KSU's Tillotson Native Plant Garden

To finish off my native wildflower weeks on
Garden Musings, I'll move to one blog subject that I'm planning to return to more frequently as this year goes on.  I feel I should do a better job at alerting readers to the learning opportunities available at the K-State Gardens and the various sub-gardens in the project.  I work only a block away from this fantastic gardening resource, and I have the honor of being allowed to provide some volunteer labor time in the KSU Rose Garden.  So please allow me a small advertisement for a very deserving garden.

The Kansas State University Gardens project is a privately-funded display garden on the campus of KSU that serves as an educational resource and as a learning laboratory for KSU students and the visiting public.  When completed, a 19-acre garden is planned that will show off hardscape and tested ornamental plant material in different aesthetic settings in the Flint Hills environment.

One of the already-existing specialty gardens in the project is the Adaptive/Native Plant Garden which was sponsored by the late John E. Tillotson.  It was redesigned in the past two years by a KSU student under supervision of the Gardens Director and it is a marvelous display of plant material that is found growing in natural areas throughout Kansas and the Great Plains Region.  As you can see from the pictures on this page, native prairie plants can make both a floriferous and cohesive display with a little pre-planning.  Last year, I was stunned when the milkweed bloomed and as you can see from the clump of milkweed around the commemorative garden sign above, those large leaves and big flower heads make a standout display if properly placed.   Amateurs and professionals alike can learn new approaches for commercial or residential landscape design from this garden.  Visit it online at the KSUGardens site or in person on the KSU campus.  And please consider becoming a Friend of the KSU Gardens to support the continued development of the garden.

June Not-Wildflowers

I hope you've been enjoying the series of prairie wildflowers I've added to the blog in the past week or so.  However, I would be remiss if I didn't also illustrate that the wildflowers aren't the only blooms or color on the prairie right now.  Some of the prairie grasses also bloom at this time and there are always forbs with some nice foliage contrast:

These long spires are the flowers of the appropriately-named "June Grass" (Koeleria macrantha).  June Grass is a perennial in the Poas family and grows 18-24 inches tall, pushing these green-white heads above the surrounding Bluestem and Indian Grass during this month, but then they'll be overshadowed later by those taller grasses. Named for a German botanist of the 18th century, Ludwig Koeler, June Grass grows in sporadic tufts over the native prairie grass and blends in with the airy white inflorescence's of PrairieYarrow and Philadelphia Fleabane. 

Another brownly-blooming denizen of the prairie right now is Texas Bluegrass (Poa arachnifera).  This dioecious grass chooses whatever sex of flower it wants to display and gets right down to it in the early summer.  The species name refers to the long white hairs of the spikelets which are said to resemble a spider web.  I don't see the resemblance, myself.

Unfortunately or fortunately, my surrounding prairie is blessed with a nice silvery-foliaged sage that I could also argue should be viewed as a prolific weed.  White Sage (Artemsia ludoviciana) is everywhere, both over the prairie and in my mown prairie lawn, where it stands out with a definite weedy look. I once cultivated a clump in my front landscaping where I thought it would make a nice 2-3 foot foliage contrast plant, only to realize that it spreads quickly by rhizomes and is fairly invasive. The flowers are also not very noticeable in the border, so my advice is to just keep this one on the prairie.  I'm still pulling it up from among the Monarda and roses.  It is also known as sagewort or wormwood, both alternative common names that are closer to the true nature of the plant.  Native Americans used the aromatic leaves of this plant for everything from toilet paper to underarm deodorant to mosquito repellent, so maybe the best use of the plant is to keep pulling it up anyway.

But enough of prairie plants without flowers.  I know that some of you must have been wondering why I hadn't posted pictures of the native prairie echinaceas, but the truth is that they hadn't bloomed until just the past couple of days.  If I have identified the species correctly, this is Black-Sampson Echinacea (Echinacea angustifolia).  I'm not a botanist but the other Echinacea in the area, Echinacea pallida, has longer petals and is a little paler-pink to my eyes.  Everyone knows about the pain-reducing compounds in Echinacea,  including the Native Americans who used the plant to treat toothaches, burns and sore throats, but what you may not know is that Echinacea is the Greek word for "hedgehog", transferred to the genus here because of the spiny bracts of the flowers.   The taproot of this drought-resistant plant can grow down 5 to 8 feet, so you can forget about transplanting this one from the prairie into your garden.

For the time being, that's about the end of the June-blooming wildflowers here on the prairie, although I noticed that the prairie thistles are just starting to open up.  When they get rolling, I'll come back with their stickery display.  But tomorrow, a special treat for all you native wildflower lovers before Garden Musings moves back on Sunday to my cultivated garden for blogging material!  For one thing, I think it's high time that I told the truth about Sally Holmes so I'm dying to get to that already-conceived post.

Wild Petunias

I almost hate to add in something so bourgeois as the picture below into the middle of an upscale series of nice native prairie wildflowers.  I'll also admit that I'm a little ashamed to reveal this hideous mess to my fellow gardening masses, but I feel I have to show you something both wild, and flowery in my garden, even if it's not "native."

This is a small raised bed at the "point" of our circular...eerrhh...teardrop-shaped driveway.  I established the bed years ago solely to give people a little obstacle to make sure they stayed on the blacktop when they entered the circle.  It was originally made of native prairie limestone and a bit taller, until She Who Doesn't Make Use Of RearView Mirrors backed into it while turning around and dented a fender and I realized that I needed to make it short enough to go under the car in case of emergency.  Anyway, I used to plant tulip and daffodil bulbs in this arid, windswept location until the deer and neighbor dogs conspired to destroy them.  Last year, I had planted a single red superpetunia in the bed, a seedling potted at a February garden show by my daughter, and it covered the bed in rapid fashion.  So this year, thinking that petunias were at least the most economical choice for this spot, if admittedly not the most aesthetic, I purchased the yellow petunias and red salvias that you see above (if you look hard enough) in an effort to give it a nice ambiance.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, last year's petunia, now self-seeded and some variation of mauve, has decided to claim the bed for itself.  Stupid me, I was under the impression that petunias were annuals and wouldn't reseed in this northern climate. I guess they are annuals, but the self-seeded plants have already outgrown the headstart given my greenhouse-grown, purchased plants.

Well, it ain't perfect, but if the Petunia From Hell wants to self-seed and help me save my gardening pennies for other things, who am I to stop it?  Until it eats the blacktop, it can thrive here all it wants.  If only the color was something beside mauve.

June Native Wildflowers III

New wildflowers are blooming nearly as fast as I can keep up with them on these days of warmer weather, but before I move on to flowers that just started blooming, I need to show you the white flowers from last week.

I'm afraid that I have to start with a boast about the voluptuous look of Large Beardtongue (Penstemon grandiflorus), a native prairie bloomer that pops up here and there in single clumps.  I know that the common name doesn't inspire any daydreams, but the species "grandiflorus" name is quite descriptive.  The plump belly of this flower, almost one inch in diameter and 2-3 inches long, makes the popular 'Husker Red' penstemon look anemic by comparison.  Native Americans used the roots of this flower to treat chest pains, so this plant is its own remedy to the swooning gardeners who see it.  It usually doesn't transplant well, but notwithstanding, I had a clump of this in my border for a few years  before it finally petered out.  So, I must learn to enjoy it on the prairie wherever it decides it wants to grow. 

I once had a plant of this Prickly Poppy pop up in the native grass down by the pond, but it never appeared again for me until this year, when it popped up near the road.  Argemone polyanthemos is native to the prairie, but likes disturbed soil so it has become somewhat rare now that the buffalo aren't churning up the tallgrass prairie. The foliage is vicious, but has a beautiful gray-blue-green hue.  The Prickly Poppy  has bright yellow sap that is supposed to be useful to remove warts.  I'd love to figure out how to grow seed for this poppy so that I could keep it going in my garden and perhaps tame it.




Of course, yarrow is everywhere on the prairie, but occurs only in its white form in my vicinity.  This is Western Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), still beautiful, but not quite as colorful as I'd like so I don't invite it into my border.  In fact, I spend a lot of time removing it from my border.  Western Yarrow, however, is a dependable prairie forb during drought years, so I hope that some more colorful yarrow cultivars that I've recently added to my garden have the same trait.

Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) is blooming everywhere in the prairie grass right now and it's tall enough to be visible at long distances.  The flowers are small, but usually perfectly formed white rings around yellow centers. The name comes from an Old English belief that it would kill or repel fleas.











 

I've already shown you a picture of the yellow Missouri Evening Primrose, but the white Showy Evening Primrose (Oenothera speciosa) is just as delicately beautiful.  Like the yellow species, however, the delicate look of the flowers of Showy Evening Primrose belie the aggressive nature of this plant.  It self-seeds in my borders, where I treat it as a welcome visitor at times, but I also give it no mercy if it pops up where I don't want it, like in the vegetable garden.  You have to walk the garden in the late evening or early morning to enjoy these flowers that close and hide from the heat of the day.

The Prairie Larkspur (Delphinium carolinianum), pictured at the right, is one of those seedlings that I've learned to recognize as it pops up and then avoid with the glyphosate nozzle.  It tends to like the moister areas of my garden beds, but it seems to be randomly distributed in small numbers over the prairie. In fact, it is a good thing that it occurs more rarely than, for instance, the Western Yarrow, because Prairie Larkspur is poisonous in moderate quantity to cattle when eaten either fresh or dried in prairie hay.

 

There are, of course, other blooms and foliage contrasts on the prairie, but I'll leave those for a post later in the week.  Hope everyone is enjoying my tour of the prairie forbs.