casa coniglio

Salvia chamaedryoides, the "dwarf-like salvia" has got to be one of my favorite plants. In a family that has many wonderfully blue flowers, this salvia has some of the most intensely blue that I've seen.The plants are small, especially compared to the bigger salvias, in my yard growing barely a foot tall, although in warmer climates I've seen them bigger. It blooms all summer and into the fall, although the first bloom is the most impressive. The leaves are grey, and are attractive in themselves, except that their greyness diminishes the impact of the blue flowers. Plants spread both by seeds and by underground stems, and in my un-irrigated garden, not in an aggressive way. It survived -11F this winter without difficulty, looking no difference from previous years.


This plant is not without its faults, however.  The plant's winter appearance is a bit shabby, and dieback occurs in an irregular way, with some branches dying back entirely, and others showing no damage.
This makes for a very irregular plant, with the random living branches sticking out beyond the basal growth. To avoid this, I trim my plants nearly to the ground in the spring.


With irrigation and a more fertile soil, the flowers are much larger and the plant growth more vigorous.  I see them planted in mixed-planting containers and they are just beautiful. But this plant is tough enough to look good without irrigation and without soil amendments.

The seed heads of Tulipa clusiana are just opening, ready to scatter the seeds. In this windy weather, the seeds will be gone by tomorrow.  I love the abstract patterns of the unfocused leaves. I'm seeing a dog face in the upper left hand corner. Or is it a pig?

Although the entire plant of Artemesia versicolor is very attractive, I find the details most enchanting. This plant will spread with time, so it needs dividing every few years unless you want a dense mat with smaller leaves. You don't have to prune it to the ground every spring like I do, and instead of a uniform compact mound, the plant forms a lumpy spread of smaller leaves and the plant covers ground faster, rooting along the stems. In either case, you may want to prune off the flowers that form in mid-summer since the yellow puffs aren't very attractive and produce loads of air borne allergenic pollen.

Salvia argentea has been blooming for the last 2 weeks. I blogged about Sarge (S. ARGEntea) before, noting that it is a plant that is primarily grown for its leaves, but I am very fond of its flowers and its candelabra effect.

The first of the Eremurus 'Cleopatra' is also the first to finish blooming. These last few blossoms will be faded tomorrow. There are still 3-5 days left on the other plants, but the curtain is coming down on this show. I can't be too upset about it, though, since the show started on May 10, which means that when the last bud fades, the show will have lasted more than 3 weeks. That's more than 3 times as long as the tulips or the reticulata irises.

Despite the dry year, Penstemon pseudospectabilis has decided to put out a second flush of blooms. Very considerate.

Yucca thompsoniana

Today in eremurus land, just before sunrise.


And then the sun rose.

It's spuria time at Casa Coniglio, a time that makes me feel just a little homesick. Here, where it is now home, I count the number of flowers on the plants. In California, where I grew up, the plants grow in such thick clumps, they plants flower in the hundreds. Here, I cherish each blossom as a jewel, but in California, they were so easy as to be practically weeds, growing in abandoned yards or by the roadside, and thus, ignored. Although I love all the irises, the spurias have a special place in my heart. This one, 'Ila Crawford' has been very reliable for me, even though it is planted in part shade under the redbud tree. There are three blossoms this year, but even if I had a hundred, there wouldn't be enough...and yet, to behold a single blossom is enough.

Neo1

Neofinetia falcata is another orchid that survived the trip to California and back. Come to think of it, it survived two cross-country trips before that. This plant is my first Neo (I have five now. See my second Neo "new Neo" here from last year, and here in 2009). I purchased Neo1 from an orchid club sale in 1995 as a single growth for $3. The woman I bought it from was so excited that she was able to grow an orchid enough that she could divide it. It sat in its little 2-1/4" pot for years without blooming or growing very much. But then when I put it into my orchid case, it took off. Three years ago, Neo1 looked like this.

I vaguely remember thinking, when I first encountered this orchid, that it wasn't impressive, with small compressed flowers (i.e. not "show quality" by cattleya or phalaenopsis standards) of a plain white. But perhaps that was because I had only seen single growth plants with a single flower spike, and for some reason those flowers weren't fragrant. Now that my plants have gotten to some size, it just might be my favorite orchid. And that is saying a LOT  coming from a die-hard cattleya fan. There are lots of things to recommend it. It is easy to grow (there was a time that I would never admit to liking an easy-to-grow orchid) and bloom (the trick is to give it enough humidity and light). It stays small enough to stay under the lights or on the windowsill. The flowers are delicate, intricate, and graceful - the long spur makes it one of the most alluring orchid I know. Perhaps best of all is the fragrance: a mouthwatering creamy vanilla creamsicle fragrance exudes from the flowers, and fills the room both day and night.  What's not for me to like? Mine is the wild form, the leaves plain, the flowers white with just a touch of pink at the petal tips. In Japan, where this orchid is native, there are hundreds of collector's forms, with various leaf shapes ("bean", "needle", etc.), leaf variegation, flower forms (extra petals, spurless), and some flower colors (pink, yellow) as well as hybrids. I've been lusting after some of these, but to be honest, I like the wild form the best.

Laeliocattleya Mini Purple 'Tamani' is one of the orchids that survived my double move. It's blooming again now, and I'm glad to have something that survived.

But when this plant blooms, it is the star of the garden. And like a firework, is very short lived.
Maybe I'm just in one of those moods today.

Sarge (Salvia argentea) is getting ready to bloom, but mostly I was trying out a new lens on my camera. Most people are only interested in the leaves of this salvia, but the blooms are rather impressive. The thing about plants like this is that they aren't interested in impressing us. They are more interested in getting along with the business of reproduction. So instead of staying in a vegetative form and producing mounds of impressive leaves, they put out leaves as quickly as they can to produce energy for flowering. So the leaves are at their peak for only a week or two before their energy goes into the blooms. Of course, they are beautiful all the way up to that point as well.

the candelabra of blossoms beginning to form

Some people say that the leaves change from impressive silver to a dull green after blooming. They cut the developing flower stems before they bloom, saying that it prolongs the silvery quality of the leaves, as well as prolonging the life of the plant. I suppose that the fully formed leaves are not as densely hirsute as the young leaves. But when I tried cutting off some of the developing flower stems I noticed no difference between the leaves of those plants whose flowering stems I cut and those I left alone. So I leave them now, and enjoy the show.

flower buds developing

Then again, the leaves of my plants aren't as silvery as some of those in photos that I see. They aren't quite the same as those in the stores that I see either, the leaves of mine being more of an olive color, and with serrated edges, a pointed tip and a smoother appearance, whereas those I see in the stores,  on-line, and at the Scottish botanical garden, seem to have a more rounded, ruffled appearance to the leaves, like giant silvery oak leaves. When I bought the plants, they looked like all the rest, but now they look like this, and even the seedlings don't have that rounded look.

the most silvery of my plants

I haven't noticed any difference in the longevity of a plant from cutting the flowers off either. The only thing that kills my plants is trying to transplant them (even seedlings) or watering them. I tried keeping one moist to try to get more impressive leaves, and was rewarded with collapse and rot. I tried a few times, in fact, and got the same results. So they get no water now, they are allowed to bloom, and self-seed enough that I have to thin the seedlings. By the way, if you let the seeds mature, be careful when trying to harvest the seeds and removing the dead stalk: all those bracts are quite sharp and can draw blood.

Like almost any other flower, eremurus blossoming doesn't seem to last long enough. Each flower on the spike doesn't last very long - a day or two. Compare the photo above to the last posting from 4  days ago. Fortunately, the spike is fairly long, so that the show lasts for a week or so. If you have the talent for pampering them, the spikes are longer, which doesn't necessarily mean a longer blossoming since more of the blossoms will be open on the spike at once. You do get a bigger show, though, so it is still worth the effort. The eremurus season will last longer if you have a few different varieties which bloom at different times. I'm eager to try E. himalaicus, particularly since I saw a stunning combination of it with an allium (somehow, Blogger deleted all the comments from my last posting...GRR!).

I love Eremurus, but I still haven't figured out how to make them really happy. I had one fabulous year in 2008, but since then, the performance has been decidedly lackluster. Last year I had almost no flowers at all, and didn't even bother to take any photos. This year, with the very dry winter we've had, I made sure to water and fertilize (gasp!) during the active growth period.



There has been spiking and the first blooms opened yesterday, but the spikes are much smaller than in 2008. Perhaps like bulbs, they store energy from the year before and need to prepare a year in advance. It may also have been that the ceanothus got really big and shaded them. If that is the case, next year should be much better, since not only did give them more (any) water and fertilizer, but the ceanothus was cut back to the ground due to the winter freeze. One day I'll get it right.

It is in the section Peltanthera, which includes such penstemon as P. palmeri and P. clutei, so that gives you an idea of the growth.

P. clutei, May 2009

P. pseudospectabilis, May 2010

P. pseudospectabilis May 2008