Author Archives: theshrubqueen

Tread Softly – or else

 

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I found out, per usual, the hard way, about another plant I am allergic to. The Stinging Nettle of South Florida, a devilish little plant with a big punch. Here it is – looking so innocent with its cute little white flower; masking the stinging nettles running up and down the stem. Just waiting for the nonchalant passerby. The straplike foliage in the picture is from a native Hymenocallis. I will have to untangle these later.

The Stinging Nettles here are commonly referred to as Tread Softly (Cnidoscolus stimulosus, if latin makes you feel happy). I hadn’t realized how many were in the so called lawn in the back until it got a little too long and they were slapping me around the ankle with their little nettles. I finally ran over one that was tall enough to see and stop just in time for it to wrap around my ankle. Here is the result:

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I went to rinse it off. That didn’t help. I got the duct tape to pull out the stingers, that did help. Then couldn’t remember if this is a baking soda paste cure or a vinegar cure. Looked that up on the internet after finding my reading glasses. Aha, it is baking soda paste and it did help. The picture is actually from several days later.

Moral of the story: take heart in the common name and Tread Softly.

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In A Vase on Monday-Memorial Day Fireworks

 

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States. The first holiday weekend that kicks off the summer season and honors those who serve and served our country.

Fireworks are a relatively common occurrence on holiday weekends during the summer; the Fourth of July being the primary holiday associated with fireworks. One can generally find some fireworks on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends as well. My gardens have been providing some fireworks of a different sort as the heat of summer starts ramping up.

In keeping with my fireworks theme, I began looking around my garden. I have several Firebush, some volunteers and some I paid for. The Firebush flowers look like firecrackers and further searching located some seed heads of culinary Fennel and Dill, the umbels exploding with seed really look like fireworks to me. Here is the Firebush, the native one. I have learned it is called Hamelia patens var patens as plain H. patens is different. Sometimes I think botanists really need to get over it and just call it something else. Of course, I was not consulted on this matter.

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Here is an overhead view, I have to say I like this as it really looks like fireworks:

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Included in the vase are the two types of Firebush, the red on the right Hamelia patens var patens, the middle orange one is H. patens and on the left side is Mexican Honeysuckle, the Justicia from last week. The fennel and dill seed heads are in yellow green.

The vase is not a vase at all. It is one half of a set of Dansk candlesticks my husband has carried around since the seventies. Looks pretty good holding all that firepower. It has never held a candle during my tenure, but I may use it as a vase again.

Bird of Paradise Progression

 

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This winter I finally indulged my desire for a Bird of Paradise (Strelizia reginae), debated with myself about placement of the plant, read all sorts of conflicting recommendations, ignored most of them and planted it in a morning sun location that I pass on the daily dog walk. The greyhounds remain unimpressed.

The above picture is full bloom on the first flower. The bud teased me for about two weeks sending a straight stem up that I wasn’t sure if it was a leaf or flower bud, until it started to bend and turn orange and blue.

Thinking these were long lasting flowers I was disappointed when the flower only lasted four or five days. Much to my surprise it bloomed again on the same stem

A curious plant to begin with- I am wondering what it will do next. It seems to be shooting up another something. Stay tuned. Here is the show thus far:

 

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In A Vase on Monday – Butterscotch Pudding beats the Rose Bowl

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I started to use a Rose Bowl for this arrangement, but the bowl must have sensed my true feelings about Roses (too much trouble and ugly shrubs when not flowering) the flowers were just not sitting right so I had to go to a more straight sided container. See picture above, Rose bowl on the left and Fostoria on the right. The picture is to clarify which Rose Bowl  I was writing about, my husband asked if I was blogging about football this week. The other Rose Bowl is a college football game.

I have a set of these Fostoria glasses, inherited from my mother in law. My husband refers to these as the Butterscotch pudding bowls because that is what she served in them. I really don’t know what they are, it is an oddly sized container for food or drink but works well as a vase. Here is a better picture of the Fostoria.

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To me the star of the arrangement is a new arrival in my garden, the orange Mexican Honeysuckle (Justicia spicigera), research tells me this plant blooms nearly year round and is a desert tropical that likes regular water. I wonder what these people are smoking who come up with these descriptions sometimes, no doubt something horticultural. Regular water on your desert tropical. Apparently it comes from a weird desert.

The balance of the arrangement contains more Justicia – J. brandegeana, the Red Shrimp Plant in darker red. The lighter red is buds of the Heliconia psittacorum, the white flowers are Bridal Bouquet Plumeria (P. pudica). Greenery is Asparagus and Boston Ferns.

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All this talk about Butterscotch Pudding has inspired me to make some. I think from scratch……Just have to find a recipe with actual Scotch as an ingredient.

 

 

 

Pineapples and their Cousins

 

A common element in South Florida gardens is the pineapple patch. Almost everybody has one, from a northern perspective, it seems kind of weird. Grow your own pineapples? Why not? Even one of our neighbors, his yard could be described as nouveau retch, is seen regularly hand watering his pineapples.

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Pineapples are in fact a Bromeliad, which are currently my favorite tropical perennial. Among the many Bromeliads I have planted that are purely ornamental I am afraid I have fallen prey to the trend and now have a pineapple patch between my citrus trees. I eat pineapple just about year round and the tops kept rooting in the compost heap. Unfortunately, the above is my patch, not too pretty.

Pineapples have an interesting history. Originally from the area where modern day Brazil is located, they moved via canoes paddled by traveling natives north to the Caribbean Islands where sea captains picked up on them and carried them home. One early accounting of the discovery of pineapple recounts a meal served by the Caribe tribe where a plate of pineapple rested next to a cauldron of boiling cannibalized humans. I think I would have asked for the fruit plate.

A status symbol on the dining tables of colonial America, pineapples were often rented for centerpieces and then sold after a few uses for eating. Thus the pineapple as a symbol of lush hospitality was born. The prevalence of pineapples as a decorative element may be explained by its being cheaper to carve decorative pineapples into bed posts or garden ornaments instead of renting them by the hour.

The Treasure Coast of Florida, the area I currently call home was once home to a large pineapple plantation. In 1895, Jensen Beach, Florida was named the Pineapple Capital of the World, shipping a million boxes of pineapples a year during the summer season. Later that year a devastating freeze decimated the crop, followed by a few tragic fires and fungal diseases that finished off the pineapple industry by 1920. Agricultural pursuits were redirected towards citrus. Wild Pineapple plants can still be seen on Hutchinson Island and are attributed to the original owner of the plantation, John Jensen.

Like many other popular plants, pineapples have also been bred for Ornamental use. Here are two prettier pineapple plants.

 

In A Vase on Monday – Frangipani and Fennel Failure

 

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The promise of the eventuality of summer is evidenced by the Frangipani starting to flower in South Florida. The Frangipani in this vase is Bridal Bouquet, a columnar, semi evergreen variety I have come to love in my garden. It is not as fragrant as other Frangipani but the evergreen foliage and form of the plant make up for any shortcomings in fragrance. I have been waiting to see what color the larger Frangipani in my garden are and blast it they are white as well. So, I am in the market for some more colorful friends for the white flowers.

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The failure in this vase is the Fennel, the chartreuse starbursts looking like Dill or Queen Annes Lace. I have been trying to grow culinary Fennel for years from seed. It gets about half the size of a grocery store Fennel and then bolts. I think the climate here is just wrong for Fennel, but have enjoyed eating the foliage and using it in flower arrangements.20160515_135536

The Burgundy foliage is from my latest Bromeliad bargain. Not a clue what it is. Bargain Bromeliad $5, named specimen, $40. I can live without knowing the name and to me, part of the fun of gardening is seeing what happens next. The other foliage is my everpresent Boston Fern or more likely its evil lookalike tuberous Asian Ferns.

Here is the Bromeliad, burgundy with chartreuse spots, a perfect foil for the yellow green Fennel flowers. If anybody knows its name, please let me know.

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The smoke grey glass vase was from a bargain store near my house bought years ago when I was overrun by a beautiful but much too enthusiastic Red Alstroemeria. The red and gold flecked flowers looked wonderful in the vase, I had a smoke grey glass vase full of Alstroemeria all summer for years.

Boston Fern…A Tale of Three Cities

My favorite botanical author sharing his thoughts on our native ferns

George Rogers's avatarTreasure Coast Natives

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The weekly Friday field trip got swatted down by waiting for the nice repair man in my kitchen as I write. So I’ll back the camera up to a fun green Wednesday meeting with the Broward Co. Native Plant Society at the Secret Woods Nature Center in Ft. Lauderdale.

A great part of “botanizing farther south” is more ferns.   A dominant species at Secret Woods is Boston Fern, not that it is rare up here in Palm Beach County.    But why is it called Boston Fern?  (Be patient, we are getting to that.)  Boston Fern was once a huge single-species industry, interestingly dating back to the turn of the 20th Century orgy of unfettered exotic plant introductions.     Sort of ironic that a pillar of the early Florida nursery industry was a native.    I grew up with a big one hanging from the fireplace mantle.

Nephrolepis exaltata 1 Today’s pictures by…

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A Tomato Based Limerick

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There once was a tomato in my garden,

An heirloom seedling gifted to me by the daughter of a game warden.

The seedling named Mortgage Lifter, it was said, never fails to inspire.

I waited gleefully for ripe fruit to transpire.

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The day finally dawned.

A perfectly ripe, red fruit had spawned.

The tomato was plucked

Into the kitchen it was trucked

A dinner salad was implored.

Mortgage Lifter  is patiently awaiting its fate on the cutting board.

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A tomato knife was wielded.

A perfect red slice yielded.

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The salad constructed, our forks and hearts were lifted.

Yet the mortgage was not shifted.

In A Vase on Monday – Tea Stained Melange

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It was Mother’s Day as I was plotting my Monday vase, so naturally I thought of what my mother might like in a vase. My mother (passed nearly seven years ago) was not nearly as snooty as I am about her flowers and enjoyed just about anything she could grow successfully. I am hard pressed to think of something she really didn’t like. Growing up we always had a seemingly magical forest of Cosmos and Scarlet Runner beans to play in. Many of the plants grown in the garden would end up in a vase on Monday! She would definitely get a kick out of all my wacky tropicals and the vases every Monday.

I ended up with her favorite teapot. I am fairly certain it was a wedding gift, the rim and base stained russet from untold thousands of pots of tea, many shared with me. I walked through my garden and cut everything that was in bloom and arranged it all in the teapot.

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The big leaves in the back are Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera), the pink flower in the middle is a Brazilian Plume (Justicia carnea), Florida Gardenias (Tabernaemontana divaricata) on each side in white, Sweet Begonias (Begonia odorata ‘alba’) the smaller white flowers, Beach Sunflower (Helianthus debilis) are the yellow and Parrot Flower (Heliconia psittacorum) the red and yellow on the sides. The teapot is marked Hall, made in the USA.

My husband wandered through as I was assembling the vase and asked me, aghast, ‘Is that your Monday vase?’

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This is a side shoot from Sweet 100 tomatoes I hope to root to extend my tomato season.

Here is my mother, ever the Southern Belle, at the peach packing house with her grandfather in the late 1940s.

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Miss Betty and Mr. Tommy

Mom Nature Lights My Fire

This plant appeared in my garden a couple of years ago. I thought it was some sort of Amaranthus blown in from across the Atlantic Ocean and decided to leave it to see what happened. Amaranthus can have some interesting flowers (Love Lies Bleeding, etc.) The foliage started getting red around the edges, confirming my thoughts, then the stems started getting woody. Maybe it wasn’t Amaranthus at all.

Then it flowered.

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Definitely not an Amaranth. Not a clue what it was. So, I took this to the Native Plant Society meeting and they said Firebush. Hamelia patens var patens? I said no, it couldn’t be, this is my Firebush, Hamelia patens. Orange flowers and the leaves are half as big.

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Firebush and Friend

Then it dawned on me, there is a great deal of arguing about the true native Firebush. I  usually ignore this kind of argument being more designer than botanist, but think I am agreeing with the Hamelia patens var patens crowd. The orange flowering one is supposed to be from the Caribbean somewhere instead of Florida. Given the seemingly magical appearance of the patens var patens in my garden, I think that the red one is the native.

Mother Nature really is a good designer, she placed the Native Red Firebush in a bed of red and yellow Heliconias behind some yellow Beach Sunflowers and across from some red Bromeliads. Perfect.

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Now if everything would just grow together. And be happy.