I Was In The Wrong Place

I suddenly realized yesterday that I'd been looking for Monarch butterflies to show up for years in the wrong place. And it has unfortunately started an "earworm".   

♫ I been in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time. 

I'd have said the right thing, but I must have used the wrong line. ♫

Thank you, Dr. John (Malcolm John Rebennack, 1940-2019)!   

Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) 

You see, friends, Manhattan Kansas is near one of the major migration routes for Monarch butterflies, and I know that, but I could never figure out why I didn't come across more than an occasional one.  Every year, when I bushhog the pasture in late June, I take special care to go around and preserve a large area of native milkweed that first cropped up on disturbed prairie soil from when we built the "barn".  I always hoped that it would draw the monarchs down from the heavens during their Southern migration period, but, watching for them, I seldom saw any.

Western Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii)

I was out again yesterday on the bushhog, cutting down some summer forb overgrowth, particularly a few patches of Western Ironweed (Vernonia baldwinii), and stopped immediately when I saw the cloud of butterflies feasting on the delicate purple blooms.  Whites, Sulphurs, Skippers, Fritillaries, Monarchs, Swallowtails; they were all out feeding in the early hot afternoon. 

Western Ironweed closeup 

Of course, being butterflies, they wouldn't sit still or let me near them, so I captured these images on 5X from a distance.  I was especially proud to catch the Monarch and Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) captured on the same plant (top right), and both nearly in focus!

Jim Mason's Pocket Guide to Common Kansas Butterflies is a great online resource for butterfly identification, and shows valuable "folded" wing pictures of most entries, but it couldn't help me with this one! 

I've never read that Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) feed on Western Ironweed before. Veronia sp. are included in a rather long list of  "adult food sources" on the Monarch butterfly Wikipedia page, but so are half the other plants in my area.   Otherwise known as Baldwin's Ironweed, it is a common invasive weed on the prairie, and cattle won't eat it (which means deer won't eat it either!).  Now that I know it is an important nectar plant, I'll have to let clumps grow in my landscape in the future.  

Color Echoes and Garden Dramas

Basye's Purple Rose

While mowing yesterday, ProfessorRoush yesterday that he had accidentally and serendipitously planted a "color echo" side by side in the same bed, unrecognized until both bloomed at the same time.  Everyone who has spent time on my blog knows that I am a fan of trouble-free Basye's Purple Rose (top, right).  It's blooming sparsely but steadily right now, preparing, I hope, for a big fall show.

Buzz™ Velvet

Basye's Purple is in the foreground of the picture to the left.  Just across the bed, in the background of the photo, is its color twin, a dwarf butterfly bush that I planted in 2014.  This one is Buddleia davidii 'Buzz™ Velvet', a rich copy of Basye's deep magenta color if ever there was one.  'Velvet' is one of the series of Buzz™ buddleias hybridized by Planthaven Int’l, and he survives well in my garden, one of only two that have returned for more than 5 years running ('White Perfusion' is the other one).



Buzz™ Velvet may be a "butterfly bush," but it wasn't drawing any butterflies yesterday in my garden.  No, the butterflies were all running to the Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum) that sits near the feet of my 'Jane' magnolia.  I have a single specimen of Joe, and he's as coarse and weedy as his name suggests, but at least he's fragrant, and fragrant in a good way.  Dull pink is a charitable description of his complexion, but in contrast the fragrance is to die for.







Joe Pye Weed does, however, beckon insects from all over the garden, just as it did the Painted Lady butterfly I photographed on it, and it has a delicious, sweet and light fragrance for ProfessorRoush to enjoy as well.  Sometimes even a weedy plant has a few positive attributes.

Wheel Bug 

Like many gardening stories, however, this happy meeting of a fragrant plant and a beautiful butterfly is not without cautionary notes.  Just two feet in front of the butterfly, another of life's little dramas, was playing out on the Joe Pye Weed.  This Wheel Bug, Arilus cristatus, has grabbed itself a bumblebee for it's evening meal.  I've also written about Wheel Bugs, and this largest of the assassian bugs (Hemiptera) is a common predator in my garden, if a nonselective one.  Mr. Wheel Bug, can you please, in the future, leave the bumblebees alone and concentrate on Japanese Beetles and June bugs?  Or are they just too tough for you, you coward?

Where Are The Butterflies!!?

ProfessorRoush tries to be a good gardener, and a gracious host of garden fauna, but once in a while he is incredibly oblivious to the obvious and dense to the details.  I've been so focused on catching up with spring--weeding, trimming, spreading 80+ bags of mulch, watering and weeding again--that I've been focused on the ground and the work and missing the big picture.  Well, to be accurate, I've missed the fact that the big picture is missing something.



 As my 'Blizzard' Mockorange (Philadelphus lewisii 'Blizzard') began to bloom, however, it finally dawned on me that I haven't seen a single butterfly yet.  Not a skipper, not a fritillary, not a hairstreak, none, on any flower yet this year.  My 'Blizzard' is usually covered with them while it blooms.  Let alone a Painted Lady on the 'Blizzard', like the beauty above that I photographed in 2012, I haven't seen any butterflies at all this year.   My 'Blizzard' is in full bloom as captured two days ago in the photograph at the left and there is not a single butterfly on it. 






What's going on?  As I think back, my alliums have all bloomed and past, and yet I saw no butterflies like this Painted Lady pictured on the 'Globemaster' allium at right, again from 2012.  Honeysuckle, roses, Knautia macedonia, all are blooming now without their usual halo of winged angels.  It's not like I've been puffing the insecticides around this year.  I use a little in the vegetable garden when I'm desperate, but I haven't broke open the carbaryl dust on the potatoes yet this year, and I don't use it in the rest of the garden ever.

Frankly, I'm more than a little worried.  I knew we had a rough winter, dry and cold, because  I lost a number of roses and more than a few long-established shrubs.  But was it really that dry and cold?  We have fallen deeper into drought this spring, with every storm passing just to our east or north, like this one I captured on radar from 2 nights ago, slipping to the east without raining here.  There have been no ground-soaking rains since last September and already the temperatures are climbing to the 100's (today the temperature hit 102ºF in my garden).   My front lawn is beginning to dry up and looks like the browning turf of late July or early August instead of the usual lush green of late May.   Are the timing or sequences of butterfly and bloom off?  My allium and mockoranges bloomed together in 2012, yet this year the alliums bloomed and faded a week before the mockorange opened the first blossom.  Has any of this environmental variability affected the butterflies?  Am I to witness no joyous fritting about of a fritillary this entire year?

Is anyone else missing their butterflies? 

I'll let you know if, and when they arrive here.  Until then, I'm at a loss to know if this is a variation of normal, or an omen of the world's end.

Old Plants And Old Landscapes

A marketing email from K. Van Bourgondien with the subject line "Do you know how old YOUR plants are" caught my eye the other day.  The email continued with a discussion of antique or heritage flowers available from this large mail order source, but my mind had already tripped down another garden path before I read the body of the email.  I was immediately thinking "how old is this or that individual plant in my garden?"

At this point, after thinking about it for awhile, I'm not sure how I would, or should, answer that question.  My garden, from when I began to think of it as a garden, began with the construction of the house and is now 14 years old, give or take a month or two.  But because I've been adding a bed or two each year to the "garden", some plants are much younger than others.  The house landscaping was first, and so there are hollies on the north side of the house that will be 14 years old come this May.  The back patio came a year later, and thus 'Madame Hardy' and 'Marie Bugnet' are 13 years old.  There are 'New Hampshire Gold' forsythia to the West that are also 13 years old and who are unlikely to get much older because I've tired of them and they are not the showiest varieties available.  Farther down the garden, there are plants of every age, right down to the one week old 'Madame Hardy' sucker that I just detached from the original and replanted down into another bed.  And there are some garden plants on this land that I planted before it "was" a garden.  Several years before building, I planted, and lost, and planted again a few fruit trees down on the western hillside.  In a similar fashion, there are asparagus roots in the vegetable garden that date back to 1996. 

There are, of course, other ways of looking at plant age.  I would argue that an open-pollinated heirloom Sweet Pea, 'Painted Lady', for instance, is only as old as the seed that I saved from last year.  Identical as the flowers look, there is still variation in the genetic makeup from vine to vine.  But in our current "Era Of The Garden Clones," how old  should I really consider my week-old sucker of 'Madame Hardy'?  Barely rooted, it is a "division" of my 13 year old, purchased original plant.  It is also the same exact living continuation of  the rose first introduced in 1832 by Monsieur Hardy himself.  That 'Maiden's Blush' in my garden dates back before 1400, before the North American Continent that I live on was known to my forefathers.  Many plants, if not most, don't slip into senescence as animals do.  Pando, a clonal colony of Quaking Aspen in south-central Utah, is believed to be the oldest living thing on earth at an estimated age of 80,000 years.  When the same genes continue year after year, century after century, how old do we say our cloned cultivars are? 

And I'm leaving out the plants of the prairie that surround my garden.  The Big Bluestem that populates the Flint Hills prairie, and the False Indigo that brighten it, I know that each clump started from individual wind-blown seeds, but how long ago?  How long does a clump of drought-resistant Little Bluestem live? Are there grasses on my land that have survived climate changes and prairie fires and tornadoes for thousands of years?  Were some of those same grasses grazed by Mammoths? How would I know?  How long will my pampered 'Northwind' Panicum clumps survive after me?

I don't know the answers to these questions, and metaphysical subjects are too exhausting right now for this winter-weakened gardener.  I'm just going to pretend that my one week old sucker from Madame Hardy is a baby, and I'm going to baby it until it blooms true and strong.  And I think that those 'New Hampshire Gold' forsythia are far too old and need to go quietly into that gentle night, helped along by my gardening Dr. Kevorkian look-alike. I'm also going to believe that somewhere out there in the Flint Hills, there is a healthy clump of  Big Bluestem which is secure and happy that it no longer gets regularly squashed under the hoof of a Mastodon.  Just because it makes me happy to think about it. 

Butterflies are Free....

Variegated Fritillary butterfly

Well, perhaps not free, but they are periodically plentiful at certain times.  I am a bad gardener in the sense that I don't pay a lot of attention under normal circumstances to the butterflies in my garden, although I do give occasional thought to selecting native plants and other plants that will attract them. 

Pipevine Swallowtail

The recent bloom of my 'Blizzard' Mockorange and 'Globemaster' Alium coincided to lure in the butterflies like.....well, like flies. The Pipevine Swallowtail at the left, however, preferred the hillside of Purple-Leaf Honeysuckle for its evening meal.  I took all eight of the different pictures within about 1/2 hour one evening.  Identifying them took much longer. 

Painted Lady butterfly

I'm not very good at identifying them, but I've made my best attempt here and I owe any accuracy strictly to a 1991 Emporia State University publication titled 'The Kansas School Naturalist, Vol 37, #4;  Checklist of Kansas Butterflies. Better experts like GaiaGardener (whose previous posts stimulated me to take a look at my own butterflies) will have to check my identifications carefully. 

Dogface Butterfly

The phrase "Butterflies are free, and so are we" is a line from the theme song to a 1972 movie that was also named Butterflies Are Free. It was one of the first movie roles for beautiful actress Goldie Hawn, memorable to a young teenager primarily for the glimpse of the panty-clad gluteus maximus of the then-young and still just-as-gorgeously-perky Ms. Hawn.  Beauty, indeed, exists in all creatures of God.

Checkered White butterfly

I suppose if you are going to visit a white Mockorange near two colonies of insect-eating Purple Martins, you would be best served to be mostly white yourself, invisible, as long as you stand still.

Virginia Lady butterfly

Some butterflies show signs of being the worst for wear, even though the season is early.  Battle-scarred and missing limbs, the goal of life remains the same; leave behind another generation, and you've done your duty for your species.

Skipper?

The identification of many butterflies seems to hinge on pretty small differences and sometimes, judging by the pictures posted on the WWW, it is important to know the regional differences in color intensity and patterns that may exist.  The "skippers" group defeated me in my attempts to identify the butterfly at the right.

Red Admiral butterfly

I am only a novice here in a foreign land filled by fairy-like aerial wraiths, but I will undoubtedly return again, lured by the ephemeral nature of the prey and the rich legacy of the field.  And maybe, just because I like being able to spot a brief blur and proclaim it "Red Admiral", a regal-sounding name if ever one existed.

A Plea for Peas

I don't know how many other gardeners have tried the old-fashioned fragrant sweet peas in their gardens, but if you haven't, consider this a plea for trying these lost lovelies.  To experience the fragrance of one of the hundred-year-old varieties like 'Painted Lady', is to experience Shangri-La, Nirvana (not the band), Vahalla, Eden, and Heaven, all wrapped into one.

'Royal Family Crimson' Sweet Pea

This year I'm growing 'Royal Family Crimson', a lipstick-red variety with a bit less fragrance than some of the older types, but with more "wow" power in the garden.  I chose them from the Select Seeds website after reading that they were bred for heat-resistance and were perfect for cutting, so they seemed to be worth a shot in my hot Kansas garden.  Indeed, they are living up to that reputation because the picture at the right was taken this morning, after a number of days of plus-100 heat in the past two weeks.  My previously grown sweet peas would have given up on blooming and started drying on the vine by now.  I have grown a number of different varieties over the years, from the old-fashioned 'Cupani's Original' to pure white 'Royal Wedding', to pink and red-striped 'American Crimson'.  'Painted Lady' is one of the oldest cultivars, very fragrant, and is widely available and she is one of my favorites.

Mixed varieties of Sweet Peas.

For the uninitiated, fragrant sweet peas, or Lathyrus odoratus, are a different species than  perennial garden sweet peas (Lathyrus latifolius; similar in form but not fragrant), and are a different genus altogether then the sweet peas we grow to eat (Pisum sativum) .  In fact, Lathyrus odoratus are considered poisonous.  For that reason, even though I know intellectually that they won't cross-pollinate, I don't grow them near consumable sweet peas from which I save seed.  I simply don't want to chance finding out I'm wrong when Mrs. ProfessorRoush whips up a nice batch of creamed peas for me.

The ancestors to the modern fragrant sweet pea varieties arrived in England in 1699, sent with or sent by a Sicilian monk named Cupani.  Directed breeding started in the 1880's by a Scotsman named Eckford. They became very successful commercially, especially with the discovery of the large-flowered Spencer types, so named because they occurred as a natural mutation in the gardens of the Earl of Spencer. They were all the rage in the early 20th century when whole flower shows were commonly devoted exclusively to sweet peas, but in the past few decades the number of gardeners who grow them seems to have faded away.   As soon as I discovered them, however, they became one of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's favorite flowers (and mine as well).

Here in Kansas, sweet peas are simple to grow and are planted in the early spring, just a little earlier then eating peas are planted.  I'm told that gardeners in milder climates should plant them in October for spring bloom, but I can testify that the seed and seedlings won't survive a Kansas winter.  I've found that mine germinate better if they are soaked for a full day before planting.  They love a spot in the sun that drains well but is constantly moist, and appreciate a little compost and extra fertilizer.  Most varieties grow as vines about 6 feet tall (although dwarf bush types are available), and so they must be provided with a trellis or fence to climb.  Mine do well with a steel cattle panel placed next to the seed line as they emerge, and I grow them in the vegetable garden currently, although in times past I have planted them beneath the shrub roses and let them climb among the branches.  If you want to keep the fragrant flowers blooming longer, dead-heading has to be done as each bloom fades.  The heirloom varieties all come true to seed if planted separately, and I keep the best varieties from year to year whenever I remember to save the seed.

I'm fairly sensitive to the strong fragrances of some plants.  I don't like, for instance, to eat in a room with even a single cloying blossom of an Oriental Lily.  But fragrant sweet peas, just as strong but not as intrusive, slip slowly into your awareness like a warm wife coming to bed late on a cold winter night.  And they are every bit as enjoyable as the latter.  Well almost, anyway.  Try a few sweet peas, wherever you can obtain them, and I promise that your sweetie will make you grow them evermore.

Gendered Plants

A few days back, editing the blog I posted about the irises in my garden here, it suddenly occurred to me that I think of, and refer to, most plants as having a gender.  "He" or "she" become my pronouns of choice when I'm not using the plant's real name.  Rarely, if ever, do I use "it" to refer to the plant under discussion.

So the big question is, WHY?  Why do I do that?  Am I just really that much of a great big gardening wierdo, or do other gardeners subconsciously apply a gender to most plants?


If I accept that I haven't ventured alone out into Spookyville, the next huge question becomes, HOW?  How do I decide on the gender of a particular specimen?  I've given it some thought over the past few hours and I can't find any sure pattern to my gender nomification.  (Now I'm really scared because I thought I just made up the word "nomification," but apparently it has roots in philosophic discussions of reason.  It means "the assumption that because it has a name, or that because you can give it one, it has actual existence."  So, because I consider a plant female, is it then female?).

'Heritage', male or female?

I don't believe that I'm responding just to flower color, but that is probably a big part of the picture. It is true that I consider most darker or brashly-colored flowers to be male and the pale yellows/pinks/pastels female.  Is the fact that I use "he" to describe the purple and white iris 'Rare Edition' and "she" to describe iris 'Lemon Pop' merely a byproduct of my cultural upbringing and biases, just as the nurseries for my daughter and son were painted pink and pale blue, respectively?  Rosa 'Madame Hardy,' who is white, refined, nicely scented, and delicate, is undoubtedly female in my mind, as is the more modern white hybrid tea rose 'Honor'.  Does that make 'John F. Kennedy', another white hybrid tea, a transvestite?  Maybe not, because grandiflora 'White Lighting' is certainly male in my mind.  Some of my color bias transmits to other species because purple clematis 'Jackmanii' is undoubtedly male, while white 'Guernsey Cream' is undoubtedly female.  Lilac 'Wonderblue' is male while 'Nadezhda' is female.  As I think of roses, I'm pretty sure that David Austin is guilty of my gender-assignment transgressions because most all of his dark roses have male names while the apricots and pastels have names like 'Lady Emma Hamilton' and 'Mary Rose'.  The one exception that comes to mind, 'The Dark Lady', just applies a smoking-hot Senorita persona to a dark red rose and that makes it okay.

What of non-flowering, or inconsequentially-flowering plants?  Boxwoods and junipers are mostly males to me, as are yews and hollies (whether it is Ilex 'Blue Girl' or 'China Boy').    Cornus stolinifera is male, while Cornus alba 'Ivory Halo' is female.  And what about trees?  Cottonwoods are female, I think, while Maples are primarily males.  Sycamore trees and Burr Oaks are very masculine, while Pecan trees are female.  Here's a good one; Purple Smoke Bush (Cotinus coggygria ‘Purple Fringe’) is male, while yellow Cotinus coggygria ‘Ancot’ is female to me.  I've lost my senses, haven't I?

It's certainly not just the name of the cultivar. Turning back to roses,  'Earth Song', a fuschia Buck rose, is a male to me (shouldn't it be female...i.e. Mother Earth?).  But I view 'Carefree Beauty', a softer pink Buck rose, as a female as you would expect.  'Prairie Star', a gender-neutral name of a soft-blush rose, is undoubtedly female.  Here's a test for you:  What is the Bourbon rose  'Variegata di Bologna'?  Male, right?   Am I okay with accepting magenta 'Mme. Issac Pierre' as a female or do I really, deeply, think of the Mme to be Mmmmmmm Issac Pierre" in my Midwestern drawl, and so she's a "he" deep in my mind, a deep magenta named as a man while I ignore the Mme. prefix?  Bright red 'Olympiad' is definitely male and in a like vein,  the same bright-red tones of 'Linda Campbell' make that stiff rugosa cross a male in my mind as well, despite the honor of being named after a prominent female rosarian.

I hate to bring Freud into the discussion, but how much of my bias is dictated by flower form?  I'm admittedly biased that obviously phallic daylilies, knipofia, and globe alliums are predominately male, although I think of many pink daylilies, such as 'Attribution' as female.  Purple daylilies like 'Night Embers'and even brash oranges like 'Kwansi' are just as surely male.   Mushrooms are male, and asparagus is male.  Pumpkins and watermelons and grapes are female.  Oriental lilies are female.  Period. Anybody surprised?

Well, now that I've exposed my floral-related gender biases, I'm sure that I'm going to find other gardeners whispering around behind my back at meetings.  But before you dismiss me as a Garden-variety Gender Offender, please take a moment and consider.  Did you disagree with my assigned genders for any of the plants named above?  Did you?