Thigmomorphogenesis; say what?

For a long time I've made a little fun of the trees in my Flint Hills yard. They're perfectly fine trees, they are just, well, they are just a little thick around the waist, like a middle-aged male, and they lean a little bit to the south like, well, never mind. I've attributed both of those characteristics to the ever-present Kansas wind howling in from the northwest, but little did I know that the endearingly odd changes in my trees were a recognized scientific phenomenonen. In reading the latest book by Linda Chalker-Scott, The Informed Gardener Blooms Again, I came across the term "thigmomorphogenesis,"  which refers to changes (morpho) in the appearance of a plant in response to repeated touching (thigmo).  And repeated touching includes "touching" by the wind coming across the prairie. Recognized changes of thigmomorphogenesis include decreased stem elongation, increased stem thickness, smaller leaves, fewer flowers and increased senescence. This results in more firmly anchored trees with increased root to crown ratio that are then naturally more resistant to uprooting, splitting, and other wind damage. The whole concept of thigmomorphogenesis makes a little sense when you think of the short, stunted nature of alpine forest trees.  It also gives me a really good, smart-sounding excuse for the occasional lapse in flower production in my garden.

So thanks, Ms. Chalker-Scott, I'm now a little bit more horticulturally-educated, and I've also been firmly exposed for being no better than the grade school bully who makes fun of the new kid with glasses.  I mean, my trees couldn't help being short and squat and here I was making jokes of them.  I hope they don't develop a complex and sulk.  

For the Beauty of the Earth

North view from my house in December.

Subject to human failings like everyone else, I sometimes forget to look past the mildewed phlox and the blackspot on the roses and the burning August days and see the beauty that is everywhere around me on the prairie.  Thankfully, I am constantly reminded that one cannot live in the Kansas Flint Hills without eventually realizing that our gardens are but a minor fraction of the glory going on all around us. Whether it's the drying hay bales to feed winter stock that have been rolled up from the bountiful prairie, or whether its the fall russets that the prairie grasses take on, occasionally, just occasionally, the hues of the earth and sky come together to create a picture that one may capture in a few digital pixels, but can only dream of creating.  Fall rain washes the dust off  the grasses and the moisture makes the dull brown grasses turn red to meet the changing of seasons.  Eventually, the prairie tones itself to compliment the wide sky in autumn.

The heat will break.  Fall is coming.  Have a restful Sunday, one and all!     

Carefree Perfection

Readers of this blog already know that I'm partial to many of the roses bred by the late Griffith Buck.  It's a sure thing that Professor Buck created a number of marvelous and hardy roses specifically for the Midwest climate, but many of them remain unknown to rosarians in other areas where roses grow easily and large.

The most well-known and best of these roses has to be the aptly named 'Carefree Beauty'.  Here in the Flint Hills, 'Carefree Beauty' also has to be in the running for the title of Most Perfect Rose.  This clear pink stunner blooms continually and it's resistant to blackspot, drought, and wind.  It's so resistant to blackspot that in a survey by the Montreal Botanical Garden it was found to have only a 0-5% infection rate. The only time I've ever seen 'Carefree Beauty' look under the weather was during the ice storm of three winters ago, when a one-half inch coating of ice broke off several canes and generally made a ragged mess of one of my two specimens. 

'Carefree Beauty' grows about 4 feet tall in my garden and it's a rose that is not prone to send out new canes, but often has a central "stalk" that just widens and spreads over time.  I've rarely seen it without a bloom and the early bloom, as in the picture at the left, will knock your socks off.  Rated hardy to Zone 4b, it is completely hardy with no die-back in my Zone 5 garden.  It even adds winter interest with a nice display of globular orange hips.

'Carefree Beauty', released in 1977, has received its accolades from many sources.  This shrub rose was one of the first named to the Texas A&M EarthKind program (http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkind/roses) and long before that recognition it was a popular rose propagated by the Texas Rose Rustlers with the study name 'Katy Road Pink'.  It's also been recommended by the University of Minnesota and as a solidly hardy rose and it was one of 24 roses that "passed the test" in Longwood Garden's Ten-Year Rose Trials (http://longwoodgardens.org/docs/educationalresources/roses.pdf).  'Carefree Beauty' is truly a rose for any garden and any gardener.

Sunflower Haven

I spend a lot of time and energy bemoaning the weather and the soil and the harsh wind and the boiling sun and the general misery that is Kansas gardening. I'm also constantly envious of the plants that others can grow but which will just obstinately shrivel up and die here. But I'll be the first to admit that if you want to grow sunflowers well, come to the Flint Hills.

It isn't named "The Sunflower State," and the state flower isn't the sunflower for nothing, folks.  The Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses website (http://www.kswildflower.org/) lists 10 different sunflower species (Helianthus sp.) that are native to Kansas and the Flint Hills area. These fancifully named wildflowers, the Stiff Sunflower, the Hairy Sunflower, Sawtooth Sunflower or the Plains Sunflower, they all open up in August and provide 4-6 weeks of brilliant color to contrast sharply with the azure prairie sky until the birds pick the seeds off in October and use the energy burst to wisely head south. The most statuesque of these sunflowers is somewhat drably named the Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) and it really is the most common species in my area.  It usually grows around six feet tall although it's listed as growing anywhere from two to eight feet tall, but if a wild seedling gets started in good cultivated soil with lots of organic matter, and if it's protected from weed competition and watered, it will try to take on the Beanstalk role from the children's fable and it will easily top twelve feet and have a stalk six inches in diameter (ask me how I know). 

The group of Common Sunflowers at the right was taken at the end of our lane at peak bloom time.  As I turn onto Prairie Star Drive coming home from a weary day of  work, this is the picture that greets me home in late August and early September. So take that, rest of the world, you may have camellias and gardenias and orange trees and bluebonnets, but we've got some world-beating sunflowers that grow wild for the price of  a mere song in our hearts.