A-Hoya There!

Flowers occasionally pop up in the most surprising places, sometimes in places where we should expect them, but where we least expect them.  Indulge me, for a moment, and imagine that you have had a nice foliage plant in your office for eight or ten years, a plant that struggles to gain sunshine and one that you occasionally overwater or underwater to the brink of death.  Imagine that it occasionally puts out a new shoot, but otherwise grows extremely slowly, fighting for every inch of its precarious life.  Now imagine your astonishment when you are on the phone one day, engaged in a quite boring conversation, and you look over and see this strange, alien thing hanging from your office plant.

I found myself in that exact scenario last week, when I saw the really strange looking structure shown above as it appeared hanging off my Hoya carnosa plant last week.  Hoya carnosa, also known as the Wax Plant, is about the only plant that can survive my fluorescent prison confines with me, and I actually grow two of them in my office for the dual purposes of extending my Seventies back-to-nature office decor and of advertising my gardening prowess in that most unlikely of places.

I wasn't aware that this plant would flower, but if I had known one of its alternate aliases, Porcelainflower, then my surprise might have been muted.   Hoya carnosa does flower infrequently, and these perennial structures are known as spurs.  Spurs, I'm told, should not be damaged because the plant will flower annually from this same spur and the spur and resulting flowers will get longer as it gets older.  Thick-petaled, waxy flowers on my single spur opened eight days after I first noticed the buds (see the photo below), and they are a fabulous star-within-a-star-shape and scented with, I swear to Mother Nature, the scent of delicious chocolate.  Native to east Asia and Australia, H. carnosa  is able to adapt to bright light, but it can tolerate much lower levels as an indoor plant.  It is said to be an excellent remover of pollutants in the indoor environment, and I can surely use all the clear air at work that I can obtain.

I believe that my Hoya is H. carnosa variegata, a variety with white-edged leaves.  I was surprised all over again today when I googled the plant and found the variety of cultivars that are available.  Like nearly everything else on this earth, Hoyas have their own afficionados, and I ran across a website run by someone named Christina that will open your eyes on the Hoyas.  Now, unfortunately, I've fallen down the rabbit hole and I've got to look for some of the other cultivars that I've seen described during my search.  There is always a new twist awaiting a plant collector prone to passions.

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.

Beautiful Edgings

'Beautiful Edgings'

I'm not leaving the daylily world behind me this year without a "shoutout" (to use vernacular from my students) for my favorite daylily.  This delicate creature is 'Beautiful Edgings', and I know that she's not flashy and that she doesn't have the biggest blossoms, or the brightest coloring, or the most rain resistant petals, but she still is my favorite.  Please allow me to explain.

'Beautiful Edgings' is a midseason "reblooming" daylily hybridized by Copenhaver and introduced in 1989.  She is officially described as cream-edged rose with a green throat, but I find that after colder night temperatures she has strong yellow tones like those at the left.  A 'Best of Friends' seedling, she stands around 30 inches tall in my garden and bears flowers that are around 5 inches in diameter.   She has received a number of awards including the Stout Silver Medal Runner-up in 2006 (missing the award by 7 votes), the 2006 Lenington All-American Award, the 2002 President's Cup, the Award of Merit in 2002, and the 1999 Honorable Mention List.

  My original plant was in the front bed, on the northwest side of the house, and she was fortuitously planted near where I walk every day.  Once I accepted how fabulous she is, I divided her again and again and I now have 5 or 6 clumps spread around the area.  This time of year, when she is blooming, I make sure to observe her every morning as I walk the dog, and I occasionally refresh my memory of her delicate fragrance.  Fragrance is rare enough in daylilies, and 'Beautiful Edgings' has one of the best in my garden.

I've never been able to fully understand the term "reblooming" as it applies to daylilies.  Certainly, I can understand "reblooming" in relationship to my detested 'Stella de Oro', continually blooming for months, and I have a couple of daylilies that bloom now and then will put out a token bloom or two in the fall.  Many other daylilies, however, display what seems just to be an extended bloom period, and for those, my "anti-marketing hackles" are raised.  How much is real reblooming and how much is hype to capture gardeners who look for "reblooming" on the label?

Regardless, while 'Beautiful Edging' is one that only has an extended period of bloom, I'm glad to great her each morning as long as she will stay, each morning that I'm awaken by the intrepid Bella whining to alert me to her urinary bladder discomfort.  I'll eagerly crawl out of bed and perform an unpleasant task to experience such beauty.

Krazy 'Kwanso'

Oh, no.  We're not leaving orange daylilies behind us without discussing that most classic of "ditch lilies," Hemerocallis fulva 'Kwanso'.  Here it comes, just when you thought it was safe to reenter the garden.

For most of my gardening life, I have enjoyed 'Kwanso' and defended it against all detractors, foreign or domestic.  It was one of the first daylilies I grew, and, as you already know, is tough and hardy and difficult to kill.  It's also colorful and fragrant as all get out.  In short, it would seem to be the perfect daylily for a beginner gardener.




Invader #1, 15 feet away from source.

Unfortunately after years of mutual enjoyment, my 'Kwanso' has become a thug.  I'm aware that the term "thug" has recently become politically incorrect, but I know of no better descriptive term for its behavior.   It's the same old story; you nurture and pamper one of your children and then it enters puberty and runs amok with newfound freedom.

I first noticed that 'Kwanso' had become a problem last year when I recognized a thicket of healthy, tall daylily fans was starting to strangle the vigor out of my 'Fantin Latour' rose.  Acting in what I thought was a perceptively preemptive fashion, this Spring I pulled up many of the individual crowns and roots of 'Kwanso' in this area, applying herbicide to any stragglers in order to leave a single manageable clump in the area.



Little did I know, however, that the prescient promiscuous beast had already made a break for freedom.  Suddenly, these past few weeks, another overly-healthy daylily clump in a nearby bed revealed its true identity as it engulfed a more modest cousin (photo above).  I've now found three other clumps of H. fulva as they bloomed in different spots throughout the garden.  'Kwanso', unbeknownst to me, spreads aggressively by seed as well as by stolon, presumably with bird or rodent assistance.



Invader #2, 40 feet away from source

If you have these or similar forms in your garden ('Kwanso' is a double form of the species and there is another cultivar, 'Flore Pleno' with 18 petals), stand fairly forewarned and destroy them now!  To reach a proper prospective, I would recommend that you rewatch the 1958 classic film, The Blob, and picture me in the starring role so well portrayed by Steve McQueen (but younger and much more hip than Steve), trying to convince the unsuspecting townspeople that a crisis is at hand.  Because that is my goal now, to spread the truth far and wide.  If 'Kwanso' can survive Katrina's flooding, as reported, it has the potential to be an invasive weed at best, a complete monster at worst.

P.S.  I've seen reports that there may be a variegated form of 'Kwanso' available.  I'd be interested in hearing if it is less invasive or whether it reverts to nonvariegated easily.