August Surprises

In the Kansas Flint Hills, late July and August is a dreadful period for gardeners.  There is often a seasonal lack of rain during those weeks and oppressive waves of heat build and sear plants (and gardeners) on a daily basis, turning leaves brown and suppressing plant growth and melting away any resolve to keep the garden in prime condition.   The roses, in misery, pause their blooms and the daylily season has ended and the landscape is left almost colorless, a bland dull green turning brown and not yet displaying any autumn coloration.

I said "almost colorless", though, because there are some intrepid garden denizens who provide some relief from the blandness.   First, I want to recommend loud and clear that every gardener, particularly if you garden in Kansas, needs to obtain some "Surprise Lilies" because this period of summer doldrum is their preferred bloom time.    One minute there's nothing in a spot, and the next, PINK goodness erupts.  I plodded out to my every-other-morning pity-watering of the tomato pots on the last day of July and saw the miracle pictured above.  A few days later, the buds were all in bloom and it was yet even more captivating.  All this from seemingly bare ground!

I've seldom been able to catch them in actual growth, but here are a few early sprouts in process.  In spring, this is a clump of green grass that appears from nowhere, stays green into early summer, and then quickly dries up and disappears.  You can see their remnants at the base of the stems.  The flower stems appear in the same spot a couple of months later, usually unnoticed until they bloom in just a few days.   Sometimes, I think if I watched them closely enough, I could see them grow before my eyes!

My other life-saving perennial at this time is a native, Salvia azurea, the Blue Sage, which is a moderately uncommon but not rare plant in my region.   The clump pictured here is a volunteer in my front landscape that I allowed to remain as a welcome invader a dozen years past and it gets more bushy and floriferous each year.

I'm simply in awe of the gentle sky-blue color and the drought resistance of the plant.   Flowering in the most in-hospitable season here, there must be some survival advantage in being the sole source, or one of the few sources, of pollen during the heat of summer that led its distant ancestors to flower now.   I'm just thankful for all the bees it draws and feeds here, and for the color it brings during an otherwise drab end-of-summer.  And right now, I'll welcome color in any form, however it wants to appear.

A Walk Down The Road with Bella

Tall Goldenrod

(warning:  picture and link heavy)  Every once in a while, ProfessorRoush decides that Bella needs to lose a little weight and we embark on a program to walk nightly down the paved area of the road, about 1.25 miles total in a down-and-back walk.  This week, as we walked, Bella was willing to impatiently wait as I snapped photos of any blooming flowers along the roadside.

So consider this a short tour of the ditches alongside the road.  Of course, this time of year, Goldenrod is everywhere.  My plant identification is suspect as always, especially here given the number of native Goldenrods, but I believe the photos above and left are of Tall Goldenrod, Solidago altissima, although it could be Canadian Goldenrod, the former being a subspecies of the latter.

Snow-On-The-Mountain, Euphorbia marginata, is nearing the end of its bloom cycle, and not nearly as prominent in the landscape as previously this season.

Of course, Blue Sage, or Salvia azurea, one of my favorite wildflowers, is blooming everywhere now.  I thought this specimen looks a bit more faded then most.  It is also known as Pitcher's Sage, in honor of Dr. Zina Pitcher, a US Army surgeon and botanist.

Sunflowers, the state flower of Kansas, are still represented by the Common Sunflower,
Heliathus annuus.   I'm not anywhere near certain of the species name for this specimen, and I wouldn't have a clue at all without the marvelous kswildflower.org website.

There is a lot of White Sage, Artemsia ludoviciana. on the walk, everywhere in the adjacent prairie, its hairy-gray leaves befitting a plant adapted to drought and grazing.

Another white flowering plant,
Brickellia eupatoriopiodes, or False Boneset, is likewise a very frequent visitor to these hills, blooming in the worst of drought and leaving behind an interesting winter skeleton.  It's taproot is said to reach 16 feet in depth when necessary.

Nearly last, but certainly not least, clumps of the the most "garden-worthy" of the prairie plants, Dotted Gayfeather, Liatris punctata, "dots" the prairie with low light purple spires.  Butterflies love this plant, and often are above it in a swarm.     

Wax Goldenweed

A new Plant ID for me was Wax Goldenweed. Grindelia papposa, or at least I think that's what it is.  The plant is in the Sunflower family and is an annual named for David Hieronymus Grindel (1777-1836) a German botanist.  Livestock reportedly don't like it and I'll have to watch for it in the pastures to see if they avoid it.

And that is a walk down my late-September road everyone.   Not as literary-worthy as Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, but its none-the-less my own little "Walk Down the Road with Bella."

Blue, Who Are You?

At this time of year, I always welcome our native Blue Sage (Salvia azurea), with open arms.  It has self-sown itself from the prairie into my garden beds, and I strive to remember what it looks like as a seedling so that I can enjoy it in full August maturity.  That sky blue hue, as I've noted before, just fills up my soul with peace.

If only I could remember to cut it back in early July so that it would "bush up" and wouldn't get so tall and sprawlacious.  This photo of a Blue Sage clump, taken at the very front of my landscaping, shows how it eventually succumbs to gravity and sprawls from the raised bed to the buffalo grass below, brushing my legs or lawnmower each time I go by.  Blue sage also goes by the name of Pitcher sage, to honor Dr. Zina Pitcher, a U.S. Army surgeon and botanist.  A botanical alias, S. pitcheri, seems to be the same plant.   The roots can extend into the prairie 6-8 feet.







I received a blue surprise this afternoon, however, in the form of an unknown blue flower in the same bed.  This slightly-lighter-blue sage with fern-like leaves popped up in the center of the bed.  At present, it is about 3 foot high and wide and just starting to bloom.  I'm surprised that I didn't think it was a weed and pull it out earlier.  I do vaguely remember seeing the foliage last month, thinking it looked like ragweed but unsure, and making a conscious decision to let it bloom so that I could identify it.






Look closely at that finely cut foliage with what surely looks like a sage flower starting to bloom among it.  I quickly snatched these two iPhone photos today so that I could spread word of this wonder to the world.   But what sage is it?  I spent two hours tonight searching for other possible salvias in the region.  I searched the USDA plants database and came up empty for anything that should be in Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, or Nebraska.  My local wildflower books didn't help.  In desperation, I broke off a piece of the plant and placed it on the scanner bed, to get a better look at the structure of the foliage (see below), and to upload it to others for identification.  I even assigned it a study name, Salvia azurea roushii, just in case it was a previously undescribed species and this was my designated fifteen minutes of fame.



In the end, however, I simply proved that the entire world should be happy that I became a veterinarian and not a botanist.  I simply spent two hours being an idiot.  Finally, examining the stem of the specimen I scanned, I realized that it didn't have the characteristic mint-like, squared-off stem that it should have as a sage.  So back I went outside, and on closer examination, found what should have been obvious to me at first glance.  This IS a Salvia azurea, growing up through the middle of an Ambrosia, probably Western ragweed (Ambrosia psilostachya), my very common garden nemesis.   I let grow, just this one time, almost to maturity, and it rewarded me by wasting my evening.  Oh well, sometimes that's how the life of an amateur botanist goes.

Welcome Natives

I like to tell visitors to my garden that I have a lot of weeds in my garden because I'm trying to promote the free seeding of native prairie perennials. That gets me a lot of pats on the back from wild-eyed environmentalists and everybody likes a little praise.  It's true, though.  I don't like to use preemergents in my garden beds simply because it will also suppress native plants from sprouting wherever they like to pop up.  It means a few more weeds and crabgrass, but one pays the price for one's choices. As my garden evolves, I've learned more and more to choose to nurture the surprise native plant treasures that the Flint Hills provides me. 

I have two favorites that spread from the surrounding prairie to various parts of my garden.  One is the Blue Sage (Salvia azurea) that blooms in August and September in my corner of the prairie.   Also called Pitcher Sage after Dr. Zina Pitcher, a early 1800's U.S. Army surgeon and botanist, Blue Sage grows two to five feet tall with the five foot height more common in a cultivated and mulched garden bed. Its roots extend six to eight feet into the deep prairie soils below, so in my garden it never gets or needs supplemental water even in the current +100 August weather. I've found that the plant gets a little bushier, it doesn't sprawl as much, and I can delay the bloom if I trim it back a little bit in late July to about two feet tall. But most important is that heavenly sky blue color so coveted by many gardeners and by this gardener in particular.  There are other blue salvias, of course, but in my Zone 5 garden this is the one that sticks.  Over ten years I've got six plants now growing in my various beds, at the cost of only recognizing the seedlings when they first begin to grow and leaving them alone. And truly, how better to find the right micro-environment for a specific plant than letting them seed themselves?

My second favorite of the self-seeding prairie natives is the native Asclepias tuberosa, or Butterfly Weed.  Popping up here and there in the most barren, arid spots I have, this bright orange native draws in butterflies in July and August like, well, moths to a flame.  There are eight current clumps of this perennial in my landscaping and since it has a long taproot and is difficult to transplant, I'm lucky to have it seed itself in areas that it likes.  It is well-behaved, never invasive, and keeps to a polite two to three foot height without trimming or coddling.  A better perennial for a garden can't be found and I hope it escapes the ravages of the hybridizers so I don't have to push away my native orange variety for some muddled pink or off-white ugly cousin.