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. 

Light from the Edge of the World

Although we've been talking about buffalograss and native wildflowers, I can't resist taking a day out to show you a sky shot.  Taken west, at sunset, from my front door Friday night.  I appreciated the "flashlight" beam from God, pointing out the leading edge of the oncoming storm that evening, but I was quite chagrined when the storm dissipated on my very doorstep with only a few random drops on the cement.  Similarly, Saturday night and Sunday were 80% chances for rain and I watched a storm moving in from Salina that should have gotten here around 1 a.m.    This morning, no rain and the chances had dropped to 40%.  We got about one-tenth of an inch around 9 a.m. and then nothing else.  Looks like the spigot is turning off for our usual summer drought here.

I gave up and watered the tomatoes and the new roses today.  I had thought there was still enough moisture in the ground, but yesterday I planted a 'New Dawn' and the soil was dry from the surface to the bottom of the hole.  More wildflowers tomorrow.....

Buffalograss III

So, for the person who wants to own one, what have I learned about caring for buffalograss lawns?  Who should have one?  How do you keep the weeds out?  What problems may develop?  What about watering?

As I've stated before, buffalograss is a low-maintenance grass, but not a no-maintenance grass.  When I first put it in, I followed instructions to wait until the average daily temperature was above 80F, I planted it in the correct concentration and then mulched it sparsely with straw to help conserve the moisture, and I kept it watered well.  The result was a thinly-covered piece of ground around the house that filled in pretty well by the end of the summer, but also developed more than a few weeds.  I controlled these by regular mowing in the first two years, but I didn't apply any extra water or fertilizer to the lawn.

By the third year, there were areas of the lawn that were unhappy and became sparse.  I wasn't able to find symptoms of disease as the cause, but resorted to applying a little fertilizer and watering these areas and even a dense-head like I am could tell that the grass loved the extra treatment.  So I've settled now into providing a nice bit of high-nitrogen fertilizer in early June, after the grass has greened and is growing well, at about half the rate recommended for a fescue lawn.  That seems to encourage it to keep a very dense, even turf appearance and helps it to be just a little more green.  And in the height of summer here, late July and early August, if we've gone several weeks without rain and the temperatures have been over 100F, then I have been known to give the front yard a little watering every other week or so. That keeps it from going entirely dormant and it will green up again quickly when the September rains hit.  Usually the right time to water is about when every one else in town is watering on a nightly basis and my co-workers begin complaining about their water bills.

Weed control is another aspect of buffalograss care that can't be neglected.  There are commercial herbicides that are labeled for use on buffalograss during the growing season, but I haven't used them.  Instead, I've been happy with a program of applying Barricade crabgrass preventer at the recommended time in early spring.  To control growing weeds, you can either burn the buffalograss each spring (see below), or you can spot-treat any weeds that green up (dandelions and other broad-leaf weeds) while the buffalograss remains dormant.  As long as you are sure the buffalograss is still dormant, you can use about any herbicide necessary, including Roundup.  Once the buffalograss greens up, I simply hand pull weeds or keep them mowed down.   As far as insect problems on buffalograss, I've never seen any.  My neighbor occasionally treats his buffalograss areas for what he was told was some chinch bug damage, but I'm not sure whether he actually has chinch bug troubles or whether it was just an excuse to sell him some insecticide.  He has a different variety ('Cody') than I do ('Tatanka') so it is also possible that I'm just too cynical about plant store representatives and  'Cody' is simply more susceptible to cinch bugs than 'Tatanka'.

And one last tip; buffalograss loves to be burnt annually.  When you think about it, that's hardly surprising since it evolved in the face of the frequent prehistoric burns that kept the prairie free of trees.  I believe that the removal of the dead understuff helps the grass to thicken up and it seems to green it up faster as well.  And the weeds that have started to grow simply hate being burnt and they disappear, never to be seen again.  Perhaps the positive effect on the buffalograss is merely a result of wiping out the competition, but I prefer to think that it is thanking me for recognizing its true nature and history.  Because buffalograss has a soul that you will recognize if you take it for your own.  As Todd Rundgren sang, "Like buffalograss, you crawled across my heart, oh like buffalograss wrapped yourself around my heart."

Striking Serendipity

For a brief interlude from alternating my buffalograss manifesto and some native wildflower pictures, but in line with the Native Prairie Weeks theme I've started, I thought I'd squeeze in a little serendipitous combination that is starting to "pop" out in my garden.  The picture below is a young start of a variegated 'Fiesta' Forsythia (Forsythia  x intermedia 'Fiesta), that has had its space invaded by a self-seeded Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa).  I started the 'Fiesta' a summer ago as a cutting from another larger specimen and I had placed it on the end of a row of lilacs, intending it to become a summer focal point against the dark green foliage of the lilacs.  I guess that stirring the soil exposed long-buried seeds and the Asclepias won the rapid dash to the finish line.  Over time, the 'Fiesta will be taller than the Asclepias and the latter will become an accent to the former, reversing the current imbalance in height.  Regardless, I don't think I could have picked a better plant to bloom and compliment the light yellow foliage and variegation of the 'Fiesta'.  Sometimes, maybe all the time, Nature knows best.

But doesn't it make you wonder?  That it would coincidentally be Asclepias, named for the Roman god of medicine and surgery (Asclepius) by Linnaeus himself, that would so often grace the garden of a surgeon?  Or that this combination, chosen for its pleasurable appearance by and presumably to God,  also is pleasing to we mere mortals who can only admire the genius of the natural world?