A Beautiful Blemished Rose

ProfessorRoush has waited for years to discuss 'Lèda', the classic painted Damask rose.  I've waited because she never seemed to have a good year; as a young bush she often had only a few flowers that would always be destroyed by Spring rains, fungus, storms, or various other environmental influences.  This year, I believed, was Lèda's year.  She was not hurt at all by our tough winter, keeping her three foot stature without dieback.  Hundreds of perfect buds followed, the bush loaded with the promise of delicate beauty about to be revealed for my world.  An early flower opened to tease me with a taste of heaven.


And then she disappointed me once again.  Rains in May, just as the photo at the right was taken, turned the rest of the ready-to-open blossoms to brown botrytis-blighted mops right as they began to open.  The few that opened completely were marred, beauty stolen in the night.  Hundreds were completely browned, with a very few only mildly disfigured, like the flower pictured below.  Even worse, I think her annual problems are entirely limited to me since she is raved about in every other reference I can find.  Perhaps the former Queen of Sparta is still mad about Zeus seducing her in the guise of a swan but for some reason she only displays her anger here on the Kansas prairie.



'Lèda', also known as the Painted Damask rose, is a near white Damask bred before 1827.  She has a strong fragrance and displays, when she's not marred, a very double, reflexed, button-eye bloom form.  Some sources say she has repeat later in the season, but I've never seen it.  That's too bad, because later blooms in my annual dry July or August might not be damaged.  In my garden, at 5 years old, she's reached 3 feet tall and across, a round bush with dark green foliage.  The foliage and bush, at least, are healthy.  

I'm about to give up on 'Lèda'.  Her beauty is either not meant for this world, or at the very least not meant for Kansas.  To paraphrase Longfellow, "When she is good she is very very good, but when she is bad she is horrid."

Persicaria polymorpha

Now that's a mouth full of Latin, isn't it?  I believe that you'll find that if you say it fast three times, Persicaria polymorpha is easier, however, than repeating "giant fleeceflower" quickly three times.  This beast of a plant lives in my front landscaping, near the walkway, and it always causes a scene when a visiting gardener sees it in flower.

I discovered it myself several years ago while on a gardening tour in the neighboring county where it was shining brightly and stealing the show at a friend's garden.  I immediately left the tour and proceeded to my then-favorite garden center to ask if she had any.  Thankfully, she had one small plant left over from a custom order for a landscape job and I took it home and planted into a nice spot.  One thing to admire about Persicaria;  a small plant will flower and one year later it will be spectacular!


I called my giant fleeceflower a beast, but, other than its size, it is an impeccably well-restrained garden citizen.  Actually a strain of knotweed, Persicaria polymorpha might flop on some more diminutive neighbors after a heavy rain, but it will soon stand itself back up (mostly) as it dries.  It helps if you don't ever fertilize giant fleeceflower, starving its growth to stay within the constraints of its genes.  It doesn't spread by runners or self-seed, as far as I can determine.  I've recently divided my now 5 foot diameter clump to start others in my garden and it is as simple as dividing a daylily.  Well, perhaps similar to dividing a slightly tough-rooted daylily.    I'd certainly recommend putting it among shrubs or perennials.  Standing alone in a lawn, Persicaria will just look like a big weed you should have removed.


Persicaria polymorpha was formerly known as Polygonum polymorphum.  Because of its good behavior, some speculate that it is a hybrid, rather than a species.  It grows about 5 foot tall, takes all the drought and sun you can throw at it, and is hardy in the worst of my Zone 5 winters.  A perennial, all the care that giant fleeceflower needs is to cut it to the ground each spring.  No pests seem to bother it, it blooms all summer long from early June through mid-September, and those creamy white panicles don't brown and enter an ugly phase.  Even in my hot Kansas sun, I might call them a little "toasted", but they primarily stay creamy for a long time and then turn reddish-brown in fall.  I leave them on all winter to provide some structure in the snows.

Dung Beetles

Ladies and Gentlemen, gardening friends of all ages, I bring you today, for the first time to be witnessed by many of your naive eyes, that most industrious of insects, creatures without which the world would be in a sh**storm of trouble.  I bring you the lowly dung beetle.

Look how busy Frick and Frack dung beetle are.  They had formed this almost perfectly round ball of cow or donkey manure (likely since those are the major source of poop in the area) and they were rolling it across a 15 foot asphalt road in the hot afternoon sun.  Why they didn't build their home on the same side of the street as the poop, I'll never know.  I'd love to tell you what species these guys are, but since there are several subfamilies of dung beetles in the superfamily Scarabaeoidea, and more than 5000 species in the subfamily Scarabaeinae alone, I don't have a chance of even coming close.  For some fun dung beetle facts, consider the following:

a)  There are three groups of dung beetles;  rollers (like the ones above), tunnelers (who bury the dung wherever they find it, and dwellers (who just live in the manure).
b)  A dung beetle can bury dung 250 times its weight in a single night.
c)  Dung beetles are the only insect known to navigate using the Milky Way.
 d) It is likely that this ball of crap I photographed is intended as a brooding ball; two beetles, one male and one female, stay around the brooding ball during rolling, the male doing all of the work (as usual).  When they find a spot with soft soil, they bury the ball and then mate underground so the female can lay eggs in it.
e)  The successful introduction of 23 species into Australia resulted in improvement and fertility of Australian cattle pastures and reduction in the population of bush flies by 90%.
f)  If the idea of these things grosses you out, try and remember that the Egyptians worshipped the scarab, a dung beetle.

Hey, waste collection is a lousy job, but somebody has to do it.

Here and Gone

Photo courtesy of Ben Brake

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of hosting a tour group of gardeners from Omaha for a brief period.  They scheduled a tour of the KSU Gardens through the Chamber of Commerce and had asked to visit a couple of "large gardens" while they were in Manhattan.  So a little over a hundred gardeners suddenly descended on my garden this past Saturday evening. 

Photo courtesy of Ben Brake

They seemed to enjoy the visit.  Sadly, the roses were all almost gone, with 'American Pillar', at left, bringing up the rear as usual.  Some Asiatic lilies were beginning to bloom and some late, frozen over roses were blooming out of turn.   I heard "beautiful" a number of times and I answered questions as fast as I could.

Photo courtesy of Ben Brake

When a group of unsuspecting gardeners encounters a rose zealot in his natural environment, they risk an epidemic of glazed eyes and aural exhaustion.  That's me, holding forth on the right of this photo.









I was most often questioned about this plant, a giant fleeceflower or knotweed (Persicaria polymorpha), slightly drowned by the last rain storm, but still a spectacle in the garden.  You can read more about Persicaria in a blog later this week.

Photo courtesy of Ben Brake

Bella, our not-so-new-now-puppy, was excited by the visit and all the new people she got to meet.  That right ear seems to flop up whenever she gets bouncy.  But doesn't she stand with pretty lines?

Photo courtesy of Ben Brake

The tour group was here, and then just as quickly gone on their buses, but they left behind a nice gift certificate that I used to purchase two new daylilies and a hollyhock.

Photo courtesy of Ben Brake

The garden is quiet again.  All the photographs here, except for the Persicaria, were taken by a family friend, Ben Brake, whom Mrs. ProfessorRoush imposed on at the last minute.  Ben can be seen with a camera at every K-State sports function toting a Nikon camera that makes me salivate and he's pretty good at it, don't you agree?  Photos of people enjoying the garden are always so nice to view again after the frenzy is over.