Category — Fragrant plants

I love brugmansias and daturas, but they’ve been a disappointment to me. Especially the brugmansias.

Brugmansias (they used to be called tree daturas) just barely make it in my climate (USDA zone 8). My common experience with them is, just about the time they form a bud, frost hits. And that’s the end of the brugmansia for that year. Next year it will rise again, but not until later than you think possible: usually in the middle to end of May, when things start really warming up. Brugmansias (and their herby sisters daturas) love heat, and shrink away from the cold.

So that’s why I was shocked to come home from a holiday trip to find that my little struggling brugmansia, all of fourteen inches high (about 36 cm), had spouted a bloom.

In order to have a hope of seeing flowers before frost next year, this fall I laboriously made it a place  indoors - a place where I didn’t think it would thrive, but trusted it would at least not die to the ground (making more work for itself to get to blooming point next season). I had no anticipation that it would bloom, especially not when I went away, leaving the house cold.

What made this happen? Well, I did treat all my houseplants with an organic fertilizer called Voodoo Brew. Voodoo Brew inoculates the soil with some of the microorganisms that make soil nutrients more available to plants. You’re not supposed to use it on houseplants, but it makes my outdoor plants so happy, and my houseplants were looking crummy, and I’m not much of one for rules until I’ve tried them myself. And you’re supposed to use it in the growing season, not the dormant one, but (see above).

Another contributor to this miracle may have been the variety of brugmansia, ‘Cypress Gardens’.  This plant was bred (or selected, I’m not sure which) for containers, and it’s also meant to flower younger than other brugmansias.

Whatever the cause, I’ve got one, just one, beautiful flower trumpet breathing fragrance into the room of a night,

and showing off that particular sheen I’ve only found on the somewhat-stiff brugmansia trumpets.

An anthropology professor of mine once told me that brugmansias made her think of love; she and her husband had met in South America, and slept under the downbreathing trumpets of a brugmansia.

Actually, she said datura, because at that time the genus hadn’t been broken in two. Now it’s generally accepted that the shrubby plants with downward hanging flowers are in the genus Brugmansia, while the herbaceous (non-woody) plants with upward facing trumpets are in the Datura genus (these are the ones that are called Angel’s Trumpets in many catalogues).

The reason my professor and I were discussing daturas is that I was doing a paper on them; even then I loved them. The chemical constituents of  the different types of daturas and brugmansias are very closely related, although there are individual variations; in that paper I wrote I reported on a custom of some Amazonian shamans, of having several datura trees in their yards. Each variety had a special trait; each variety was used for a different type of divination. Finding a lost item might mean using one tree; helping an adolescent through the spiritual transformation into adulthood meant using another. The shaman knew which to use, how much to use, and how to guide someone through the experience safely.

No such shamans exist in my own culture (although many believe that European witches used daturas as their “flying” ointment, and had some skill in judging the dose and using the experience for spiritual gain). The datura/brugmansia reputation as a hallucinogen naturally attracted me as a teenager, although fortunately I didn’t find any to experiment with at that reckless age. Later, I did try smoking the leaves, since they were long listed in the U.S. pharmacopoeia as a remedy for respiratory problems, to arrest coughing.

They did arrest my cough somewhat, but by that time I knew that too much datura could also arrest breathing, so I was pretty cautious in my experiment (it tasted very bitter, even in smoke, which made me inclined to limit the experience even further). I have seen at least one young woman permanently altered for the worse from eating datura; I would never ingest it.

But I can admire its power through my nose and my eyes and those other senses all of us plant lovers use when we commune with green friends.  I can feel brugmansia’s power of death and resurrection spreading invisible fragrance through my house. That means a lot, this time of year.

Sagebrush conjures up romantic notions: Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage, with cowboys, campfires, and rustlers (which probably were not all that romantic when people were actually dealing with them).

It also conjures up spiritual visions: smudging in Indian ceremonies, a purifier which has brought soul-health as well as physical health.

It’s a peculiarly Western American plant, as you can see by this map at the USDA. The USDA, in its wisdom, has included Alberta and British Columbia in its distribution map, but not Baja Norte, the northern part of Mexico, where sagebrush also reigns. Could this be the place where politics make science stupid? We may never know.

Sagebrush can be honestly confusing: since it’s commonly called “sage”  (as in the Zane Grey title), many people confuse it with the salvias. To add to the muddle, there is an actual salvia sage native to the western USA (Salvia apiana) which is also used for smudging and has a somewhat similar clean-astringent scent. If you look carefully at the smudge stick, it’s easy to tell which is which: Salvia apiana (whte sage) has the big leaves shaped like garden sage, only paler. Sagebrush has a number small tri-tipped leaves.

There’s a final reason why sagebrush could be confused with sage: the color. Though sagebrush actually has more grey-white than most garden sage, it is the green most of us imagine when we hear “sage green”. A pale, luminescent green that lights up the plain with a swatch of unexpected light.

But if you look at sagebrush closely, it’s a bit like lavender or some other Mediterranean that’s gone unpruned too long: leggy and woody. The flowering stems, which come on in late summer or early fall, are almost grasslike, adding to the feathery luminescence. It’s one of those plants that’s good at illusions.

The Latin name Artemesia refers to Artemis, who was goddess of the woods and the hunt, a wild thing. Sagebrush certainly is wild; I’ve never seen it cultivated. Tridentata refers to the three teeth at the end of each small leaf.

Goats and sheep eat sagebrush as winter forage, and the plant was used medicinally by the Spanish Californians for rheumatism, colds, headaches, and indigestion.

Probably it’s the scent of sagebrush that suggested these cures. It’s certainly memorable, a scent that makes you feel suddenly healthy and alive: clean, almost smoky, yet fresh at the same time. If you’ve smelled it once, you never forget it.

‘Black Beauty’ isn’t really black. It is mysterious, though. Iwonder why its breeders decided to give it that name? Its dusky-wine-red coloring deserves credit on its own.

Nonetheless, I’m not about to quibble (much), because Black Beauty is a fine lily. Though it’s offered by Old House Gardens, it’s not really an heirloom lily, it just looks as if it should be. “We followed our hearts on this one,” says owner Scott Kunst. “As we talked about all the great heirloom bulbs we might celebrate, we kept coming back to how spectacular ‘Black Beauty’ is and saying ‘too bad it’s not that old or endangered.’ Finally we decided if we all loved it so much and thought it belonged in everyone’s garden, it didn’t really matter if it’s only 45 years old and not yet on the edge of doom.”

In different lights, the color of Black Beauty comes off lighter or darker. Since I’m a nut about the way the stamens come bursting out of the deep starlike cleft in its center, I take pictures of it in lots of different lights.

The back view has its own curvy complex beauty.

Black Beauty is a hybrid of two species, Lilium speciosum rubrum and  L. henryi. It was bred in 1957 from Leslie Woodriff, who specialized in crosses that people had thought were impossible.  Its breeding makes it an Orienpet, which is lilyspeak for an Oriental/Trumpet lily cross. Since neither of these species is a trumpet lily, I’m a little puzzled as to why, but that’s what the authorities say. We must bow to the authorities.

Dave’s Garden reports good results from growing this lily in zone 4; it’s also trouble-free in my zone 8 garden, where it takes weather from 15 degrees F to 105F without turning a hair. It does well for me in anything from pretty shady semishade to pretty sunny. It comes back after abuse (such as not watering too well), and, I just found out, it’s another unexpected hummingbird plant! (Yet another excuse for planting more lilies.)

Something I still haven’t captured to my satisfaction is the texture, which has subtly sparkling bits of light mixed with the smoothness and stubbly spots.

All this and fragrance, too.

Here I have to make a confession: I’m a lily freak, but I just don’t like Oriental lilies that much. The species, yes: the big honking hybrids - not really. I’ve tried, I really have. But Black Beauty, with its graceful species look, is the only Oriental hybrid I want in my garden.

For years, I’ve been drooling over descriptions of this flower: it’s a bulb, it’s fragrant, it blooms in the middle of hot summer: what more could I want?

I did try it once. Reading somewhere that it was drought-tolerant, I got three bulbs and planted them in one of my containers. Results: nothing.

I still wanted to try again.

Yet somehow, year after year, I kept cutting it off my list. Next year, I’d say to myself. Next year I’ll have it. And year after year, I kept reading and seeing pictures of all the beautiful species as well as the hybrid cultivated forms (Scott Ogdens’s book, Garden Bulbs for the South, was the catalyst for many of my fantasies).

Last fall I finally ordered them again. Bowing to my climate and budget, I picked one of the best-known, easiest-grown, and easiest-to-find cultivars. Hymenocallis festalis is hardy to zone 8, where I live. The graceful, elegant, desirable species I saw were from Mexico, and hardy only to zone 9 or 10. I’d been down that road before. I chose the road most traveled by: I ordered a plant I knew would survive in my climate.

As usual, I had to work at finding places to stash all my fall-planted bulbs, and I’d forgotten not only where I’d put them, but that I had them. So when these strange fat light-green amaryllis-like stems started emerging from the large container with the Goodwin Creek lavender and Berggarten sage, I didn’t know what they were.

Until the day one opened. For a minute, when I saw it, I thought: what’s that white trumpet lily doing on such a short stalk? My hymenocallis is shorter on its stalk than the picture, only about eight inches tall; that’s usually caused by late planting. Since I didn’t keep records of when I planted last year (bad, I know), I’m not sure if planting late was the cause this time.

I happened to pick up Two Gardens, letters of Elizabeth Lawrence and K.S. White, while I was mulling this over. In one of the letters, Elizabeth Lawrence points out that hot-freeze-hot can create short bulb stems. We certainly had that this spring – and summer.

I’m also wondering if they came up this time because of a mistake I made. I got distracted watering one day, and I left the hose on that big container with the lavender and sage (and Hymenocallis).

Some hymenocallis like a boggy situation (I saw some in a greenhouse that were growing in water);

others prefer light watering and good drainage. Hymenocallis festalis is the light-water type according to most of my sources (including Select Seeds, where I bought them). But it’s interesting that I got the hymenocallis sprouts right after I gave that pot a good soaking.

Gaygardener says that H. festalis multiplies better if it’s kept moist all the time. I might test that out at some point, but our water table is low from drought, and I’m not going to make my lavender/sage pot into a bog anytime soon

In any case, in the obliging way of bulbs, it’s opened. The fragrance is of the orangeblossom/gardenia/ tribe, but somehow diluted and softened in a very pleasing way.

Hymenocallis X festalis is a cross of the Mexican H. narcissiflora with H. longipetala. (Maybe those are some species hymenocallis I could grow, if I could locate them. Or maybe not.) Hymenocallis is in the Amaryllis family, which is why its emerging stems reminded me so much of amaryllis. Daffodils are in the same family, as you can tell by hymenocallis’s looks, and one of its common names.

As for the Latin name, “Hymenocallis” means “beautiful membrane”, and refers to the flower’s corona. The “festalis” part of the name means, as you might have guessed, festival or holiday. So it’s a beautiful festive membrane. (I do think the curling-back petals of hymenocallis look like some party decoration.)

Someday, maybe I’ll find a way to grow some of the species hymenocallis. Meanwhile, I’m happy to finally celebrate my little Hymenocallis festival.

This is the time of year that cars slow down as they ride the river grade. That’s because this is the time of year that the sticky monkeyflower comes out, glowing peach above your head on the south-facing cliffs as you curve down among them. When the season’s right, they’re accented by purple bush lupines.

Sticky monkeyflower can, and does, grow out of perpendicular granite cliffs. There’s generally a bit of crushed granite in the cliffs as well, and either the monkeyflowers root there or their roots help create the crushed granite that eventually (long after my lifetime) will turn into precious soil.

The name mimulus comes from the original Latin meaning of minus, comic actor (probably the same origin as “mime”; does anybody know?). “Monkeyflower” also refers to the facelike characteristics of this flower. To me, it’s no more like a face than, say, a snapdragon (which sticky monkeyflowers resemble), but okay. Whatever.

Sometimes this plant is listed as Diplacus auranticus, a way to distinguish it from its water-loving mimulus relatives. (Diplacus comes from the Greek diploos, meaning “double”.)

The lumpers and splitters are at it again. Many authoritative sources list this plant as Mimulus. But then again, many authoritative sources list it as Diplacus. You decide. The Diplacus branch of the family (for those who prefer splitting) likes dry, rocky slopes. Other monkeyflowers grow in damp places, sometimes even actually standing in water. Whatever its official name, sticky monkeyflower is the only monkeyflower I know of that is woody and grows in dry areas (”bush monkeyflower” is another name for it).

“Auranticus”, the part of the Latin name experts agree on,  means orange-red, possibly because of the color of  the coastal version of this plant. Pictures of coastal sticky monkeyflower look “oranger” to me; they have more yellow, and they’re darker than the paler peach ones we see here in the foothills. On the other hand, there’s certainly some variance in color from bush to bush, and as the flowers age (they fade a bit), so maybe this is one of those shrubs that sports or adapts easily.

Crossbreeding probably enters in, too. Calflora calls this “a highly variable complex of intergrading and hybridizing forms, many of which have received specific and subspecific names, but which the Jepson Manual has grouped together as a single species.” This photo  shows some of those variations. And I have to say, it does make a case for splitting them into subspecies - but splitting how? I’m not going to get into it. I will just continue to describe the plant, and let others carry on the good fight.

 As for the “sticky” part of its name: the bush exudes a resin, most noticeable in hot weather. Oddly, unlike most resins, it isn’t particularly aromatic, at least not to my nose. The flowers, on the other hand, have their own unique fragrance: they smell like orange bubblegum. Yet another case of art imitating nature.

Next post: sticky monkeyflower in the garden and in beds