Category — Wild plants

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.

There may be those who feel enough has been said about sticky monkeyflower on this site. But when Catmint told me she grew this California native in her Australian garden, I had to know more.

Pomona,

This is the mimulus or sticky monkey flower I have in my garden. It’s not flowering at the moment (autumn) but I think you can see how happy and healthy it is. This one has orange flowers, others available have cream flowers.

It has had very harsh treatment. It has been transplanted about 5 times. It has been radically cut back.  It has been exposed to our horrendous summer and was not watered except when first transplanted.

I obtained this Mimulus auranticus from a nursery called The Diggers Club.  The Diggers
Club  (www.*diggers*.com.au) is more than a nursery. It is an important and wonderful institution for gardening in Melbourne and further afield. They have a beautiful garden open to the public and specialize in sourcing and propagating heirloom fruit and vegetables, and unusual and drought resistant perennials.  I have learned heaps from them, including that plants from California and the Canary Islands do particularly well in this climate. As with the mimulus in the photo. It’s so far from home, but that’s multiculturalism for you … it works.

Cheers, CM

Visit Catmint’s blog, Diary of a Suburban Gardener for more on water-saving gardens, plus  piquant book reviews and opinions. (The subtitle is: “Now Where Did I Leave the Secauteurs?”)

At last, a real species tulip.

Ah, but which species? We’ll leave the botanical brangling until later. First, a description.

This is the smallest tulip in this series. It doesn’t just come up to your ankle; it comes up to your ankle bone.

It’s the earliest tulip, too. In full bloom by mid-March, even the first year of planting, it’s ahead of some of my narcissus. It’s a native of Central Asia, where it blooms on rocky mountain slopes, by streams, and on rock ledges. By which you can guess that it’s a tough customer for soil as well as weather.

As you can see, the bees love it; they really have to look for those early flowers. And I loved the way it folded up at night: the tight buds looked just as they did before they’d opened.

After it had faded, I read that T. turkestanica has an unpleasant scent. As you can see, I got pretty close to them in order to take the bee picture; I didn’t smell anything. On the other hand, scent’s a chancy thing, and I didn’t bury my nose in them to check.

I planted these tulips in a container with later, bigger ones. The combination worked well; small early tulips bloom and die off while the bigger-tulip foliage covers them up with new green. This is a lot better than those combination plantings where the small bulb blooms last, amidst crackly sere foliage. (That would be a poetic way of saying dead.)

Now for the Department of Botanical Brangling. This tulip is, certainly, a tulip that is found in the wild, in this form as well as similar others. (Bulbs often vary in the wild, and tulips, as we know, are deeply given to variations.)

Anna Pavord says that T. turkestanica has a horrible smell, while T. biflorifomis, a look-alike species, has a faint odor of honey. Implying that they are two distinct species. She does mention some variations in turkestanica types she looked at: some with broad leaves, others with narrow.

Janis Ruksans collected some of these bulbs in the Turkestan mountains. He refers to this tulip throughout his book as the T. bifloriformis/T. turkestanica complex, and says that a lot of work still has to be done to make out the real difference between the two.

Anna Pavord has done her research, not only on paper but going out in the field. Janis Ruksans has spent decades not only collecting plants in the field and noting their slight differences from habitat to habitat, but then growing and propagating them in his nursery, where he has opportunity to see them up close and personal. He’s definitely not a lumper by nature, as his book and catalogue descriptions detail the different subspecies with minute precision.

So I’m going with Ruksans, although I mean no disrespect to Pavord. As far as I can see from here, he has access to more primary-source information, and he’s not talking through his hat. (Wherever did that expression come from?) I’m not going for the T. turkestanica/T. bifloriformus  judgement to the extent of retitling this post, though. Life is too short.

Do any of you have an opinion on this?

Whatever their exact botanical designation, these tulips have been blooming for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. They have been in commerce so long that the nursery-grown versions are quite cheap. (I hope all of you are checking to be sure that you never buy wild-collected bulbs. It decimates the populations when they are collected in bulk, instead of carefully selected for propagation.)

If you want quick, early color and cheer from a tulip tiny enough to grace your windowsill, give this species - whatever that is - a try.

References:

Anna Pavord, The Tulip, Bloomsbury, 1999

Janis Ruksans, Buried Treasures, Timber Press, 2007

Beds may be a natural place for sticky monkeyflower. According to the Flower Essence Society, sticky monkeyflower tinctures can be used for integrating human love and human sexuality; possibly some of the keys to this are the “facelike” flower,  more pointedly human (to some), and the orange color, color of the second chakra, which involves creative power of all kinds, including sexual. (Flower essences are homeopathic tinctures which address the emotions behind illnesses; they have no scent. They are often surprisingly effective where other remedies fail, and work well with other medications.)

The association of the flower with partnerships may also come from a salient plant fact: sticky monkeyflowers emerge in opposite pairs. Lots of them. The “double” meaning of one of its Latin names, Diplacus, is clear here.

Sticky monkeyflower is also used in the sickbed. The Miwoks used the root for diarrhea, dysentery, fevers, and hemorrhages. The leaves were made into a poultice for sores and burns, apparently having antiseptic qualities. This was important: in eras or places with no antibiotics, people could die of a septic cut.

The Miwoks had an aesthetic relationship with this plant, too. Flowers were used for wreaths, and put in children’s hair as ornaments. The back-to-the-landers in this area have used them the same way, but it’s a fleeting joy: sticky monkeyflower doesn’t last long off the bush, even if it’s in a vase with water.

Like snapdragons, monkeyflowers belong to the figwort family, which may be why they aren’t denuded by deer. Deer tend not to like members of the figwort family, a fine piece of news for those of us who garden in deer country. (You will have noticed that I wasn’t rash enough to say, Deer won’t eat monkeyflower. Deer will eat anything that grows, if they’re hungry enough.)

This unfurling bud shows sticky monkeyflower’s relationship to foxgloves and snapdragons. The snoutlike buds are very similar on all three flowers.

Sticky monkeyflower does attract bees and happily drunken hummingbirds, though, a big bonus in the garden. Another bonus: sticky monkeyflower is happy in serpentine soils, not the easiest type to grow plants in.

Given their beauty and deer resistance, I think sticky monkeyflower is a beautiful candidate for a low-water azalea substitute. It has the same low bushy form (it never gets more than knee-high, and usually only goes up to your shins), and the same striking display of bright flowers in spring. Liz Simpson  shows a beautiful example of sticky monkeyflower planted with native penstemon, for a gorgeous low-water spring display.

In moister, milder climates, sticky monkeyflower can bloom through the summer. While they are designed for dry rocky cliffs, clearly sticky monkeyflower has some variability in where it chooses to settle. Not only is there a coastal version of this plant, there are reports of it blooming in cool, foggy, rainy Castro Valley, San Francisco. It’s even doing well in at least one garden in  Bellevue, (in the cool part of Washington state).

Some gardeners recommend watering sticky monkeyflower once a month, for a fuller, more floriferous plant. (Most natives need to be watered somewhat through their first season, while their roots establish themselves.) Eje   at Dave’s Garden says that if you do that, it’s a good idea to hold off on the water at the end of the season, to encourage the plants into the dormancy they’d have in the wild. Of course in my area, where they grow naturally, it rains in the winter (the time they’re dormant). I’m not sure if this is a difference in sticky monkeyflower subspecies (makes a case for the splitters) or a clever idea for tricking the plant into dormancy where there is no winter cold.

While all this is beginning to sound like a lot of trouble, most gardeners who grow it stress how easy sticky monkeyflower is, and how tolerant of different conditions. I get the impression that these gardeners love the plant so much, they just want to help it show off its best.

The hard part may be getting  hold of sticky monkeyflower plants.  Like most wild plants, sticky monkeyflower doesn’t transplant well. Don’t dig it up, unless you’re ten minutes ahead of a bulldozer. That’s the only situation where you’re giving the plant more of a chance than it would have had if you hadn’t jumped in. Transplanting usually kills it.

If you want sticky monkeyflower, you must either save seed or get it from a native plant sale, or online from Las Pilitas Nursery . Las Pilitas is one of the authoritative sites which lists it as Diplacus auranticus and has some subspecies, with full explanations of their plant community and growing conditions. (If you have other sources for this plant,  please let us know. Since Catmint found it in her garden in Australia, it’s obviously got some  far-reaching conduits out of here.)

If you want to try growing your own, the easiest way to get the seed is to put a small paper bag over the almost-ripe pod. It’s always good to check the spot where it grows, so you can give the plant what it wants in your own garden: what’s the soil like? Drainage? Plant community? Sun exposure? After you gather this info, leave, then return when the seeds are ripe. The bag keeps the tiny seeds from falling irretrievably into the dust. The best time to sow seed is when nature does: in time to catch the fall and winter rains.

CApoppy at Dave’s Garden reports success from taking cuttings, something which I never even thought of trying. Root in early fall for planting in spring, is CApoppy’s advice, and you can cut it back in spring to keep it less leggy. Capoppy also suggests a remarkable-sounding combination; sticky monkeyflower with a maroon and apricot Pacific Coast hybrid iris, which presumably has the same low water requirements.

I haven’t grown this wildling in my garden (although writing this post is making me wonder why. Then I remember: I don’t have much sun. Oh yeah, that’s why.) . I hope those of you who have more experience at growing woody plants from seed and cuttings will speak up about your own methods.

(Nancy, this is the closest to the growing-off-the-cliff thing that I’ve got.)

References:

Tracy I. Stone and Robert L. Usinger, Sierra Nevada Natural History, University of California Press, 1963

Theodore R. Niehaus, Sierra Wildflowers: Mt. Lassen to Kern Canyon, University of California Press, 1974

National Park Service, California, wildflower page

http://davesgarden.com

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