Flowers and Plants

Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)

Photograph taken on Monday, June 08, 2020 by Henry
Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) on Asiatic Lily

Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) on Asiatic Lily

We had our first sighting of a tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) today and it was nice enough to perch on the Asiatic lilies growing in our front garden. I’ve actually seen a few butterflies around but haven’t had a chance to get any photos. Soon we’ll have them in abundance, especially when the Buddleia starts to bloom. These Asiatic lilies are surrounded by tiger lily plants (Lilium lancifolium), which are considerably taller and I’m not sure these can get the attention they deserve. On the other hand, this makes them harder for the deer to get to, which is a plus.

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Mountain Bluet (Centaurea montana)

Photograph taken on Sunday, June 07, 2020 by Henry
Mountain Bluet (Centaurea montana)

Mountain Bluet (Centaurea montana)

The mountain bluet (Centaurea montana), also known as perennial cornflower or perennial bachelor’s button, has a pretty, blue flower and does well in the perennial border. Dorothy and three of her housemates drove down late yesterday and today we took a drive out to Rocklands Farm Winery. They have just reopened and it was really nice to be out. Actually, we spent most of our time there visiting with Greg and Janis, which I really enjoyed. This flower is in Janis’ garden and I took it as we ate our lunches and got caught up with what everyone is doing. For information on Rocklands, see https://www.rocklandsfarmmd.com/.

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Red Strawflower

Photograph taken on Saturday, June 06, 2020 by Henry
Red Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

Red Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum)

We’ve had strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum) each of the last few years and I really like it quite a lot. Also known as everlasting flower, it provides color over a really long period. The central part of the flower turns dark but the almost woody bracts keep their color. This year, we happened to come across this bright red variety. I have to say, it’s really a stunner. The yellow one is nice, but this one is just amazing. I think maybe next year I’ll get more than one. I don’t know that I could get tired of this color.

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Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis)

Photograph taken on Wednesday, June 03, 2020 by Henry
Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis)

Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis)

I took some photos of some yellow flowering sedum this afternoon but they didn’t turn out very well. You’d be stuck with them except I happened to see this Asian lady beetle (Harmonia axyridis) on a stem and got down on the ground to get a few photos of it. This plant has a flower cluster similar to Queen Anne’s lace but that’s not what it is. It’s a very aggressive weed that we picked up somewhere along the way and we really need to do something about it. But it made for a nice photograph, in this case. It may be Chaerophyllum aromaticum but I really don’t know. Whatever it is, you really don’t want any.

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Dianthus armeria (Deptford Pink)

Photograph taken on Tuesday, June 02, 2020 by Henry
Dianthus armeria (Deptford Pink)

Dianthus armeria (Deptford Pink)

This is a pretty little flower that’s starting to appear in our garden. It is Dianthus armeria, the so-called Deptford Pink, native to Europe and not naturalized over much of North America. It is an annual or biennial and grows between two and three feet tall with very thin stems topped by these lovely little pink flowers, which are about a centimeter across. It self seeds pretty well but isn’t aggressive enough to be a problem at least in our garden. Most of those we have are growing in containers on the driveway or around that area.

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Pink Spiderwort

Photograph taken on Sunday, May 31, 2020 by Henry
Pink Spiderwort

Pink Spiderwort

We have two of these pink spiderworts in the side garden. They really are nice and I took some photos today with this one in the foreground and with the more usual blue flowered variety being it. We don’t remember the name of this variety and it may be a type of Tradescantia ohiensis, the Ohio spiderwort, rather than T. virginiana. There are others, too, of course. Anyway, it’s a really nice flower and lovely in the border. The flowers open in the morning and then close up during the heat of the day, so best appreciated early. This was taken from about the same spot as yesterday’s photo of the wren.

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Allium moly (Golden Garlic)

Photograph taken on Friday, May 29, 2020 by Henry
Allium moly (Golden Garlic)

Allium moly (Golden Garlic)

I really should plant more of this as well as other ornamental onions. This is Allium moly, often called golden garlic, and it’s a lovely little bulb, blooming later than many of the spring bulbs. Its flowers are smaller than daffodils but it makes up for that by being one of the few things in bloom right now. In theory it spreads and needs to be controlled when growing in ideal conditions. Clearly that’s not what it has here, but it seems happy enough. Another Allium that I’ve had but don’t now is Allium caeruleum, which has pale blue flowers. I think I’ll order some of that, too, this fall, along with a bunch more deffodils.

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Kousa Dogwood

Photograph taken on Thursday, May 28, 2020 by Henry
Kousa Dogwood

Kousa Dogwood

It’s kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa) time in the neighborhood. These trees bloom later than the native flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) and in general have fewer problems here. They make quite handsome trees of a good size for a suburban yard. They flowers are followed by interesting fruit so they have two seasons of interest, which is nice. They also have interesting bark. The main thing, though, is that they aren’t killed by dogwood anthracnose, which is pretty hard on the C. florida trees. C. kousa is also a bit hardier, although that’s not a real issue here. But the disease problem really is.

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Sisyrinchium angustifolium (Blue-eyed Grass)

Photograph taken on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 by Henry
Sisyrinchium angustifolium (Blue-eyed Grass)

Sisyrinchium angustifolium (Blue-eyed Grass)

There is a lot of interest in native plants and in general I don’t mind that. They often thrive in out local conditions. It’s somewhat related to the emphasis on so-called organics (as opposed to synthetics), thinking that they are inherently better and safer. Nevertheless, some natives can easily become weeds. Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) is a case in point. It’s actually lovely and in its place, worth growing. But be aware that it will come up around your yard and garden and if you don’t want it to take over, you’ll need to be a little ruthless in pulling it out.

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Peony ‘Coral Sunset’

Photograph taken on Monday, May 25, 2020 by Henry
Peony ‘Coral Sunset’

Peony ‘Coral Sunset’

In the fall of 2014 I planted three of these peonies, called ‘Coral Sunset’, in our back garden. They have bloomed a bit better each year and I really look forward to seeing them each year. Between the three plants there are seven blooms this year and they are wonderful. There are a lot of peonies I’d be happy to have but I think this one is high on my list. The stems are strong and the flowers not so heavy that they all droop down, which means you really get the full effect of the blooms. Interestingly, they fade to a pale almost-yellow color as they age, which isn’t nearly as striking, but I’m not about to complain.

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Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

Photograph taken on Sunday, May 24, 2020 by Henry
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

I really do try not to have pictures that are very much alike, especially near each other. However, I’m a few days behind in posting things and I often take pictures forgetting what I’ve photographed in previous days. Or, I take pictures of a variety of things and then pick one that I like, forgetting that a few days later I took a similar photo and have less to choose from. It’s that sort of thing the brings you the second photo of Rose ‘Perle d’Or’ in four days. Sorry about that. But you have to admit this is a really pretty flower.

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Iris pseudacorus, (Yellow Flag)

Photograph taken on Friday, May 22, 2020 by Henry
<em>Iris pseudacorus</em>, (Yellow Flag)

Iris pseudacorus, (Yellow Flag)

I took pictures in the yard earlier today but then Cathy and I went to Meadowside Nature Center and took a walk there. Since most of my pictures this spring have been from the yard, I decided to feature a photo from off-site today. We walked from the nature center down to the creek (North Branch Rock Creek) and from there to the lake. We could see the eagle’s nest and at one point saw one of the juvenile eagles sitting on the edge of it. We stopped and sat by the edge of Lake Frank and I took some photos of these yellow flags (Iris pseudacorus), growing on the shore. They are native to Europe and western Siberia, the Caucasus, and northern Africa. They’re quite lovely and I particularly liked the way these were shown against the grey of the very still water. We enjoyed watching the swifts or swallows skimming around over the lake. We heard a barred owl a few times in the distance.

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Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

Photograph taken on Thursday, May 21, 2020 by Henry
Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

Although it will bloom off and on throughout the summer, there really is nothing to compare with the first flush of blooms on even the best repeat flowering (or remontant) roses. This rose will have at least a few blossoms on it from now until well into the fall but right now, it’s so covered with buds that by this weekend we’ll be hit with their heady fragrance as we come out the front door. We really couldn’t ask much more from a plant. The flowers are small and delicate but really pack a punch in terms of their small, which is wonderful.

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Evolvulus ‘Blue My Mind’

Photograph taken on Tuesday, May 19, 2020 by Henry
Evolvulus ‘Blue My Mind’

Evolvulus ‘Blue My Mind’

This is yet another tender perennial grown here as an annual. It’s a non-vining, morning glory-like plant native to Brazil. It’s a member of the convolvulus family (a.k.a. the bindweed or morning glory family, Convolvulaceae) but it doesn’t twine and the genus, Evolvulus, means to untwist or unravel. This variety, ‘Blue My Mind’, has beautiful, pale, sky-blue flowers about an inch across. This does really well in hanging baskets or other containers and that’s where this is destined to go, but so far it’s among the plants waiting to be potted up.

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Strawflower ‘Basket Yellow’

Photograph taken on Monday, May 18, 2020 by Henry
Strawflower ‘Basket Yellow’

Strawflower ‘Basket Yellow’

Here’s another of the plants we bought a while back from Fehr’s Nursery. It’s a strawflower called ‘Basket Yellow’. Also known as everlasting flower, the official binomial is Xerochrysum bracteatum although it was formerly included in the genus Helichrysum or Bracteantha. It’s a tender, short-lived perennial native to Australia and treated as an annual here and we have two. This one is pure yellow and the other is red and orange, which is pretty nice. We’ll put them in pots on the back patio and they’ll give us color right through the summer. The flowers, not surprisingly, last a long time. I wonder if that’s where they get their name?

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Champneys’ Pink Cluster

Photograph taken on Sunday, May 17, 2020 by Henry
Champneys’ Pink Cluster

Champneys’ Pink Cluster

This is a difficult rose to photograph well. First, it’s quite tall and most of the blooms are right at the top, about eight feet from the ground. Second, it’s against the south wall of our house, which is brick but not the most attractive background. It was also cloudy today and the rose wasn’t in the bright sun, which would have been nice. But I wanted to be sure to include a photo of this rose, as it’s doing quite well this year. This is one of four roses that survived the great rose dying of last year. It’s by far the tallest of them but the other on the end of the house, which nearly died a few years back, has to potential to be much larger, if it can continue its come back.

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Lilacs

Photograph taken on Saturday, May 16, 2020 by Henry
Lilacs

Lilacs

Many years ago my dad gave me a subscription to a thing called The Seed Guild. The idea was that this guy had relationships with botanical gardens and arboreta around the world and had worked out an arrangement where he collected seeds from them and distributed them to Seed Guild members. I don’t remember the details but I do know the seeds for this lilac came from there. The catalogs I have (from the late 1990s) list three species, Syringa amurensis, S. josikaea, and S. wolfii, so I assume it’s one of those three. I’m leaning towards the last of them, which may more properly be known now as Syringa villosa subsp. wolfii (C.K.Schneid.). I had it growing in a container for many years and it never got very big. When we moved here in 2006 I planted it in the back garden and now it’s about 8 feet tall and obviously doing well.

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Exbury Azalea

Photograph taken on Friday, May 15, 2020 by Henry
Exbury Azalea

Exbury Azalea

After work today I sat out in the yard. It was quite warm and I was enjoying the birds singing in the early evening. There is a family of house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) that have nested in a small, ceramic bird house hanging from our cherry tree and they make themselves known. I got a few photos of the wren but they’re small birds and I wasn’t really that close to it. I also surprised a rabbit (an eastern cottontail, Sylvilagus floridanus), who came around the corner and found himself much closer to me that he would have liked. He froze long enough for me to get a pretty good close up. But I decided to post this photo of the Exbury azalea that’s just finishing up a really nice blooming season.

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Asclepias curassavica ‘Silky Red’

Photograph taken on Thursday, May 14, 2020 by Henry
Asclepias curassavica ‘Silky Red’

Asclepias curassavica ‘Silky Red’

One of the plants Cathy bought on our annual Mother’s Day trip to the nursery (a week early this year) was this blood flower, Asclepias curassavica ‘Silky Red’. As you can see, the colors are pretty intense. This species of butterfly weed is native to the Caribbean and Central and South America and is only winter hardy to USDA zones 9 to 11, so we grow it as an annual here but it’s worth it. The butterflies and other insects love it and even without that, it’s just a beautiful flower. If you have a very bright indoor location (or a heated greenhouse!) then you could bring it in for the winter, but we just start new each year.

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Lavandula stoechas ‘Anouk Supreme’

Photograph taken on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 by Henry
Lavandula stoechas ‘Anouk Supreme’

Lavandula stoechas ‘Anouk Supreme’

Last year, after getting rid of the stump from the Colorado spruce that I cut down, we planted a hawthorn to one side of the bed and Cathy planted some perennials as well. Two of them are a variety of Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) called ‘Anouk Supreme’. They are blooming now and they are quite lovely.

Each individual inflorescence is nice, as you can see here, and overall the entire plant is really nice, with lots of blooms. The individual flowers are a very deep purple and the bracts at the top are only slightly less intense. Both the leaves and the flowers give off that wonderful lavender aroma that we’re all so familiar with.

We haven’t done terribly well with plants like this in the past but I think this is a good location for them. If they do well, I’d be happy to get a couple more. We also have a rosemary that we might put here with them. This species of lavender is native to the Mediterranean countries including France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.

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