It has a huge native range from Canada south to Louisiana, so it’s surprising that introductions of heat
Hey Doll, love those Eyes Read More »
Looking divine in the garden is the giant Taiwan table fern, Pteris wallichiana ‘Hualien Giant’. This originated from our 2008 expedition in Hualien County at 7,900′ elevation, and has performed amazingly well in moist, compost amended soil, in light shade. In the wild, it reached almost 8′ tall, but our plant so far has only
Taiwan Table Fern Read More »
Juniper Level Botanic Garden has an extensive hardy fern collection, and looking quite amazing for mid-January is Adiantum poiretii ‘Argentine Lace’. This maidenhair fern was grown from our 2002 Argentine spore collection of a little-known and rarely-grown species, native to South America, South Africa, and the Arabian peninsula. It has thrived for us at JLBG
Flowering in early December, this is our first time to see blooms on a cast iron plant collected for us in 2018, by the late Alan Galloway in northern Vietnam. It didn’t take but a glance to realize that it represents another new, undescribed cast iron plant species. Our taxonomist, Zac Hill, has already been
A Cast of Hundreds Read More »
One of our favorite ferns, known as Cat’s claw fern, is putting on quite a show this fall. Onychium japonicum is a plant I’d never met until a 1996 expedition to Yunnan, China. Although it was a bit depauperate in the wild, the potential I saw, was far exceeded by its garden performance. We now
Looking great in our trials in early November is Symphotrichium dumosum ‘HillandSchmidtii’. Also, known as Aster dumosus before its name change, this fascinating 2018 Zac Hill/Jeremy Schmidt collection from Wilkes County, Georgia has proven to be quite a winner, so it will certainly be slated for a future Plant Delights catalog. We initially though this
An aster by any other name Read More »
One of the top pollinator plants in the garden this month is this clump of adult ivy. All ivies clump, instead of run, once they gone through horticultural puberty, which usually happens around age 15. English ivy, Hedera helix makes a similar, but larger shrub, that flowers in July. The clump below is our selection
A Hedera the Class – A Pollinator Magnet Read More »
In 2012, plantsman Hans Hansen and I were botanizing in the Balkans, when we drove up on a patch of flowering Aconitum superbum in a field at 4,200′ elevation, near the town of Kupres, Bosnia. Hans collected seed, since monkshoods fare far better in Michigan than they do in the heat and humidity of Raleigh,
One of my favorite plants when I strolled through the woods as a young child was resurrection fern, Pleopeltis michauxiana. If the Latin name sounds unfamiliar, it was originally published in 1939 as a member of a different fern genus, Polypodium polypodioides var. michauxiana. It’s natural distribution range is quite large, from West Virginia south
Time to bring back Resurrection Ferns Read More »
