Category — Wild plants

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.

Here’s another report from the high Sierras – plus an entry in a photo contest at   Gardening Gone Wild. Their theme this month is “get down on your knees”. I was either on my knees or my belly for this one; I’m often in undignified positions with plants. And since it’s a Wild Gardening photo contest, I figured a garden of mule’s ear would be particularly apt.

It’s a wild plant that grows in its own nature-designed garden, and I think it’s worth it to take a look at how that happens. So many good garden designs appear in nature (and most of my favorite garden designers notice that).

Mule’s ear colonizes on Sierra slopes, making a repeating pattern with its leaves and, in season, flowers. Here you can see that it’s pointed up by Indian paintbrush (Castilleja); there’s also some of the miniature mountain lupine which blooms through fall, when it is also punctuated by occasional asters. An occasional low shrub leaves the sense of a meadow but gives some variation.

Mule’s ear is a good example of how a repeated plant, with a bit of variation, can be a very satisfying sight. It’s not a sight I see in my own garden much, as I tend to the botanical-garden order of gardening, but I notice I actually have been slipping a little into repeating plantings (I planted Papaver rhoeas “Falling in Love” in several containers, and really enjoyed the results), because there is a certain satisfaction to it. Maybe we’re just dialed in to like having certain plants surround us; maybe it’s an ancient survival instinct or maybe it’s an ancient magical one.

Mule’s ear is in the sunflower family, obvious when you look at its blooms:

While most dry-environment plants have small leaves (often hard and shiny) to keep in vital moisture, mule’s ear uses another tactic: soft hair all over the leaves (mollis means “soft”). And in order to avoid too much evaporation, mule’s ear leaves are oriented vertically, to get as little sun as possible.

That’s another clue we might use for our gardens: how suited is this plant for my environment? If I want to plant a lot of something, that’s a really important question, because a lot of work, water, and whining will go into it if I pick something that just isn’t suited to my climate.

In any case, I always look for colonies of mule’s ear (I admit, to myself I call this mule ears and am having a hard time getting it right for this post). I’ve been watching this particular field for years.

Even though it isn’t as spectacular in the fall, I may like mule ears best when it’s on its way out*. Half the foliage dries by early fall, and when the mountain wind blows, it makes a pleasant rustling.

Not all the ears dry at once, as you can see, so there is a depth of color and texture  as well as sound to fall mule’s ear as they slowly dry in the Sierra wind.

*For those who are unsure of the use of “it’s” and “its”, this sentence proves a guide. If a sentence doesn’t work reading the contraction as “it is” “it was” or “it has” then the word you want is “its”. And I know: many editors don’t even get this these days. That’s their shame, but it doesn’t need to be yours.

When Sylvia suggested that I write a sister piece to her post on California natives in Britain, I thought it was an intriguing idea. While researching it, though, I began to see why she wrote me that in the UK gardeners are used to plants being from somewhere else. Maybe it has to do with being an island with a long history of trade and migration? So many of the plants I looked up were “naturalized” in Britain, or even more obvious imports from elsewhere. Britain has been a seafaring nation for a long time, and one of the cargoes those ships brought back was plants.

In any case, as Sylvia points out, our climates are very different. I found only two plants in my garden which could be considered English natives, with another few possibilities if you allow for a little cheating.

The first, most obvious, is foxglove, at least the Digitalis purpurea foxgloves. I knew these were native to Britain as well as northern Europe because I remembered that from researching my foxglove series. I completely adore Digitalis purpurea in all its forms, a truly magical plant. One of the great things about D. purpurea foxgloves in my garden is that they don’t demand a lot of water (though they do need some; they’re not a xeriscape plant). They also like the semi-shade that most of my garden is in. My Shirley foxglove is down to those last few blooms towering over my head:

My Sutton’s Apricot seem to be sulking for some reason, so I’ll have to use pictures from the past.

The second plant I grow that’s native to Britain is Viola odorata, the common scented violet. Although, in my opinon, there is really noting common about violets. I grow a few cultivars; one is the highly-scented deep-colored violet that blooms every year in that protected spot by my friend (and uke player extraordinaire) Dan Scanlan’s garage. I’ve had a lot of fun making music in that garage, so that may be part of why I love them so much. But the flowers themselves have incredible charm. And this year - maybe because it was cooler longer? maybe because they just felt like it? - they bloomed for months. Well, at least two.

I also grow ‘Rosina’, a rose-colored cultivar. I like it, but somehow the deeper color sends me more. I used to have a white Viola odorata, but it disappeared.

Finally we come to the cheating part. ‘Penelope’, was bred by Joseph Pemberton in 1924 - in England. Does that count?

Do my David Austin roses, ‘Sharifa Asma’

and ‘Fair Bianca’

count? (I have more David Austin roses, but you get the general idea.)You be the judge.

Sylvia challenged herself to see how many of my native grow in her garden. This is her report. PB

One of the great things about blogs is that we can ‘travel’ to other countries and see plant communities in the wild, we can see them through the eyes of a like minded gardener.  I have learnt so much from blogs about how to grow plants or why something will not grow for me. This set me thinking
about how little I knew about Pomona’s area of America and the wild plants that grow there.  How many plants do I grow that are wild to Pomona?  I thought it would make an interesting post.

When I went to look for some of Pomona’s natives in my own garden, I found it a bit of a challenge; our climates are so different. In the West of England we rarely have a shortage of rain and drought years are few and far between so this is not something I consider.  I have lost more plants to being too wet rather than too dry.

Plant ‘hunters’ often tell us that we should see plants growing ‘in the wild’ to really understand how they grow, but for most of us that is not possible.  However we do know our own native plants and with a growing realisation that a lot of these make lovely garden plants able to copy with the local conditions and we are cultivating more of them.

The first plant I know comes from California is Californian Lilac, this is a favourite shrub of mine.  One of the few shrubs that I have more than one variety of.  I used to have 3 but lost one - I think because it got too wet!  We had an small underground water leak which also killed a Robinia
tree. Ceanothus is border line hardy in the UK but living in the south they seem to thrive, they are considered a good coastal plant here.  (Pomona do they grow by the sea in California?)  The two I have are both evergreen varieties Ceanothus azureus ‘Concha’ and Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var.
repens,  I hope Pomona is not going to tell me that these species don’t come from California!

My ceanothus have so many flowers because they are selected forms. The one in the back garden is more shaded and I think flowers for 2 weeks at the most.  But the one in sun in the front flowers for longer and is inclined to have a few stray flowers though the summer.  Interesting that it copes with more wind and wet here and doens’t have the hot
temperatures. I am surprised it isn’t grown more, possibly because it can die for no reason, as it is such a useful evergreen plant.  I don’t think that it will survive in some of the colder area of the UK. Which is why it is often recommended for the coastal areas where the winters are milder.  We all talk of plants for the winter hardiness but the summers really do make a difference. I struggle with Morning Glory (annual climber) because of the colder wet summers yet can’t grow blue poppies because of the heat!

I have to prune both these plants every year to keep them to their allocated spaces. Cocha likes to tap our bedroom window if I forget to trim it!  This winter, which was colder than we have had recently, one whole limb died but
it doesn’t seem to have effected the rest of the shrub. Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var. repens is a vigorous plant for me but I wouldn’t be without its blue fragant flowers in May.   The rest of the year both plants are a lovely green and blend into the garden, Californian Lilac is definitely a very beautiful garden plant and one I wish I had room to grow more off.

I have grown Calfornian Poppies (Eschscholzia californica) from seed and bought some seed to grow this year but it is still in the packet!  I will try to get some into the ground hopeing to get some flowers before the end of summer.  The first time I pulled some of these up I was amazed at the long root, good for finding and storing water I assume.  I get some volunteer plants from the original seed I planted and I like their ferny foliage and bright orange flowers.  Do these grow wild around you Pomona?

Now I got a bit stuck, what else is native to Pomona’s area of California, Lupins? I have had trouble with lupins the plants either die on me or are a horrible colour, I have tried seeds without any luck.  This year I have my first blue lupin flowering - I wish I had bought more plants and I have a packet of seed to try again. I know lupins come in lots of colours but I like blue and having seed pictures of blue lupins flowering in the wild I will keep trying to get a few blue ones.

The lupin is different from the wild types that grow in California, as it is a garden hybrid. (Interestingly we don’t use the ‘e’ in the common name)

Considering the very different climate, rain and temperatures that we both have, it is not surprising that I don’t grow many plants for this area.  It is amazing that so many plants will adapt to such different climate conditions.  It is fun to think about the countries our plants come from
especally when you ‘know’ someone that lives there.

Next post: I take up Sylvia’s challenge: how many English natives are in my garden?

I didn’t find Lewisia cotyledon in my Sierra Wildflowers book, but I did find that the genus is named for Captain Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark. It’s in the Portulacaceae, or purslane family.

Of course these plants were well-known to those who already lived where they grew. In the Pacific Northwest, some species were used as food, but they had to be specially cooked to remove bitterness.

There are several different species, and my Lewisia cotyledon is native to a very specific spot, the mountainous pine belt of Trinity and Siskiyou counties, in northern California, where it grows at 4,000 to 7,500 feet (about 1,220 to 2,134 meters). I got it through a local nursery that specializes in unusual plants, including natives, and gears its selection to plants that do well in our area (another plug for local nurseries; for expertise, selection, and quality of plants, they just can’t be beat. The prices are usually better, too.). My own climate is similar enough that Lewisia cotyledon (it doesn’t have a common name) does well here.

But I was quite surprised to find Lewisia on a British blog, Snappy Croc’s Gardens. Much as I love this blog, it only lets you search the archives by the current month, or by the year. I wasn’t willing to go through three months’s worth of 2008, so I don’t know the variety of Lewisia that was grown there; I just remember seeing the picture of flowers that looked awfully like the plant I had just bought, and being amazed it was apparently popular in rainy England. For Lewisia, like most natives here, is used to dry summers and lots of drainage. Perhaps some of the Northwestern varieties are more water-loving.

My Lewisia (and apparently most of them) has a rosette of fleshy, succulent-like leaves, a typical water-saving device for plants.

When it’s not flowering, this makes Lewisia an inconspicuous plant, which is why, I’m hoping, I didn’t know that there is a species which is native to my own county (Lewisia cantelowii). I’ve never seen it in my rambles, but now I’ll look.

The plant is only about a foot tall when it is flowering, according to the books; the ones I’ve seen, including my own, are more like six to eight inches (about 15 to 20 cm). It has a fleshy taproot - another water-conserving device, and a good way for mountain plants to anchor themselves in stony soil.

Supposedly these plants bloom in June and July, but their altitude range means that they are actually growing in several different climates, from hot foothill chapparal to alpine mountains, where you can still find snow in June. In my area, they’re flowering in May.

Given that Lewisias seem to be versatile, they probably fit into a number of gardening climates. They aren’t a showy plant, but they have lots of charm, and make a great, easy-care low-water plant in pots or in the ground.