See, This Is Why...

This is why I encourage the growth of the Prickly Poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) in my garden. Yes, the so-called "Prickly Poppy" or "Crested PricklyPoppy" is an invading weed in dry, barren soil, but it certainly catches the eye.  Look at those white petals, the cleanest perfect white ever created, and made out of the finest parchment.  Experience the cloud of yellow stamens floating above the petals like the center of the sun.  Notice the purple cross (stigma) at the center of the bloom, a royal receptacle waiting to collect the golden pollen.  And look at the attendant honeybees in the pictures on this page.  In that overall shot of the whole plant, every single open bloom has a bee in it.  Count them.  Imagine a garden bed full of white poppies and honeybees.


On the recent day that I took them, just past the worst heat of the hottest summer on record, nothing else was blooming in such perfect form in my garden.  Nothing else was even close. There were a few decrepit drought survivors trying to bloom, but they played second fiddle to this beauty.  I know that I've written a tribute to this plant before, but witness again an opportunistic plant  that deserves more than to be called "just another weed."

Perfect blooms in the heat of summer? Healthy blueish foliage during a drought? No pests? Nectar source for bees?  Xeriscape worthy?  Someone (maybe me?) should spend half a lifetime in a worthwhile manner trying to breed these weeds into a decent and refined garden plant.  If this plant lost a few prickles and maybe gained some foliage density, gardeners would fall all over themselves trying to buy it.  Imagine the possibilities if it could be developed with some color variety or variegated foliage.  Why, it might even make the cover of Fine Gardening.  Now that would be something.

The Catalonian

'El Catala'

The beautiful, albeit slightly heat-singed, bi-colored rose pictured at the left is the Griffith Buck rose 'El Catala', a tribute to the great Catalan rose breeder Pedro Dot (or Pere Dot i Martinez as he was known in Catalan).  The Catalonians are an ethnic group in northern Spain (including Barcelona) with their own distinct language. As a high school student, Griffith Buck was assigned by a Spanish teacher to find a pen pal from Spain.  Senor Dot became that transAtlantic correspondent, taking the time to befriend the budding rosarian in a mentoring relationship that forged a lifetime interest and friendship, although the actual letters were written by his niece, Maria Antonia.  Pedro Dot's roses are not widely distributed these days, but if you've seen any of them you would most likely have run across 'Nevada', a single white Hybrid Moyesii, or the Large-Flowered climber 'Madame Grégoire Staechelin', both bred in 1927.

Officially listed as a red-blend grandiflora, 'El Catala' was released in 1981.  The classic buds open slowly to reveal double 4 inch diameter blooms of rose-red to crimson-red on the face of the petals and very pale rose on the reverse.  The color seems to intensify in heat and sunlight.  Blooms are borne singly or in clusters up to 8 at a time and have a mild fragrance.  The bush, in its second summer in my garden, is small at present, only 2 feet tall and about 1.5 feet wide, and seems healthy but not very vigorous.  It has a slow repeat bloom, but I've seen no fungus or winter damage here during two seasons.  The seed parent was 'Wanderin' Wind', a Buck-bred pink shrub, and the pollen parent was a complex cross of a seeding of 'Dornroschen' and 'Peace' with 'Brasilia'.  It is the latter ancestor, a scarlet rose with a golden yellow reverse, that the unique coloring pattern of 'El Catala' seems to originate from.   

'El Catala'

I find the coloring to be quite similar to the 1980 William Warriner-bred eventual AARS winner 'Love', although 'Love' tends to be a little more crimson on the inside and a little more white on the outside of the petals than 'El Catala'.   I grow 'Love' here on the Kansas prairie as well as 'El Catala', and it is no contest that  'El Catala' is a much more healthy rose than 'Love', which struggles year to year to keep enough canes alive to reach a bloom-supporting size.  Although the summer heat seems to be doing its worst on the pictured 'El Catala' blooms, they hold their own the rest of the year, adding a nice and very different touch to the front of the rose garden.

Passed Along Pleasures

It's always a great joy when somebody gifts you a plant or when you can pass along a favorite plant to a friend.  Witness "Greggo's Sedum", a gift from Greggo when he visited my garden a few weeks back.  In the midst of drought, with everything fighting for survival, there could be no more useful gift than a succulent, even if it is one purloined from a distant garden during the travels of a friend. 

Greggo, as you can see, the sedum clippings survived, rooted, and are even getting ready to flower.  It's somewhat sad to be fearful about the drought resistance of a succulent, but I think I'll hold off planting it out into the garden for awhile until I'm sure it can survive the drought.  I don't want to risk this memory of friendship, any more than I would risk the divisions of sedums from my maternal grandmother that have grown for years in my garden.

Almost two decades ago, in the infancy of my gardening education, I came across a delightful book named Passalong Plants, authored by Steve Bender and Felder Rushing and published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1993.  As the title suggests, Passalong Plants is a descriptive collection of heirloom plants that are often gifted from gardener to gardener, mother to daughter or father to son in the gardens of the South. It's about old plants and old friends, varieties that aren't often found at nursery centers, but which can anchor a regional garden because they've survived the climate of time.  These beautiful plants are all described in, as the foreword by Allen Lacy states, "a distinctive voice, folksier and colloquial and playful."  If you can find a copy, it is one of the most delightful reads of "modern" gardening literature.  Along the way, amidst the humor and joy of gardening in the words, you'll learn about plants that need to be found for your own garden, about the delightful stories of their provenance and value to the gardeners who grow them, and you'll be reminded of all the wonderful plants you already have that represent friends and family in your own garden.