Blue Flowering Grass?

Common Dayflower

Sometimes Nature, herself, smacks us on the forehead with the creation of a little unsolicited garden plant combination that draws our immediate attention.  I had just that sort of mental face-slap as I strode into the veterinary college within the last hour, noticing these pretty blue flowers waving among a ornamental grass clump to the left of the entrance.  My semi-aware brain immediately snapped into frantic overdrive.  Blue flowers?  Ornamental grass?  What new cultivar was this?

A closer look revealed the beast lurking within the beauty.  The ornamental grass clump is a Panicum cultivar, probably something like 'Cheyenne Sky' or 'Shenandoah', beginning to turn red on the tips here in late July.  I grow several at home, and every Fall I enjoy the soft spikelets atop the stiffly erect blades of the grass.  Here, in front of the limestone building, this blue-green cultivar stands out in nice contrast, although it doesn't create quite as lively a scene as it does in my constantly wind-swept garden. 

An Unholy Combination

The flowers, of course, are those of the Common Dayflower, Commelina communis, a thug that I've mentioned before and wrote about in my book, but never really discussed here.  It is quite a beautiful flower, really.   The gorgeous dual sky-blue petals soar above the bright yellow staminodes, while the less conspicuous anticous fertile stamens hover over the single, smaller, obscured white petal.  Harmless in appearance, the plant is actually one of the most invasive plants I've ever known, a fearless Asian invader bent on world domination and more ruthless than any human barbarian horde.  I obtained a single clump early in my gardening career from a friend fiend who grew them beneath a shade tree.  Released into the unrelenting sunshine of my Kansas garden, I quickly found that it spread ruthlessly, impervious to glycosphate. 2,4-D, and everything else I've thrown at it.  I've tried to burn it out, starve it, and stomp it to death.  In its native environment, it grows primarily in moist soils, but here it has laughed equally at droughts, heat, drowning and frigid winter temperatures.  I haven't let a single plant flower in my garden for 15 years now, and still it persists, defying my best efforts at Dayflower genocide.  My sole hope is that somewhere, hidden in a small laboratory, a mad scientist is working on a small nuclear bomb suitable for garden-size applications. 

No matter how beautiful this combination seems, consider this a forewarning that you would have to be crazy to try it in your own garden.  Of course, I'm overlooking the fragile sanity level of most avid gardeners.  Anything to outdo the neighbors, right?  Several of you already have mentally placed this combination into your gardens, perhaps along the garden paths where it can be experienced at close quarters, perhaps just around that specimen bush, where it will surprise and delight a visitor?  Don't.  I'm telling you, just don't.  God only knows how many years, State workers and tax dollars it will take to eliminate the Common Dayflower from this one clump of ornamental grass.

OMG, I Did NOT do that!

Well, I've gone and done it now.  Some of you out there probably know what the outcome from my most recent rash action will be, but those who do know what will happen haven't shared that knowledge publicly, at least that I can find.  So I forged ahead, bravely going where no gardener who is willing to admit it has gone before.


Miscanthus sinensis 'Variegata'

The problem:  I'm tired of ornamental grasses that grow too tall and then flop over the roses in an attempt to smother them.  Yes, it was probably bad placement in the first place, but how was I to know how floppy some, but not all of the grasses, get?  I grow a number of ornamental grasses in my mixed shrub and rose beds and for the most part, I enjoy the extra season of flowering and change they add to my garden in autumn, and enjoy them again in winter as they collect and brave the snows. The Calamagrostis sp, and most of the Panicums mind their manners with a few exceptions, bravely standing up tall and not bothering the next-door neighbors.  But many of the Miscanthus, and Panicums such as 'Dallas Blues', just get too darned big for their own good.

I attempted to move some established clumps of Miscanthus sp. this spring that were poorly placed and I was taught once again how difficult the root system of these grasses are to divide and conquer.  In fact, they conquered me and I gave up.  My second thought was to try cutting them back by half in mid-summer and seeing what effect that would have on their ultimate flowering and size, but I can't find any information about the likely result.  Well, to be honest, everything I've read says NOT to cut them back mid-season.  Since I know that grasses grow from the base, I am skeptical of that advice and I'm wondering what the real harm will be. 

So, I did it anyway.  In the upper left, Miscanthus sinensis 'Variegata'  has been sheared off so that the Rose de Rescht at its feet can get some more sun.  Before, as you can see in the middle picture here, its full size even before flowering is an imposing figure next to the roses around it.  And in the picture at the lower right, you can see that I've hacked away at Panicum virginatum 'Dallas Blues' so that it doesn't shade my hard-found new rose 'Lillian Gibson' (the story about that, later).  In fact, a total of 5 other Miscanthus along with these two bad boys got a haircut.

Panicum virginatum 'Dallas Blues'with baby rose
 'Lillian Gibson' at its feet.

So go ahead, those of you who know what is going to happen, feel free to comment and say what an idiot I am and how you would have told me not to do it.  I found that cutting them off was easy to do, about 20 minutes for 7 grass clumps in the evening sun, and I'll do it again in a heartbeat if it isn't too detrimental to the fall display.  I'm hoping they mature shorter and more upright and I don't hurt flowering too much.  Time, as always, will provide me the ultimate answer.  I'll keep you apprised of how the experiment is going.

93; Not Fahrenheit

Yesterday afternoon we hit 93 here in the Flint Hills; that is, a 93 MPH sustained wind gust.  I've often lamented the windy nature of Kansas in the past and I've seen 70MPH sustained winds, but I don't know if I've ever seen a 93MPH sustained gust.

The occasion was a summer storm initiated by a cold front moving in to break our month-long streak 100+F weather, and since I was in a meeting in the interior of a very large K-State building, I missed it entirely.  I emerged to see the end of a fabulous but short rainstorm that brought about one inch of rain to break our month-long drought, to the site of limbs down over the KSU campus, and to a phone message from Mrs. Professorroush that the power was out at home. 

On the bright side, my garden survived the wind intact.  I've spent some time over the past few years learning how to prevent wind damage to the structures in my garden and it has paid off.  That knowledge was hard-won and primarily consists of over engineering structures in my garden to resist an atomic blast, to trimming trees and shrubs to encourage compact form, and to frequent prayer during storms.  I was most pleased to see the several wire towers for vining plants (honeysuckle, Sweet Autumn clematis, bittersweet) in my garden came through without a dent.  Before reinforcing them this spring, a gale like this would have left them looking like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  And my 2 year old, handmade/homemade octagonal gazebo is still standing.  During its construction, I knew better than to use a flimsy commercial kit, lest I someday have to search for the remains of the gazebo in Missouri, so it's anchored with 8 four X four posts that are cemented in the ground and so far, it's survived the worst of the Kansas weather.

My minor casualties consisted of a few splayed ornamental grasses (Panicum virgatum ‘Prairie Sky’ seems to be the worst of these), a snapped off Caryopteris 'Blue Mist',   and a broken-off rose, Griff's Red, that was down to a single cane and had been struggling anyway.  With a little luck, the only permanent damage was the Griff's Red loss and I tried to minimize that impact by planting some stem cuttings from the cane.  Time will tell.