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.

 

Intuited Love

'Red Intuition'

This, friends, is the rose that ProfessorRoush has been waiting for.  I don't recall where or how, but somewhere last year, I came across a picture of 'Red Intuition'.  Given my fondness for striped roses, it was inevitable that this one would eventually grow in my garden.  I bided my time over the past year, staring daily at the post-it note above my phone with only its name listed in my poor penmanship.  And this Winter, while ordering roses for the current season, I obtained it from Palatine roses in Canada.  

And ever since then, I've been waiting still.  The bare-root, grafted rose came on time, went straight into the ground, and began to leaf out.  I had a brief scare with our very late April frost, which knocked it back a bit even though I had covered it up overnight, but it shook off the frostbite and eventually sent up a bud.  A bud that opened slightly 3 days ago, as you can see below at the left, and then proceeded to tease me petal by petal until today, in the late afternoon, when it was finally fully open (as above) and met all my expectations.

'Red Intuition' is recorded as discovered in France by Guy Delbard in 1999, and introduced in 2004. It is patented in the US as DELstriro.  The rose is described as red, with dark red streaks, stripes, and flecks, and double with 31 to 39 petals (it's also listed as having 17-25 petals on the same page of helpmefind.com).  It's a large bloom of about 4.5" diameter, borne solitary or in small clusters.  The bush is described as tall, nearly thornless, and with semi-glossy foliage.  'Red Intuition' is a sport of 'Belle Rouge' (or DElego), a 1996 Hybrid Tea by Delbard.

'Red Intuition' is certainly a beautiful rose all on its own, but my interest in it goes far deeper than its stripes.  There is a "lost" Griffith Buck Hybrid Tea rose that Dr. Buck patented and named 'Red Sparkler' and I'm playing a hunch.  I've only seen one really poor picture of it (the same picture is reproduced everywhere), and to my eyes it was the splitting image of 'Red Intuition'.  Official notes indicate that 'Red Sparkler' was the same 4.5" diameter size as 'Red Intuition' and had a similar number of petals, but it differs in that it is listed as a velvety red rose with pink AND WHITE stripes so maybe I'm all wet.   My concern is that 'Red Intuition' has leathery, semi-glossy foliage, while 'Belle Rouge' reportedly has glossy foliage, so if 'Red Intution' is a sport of the latter, it was a double sport, both in foliage and in flower color. That would be darned unusual.  Add that to a rumor that Dr. Buck is rumored to have sent bud wood of 'Red Sparkler' to Europe at one time and maybe you can understand why I'm going to get a plant of 'Belle Rouge' and grow it right next to my 'Red Intuition' to compare the foliage.  Just in case the lost rose isn't really lost.

Made in the Shade

ProfessorRoush has had a busy week of gardening with more to come.  In addition to last weekend and the evenings, I took a couple of days off work so that I could exhaust myself in the garden.  Two days, sunup to sundown, and I'm tanned like a tanning-bed addict.  No, now don't get too excited, girls.  Only on my arms, face and neck.  My snow white legs are the really titillating image.  A classic "farmer's tan" on a gardener.

It's time to unveil  the skeleton of a project which began on delivery of a large package last Wednesday.  There, down in the vegetable garden.  Do you see it?  I'm not going outside on this rainy Saturday morning to give you a better view, but how about the closeup below?  Sorry about the window screen in the way, but that's a frame for a shade house, amazingly and partially erected by yours truly.




I can live without many things in my garden, but I'm tired of growing a nice crop of strawberry plants each spring and then watching them burn to a crisp in July and August.  So I resolved this year to build a shade house to help the plants get through the brutal Kansas sun so that I can enjoy a proper harvest next year.  This shade house is 24'X14' and covers the entire patch.  Using a sledgehammer for the first time in a decade, I drove the 14 posts down through the rock and clay all by myself in a single evening.  Well to be honest, I drove 10 of them and I dug and cemented the 4 corner posts in place to help hold the house down against the occasional tornado.  Chalk up one victory for the aging gardener!   Right now I estimate the first ten years of strawberries will work out to about $1/berry.

By no means is this the end of my gardening week, either.  Today, over 100 gardeners from Omaha are visiting my garden.  They came down to Manhattan to see the KSU Gardens and ended up asking the Chamber of Commerce to visit a couple of "large" local gardens.   My garden may not qualify as unique or educational, but "large" got me on the list.  The garden, despite the waning roses and the long gone irises and peonies, is in about as good a shape as I've ever had it after a week of effort.  And to top it off, tomorrow is the annual Manhattan Area Garden Show and I'm the roving photographer for it.  My gardening week will end Sunday night, and for once I'll be glad to leave the garden and go back to paying work!        

Banshee or Banshees?

My reading is causing ProfessorRoush an identity crisis about a rose.   'Banshee' is a great rose in my climate, but the rose I call 'Banshee' may be one of several different roses known under the same name, sort of a reverse alias, if you will.  My faith that I have the "real" 'Banshee', if there is such a plant, is only based on my faith in Connie of Hartwood Roses, from whom I purchased 'Banshee'.  She obtained her plant from a cemetery in King William, Virginia.

'Banshee' is a pink Damask-like once-blooming shrub known prior to 1773.  My specimen is four years old and approximately 5 feet tall by 6 feet wide and is still growing .  Blooms are lightly double (17-25 petals) and start out medium pink, but quickly fade to blush.  Individual flowers last about 5 days before petal drop and are intensely fragrant.  Leaves are light green (sometimes described as pea green) and usually come in compound leaflets of 7.  She reminds me a lot of 'Maiden's Blush', in bush form and in flower, but she exhibits none of the wet weather balling and blight that 'Maiden's Blush' does here.  'Banshee' is completely hardy here, surviving last year's very cold Zone 5 winter without any cane dieback or loss.  I don't recall seeing any hips form but will watch again this fall.

Paul Barden has a lot to say about 'Banshee', in fact reproducing a 1977 American Rose Annual article by Leonie Bell titled "Banshee: The Great Impersonator".  Bell  regarded "the Banshees" as a strain rather than an individual rose, and believed her to be a Gallica.  Newer sources suggest that it is a R. turbinata hybrid.  The real 'Banshee', or one of her suspected full sisters, should have an acorn-cup shaped hip and a calyx more than twice the length of the bud and glanded.  And the pea green leaves.  The blown up photo at the left is a good example of the long calyx and the glanded bud.

'Banshee', faded and older flower

'Banshee' is a rose that is either loved or hated, perhaps dependent upon climatic influence and on whether a particular rose is the real 'Banshee' McCoy or an impostor.  In my climate, my 'Banshee' doesn't ball up or drop 90% of the buds before opening as other writers complain about, although 'Maiden's Blush', often been marketed as 'Banshee', does.  'Banshee' does seem to be a bit unorganized in habit, opening later to a flat and mussy flower with lots of stamens.   I have seen no blackspot or other fungus on Banshee, and in fact it seems an iron healthy rose.  Or a healthy family of roses, as the case may be.




 

Distant Drums Doubt

Friends, you would think that an old gardener could catch a break.  Out here on the Kansas Prairie, I garden in defiance of scorching sun, bitter blizzards, desiccating droughts, gale-force winds, rocky soil, and even the occasional prairie fire.  Is it too much to ask if the gardener's wife could cut him a little slack?

I took the picture above yesterday morning when the ground was still wet with dew and I sent it to Mrs. ProfessorRoush after telling her that I thought I'd captured a photo of a rose with exquisite coloring.  After receiving it on her iPhone, sitting in an adjacent room to where I was engaged on the computer, I heard her immediately exclaim "no way!".  And she then proceeded to accuse me of faking the coloration by photoshopping it.  And wanted to know where it was in the garden (even though she passes by it every day).

Mrs. ProfessorRoush is a wonderful wife and human being, but I was deeply hurt that she could suggest I would resort to falsifying a photo to deceive her.  I'm certainly not above cropping out a decaying bloom from the corner of a picture, nor occasionally playing with the brightness/darkness setting of a photo, but I would never, and probably could never, fake a picture like this one.  I don't even own Photoshop.  I do my cropping and compressing on the Microsoft Picture Manager  that comes with the computer.  If I had really faked this photo, I'd have certainly smudged out the insect bites on a couple of the petals.

The photo is, of course, of Griffith Buck's 'Distant Drums' rose, a rose that I've written about before and one that is admittedly not one of my favorites.   The blooms of this rose always have a unique coloration, but this trio went above and beyond their usual palette.  Since it just gave me a chance to astonish Mrs. ProfessorRoush, I may have to raise my personal ranking of 'Distant Drums'.  It's not often that I can gain a little respect at home, even if I have to loudly and fervently assert my innocence to get it.

I liked the photo so much, in fact, that I just made it my "masthead" for the blog.  What do you think of it?

Chasing the Rose

From Carol, at May Dreams Gardens, I learned of a new and very readable book about a "found" rose and I put it on my birthday list to purchase and read.  Of the three books I purchased as a self-gift for my now past birthday, I chose to read Chasing the Rose: An Adventure in the Venetian Countryside first.  Chasing the Rose is by Andrea di Robilant and it has kept me captivated for several nights this week.

The book is a journey of the search for the identity of a rose, known as  'Rosa Moceniga', that was found on the author's ancestral home of Alvisopoli, Italy (a city named for its founder, the author's great-great-great-great grandfather, Alvise Mocenigo).  It's a journey that covers vast spaces, as di Robilant searches for clues about its origins in several countries and gardens, and also covers vast time periods, for it is, in part, a historical essay on his great-great-great-great grandmother Lucia's relationship with the Empress Josephine of Malmaison and a history of the "China" roses. 

The story is quite entertaining regarding the rose and, because of the historical info, educational at the same time.  It was also eye-opening for me, because the author interacts several times with Professor Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florence.  Professor Mancuso is one of the pioneers in the field of plant neurobiology, a field that views plants less as insensate organisms battered at the whims of man and nature, but as information-processing organisms with communication between all parts of the plant and responses to the environment.  He even gave an interesting TED lecture in 2010.  There is even a Society for Plant Neurobiology, which you may belong to for the annual membership of $60, and a Journal of Plant Signaling and Behavior that publishes manuscripts about plant responses to environmental stimuli.

Heck, I thought we'd left all that behind in the 1970's after the publication of SuperNature, a bestseller about ESP and plants and other mystic crap that captivated me in my teens.  It has since been discredited, but the book made a wave among the wannabe hippies with its reports that a razor blade left in the pyramid of Cheops will magically become sharp again and that plants can sense the death of nearby snails, among other made up or poorly investigated crap.  Now here the idea is back, complete with all the controversy.  Wikipedia has even stepped into the fray, moving an entry on "plant neurobiology" in 2012 into an entry regarding "plant perception."  

I don't know where you stand on the subject, and keep in mind that there have been no discoveries of neurons or a brain in plants, but in the future, you might be a little nervous about missing a watering of your potted plants.  You never know when they might retaliate by psychically strangulating us in our sleep.

Beastly Bindweed

If you were ever skeptical of stories that report that bindweed can come up from beneath asphalt, now is the time to lower your cynicism and face the triumphant floral villain.  A few weeks back, the gravel road in front of our house was paved and it is now full of green-bubbling volcanoes of exuberant triangular leaves.  Although my neighbor questioned the policy prior to paving, the paving company and township said that pre-treating the road base with herbicide was not necessary.  They were wrong.  That root system can go down to over 10 feet deep and if the entire root isn't removed, it regenerates from any remaining rhizomes. To top it off, seeds remain viable for up to 50 years in the soil!  Because of the lack of foresight and the tight pockets of the local government, we may now be in for a lifetime of erupting asphalt on our road.  


Bindweed, or Convolvulus arvensis, which is the likely species in this area, grows throughout Kansas, but was native to Eurasia, carried across the Atlantic ocean and west across the prairies by its own version of manifest destiny. Once cultivated as an ornamental and a medicinal herb, it is now a noxious weed in many states and is nearly impossible to eradicate without toxic chemicals.  The plant at the bottom right has been sprayed twice with Roundup and still continues to grow.  We should consider adding nuclear waste to the next spray.  Or we'll have to try flamethrowers or perhaps raw sulfuric acid.  And what do we do about the yet-unerupted masses hiding below the surface like the one to the left?  How do I kill the seedlings before they destroy the road?

Up till now, I've controlled its spread into our yard, and I've fought it in only one of my garden beds (one with imported soil), but it seems to really like the poor clay base of our road.  Or at least the seeds are feeling cramped and trying to find some sunshine.  The patience and strength of those tiny tendrils is mind boggling.

 

I wish my roses had that excess of vigor.  Or perhaps I don't, because roses that came up through asphalt AND had thorns would be pretty rough on our tires.  Anyway, what's next to test my tolerance?  Kudzu?

Honorine de Brabant

In the near future, I should post a list of roses that survived our harsh -10ºF winter and snows in unscathed fashion, but right now, I'd like to spotlight a rose that surprised me in that regard.  'Honorine de Brabant' is beginning her second full season in my garden and her 2.5 foot tall canes had absolutely no tip dieback or damage this winter.

I previously grew 'Honorine de Brabant' near my back patio, in poorer and more clay-ish soil, and she struggled and died there even though I pampered her as much as possible.  I repurchased and replanted her as a rooted band into a mixed border, in fact into a hole dug in the middle of a large clump of Miscanthus sp. grass that was too big to move and had been previously killed with Roundup.  Here, with 'Charlotte Brownell' and 'Country Dancer' to gossip with, HDB has come into her own.

'Honorine de Brabant' is reported to be a "discovered" Bourbon, by Tanne of France in 1916.  The fat buds seem to promise a rose full of petals but her dainty blooms are merely double and not so full of petals as many Old Garden Roses.  She is, however moderately fragrant, and she remains cupped and displays ample golden stamens around her pistil, a lady of some refinement.  The petals seem fragile and curl at the tips, but they stand up well to heat and wind.  I saw a few blooms from her last year when she was still small, but her rebloom is slow and stingy in my experience here and others report the same thing on GardenWeb.com.  She does have a good last Fall flush, however.  She is a healthy bush, without a trace of blackspot, and I always welcome the unique blooms of a striped rose.  I expect Honorine to top five feet tall and I hope she will retain that vase-like shape seen below on to maturity.  Did I mention that she is one of the minority of roses in my garden this year that had no winter damage?

 

I love striped roses so much, in fact, that last night I committed a rose faux pas at the "two-for-ten-dollar" sale at Home Depot.  On that particular sale rack, there were a number of wretched potted roses labeled as "Love", but the only two that were blooming had striped blooms, one identical to 'Honorine de Brabant', the other darker magenta stripes and more fully double like 'Variegata di Bologna'.  Both were strongly fragrant and I suspect some commercial grower in Oklahoma was getting rid of excess stock by labeling it with a name more recognized by the general public. I bought and planted both, although they are grafted roses, so I can compare them to my own-root specimens of those varieties.   Not very exciting as activities go, but it keeps me off the streets.

Rainy Day Scanning

During the periodic brief rains yesterday (which didn't amount to anything except running me out of the garden), I collected a few flowers to play with a scanner photograph or two.  I had forgotten over the past couple of years, during times of peak bloom, to try this method, and I had forgotten the lovely effects one can create.   This scan of 'Madame Hardy', taken against the backdrop of one of Mrs. ProfessorRoush's blouses (sssshhh, don't tell her!), is a simple and lovely composition, despite my lack of proper photo editing skills and the rudimentary software I have for doing it.  If you've ever wondered, most of the photographs on this blog are not edited beyond cropping and compressing to be posted.



I was just playing yesterday, and in a bit of a hurry, as you can see from the photo at the left.  Haste makes waste on these scanner photographs and you've got to have everything arranged just so.  Folded petals don't help the image, nor do insects or wet flowers or pollen falling from the stamens.  Still, in this picture, you should be able to find 'Honorine de Brabant', 'Alchymist', 'Variegata di Bologna', 'Allegra', 'Gallicandy', 'Survivor', 'Mountain Music', 'Duchesse de Montibello', 'Alfred de Dalmas', 'Prairie Clogger', and a couple of unknown reds.  I tried to choose the best flowers, but even the flowers I thought were perfect, like the 'Madame Hardy' above, have some rain-browned edges on closeup.  Rats.




Of course, to get rid of the imperfections, one can always move to the more abstract, as in this paint.net modification (using the "dents" setting) of another 'Madame Hardy' scan set against a black background.  This one would make a fine stained-glass window, don't you agree?

Or, one could go with an ethereal look.  This almost all white image of 'Madame Hardy' would have been better if I could have figured out a way to get the white background while also pressing down on the flowers to improve focus. Maybe next time.  Oh, and happy Memorial Day, everyone!

The Garden Approves

Cope's Gray Treefrog

ProfessorRoush was adding a few "branches" to his bottle tree yesterday and had drilled three new holes, when he noticed some of the drilling shavings were piling up in the crook of a branch atop what appeared to be a weathered wood chip.  I reached over to brush the shavings and wood chip away and at that point the wood chip opened its eyes and glared at me.  Say what you will about the quality of iPhone photographs, it's always nearby and available, which allowed me to immediately snap these pictures of my new four-fingered friend.

Six species of frogs live in the Flint Hills region, and I believe this one to be a Cope's Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis) or perhaps the Cope Eastern Gray Treefrog (Hyla versicolor), based on the characteristic enlarged toe pads.   The two species cannot be separated based on external characteristics, but only by analysis of their calls, chromosomal material, or size of their red blood cells.  This frog was already irritated beyond the point of making a sound and it was unlikely to appreciate any attempts to draw blood from it.  My references, such as Joseph Collins' Amphibians & Reptiles in Kansas,  suggest that H. chrysoscelis is the only one reported in Riley County.  These frogs are tolerant of high temperatures and climb to the treetops on warm, humid summer nights.

I don't know what this little guy is trying to say to me.  Frogs were tied with creation myths by early civilizations and worshiped as rainmakers.  There was even an Egyptian frog goddess, Heqet, who represented fertility and was depicted as either woman with a frog's head (yuck!) or a frog on the end of a phallus.  She was present at the birth of Horus and breathed new life into him.  In the Middle Ages, frogs became associated with evil and devil worship, likely from association with the three frogs of Revelations 16:13, "And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet."  I'm going to believe that my frog is beneficial and is waiting to eat any evil spirits attracted by the bottle tree (or mosquitoes, which are the same as evil spirits in my garden).

Oh yes, and, as you can see, I've already changed out the crappy green and clear bottles on my earlier bottle tree rendition.  I ordered two dozen cobalt blue bottles last Monday and then added one of our own and the two bright pink bottles to make 27 bottles.  Looks better, doesn't it?  The mauve roses blooming  in the foreground are Purple Pavement.  The pink bottles?  Well, you can call it further whimsy, but I have a theory that the pink bottles will lure the evil spirits near and the blue bottles will capture them.  Silly, but just as good a reason as any.  It seems to have attracted the frog, anyway.  The Smithsonian, the frog, and I now collectively approve of my bottle tree.

Barden's Crested Damask

The rose season has started here and I should show you the first new rose that I'm excited about.  'Crested Damask' was a 2012 addition that I obtained as a rooted cutting, or band, from Rogue Valley Roses. She isn't much of a bush yet, but the raspberry-bubblegum-pink color you see here is just shouting to be noticed above the foliage around it.   If she were a bigger bush she would stand out clear across my garden. 

'Crested Damask', or ARDmarcrest, is a 2005 introduction from the breeding program of Paul Barden.  This is a once-blooming, very double rose of  about 3.5 inches in diameter that opens in almost-quartered fashion complete with button eye, and blooms in small clusters of 3-5 flowers.  She is a cross of 'Marbree' and 'Crested Jewel'.  I was interested to see 'Marbree' in her pedigree because the first time I saw 'Crested Jewel' in bloom I thought she had a resemblance to 'Rose de Rescht' and  'Rose de Rescht' is a parent of 'Marbree'.  The fragrance is very strong and very old rose.  The bright pink color speaks favorably of itself and pops out from the green foliage around it.  And best of all, the 10 or 12 blossoms that I've seen so far have all been perfectly formed, unmarred by late freezes, winds, or sun.  I've begun to take note of roses of dark color that get baked in my summer heat, and 'Crested Damask' is not among them. 

I haven't needed to spray her nor did I see her get any blackspot last year, but she is still small-statured for me, currently about two feet tall and wide.   Planting her into fall during our third year of drought and placing her under the shade of an adjacent five foot rose probably hasn't helped the growth of 'Crested Damask', but she survived last year's harsh winter without dieback and I can attest to her hardiness in zone 5/6 (whatever last winter was).   I have seen conflicting information on the ultimate height of this rose; helpmefind lists her as a 5'-7' shrub, while Rogue Valley Roses lists her as 2'-3'.  Paul Barden himself says she is likely to be a 5 foot shrub or more.

If you come by this time of year, look across the garden for a raspberry-pink splash, and then, as you draw closer, don your sunglasses to spare your eyes from her brilliance.  As long as she stays healthy, 'Crested Damask' has a bright [sic] future in my garden.

Queen of the Irises

ProfessorRoush has a favorite iris.  Hand's down, no question about it, a definite favorite.  I grow all colors and types of irises.  I maintain approximately forty different varieties that still survive my neglectful gardening.  I'm partial to the purples like 'Superstition', so deep they are almost black.  I fancy the bright sky blue irises such as 'Full Tide'.  I love the soft pink refined splendor of 'Beverly Sills'.  But it is bicolored and vivacious 'Edith Wolford' that holds my iris heart.

I fought long and hard to obtain 'Edith Wolford'.  Every year at the local iris sale I would rush to her spot in the alphabet first, only to be beaten to the spot by a purse-swinging senior lady or to find that all the divisions had been sold privately before the public sale.  A friend finally took pity on me and set aside a fan for me.  Or, as a second friend pointed out, I acquired 'Edith Wolford' by cheating.  A gardener can only sustain the bruises from heavy handbags and bony elbows a few times before he must take preemptive action to end the abuses.

'Edith Wolford' was a 1984 introduction by the late Ben Hager,and she has received all the top American Iris Society awards including the Dykes Medal of Honor (1993), the highest award given.  Hager was the owner of Melrose Gardens in California, and he also hybridized the above-mentioned 'Beverly Sills' (1985 Dykes Medal of Honor).   'Edith Wolford' is the perfect contrast of soft yellow standards and gentle blue falls.  Her beard is a brighter yellow, a beacon to the insects who would steal her pollen.  She even occasionally reblooms.  'Edith Wolford', however, does not always photograph well since cameras tend to make the soft blue falls more purple than they really are.  For example, the top picture on this page was taken on my "good" Canon camera, and the picture at the right was taken on my iPhone.  Both are a little purple-tinged, although the top picture does more closely capture the quality of the canary-yellow standards.

I won't entertain negatives in regards to 'Edith Wolford' in my garden since she grows so well here, but to be fair, other gardeners dismiss her as sickly, sparing of her blooms, slow to grow, and prone to rot.  To those who would be her detractors, I will mangle a quote from the The Hunger Games and suggest, "May your odds with irises be never in your favor." 

Volunteer Opening

Another mystery of my garden was revealed last night when a volunteer peony seedling (sapling? stalk? plant?) opened for the first time.  Until I first noticed this little gem in 2012, growing where it shouldn't be, I was unaware that some peonies would self-seed if they weren't deadheaded.  There were 6 or 8 ancient peonies near the orchard where I was raised, and I never noticed any distant seedlings, but perhaps that was because we mowed around each peony and never gave them a chance.  In contrast, my cypress-mulched and partially shaded front garden must be perfect for peony babies, because I've now got three small new peonies where none was planted.

My natural approach of live-and-let-live for self-seeding plants paid off perfectly this time.   This little girl is presumably a self-cross of 'Kansas' or 'Inspector Lavergne', or a cross of the two, since there are several of each in the bed.  Regardless of the parentage, I'm pleased at the almost bright-red coloration, the prominent yellow stamens, and the semi-double form, and I think I'll keep this one around under an appropriate study name such as 'Roush's Red'.  The blue foliage at the top of the picture, if you're wondering, is a blue-green sedum, 'Strawberries and Cream'. 

If you recognize the foliage of a volunteer plant, and it isn't a weed, don't pull it up.  You just never know the gifts you've been given until you, in turn, give them a chance to shine.

 

Predictable Poser

ProfessorRoush has spent the last 3 years puzzling over the provenance of a perfect little rose seedling that I found in the shade of 'Hope for Humanity' late one summer.  Praying that I had a new little self-seeded hybrid of my very own, I transplanted it to a new bed where it would get plenty of sun and I waited for it to bloom.

At the end of a full growing season, in 2012, the rose was about 12 inches tall, and still perfectly healthy, but it did not bloom.  It was obviously winter-hardy and had no blackspot.  It had small foliage of 7 leaflets that roughly resembled a R. spinosissima, but the only two R. spinosissima hybrids I've ever grown were 'Harison's Yellow' and 'Stanwell Perpetual'.  'Stanwell Perpetual' had been grown near the birthing site about 6 years ago, but was long dead.  Could this rose be from a surviving root of that rose?  If it was, then why wasn't it blooming?

I waited another year, believing that even a non-remonant rose would bloom at the start of the 2013 season, but the plant still didn't bloom.  By that time, my theory was that I had a seedling of R. arkansana, the wild rose of the local prairies, and I was kicking myself for thinking it could be anything else.  But R. arkansana's foliage in the nearby prairie looked bigger than my rose, and by the end of last season, the rose was 3 feet tall, with long canes and small short prickles everywhere.  Thankfully, it was still completely free of blackspot.  But what was it?

This week, the mystery was solved for me.  The rose has been blooming with these little pink single-flowered blossoms.  I looked at them, looked over my shoulder at the R. eglanteria (R. rubiginosa) growing in another bed, and I confirmed the identity of my seedling as R. rubiginosa by rubbing a few leaves and releasing that nice green apple scent.  Somehow, (a bird?) Shakespeare's Sweetbriar rose had seeded itself 200 feet away from the bed in which it grew. 

I suppose it could still be a hybrid, but I can't tell my rose from the species at present.  We'll confirm it again when hips form.  Mystery solved, but do I really want another monstrous R. eglanteria near a pathway and short of room?  I think not.  It'll have to be moved. 

New Roses, Bright Future

'South Africa'

As this blog entry is being posted on the evening of 5/19/14, you might just try to picture me out in my garden planting this rose, 'South Africa', because that's where I'm going to be.  Last Thursday, just before Mrs. ProfessorRoush and I left for a three-day weekend trip to visit my son in Colorado, this rose and a few others arrived,  leaving me with the choice of planting new roses out into a predicted two nights of mid-30's temperatures and possible frost, or of placing them on the kitchen table in front of a bright window and hoping they would survive indoors for a few days without me.  Survive indoors, they did.

It's nice when own-root, new roses are already blooming as they arrive, and I was especially excited to see these blooms from 'South Africa', a W. Kordes & Sons floribunda introduced in 2001.  Although the spectacular color of this rose is not in question, everything else about it seems to be up in the air.  The British label it a Floribunda, the American Rose Society calls it a Grandiflora, and it is introduced in South Africa as a Hybrid Tea.  It was introduced by Kordes as 'Golden Beauty', and also carries the registration name of KORberbeni, but I've found other references that say that Kordes et alnever registered the rose.  It won the Gold Standard Rose Trials Gold Standard award in Britain in 2009, and the Golden Price of the City of Glasgow in 2006, so it has a pretty decent following across the pond. 

For the life of me, I can't find anything about why the rose is marketed as 'South Africa' here.  'Golden Beauty' seems intuitive, but there is no explanation that I can find for renaming it as 'South Africa'.  The Kordes & Sons website doesn't even list the rose anymore, on either the German or English versions of the site, and that seems a little odd too.  So, if anyone knows more, please enlighten me.

In the meantime, I've got this one and eight more roses from www.rosesunlimitedownroot.com to plant tonight.  Of the remaining, all are Griffith Buck roses except for 'Edith de Murat', an 1858-era Bourbon.   I couldn't resist another sweet-scented Bourbon.

Wanton Whimsy

Gardeners one and all, please forgive me for the crass display you are witnessing.  I took a long step this past week beyond acceptable garden ornamentation, crashing and burning far past the gates of conventional decorum.  I created, in my unsuspecting garden, as you can plainly see here, a bottle tree.

I've lusted for a bottle tree for years and I still can't explain the urge.  It's like I am a Babtist preacher who keeps coming back to Mardi Gras.   I normally strive to maintain a garden that the general public will likely approve of, even as I push back against pruning conventions to the irritation of those who like their shrubbery carefully clipped and marching in step.  The existence of a bottle tree in my garden is a leap far past the line of whimsy for me, a singular incongruity like a wart on a princess.  I've flirted with whimsy before, bringing yet another rabbit statue into the garden, but until now I've stayed on the safe side, refusing to add figures of gargoyles and peeing little boys.

There are commercial bottle trees available, even an entire company dedicated to their creation, but I had to make my own.  For one thing, I felt the commercial trees were too small, usually under 5 feet tall and seldom holding over twenty bottles.  And they're pricey.  And I was worried about anchorage against the Kansas winds.   A bottle tree that has to be straightened after every storm would be exhausting.  So I created my own, cementing a treated landscape post into the ground so the trunk would be over 6 feet tall. I cut rebar for use as "limbs".  Best of all, I can add to it merely by drilling a hole and adding another limb.  I want lots and lots of bottles.

The King of Bottle Trees, Felder Rushing, who himself has fourteen of them, believes that bottle trees date as far back as men have made glass, from back when the belief arose that spirits could live in bottles and that evil spirits could be captured in them. Rushing also relates, and I agree, that blue-only bottle trees are the best.  Doubt me?  Click here to be convinced by a picture of Rushing's blue tree covered in snow.  Mine would be all cobalt blue already, but Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her friends insist on choosing wine for its taste instead of the pretty bottle it comes in.  Consequently, I have only one blue bottle at the moment, but the Internet may come to the rescue since I can buy a dozen cobalt blue bottles there for a mere $19.99.   I think making an all blue tree will really spruce up the bottle tree and my garden. 

(Get it?  "Spruce up my bottle tree?")

 

Early Lead for Therese Bugnet

'Therese Bugnet' came out of the gate strong this year, bright and flashy, fast to open.  She's still running well with a terrific display of speed, out-showing every other rose in my garden, but as you can see from the ground around her (photo below), she's starting to fade and drop back.  I think she's going to place in the final rankings of my rose year, but we must wait to see if she can put on a vigorous second and third effort and then keep going right on to the frosty wire in October.  What do you think, a photo finish in Garden Musings this fall so that the judges can deliberate?




In all seriousness, 'Therese Bugnet' seldom has a bad year, but I can't remember such a floriferous display or her pinks to be quite so vibrant as I'm seeing now.  Am I being objective, or have I been influenced by a long dark winter, conditioned to fall in love with the first cute, bright beauty to cross my path?  Unlike many of my so-called hardy roses, this harsh winter never touched her.  Her canes remained strong and healthy, no tip dieback at all, even after the late freeze.  And every bud is opening to a perfectly-formed flower.  Even with a ride-along spider (look closely at that first picture), she's gorgeous, from the tips of her petals right down the white streaks to her ovaries and further along the red canes to her roots.  And her foliaged attirement is attractive as well, no trace of disease or insect or frost damage.  It's nice, occasionally, to find a pretty woman in this modern age who also knows how to dress.

I've grown 'Therese Bugnet' almost as long as I've grown roses and I tend to take her for granted most years, knowing that she'll be there, requiring no extra care, blooming slowly along in the background.  After her display this year, I regret that I once called her the trailer trash of the rose world.  She's a tough old gal, and strong women often are less-appreciated because they take care of themselves instead of calling for attention from the gardener by swooning at the first touch of heat or drought.  This year, however, I think it is her time, a time for 'Therese Bugnet' to shine once again and remind her why I fell in love with her those long years ago.