Lord Help Me, I Bought a Knock Out® Rose!

Long-time readers of this blog are doubtless aware that ProfessorRoush hates Knock Out® roses.  I blame the Knock Out® line for the collapse of many rose nurseries and the rapid decrease in rose varieties available at local nurseries.  I blame Knock Out®s for knocking the Queen of Flowers off her pedestal and coercing the public into treating roses as mere utilitarian shrubs.  I blame Knock Out®s for their lack of grace, lack of fragrance, and their easy susceptibility to rose rosette disease.  Heck, I'd blame them for global warming if I could reason out the slightest plausible logic chain that might link them together.  

And yet, while I was "saving big money" at Menards today (or so their advertising jingle tells me), I ran across 'Petite', the so-called "first miniature Knock Out® rose," and I fell for the hype, hooked and cleaned out, as it were, right there in the store.  What can I say?  I was weak at the moment, it was priced right ($17.95), it was healthy, the back of the plant tag said it was hardy to Zone 4, and I was disappointed at all Menard's other seasonal rose offerings at the store.  My hypocrisy on full display, I swooped it up and brought it home before my conscience kicked in.

Here at home, I transplanted it to a larger vacant pot and watered it in.   Despite its "fire-engine red" color I'm not confident it will be noticeable planted alongside the large shrubs and shrub roses of my greater garden, and besides, I can always move the pot and hide my moral failure and disgrace if any discerning gardeners are coming over.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush, of course, will love this potted rose wherever I place it, but her tastes, as always, are suspect in regards to plant aesthetics.  Thankfully, her discernment is better at choosing husbands, or so I'd like to believe. 

In my defense, 'Petite', otherwise known as Zepeti®, is not really a Knock Out® rose, at least not one bred by Bill Radler. Yes, it was introduced in the US by Star Roses, the parent company promoting all things Knock Out®, but the registered variety name is MEIbenbino, indicating it was a cross by the House of Meilland, in this case by Alain Meilland in 2011.   Alain is, by my count, the 5th generation of his family to be engaged in rose culture, but he was evidently turned by the Dark Side of the Force and used RADtko ('Double Knock Out') as the pollen parent of the cross resulting in 'Petite'.  

I did notice an unexplained oddity during my research around MEIbenbino.  Helpmefind\roses says that 'Petite' is the "first rose covered by a U.S. Utility Patent, which protects the introducer by restricting any party from hybridizing with it."  A utility patent restricts breeding, propagation, reproduction from or development of this variety as well as propagation.   And yet, helpmefind/roses also says that 'Petite' is a verified triploid.   Since triploid plants are usually sterile, I'm a little perplexed about the "superpatent" afforded this rose, since logically it should, as a triploid, be the end of its own genetic line.   Regardless, in the event that it ever develops hips and seeds, one should keep it to oneself and not notify the patent police.  Or, like Bella here, just avoid this rose altogether as a safety measure.  My conscience will thank you.

Dandy Standout

Any ideal hobby should have variety, and gardening seems to have it in spades (yes, pun intended).  Gardens provide variety of species, cultivar, and plant size.  Variety of color, variety in foliage (in fact, some foliage is "variegated"!), variety in season of bloom, and variety of leaf shape, petal shape, and plant form.  Gardeners induce variety (or chaos) themselves by how they site a plant, how they fertilize and care for it, and how they protect it from temperature extremes or insects.

And every season, it seems, some plants seem to decide all on their own to step up and stand out, to shine or sparkle.  This year the first plant to do so seems to be the lilac 'Yankee Doodle', a relatively recently introduced (1985) cultivar of S. vulgaris selected by the late Jesuit priest, Father John Fiala at his farm in Medina, Ohio, the acreage he called Falconskeape.

My 'Yankee Doodle' caught my eye today as I was engaged in my first spring mowing, mowing not so much grass as a crop of rampant henbit, chickweed, and other spring nuisances.  'Yankee Doodle' was planted in 2003 among a line of right lilacs along the west border of the garage pad, a line that perfumes the entire yard if provided the proper temperature and a gentle breezes comes out of the south or west.  My intention at the time of planting it was to both screen out the two-foot tall ugly concrete wall that constitutes the edge of the garage pad, and, to create just the sort of saturated fragrance showstopper that it has become.  My lilacs amply fill both roles.

Most years, 'Yankee Doodle' struggles, lanky, tall, and sparse, its stems prone to borers and breakage, as are the cultivars that flank it, 'Nazecker' to the right and 'Wonderblue' to the left.  I should complain less about them since this bed is labeled "Forsythia Bed" on my maps and contains not a single forsythia, all perished or shovel-pruned for their inconsistent bloom.  This year, somehow, 'Yankee Doodle' bloomed extra-prolifically and it is the most prominent lilac of its immediate group, indeed of the whole line.  It is at the end of its bloom cycle as pictured here, the deepest purple single flowers of lilac-dom faded just a bit here by age and a recent rain.  And yet, still it caught my eye as I mowed, a 'Yankee Doodle' all dandied up and showing off its best side in this, its seemingly random year to stand out.   So now, 'Yankee Doodle' fading, I'm left to wonder what species, what variety, what plain, regularly overlooked plant will step up to be the next Cinderella or Dandy.

And Where Did YOU Come From?

By the question in the title, ProfessorRoush is not trying to be nosy of you, the reader, but of this precocious Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) that suddenly appeared as I was puttering around outside, doing some trimming, some weeding, and a little planting.  I was shocked in the moment, first to see any butterflies at all this early in the season, and then shocked again to have it cooperate for these closeups.

You see, really I was out taking stock of things, because for the past few days, I've been in Washington DC, where I took the photo on the right during some moderate rain and wind at 6:41 p.m. (isn't it amazing that because of phone cameras, I will always know exactly where I was at 6:41 p.m. on Friday, April 11, 2025, because the data is forever embedded with the photo)?  If you're going to walk near the White House, I can now recommend doing it on a chilly, rainy Friday night because the streets were deserted at that hour, no protestors ranting and chanting and messing up my "chill", just a few tourists on the sidewalk and a half-dozen watchful Secret Service and Capital Police agents (that I could see at the time).  I was only sorry the landscaping lights weren't on yet, and, no, I didn't ask to knock on the door and see if President Trump was receiving visitors.

I was also fortunate on Saturday to have my return flight fly directly over near our home, and so, on April 12th at 2:40 p.m., I was able to capture this photo from the window of the plane.   Our home and gardens are in the white circle center left, surrounded by the darkened prairie ground exposed from our burn last week.  Click on the photo to enlarge it (hitting "escape" will then bring you back to the blog).  Mrs. ProfessorRoush was presumably not at home at the time and in route to pick me up.

But I digress.   The Swallowtail that prompted this blog entry (a male, easily gendered by its less colorful "eyes") seemed to be focused on the female holly plant sited on the northeast corner of the house, and the inconspicuous white blooms of the holly.  I didn't read anything about holly being a host plant, but both roses and magnolias are larval hosts for the species and there are plenty of those about.  Other host plants include lilacs and Cottonwood trees and those species are each in my yard as well. 

I was saddened that this specimen seems to have a damaged or missing left "tail", and I hope that won't hinder its search for a mate or its long-term survival.   For what little I know of Swallowtails, this male might also be just out of its chrysalis and maybe it just needs to unfold the left tail, temporarily rather than permanently deformed.  Either way, I wish the little guy luck and happy mate-hunting.  As there are either two or three generations of Tiger Swallowtails in a season, depending on the latitude, the Swallowtails I see in September could be his grandchildren.

The White House, from Lafayette Park, 04/11/2025, 6:41 p.m.

Redbud Respect

ProfessorRoush, is appreciating the multiple Eastern Redbuds (Cercis canadensis) that are this year, if ever-so-briefly, the shining jewels of my world, focal spots of happiness who seldom get the recognition they deserve in the landscape or in print.  In fact, I am taking special notice of redbuds popping, intentionally planted and wild, all over town, bright pink-red blooms beating the crabapples and Bradford pears into bloom and stealing the spotlight from the sparse lime-green Spring foliage of other trees.  Soon, they will fade into the background, underappreciated understory trees lost among their distant lignacious cousins.  

A prominent specimen in my yard, pictured at the left, was a volunteer in my back landscape bed which I have allowed to remain in its self-chosen spot and nurtured to adolescence.  In fact, "nursed" might be a more accurate term than "nurtured", as this tree split into two during a violent windstorm several years back and I braced and bandaged and pruned and healed it to its current form.  Among the many storied uses of Duct Tape, I can add "tree bandage" to the list from personal experience.

Of the 7 or 8 redbuds in my yard, only one was intentionally planted, the aging specimen pictured here at the right, the favorite tree of Mrs. ProfessorRoush and planted just outside the laundry room window. Viewed from the road in front of the house, it frames the right side of the driveway and decorates and anchors the house.  Seen "down the hill" and into the garden, it serves as a complimentary backdrop to the floriferous 'Annabelle' lilac terraced below it, the latter the first of my lilacs to bloom.

 

I have noticed the redbuds especially this year because the fickle Kansas weather preempted and eliminated last year's bloom with a miserably-timed freeze, a not-so-uncommon occurrence that happens here, according to my notes, about one year in five.   A redbud-less Spring is, I can confirm, intensely discouraging, and similarly disheartening in spirit as other dysfunctions of daily life.  Such a depressing interruption of our annual cycle drowns our spirits in disappointment (some choose drowning their disappointment in spirits) while we attempt to sustain some minor hope for the best for next year.  Sine qua non, while the late night television lineup seems packed with commercials of remedies for erectile dysfunction (which it demurely refers to as "ED"), there is no known cure for gardeners who suffer from RD (redbud dysfunction). 

My notes also tell me that the redbuds are blooming early this year, a full 10 days ahead of their average peak.  I originally thought it was a late Spring, but while some species are blooming later than normal (Scilla, daffodils), others seem to be early.  Perhaps the long cold Winter and sudden, extended, warm period in mid-March has compressed the season. Some species and accurate dates, sadly, are often respectively missing or suspect as I am prone to only note early blooming species and choose those notations by whim. And consistently, by late April I fade away and stop recording.  So some years I mention the first blooms of some species and other years I don't record them but have notes of other flowers.   A better system might be to take notes of blooming plants on specific days; the 1st, 5th, 10th, etc. of each month, for example, which might improve accuracy and consistency.

The last two photos here reflect the remaining redbuds in my garden.   On the annual Manhattan Area Garden Tour a decade back, I noted that one homeowner had created a "grove" of redbuds.   Intrigued by the idea, I have collected, over several years, a half-dozen of volunteer redbud seedlings from their birth sites and replanted them beneath a Cottonwood tree at the back of the yard.   Here around the solid garden bench and protected by the Cottonwood, some have grown enough to be noticeable at bloom, and in 5-10 years, I expect this to be a wondrous focal point, full of mystery and life and Spring fairies each year.