Now? Really?

Like many other Texas-borne and -bred organisms, my Texas Red Yucca seems to be befuddled since it was transplanted from its native environment.  I have three plants, purchased on a whim after I saw them blooming in Las Vegas, and I am finding their bloom periods unpredictable at best.

Keep in mind that all three plants are the same age and size and they are cited about two feet apart in the same bed under the same tree.  Last year, two clumps bloomed, the center one starting in June and the south-most one in July, both continuing through September.  This year, the center clump didn't bloom at all.  The clump to the north end bloomed alone in June and has made a nice display all summer.  A closeup photo of the very long-lasting waxy flowers from that raceme is on the left, below.  Most recently, just a few days ago and after our first freeze here, I noticed two foot-high flower spikes growing on the southern-most clump as pictured to the above right.  Say what?  What possible natural signal would have enticed this plant to start blooming now? 

Talk about your messed up biologic cycles.  Land sakes, it must be more evidence of Global Warming!   Somebody please, quick, alert Al Gore!  He'll surely take action; at least, maybe, if you can pull him away from the millions he made selling his TV network to Al-Jazeera.

It will, at the very least, be interesting to see how the winter weather affects this raceme.  Will it shrivel up and turn brown and die?  Or will the waxy coating protect it from the frigid North winds and the dehydrating bright winter sun?  Will this stalk perhaps make it to March and then bloom in April, giving me 6 full months of bloom from a single stalk of flowers? 

No way could I get that lucky.  I'm predicting either a) a mouse will find these succulent stems delightful as a Christmas meal, or b) that the stress of the flowering stalk forming in late fall and into winter will result in the death of the plant, while its more intelligent neighbors bide their time and survive.  Or both.

A Little Piece of Texas

Like most of the US population, Kansans sometimes exhibit a little bit of Texas envy, manifested in the gardening population of Kansas by a desire to grow Texas Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush.  Since neither of the forementioned plants are reliably hardy in my climate (don't think I haven't tried!), I've turned to another native Texas plant to satisfy my yearnings; Red Yucca, also known as Texas Red Yucca or Red False Yucca.

Of course, since I've only been in Texas once, not counting a few hops through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I was introduced to Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) in Las Vegas, where it serves as a common xeri-landscape plant.  I'm sure any native Las Vegans, if in fact there are any, could identify the plant on sight, but I suffered on that particular trip from being in a foreign climate where a) I had no real idea what I was looking at, and b)  neither did any of the people working for the hotels and casinos that I asked.  From experience, I'm guessing that casino dealers and hostesses as a general rule don't spend a lot of time admiring the casino landscaping.  Identification had to wait for my return home and access to a computer, where I recognized Hesperaloe on the High Country Gardens website as the plant I'd just spent three days lusting after.

Hesperaloe parviflora 'Yellow'

Red Yucca is found native to the Rio Grande and northern Mexico area, in the Chihuahuan desert, where it matures to a 2-3 foot high and 4 foot wide succulent mound with narrow blue-green leaves and filamentous edges.  The plant flowers over a long period with inverted bell-shaped flowers of coral red, and it is well-suited for xeriscaping by its drought-tolerant, full-sun requirements and its preference for alkaline soil.  I was happy to see that it's a favored plant by hummingbirds and requires little or no maintenance beyond cutting down the flower stalks.  In fact, one helpful Internet gardener commented that it grows in very poor soil, "virtually no soil," so it seems made for my Flint Hills clay.  It's supposed to be hardy to zone 5, and evergreen to boot, so I'm giving this one a chance in my garden.  I've planted two different varieties from High Country Gardens, the red Hesperaloe and a yellow form (Hesperaloe parviflora 'Yellow'), both in somewhat well-drained poor-soil areas. Both survived the hot, dry summer we just had and needed minimal extra watering for establishment.   The yellow form, pictured at left, is doing great and probably has doubled in size since June, although it hasn't yet bloomed. I have great hope for it as I've seen reports of it growing in Denver, Colorado, and Shawnee Mission, Kansas, the latter just a hop, skip, and dead plant away.

So, once again, I'm stepping out into the murky waters of zonal envy and pinning my dreams for garden excellence on a whimsically-chosen plant glimpsed in someone else's climate.  You'd think I'd learn, expecting providence while staring from warm September down into the depths of a Kansas winter.  You'd think all gardeners would learn, but gardeners, more than all other human strains, seem to remain eternal optimists in the face of repeated failure.