FREE FREE C4TAWG 'CATAWG 1-800-72&7667 1-80(). 723-7667 Operater 1526 Operator 1526

Is S.omething Missing From Your Garden? Is your garden rnissingjewel-like flowers floating on ordering one of,Qur durable TetraPond 32 mil, flexible, 2 a sh:lnuner:l:ng water surface and the darting brilliance of ply PVC pool liners. So easy to install and maintain you will goldfish? Are you missing the melodic sounds of water ask yourselfwhyyou waited so long to begin this adventure. spilling from a fountain, vessel or waterfall? Then what Call toll free to nearest location to order your liner. Please you need in your garden is a lily pond. Let Lilypons Water have credit card information handy. Gardens and TetraPond help you to get started today by Choose from the seven sizes listed (sizes are approximate) for depth 18" to 24" in your own d€Sign. Sale Nrices are good through 09/08/93. Add 86.95 for packing/handling within 48 contiguous states. Manufacturer's Suggested Price SALE Manufacturer's Suggested Priee SALE o 8' x 13' hner makes 4' x 9' pool . . . . 8 99 876.95 o 13' x 20' hner makes 9' x 16' pool . . 8279 8199.95 010' x 16' hner m~es 6' x 12' poel ..... 169 119.95 o 16' x 23' hner makes 12' x 19' pool 349 249.95 o 13' x 13' l:iner makes 9' x 9' pool . . . . . 199 138.95 o 20' x 26' hner makes 16' x 22' pool . 499 359.95 o Lilypons Water Gardens 100 page catalog . FREE o 23' x 30' hner makes 19' x 26' pool . 589 429.95 Use your personal check or circle credit card: Discover MasterCard VISA Card Numbe.r Expiration Date ___----- Name Address Apt. _____ City . State Zip Phone L-)___ _ CalifOrnia (7.75%), Ma,ryland (5%), and Texas (7.25%) residents please add sales tax. Lilypons Water Gardens® Dept. 1526 Dept. 1526 Dept. 1526' P.O. Box 10 P. O. Box 188 P. O. Box 1130 Buckeystown, Maryland 21717-0010 ,Brookshire, Texas 77423-0188 Thermal, California 92274-1139 1-800·999-5459 1-800-765-5459 1-800-365-5459 American Horticulturist Volume 72, Number 8 August 1993

ARTICLES

The Prodigal Sunflower by Rita Pelczar ...... 15 From food and dye for the first Americans to a possible herbicide for tomorrow, this native keeps giving and giving.

A Garden With an Altitude by Marty Carlock ...... 22 Th@ Betty Ford Alpine Gardens are teaching residents of ski country that they can grow more than just pansies.

Shhhh! A Pro's Library Secrets by Keith Crotz ...... 28 When amassing a garden book collection, plan on gaining wisdom, not wealth, a book dealer advises. AUGUST'S COVER The Catmint Muddle Photographed by Kusra Kapuler by Elisabeth Sheldon ...... 34 The annual sunflower is grown the You'll love growing members of the Nepeta clan, but you world over for its seeds as well as may not always be sure what you've plant@d. its beauty. But Helianthus annuus is only one member of a genus that The Plains Cottonwood has been cultivated for at least by Robert Michael Pyle ...... 39 5,000 years. Among the 150 or so A naturalist reflects on the kin of a tree that once saved his life. forms of Helianthus, there are many that deserve a place in the garden. In her article beginning on page 15, Rita Pelczar looks at the history and the horticulture of DEPARTMENTS sunflowers. Commentary ...... 4

Offshoots ...... 5

Book Reviews ...... 8

Classifieds ...... 43

Pronunciations ...... 46 American Horticultural Society

The American Horticultural Society seeks to promote and recognize COMMENTARY excellence in horticulture across America.

nnovations in gardening are rare. Its OFFICERS 1992-1993 traditional methods and values have Mr. George C. Ball Jr. been derived from the timeless quality President I West Chicago, Illinois of the plants themselves. Mrs. Sarah S. Boasberg However, innovations do sometimes come First Vice President about, both naturally and artificially. Natural Washington, D.C. innov~tion occurs through both long-term Dr. William E. Barrick Seccmd Vice President evolutionary developments and short-term Pine Mountain, Georgia environmental fluctuations. Artinicial innova­ Mr. David M. Lilly tion occurs in the plants themselves as a result Secretary of selection and breeding, alld in their use, St. Paul, Minnesota Mr. Gerald T. Halpin when gardeners choose the plants they will Treasurer grow, where, and how, based on social, aes­ Alexandria, Virginia thetic, and environmental considerations. Innovation keeps cultures vital. Therefore, its occurrence cannot be ignored. This is especially true in horticulture, where innovation, although rare, has BOARD OF DIRECTORS long-lasting effects. For example, there has been much discussion of "water­ Mrs. Suzanne Bales wise" or drought-tolerant gardening, particularly in the American West. Bronxville, New ¥otk Horticultural innovations that have emerged from the southwestern Dr. SheIfan Blair Columbus, Ohio United States and the Middle East include new technologies, such as drip Mrs. Mary Katherine BLount irrigation. Many gardeners in California are converting to native plants Montgomety, Alabama that will withstand low water levels-a welcome development. However, Mr. William F. Brinton Mount Vernon, Maine care must be taken to maintain aesthetic continuity with the look and feel Mrs. Beverley White Dunn of more "water-dependent" gardens that represent an important heritage Birmingham, Alabama in California and that offer a welcome relief from the western landscape, Dr. John Alex Floyd Jr. Birmingham, Alabama especially in the state's interior cities. This year's heavy rainfall and Mrs. Julia Hobart snowpack in the Sierras might seem to assure us that there will be much Troy, Ohio available water in the coming years. However, private and public gardens Dr. Richard L. Lower must continue to use plants innovatively. Madison, Wisconsin Mr. Elvin McDonald This issue of American Horticulturist illustrates the wide range of H@uston, Texas wonderful plants in our country, and the varied uses and meanings Mr. William G. Pannill associated with them. The plains cottonwood, although rarely thought of Martinsville, Virginia Mr. Lawrence V. Power as a garden tree, is a sentimental favorite of those in the Great Plains, where New York, New York its presence led pioneers to water and welcome shade. Native Americans Dr. Julia Rapi"ap@rt and settlers found many uses for our native sunflower; it took the Russians Santa Ana, California to develop it as a commercial crop. As is the case with many of us, ancestors Mrs. Flavia Redelmeier Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada of the catmints came from other continents, but their preference for dry Mrs. Jane N. Scarff soils makes them ideal for those low-water landscapes. The Betty Ford New Carlisle, Ohio Alpine Gardens in Vail, Colorado, is a perfect example of how both natives Mrs. Josephine Shanks Houston, Texas and non-natives can be adapted to special situations, in this case high Mrs. Billie Trump altitude and a short growing season. And we bring you an article on Alexandria, Virginia creating a garden book library that matches your own needs and interests, Mr. Andre Viette Fishersville, Virginia whether you grow prairie flowers on our Great Plains, rhododendrons in Ms. Katy Moss Warner the Northwest, or staghorn ferns in Florida. Lake Buena Vista, Florida When your own library fails you, remember that information is as near as our Gardeners' Information Service. Our mission is to disseminate EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR horticultural information and knowledge, and we look forward to sharing Mrs. Helen Fulcher Walutes that knowledge when you call. George C. Ball]r., AHS President

4 AUGUST 1993 American Horticulturist

Editor OFFSHOOTS Kathleen Fisher Managing Editor Mary Beth Wiesner Assistant Editor Chris Bright Editorial Assistant Steve Davolt Desigl~ Director Joseph Yacinski Designers Bob McCracken Reg Perry Membership Director Darlene Oliver

Editorial Advisory Board Dr. Gerald S. Barad Flemington, New Jersey John Bryan Sausaliro, California John Creech Hendersonville, North Carolina Keith Crotz Chi llicothe, Illinois Panayoti Kelaidis Denver, Colorado Peter Loewer Asheville, North Carolina Janet M. Poor Winnetka, Illinois Dr. James E. Swasey Newark, Delaware

Advertising AHS Advertising Department 2300 South Ninth Street, Suite 501 Neighbors spreader. "Your house's last owner fertil­ ArlingtOn, VA 22204-2320 ized the lawn less than two months ago," I (703) 892-0733 by Jeremiah Hana noted. " I fertilize mine only twice a year." Color Separations "Yea h, but yours is already established. Chroma-Graphics, Inc. ow that I think of it, Bob Carr's Mine needs a little work. Within three Printer faith in my green thumb was well months mine'll put yours to shame," he William Byrd Press, Inc. justified. Thanks to hard work, promised as he rolled my spreader from my N Replacement issues of AMERICAN HORTICULTUR· good luck, and the Almighty, I had one of garage. 1ST are available at a COst of $2.95 per copy, The the best yards in the neighborhood. The Neighbors are a funny lot. Some of them opinions expressed in the art icles that appear in AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST are those of the thick, velvety front lawn was accentuated are like family, others are like close friends, authors and arc nor necessarily those of the Society. by a panoramic perennial and rock garden and a few become foes. I wasn't sure where Botanical nomenclature in AMERICAN HORTICUL­ TURIST is based on HORTUS THIRD, Manuscripts, with abundant flowers in bloom all season. Bob would end up on this imaginary scale, art work, and photographs sent for possible publication That was then and this is now. Today, no but I knew right then that he was working will be returned if they are accompanied by a self-ad­ dressed, stamped envelope. We caoom guarantee the southern Californian with any sense has a his way towards the wrong end. safe return of unsolicited material. lawn. Not a very big one anyway. Bob Throughout the week, I helped him do AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST, ISSN 0096-4417, Carr, however, is probably still tryi ng to heavy lifting, light hauling, various do-it­ is the official publication of the American Horticulrural Society, 793 1 East Boulevard Drive, Alexandria, VA grow the biggest, greenest lawn in his yourself projects, and shared a two-hour 22308·1300, (703)768·5700, and is issued six times a neighborhood. ride to work with him. This would prove year as a magazine and six times a year as a News Edition. The American Horticultural Society is a non­ A week after the Carrs moved in across to be a bad decision. profit organization dedicated to excellence in horticul­ the street, Bob asked about my lawn. Aside from being an authority on every­ ture. Membership in theSociery includes a subscription to AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST, National mem­ "How do you keep it so green in this dry thing, Bob talked louder than necessary. bership dues are $45; twO years are $80. Foreign dues climate?" He had the bad habit of interrupting before are $60, $15 of dues are designated for AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST. Copyright © 1993 by the Amer· "Fertilizer and water," I said. "Since I could finish a sentence. The more familiar ican Horticultural Society. Second-class postage paid rain's rare here in southern California, the we became, the more candidly we spoke to at Alexandria, Virginia, and at additional mailing of­ fices, Postmaster: Please send Form 3579 ro AMERI­ water bills are astronomical. But it's ei ther each other. l finally told him to sh ut up and CAN HORTICULTURIST, 7931 EaSt Boulevard that or a lousy -l ooking lawn." let me finish, but he was talking too loudly Drive, Alexandria, VA 22308-1300, That Saturday, Bob rang our doorbell to hear me. Produced in U.S.A, ea rl y. He wanted to borrow my fertilizer Like a dog, every man has his day. Mine

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 5 was to come as a blessing in disg uise. Dur­ he borrowed my hose to soak it in well. ing the spring, many lawns in our neigh­ A week later, Bob came over when he got AHS Affiliates borhood were attacked by cutworms and home from work. "I can't tell any differ­ almost simultaneously, by a mysterious ence. Except for the white from the flour, Members of the following fungus. Brown spots abounded. While pro­ my lawn's still brown as ever." institutions are participants in AHS's fessionallawn services did a brisk business, "Mine's improving," I said. Affiliate Membership some of us tried to solve the problem our­ "Why is it working for you, but not for Program, a networking selves. Bob came over as I sprayed my me?" opportunity available to most lawn. "Hi, Jerry. What're you putting on "Did you mix it like I told you?" botanical gardens, plant societies, your lawn now? " His eyes compressed into slits. "Mix it?" and horticultural groups. " Insecticide. It's supposed to kill the cut­ "Well, yeah," 1 said, pokerfaced. "Each worms." bag of flour should be mixed with a cup of Five minutes later he returned. "Mind if sugar, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a American Daffodil Society I use your hose, sprayer, and insecticde pinch of salt." Milford, Ohio when you finish?" "You-you're not serious!" American Hibiscus Society Bob chose not to return the hose, 1 shrugged. "Well, my lawn's getting Coco Beach, Florida sprayer, and insecticide. Since he still had green again and yours is still brown, or my fertilizer spreader, my tool rack was white, or whatever that is." East Tennessee Horticulture beginning to look as bare as Mother Bob reeled around and stormed back and Landscape Association Hubbard's cupboard. across the street. 1 can't swear to the recipe, Knoxville, Tennessee That weekend he borrowed my pick-up but he soon appeared again with my fertil­ to go for a load of decorative rock. He told izer spreader and began applying some­ Friends of Manito Park me he'd put in a rock garden that would thing to his lawn. 1 went inside, locked Spokane, Washington put mine to shame. He returned the truck myself in the bathroom, and howled. Friends of the Davis Arboretum with the gas tank half empty. The weekend came and went. 1 waited Davis, California Since at the time we didn't realize that until Bob was due home from work before most of the brown spots were due to fungus, 1 took the two dozen eggs out to my lawn. Garden Resources of Washington we continued to drown our lawns morning As he pulled up and exited his car, 1 broke Washington, D.C. and night, making matters worse. Finally, a one of the eggs and placed it on my lawn, neighbor learned about the fungus from trying to be as conspicuous as possible. Hardy Fern Foundation some professional lawn care people. The "Hi, Jerry. What're you doing? " Seattle, Washington. demand for the fungicide they recom­ "Applying the finishing touch," 1 yelled mended had almost exhausted the supply, back. The Herb Society of America but I finally found it in powdered form. Mentor, Ohio 1 counted. It took exactly six seconds for Since Bob and I had stopped carpooling, him to reach me . "Eggs?" Huntsville Botanical Garden I had already started to work on my lawn "Yep. They'll blend in with the flour and Huntsville, Alabama when he arrived home from work. He other stuff and rea lly give my lawn a shot parked his car and yelled across the street. in the arm." 1 cracked a third egg and Master Gardeners International "Hi, Jerry. What're you putting on your placed it in line with the other two, about Corporation grass now? " one foot apart. "Be sure you don't break Alexandria, Virginia The temptation was too great. Although the yolks or they won't work." I had trouble keeping a straight face, I Poor Bob reeled around, went to his car, Matthaei Botanical Gardens yelled, "Flour." and sped off. His wife came outside as he Ann Arbor, Michigan "Flour?" left. "Where's he going?" National FFA "Yeah. I learned about it today at work. "Not sure, but my money's on the super­ Alexandria, Virginia It'll get rid of the fungus." market." He started across the street. "You're put­ Bob's lawn was a sight to behold: the Oklahoma Botanical Garden ting me on." yellow yolks of the fresh eggs contrasted and Arboretum "Believe what you like," I said as I re­ beautifully with the white-brown grass. Stillwater, Oklahoma sumed spreading the fungicide, "but don't Neighbors came from blocks away to see come over or you'll get flour on your shoes the display: fresh eggs, sunnyside up and a Rare Fruit Council International and track it on your carpet." foot apart, all over his front yard. Miami, Florida He turned and went back across the Eventually, Bob realized I'd duped him. Santa Barbara City College street. Five minutes later he came out, got When enough of the embarrassment wore Environmental Horticulture Program in his car, and drove away. He returned off, he came over to borrow my shovel and Santa Barbara, California with twelve, five-pound sacks of flour. wheelbarrow to clean up the mess. Without saying a word, he went into his As he went back across the street, I didn't Tennessee Native Plant Society garage and got my fertilizer spreader. mind any longer about his arrogance. Or Knoxville, Tennessee Bob looked rather odd as he made nice about his borrowing so much. After all, straight passes back and forth over his what are neighbors for? Tustin Garden Club lawn with the flour. An occasional wind Santa Ana, California gust sent the white stuff into the air, ca using Jeremiah Hana, now reformed, is an or­ an eerie mist that virtually obscured him as ganic gardener and computer scientist in he continued to work. When he was done, Corona, California.

6 AUGUST 1993 H E LEN H AYE s

1900 -1993

"All through the long winter I dream of my garden.

On the first warm day of Spring I dig my fingers deep into

the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar."

-Helen Hayes, 1992

Whenever we are in the garden, we shall remember our dear friend.

MIRACLE-GRO We Grow BeautijU1PerennUds At A Price You Will Like!!! BoOK REVIEWS The plants that return to bloom season after season for years of easy pleasure, our specialty . .. Perennials. Natural Affairs White Theris for early spring, Peter Bernhardt. Villard Books/Random summer's perky Shasta Daisies and House, New York, 1993. 225 pages. 53/4" fall for blooming Chrysanthemums ... Perennials beautify your home. x 81/2". Color and black-and-white photo­ graphs and black-and-white illustrations. Bluestone grows over 300 varieties Publisher's price, hardcover: $25. AHS of perennials which are shipped in member price: $21.25. full growth - easy to plant and each plant guaranteed. With the immense popularity of science Send for our free catalog or call 800-852·5243. We will be pleaaed to hear from you. writers like Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, and Lewis Thomas, every book Nam9 ______publisher wants to champion a newcomer who can reliably laicize his or her field of Addr9ss ______expertise--and sell millions of books in the 5tat9,______bargain. Among the strongest contenders from the current field is Peter Bernhardt, a Zip ______peripatetic botanist who weighs in here 7225 MIDDLE RIDGE RD. MADISON, OHIO 44057 with a lively, literate collection of his recent essays. Subtitled "A Botanist Looks at the Attachments Between Plants and People," these observations on the intersections of human and vegetative life will make perfect fodder for summer's end reveries. Much of the plant trivia in Natural Af­ hardt has spent two decades studying the fairs has a kind of "Ripley's Believe It or plants of Australia and the Americas. After Not" appeal. There are odd bits of history: graduate work at the University of Mel­ the Empress Josephine Bonaparte built an bourne, he served as a curator and a writer­ Australian garden at her Malmaison es­ in-residence at the Roya l Botanic Garden tate, complete with black swans floating on in Sydney; he is probably most interesting a lake and wallabies bouncing across the when waxing wry or rhapsodic on Austra­ lawn! And sensational shockers: the lian plants, people, and culture. "The sought-after spice saffron can only be col­ Hoon's Nest," for example, is both a schol­ lected from the female sex organs of the arly gloss on the Cannabis genus and a saffron crocus and is often worth more sidelong glance at its dubious cultivators.

A- Hairpin Style Markers 30 For $12.1 0 than its weight in gold! (Hoon is colloquial Australian for "a lout­ B-Plant 0r Shrub Labels 100 For $ 8.20 Bernhardt's drama tis personae are plants ish, aggressive, or surly youth.") Elsewhere C- Cap Style Markers 30 For $12.45 D- Swinging Style Markers 30 For $10.85 and people and his plot traces our long his­ he relates how rural Australian cemeteries E - Rose Markers 30 For $11 .40 tory of interaction. His coverage of Victorian have become excellent wildflower refuges. F - Tall Display Markers 30 For $14.80 G - Tall Single StaH Markers 30 For $12.40 flower symbolism is as deft as his up-to-the­ "A Sanctuary for the Dreamtime," per­ H - Flag Style Markers 30 For $10.60 J - Small Plant Labels 100 For $ 7.70 minute survey of the edible fruits of haps the best piece in the book, sketches a K - Tie·On Labels 100 For $12.80 Passiflora species. In "Muse Under Glass," moving portrait of one man's bond with M - Miniature Markers 30 For $10.65 Bernhardt notes how artists of the sixteenth nature. Billy Ricketts, a self-taught sculp­ Special Quantity Prices Available century and later, in capturing their botanical tor, moved to the Dandenong Ranges of Prices Include Prepaid Postage subjects, were also chronicling greenhouse eastern Australia in the 1930s and subse­ INTRODUCTORY OFFER development and the advance of plant explo­ quently created a statuary garden dedi­ 1 Each : A, B, C, D. E, H, J and K With Waterproof Crayon, Only $3.50 ration. Thus the tropical jungles of Henri cated to aboriginal religion. Ricketts's Rousseau assembled congeries of exotics anthropomorphic figures rise from the PAW PAW EVER LAST gathered from five continents. rock, ensconced in tree ferns and covered LABEL COMPANY Currently a professor of botany at St. in moss, establishing the deep connection P.O. Box 93·AH2 Louis University and a research associate of a people to their native land. Paw Paw, Michigan, 49079-0093 at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Bern- "There is no Muse of botany or horticul-

8 AUGUST 1993 Hardcover Grow Prize Winning Plants ... Over 150 B&W photos & tables Index, glossary Faster and Easier! ave humdreds of dollars by using The Greenhouse and Nursery Handbook 512 pages, S in your horticultural projects. This new book shows hobby greenhQuse 6x9 owners, serious gardeners, landscapirlg enthusiasts and indoor plant , lovers how to inexpensively grow all types of plants in cOr:ltainers. The handbook reveals how moGiern commercial growers produce premium crops of plants, trees and flowers at the lowest possible cost. Discover time savirlg professional secrets that will make everyone envious of your green thumb. Easy to understand, easy to use The Greenhouse and Nursery Handb ook is written irl I'llain English - every horticulturist can use it Orl a daily basis. Amateurs will easily grasp each new topiC beeause the author knows how to make difficult subjects seem simple. Dr. Francis Jozwik is an internationally reeognized scierltist and commercial horticulturist who h'as grown and sold rmi llions of plants for over 25 years - he shows you how to make practical use of modern methods. For business and career use Professional horticulturists also can use this book to make every job easier and more cost effective. It shows commercial growers how to realize greater profits than they ever imagined possible. And it is the perfect companion for people involved in the horticultural aspeets of teaehing, therapy, research, parks maintenanee and interior landscaping. The Greenhouse and Nursery Handbook thoroughly covers almost every imaginable topic dealing with ornamental container crops. It is the newest, most complete refererlce source available. Here's what you will find in The Greenhouse and Nursery Save $1 0 - Order now! Handbook: Our introdl!Jctory offer allows you to purchase the Deluxe Hardeover • Complete instructioms on how to grow • Specific suggestions for major plant Edition of The Greenhouse and Nursery Handbook at the lower softcover hundreds of ornamental plant varieties requirements such as soils and nutrients. price. This special bonus is available only to mail order customers. a=rding to professional standards. • The latest in pest and disease eontrol­ The deluxe hand bOQk is a great gift for • Clear, down-to-earth explanations of both practical and tMeoretical aspects. any dediGated plant lover. We ship how plant growth and development are • Management guidelines for commercial promptly upon order arrival influenced by majQf cultural factors . horticultural prod \,Jcti on and marketing. unless you request a futl!Jre • i"ractical advice about how to sell orna­ • Annual and perennial flowers, trees, date. mental plants at a profit. shrubs, roses, foliage plal'1ts and potted Your investment is risk • How to plan green Mouse and nursery flowers - the latest in eorltainer facilities and how to Qrganize gmwing growing techniques. free - tt:\e entire price is operations. refundable in cash if you are dissatisfied for amy reason. Simply return the urndamaged Here is what respected independent publications say book within 30 days after arrival. about Dr. Jozwik's new book. The original invoice must accompany returns. From Hobby Greenhouse Association Magazine: "The Greenhouse and Nursery Handb00k is a m\,Jst for anyQne with a greenhouse f0r r------rn Qbby or business - a great addition to any plant lover's library." Yes! I want to take advantage of your special limited time offer. Please rush my copy of The Green hou se and Nursery Handbook. I understand that I will From Hort Science -Publication of the American Society for Horticultural Science: pay only the softcover price of $49.95 plus $4.95 shipping but I will receive "Whenever it seems as if he (Jozwik) has missed explaining some topic it appears in the Deluxe Hard cover Edition as a special bonus for ordering now , the very next paragraph." I also understand my investment is ri sk free - the purchase price will be From The Small Press Book Review: promptly refunded if I am dissatisfied for any reason . No questions asked! "The voluminous handbook for gardening professionals and serious amateurs covers My total payment enclosed is $54,90, everythimg ... AII this is done in a style that is both knowledgeable and accessible to Payment by: D Check D Money Order the general interest reader." D Visa, MasterCard Exp. Date ______Card No.______

Expert Author Name Recognized by Who's Who in the World 1991-1993 Address ______Ph,D, in Plant Science and Botany Lectured at major American universities City Former research scientist in U,S. and Australia State Zip ______Successful commercial grower for 25 years Mail to: Andmar Horticulture Books West Yellowstone Blvd . Mail to: Andmar Horticulture Books P.O . Box 217 • Mills, W Y 82644-0217 West Yellowstone Blvd . Unconditional Money Back Guarantee P.O. Box 217 • Mills, WY 82644-0217 ____ ~~i~ ~~:.r.?~ ~EP~~a~e_~:.c: .?~~a.?:r_if}.?~ ~~~e~ ~<:.t ~o_ c..u~ :o~£<:.n~ ___ _ ture," Bernhardt writes. "Urania helped UNIQUE the astronomers but paid no attention to HOUSEPLANTS the life sciences. Nevertheless, plants in­ MOVING? spire all the arts without the aid of the nine da ughters of Zeus." Whatever his inspira­ tion' Bernhardt ventures far beyond aca­ demic groves to make botany more edifying for us all. -Steve Davolt

DON'T LEAVE YOUR Steve Davolt is editorial assistant of Amer­ AMERICAN ican Horticulturist. HORTICULTURIST BEHIND Hortica Inhale our Sweet Send us an old address label and your Alfred Byrd Graf Roehrs Company, East Parma Violets Rutherford, New Jersey, 1992. 1,218 new address and we'll make sure you pages. 71;2" x 101/4". Color photographs. Established in 1892, Logee's is don't miss a single issue. Publisher's price, hardcover: $250. AHS one of the country's foremost member price: $210. mail order sources of rare tropicals. Our color illustrated catalog lists Send address and name changes to: The introduction to my own recent book, over 2,000 of the finest fragrant and flowering plants. American Horticultural Society The New Houseplant: Bringing the Gar­ den Indoors, iRcludes this statement: "The Address Change Department bible I have turned to for house plants more L08ee's 7931 East Boulevard Drive than any other is Exotica, the work of Greenhouses Alexandria, VA 22308-1300 Alfred Byrd Graf, a man after my own Fax: (703) 765-6032 heart. " Hortica, Graf's latest book, con­ 141 North Street firms my judgment. Dept. AH My acquaintance with Graf goes back to Dani@lson, Conn. 06239 the summer of 1959. Graf had already Catalog $3.00 refundable published his first compendium of tropical foliage plants, and I spent that summer writing a book-hmgth manuscript for him on gesneriads. Parts of this have continued to be woven into subsequent editions of his books; when encountered unexpectedly The glories of the garden! they always evoke a special time in my life-first marriage, first house, first baby, first book. I did the writing in an attic bedroom that included a fluorescent­ lighted table with a host of gesneriads for me to interact with and write about. Graf's first major work, Exotica, was a photographic encyclopedia of house plants that became the standard referenc(l work in the indoor plant business. This would have been a solid achievement for a well-funded THE CITY THE RANDOM WILDFLOWERS PERENNIALS GARDENER'S HOUSE IN YOUR FOR AMERICAN publisher, but Graf managed it largely on HANDBOOK GUIDE TO ROSES GARDEN GARDENS his own, traveling the world to take pictures From Balcony to The most comprehen- A Gardener's The classic source, of plants, many of which had not been Backyard sive guide ever pub- Guide AtoZ. properly photographed before. His second The definitive how-to lished ; more than 1400 Today's new wild- "Of inestimable value." opus, Tropica, extended his coverage to for small spaces and roses in full color! flower classic- the - Elizabeth Scholtz, i'i' tropical flora in general. containers. most beautiful ever Director Emeritus, "lrresistible." Brooklyn Botanic ~ Now we have the long-awaited Hortica, published! Garden '" - Women's Wear Daily '" which covers all of the important plant genera, not just those from warm climates, RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF S8RUBS TREES OF N(')RTH AMERICA AND EUROPE as in the previous works. With over 8,000

RANDOM HOUSE 'BOOK OF HERBS RANDOM lIOUSEB@(')K OF PERENNIALS (EARLY) color photographs and the last word in­ Volume I. botanical nomenclature, Hortica is a work RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF BULBS RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF PF;RENNIALS (LATE) Volume 2. that no advanced gardener or collector can AU wrnt 4-GOLOR PHOTOGRAPHS TIlR®UGHOlJ1f.. afford to ignore. The book's principal value is for identi­ fication. Cultural advice, included in Graf's RANDOM ~ HOUSE previous encyclopedias, is lackiflg here, but this omission is hardly surprising given the

10 AUGUST 1993 it both in full leaf and bare limbed, which allows the reader to get an idea of the HORTICA mature habit. Each drawing is accompa­ nied by a stick figure so that an instant COLOR CYCLOPEDIA of GARDEN FLORA impression of relative height is possible. and INDOOR PLANTS reat This is especially helpful to American read­ ALFRED BYRD GRAF, D.S<. ers since the English publisher uses the G RDEN metric system. Coombes is botanist at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum in Hamp­ VISIONS shire, England. In 1985, he wrote Dictio­ nary of Plant Names, and he is currently revising the prestigious Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs. He visited the United States in 1992, touching base with garden­ ers of every stripe and indulging his inter­ est in all green and growing things. This interest informs his comments in Trees beyond the m~rely academic. Over 500 species are described in Coombes' book. I hope he lives long enough to describe 500 more. -Harriett Watson scope of the work. Its thorough photo­ graphic coverage puts Hortica in a class of Harriett Watson is garden columnist for its own, and I can testify to the effectiveness the Aiken (South Carolina) Standard. of Graf's approach. At the Compleat Gar­ dener, the Houston gardening store where The Thunder Tree I work, the book has proved invaluable for Robert Michael Pyle. Houghton Mifflin helping customers, who bring us all man­ Company, Boston, 1993. 220 pages. 53/4" ner of plants for identification. x 81/2". Publisher's price, hardcover: The New York I once inadvertently brought Graf him­ $19.95. AHS member price: $17.95. self a plant. One afternoon several years Botanical Garden ago, I returned to my exhibit at the New "I'm going to the creek!" was often heard presents in my childhood home, sometimes in revolt York Flower Show to find Graf on his a new one-day seminar on the art knees taking pictures of a ligularia. He or frustration, but more often as, where else thought it a finer specimen than the one he would I be going? The creek was sacred to and craft of garden-making. had photographed and said he hoped he my brother and sisters and me. Its mysteri­ had just taken the definitive portrait. Did ous black water ran under a 75-year-old tj'our noted landscape architects he? Open up Hortica to page 396 and rotting rough-hewn bridge. Willows, oaks, and garden designers share the judge for yourself. -Elvin McDonald and scraggly shrubs and grasses grew on the sloping banks like the tangled hair of a garden-making process with Elvin McDonald is the author ofnumerous banshee. Our horses and cows languidly you! Learn how each of these garden books and a Board Member of the drank from it on steaming hot Ohio sum­ accomplished designers created American Horticultural Society. mer afternoons. It was our moat that we patrolled, our headquarters, our bivouac the gardens that they live with, Trees against the adult world, a place shrinelike gardens that express individuality Allen J. Coombes. Dorling Kindersley, and holy, and yet utterly pagan, with its and p@rsonal preference, gardens Inc., New York, 1992. Distributed by voluptuous waters full of snakes and frogs. that provide a wonderful setting Houghton Mifflin Company. 320 pages. Beavers slid down the banks and fat ripe 7%" x 91/4". Color photographs and illus­ berries hung over the swirling waters. both for plants and people. trations. Publisher's price, hardcover: Under the bridge was the netherworld-the $29.95; softcover: $17.95. AHS member subconscious, the forbidden, the world of Coming to a city near you price, hardcover: $26.95; softcover: $16.15. trolls and evil spirits, which made just look­ ing under it the ultimate dare. in October 1993. Allen J. Coombes' Trees contains a wealth The magic of that unkempt little creek of technical information in a format that flooded back to me as I read The Thunder Call or write today to receive a will not deter the amateur. Tree. In describing the lifelong pull of such Hundreds of color photographs illus­ childhood places, Robert Michael Pyle gets detailed brochure. trate all aspects of the taxa Coombes has it exactly right when he writes, "These are 1-800-322-6924, [)ept. 51 included. The photos are accompanied by the places of initiation, where the borders notes indicating origin, habitat, and refer­ between ourselves and other creatures The New York Botanical Garden ences to be consulted if more detailed in­ break down, where the earth gets under Education, Dept. 51 formation is desired. our nails and a sense of place gets under Bronx, New York 10458-5126 A schematic drawing of each tree shows our skin."

AMERICAN HORTICULTU RIST 11 The Thunder Tree is a melancholy lovesong for lost innocence and for the increasing loss of wild, untidy places of discovery. It will strike a chord of recogni­ tion in anyone who, as a child, formed a deep connection to a specific place-a place that revealed something of nature's joyful yet poignant beauty and mystery. The memories are terribly bittersweet when these special places, like the author's and mine, live on only in the mind, having long since been swallowed by subdivisions and shopping malls. As a child growing up in the mid-1950s outside Denver, Pyle developed a mystical bond with a scruffy weedy canal that ran outside his family'S suburban develop­ ment. The High Line Canal was part of a grand irrigation plan for greening the American West in the late 1880s. For the author and his brother it became a refuge from the mind-numbing sterility of subur­ bia, which was inexorably destroying farmland and wilderness. Pebble-furred, big-tailed rock squirrels While The Thunder Tree can read like a navigate the fissures and watch from pink guide to High Line Canal wildlife, it is promontories, causing pink-pebble slides about any meadow, woodland, marsh, va­ that splash into the cool, fast flow. " cant lot, or garden that "weaves a rooted The second part, "Landmarks," de­ companionship with home ground." scribes the disruption of the land by Ufl­ The author muses that the places that checked development. Still Pyle finds hope bond many people to nature are as unspec­ in continuity with past values and life­ tacular as his own abandoned ditch. Yet styles. He calls natural landmarks such as from this ditch, his life flows. "From the trees, fields, ditches, and rocks "the hold­ time I was six," he says, "this weedy wa­ fasts in the hurricane of change," without tercourse had been my sanctuary, play­ which we lose our physical and spiritual ground, and sulking walk. It was also my bearings. imaginary wilderness, escape hatch, and His comparisons of his canal to birthplace as a naturalist." This early con­ England's famous ley lines recalls the nection eventually led him to earn a PhD "songlines" of Australian aborigines-sa­ in ecology from Yale University and to cred routes, discerned through intense lis­ author or co-author five books on butter­ tening and a special vision of the flies and other invertebrates. landscape, tracks, and relations between In the first of the book's four sectioro.s, landmarks. Please send me a free catalog. o "Lifeline," he describes falling in love with The third part, "City Limits," further Please send me 100 Mammoth o the canal and its borders. His recollections laments the cancerous rate of unchecked Darwin Hybrid Tulips for $19.95. development. Pyle argues that by ignoring o Payment enclosed: ____ are reverential and poetic. While I found much of the description of the High Line's natural limits to growth, we are creating o Charge to: 0 Master Card 0 VISA course and history tedious, the writing for cities and towns that can never be self-sus­ Acct. No.: ______the most part moves swiftly with insightful taining, but only sustained "vampirelike" Exp. Date: ______descriptions. One can smell the charred by exploiting resources from elsewhere. Name: inside of the burned out "Thunder Tree," Homeowners in the new subdivisions, Mailing Address: ______a huge ancient cottonwood that once saved which have destroyed native grasses and him and his brother from a potentially fatal butterfly habitats, tend to hold an "Ortho hailstorm. One feels the shimmering heat view of the world," he says. Even those Shipping Address: ______and hears the rustle of cottonwood leaves, who don't drown their lawns in chemicals the screech of magpies, and feels the downy plant non-native grasses that will never City: ______flutter of butterflies through summer attract the myriad butterflies that so de­ State: _____ Zip: _____ grasses. lighted him as a child. Where is the realiza­ Phone Number: ______I also faintly healid the poet Gerard tion, he asks, that without limits, natural Manley Hopkins in Pyle's description of the poverty is inevitable? VaJ1 €J1sdeJ1 lJ1c. flora and fauna of a certain canal section: In the last part of the book, "Still Life," he Stillbrook Farm "Ragged orange hoodoos and twisted blue mourns such life passages as his parents' 313 Maple Street, Litchfield, CT 06759 junipers guard the ridge above, gray rabbit­ failed marriage, the cutting down of the 23 (203) 567-8734 brush and scrub oak daub the steep hillsides. "Thunder Tree," and development en-

12 AUGUST 1993 croaching on his beloved canal. He pays pie-striped lavender blossoms; Mexican homage to the shared interest in butterfly shell flower, an iris family member; and collecting that healed a separation from his purple bell vine, which has a bell-shaped mother, lovingly describing her fanaticism, red calyx and tubular purple corolla. BEAUTY FROM skill, and lack of self-consciousness as she The adventurous gardener will find hauled butterfly nets around town. more than a few plants that he or she can't In the end, his hopes remain high that the live without. Mulligan admits that some of High Line arnd all it symbolizes will prevail. the plants may only be available from other BULB~ If nature can thrive there, he reasons, na­ gardeners who generously pass around ture can reclaim any lost place. A call for extra seeds. These "folk plants," like the the rights of childhood discoveries, of wa­ solid yellow blackberry lily, are those "that terways, wildflowers, cottonwoods, rocks, are mostly given away or baFtered from magpies, foxes, and of all extraordinary gardener to gardener," he writes. He does unspectacular places is well sounded in this provide an extensive list of sources. These haunting book. -Maureen Heffernan are arranged alphabetically by supplier, so if you're looking for sources of bulbs you Maureen Heffernan is education coordina­ need to read through the whole list to tor for the American Horticultural Society. discover the sources you need. An excerpt from The Thunder Tree be­ Any book on rare and unusual plants for gins on page 39. the garden should include a warning about collecting plants from the wild and buying plants only from reputable nurseries. That Mulligan doesn't include such a warning A~ ~ ~ yet does include two native plants that are UNUSUAL ~LANTS primarily wild-collected in the United States-pink lady's-slipper and pitcher plant-is my only criticism of the book. In every other respect gardeners with a yen for unusual plants will find this to be an invaluable source. -Mary Beth Wiesner

Mary Beth Wiesner is managing editor of American Horticulturist.

IltlAM C,MUllIGAH Book Order Form [] Natufal Affairs . $21.25 The Adventurous Gardener's o Hortica ... $210.00 o Trees Sourcebook of Rare and [] Hardcover $26.95 Unusual Plants o Softcover . $16.15 William C. Mulligan. Photographs by o The Thunder Tree $17.95 Elvin McDonald. Simon & Schuster, New o The Adventurous Gardener's 1 3 Sourcebook of Rare and Sening America's frnest York, 1992. 224 pages. 9 /4" x 9 /4". Color Unusual Plants ...... $36.00 photographs. Publisher's price, hardcover: gardens for over 80 years. $40. AHS member price: $36. Postage and hamiling: $2.50, first eook; $1.50 John Scheepers, Inc. offers the most each additional book. Virginia residents add 4 1/2% sales tax. Please allow six weeks for deliv­ spectacular collection of flower bulbs William C. Mulligan has written a book for ery. Prices are subject to change without notke. to enhance your garden's beauty. all of us wannabe plant hunters. The Ad­ venturous Gardener's Sourcebook of Rare Enelosed is my eheck for $ ~~ ___~~ Send for FREE catalog Send for your free color catalog and Unusual Plants is filled with descrip­ lJ Visa 0 MasterCard Ex p. Date: tions and beautiful photographs (by Elvin featuring Holland's largest selection McDonald) of out-of-the-ordinary plants Acct. #: and finest quality of flower bulbs. just waiting to be discovered by gardeners Name: ______Signature: who dare to look beyond the average nur­ sery and garden center. The book focuses Ship to: Street: ______on plants that "seem to have been waiting Street: ~ ______~ ____ City:______in the wings for decades, maybe centuries," Mulligan writes in the introduction. City: State: _____ Zip code: ____ Within these pages are hundreds of State I Zip: ______- plants arranged in eight categories. Here John Scheepers, Inc. you' ll find selectio ns like Trachelium MAll TO: AHS Books, 7931 East Bouleva rd ..#fa)~ P.O. Box 700 caeruleum, which has fuzzy amethyst blue Drive, Alexandria, VA 22308-1300. AH8/93 Bantam, Connecticut 06750 (203) 567-0838 flowers; a miniature hollyhock with pur- ~[~

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 13 14 AUGUST 1993 The Prodigal Sunflow-er Revered by Native Americans, it was "discovered" by Europeans, beefed up by the Russians, and is back home as a versatile garden plant and potential herbicide source.

B y R T A p E L ( z A R

here are many ways of looking at a sunflower. To the Incas it was an emblem of the sun god. The North American Ojibwas crushed its root for a wound dressing. Gerard, the herbalist, ranked it above the artichoke in " provoking bodily lust." Today the sunflower ties rapeseed as the world's third largest seed oil crop, behind soybean and cottonseed. Songbirds consider its fruit-an Tachene-gourmet fare. Interest in native plants and naturalized landscapes has height­ ened interest in sunflower species; the bright, bold blossoms have found homes in cutting gardens, perennial borders, and wildflower meadows. Centuries before Europeans set foot on the North American continent, Native Ameri­ cans were growing the sunflower for: food, medicine, and dye. Archeological findings indicate that the sunflower was being cultivated in what is now the southwestern United States as far back as 3000 B.C. Early European explorers wrote of seeing the seed being crushed and boiled to release its oil, which was used for cooking, making paints, dressing hair, and anointing the body for cer ~ monies. Grinding the seed between stones produced a fine meal to thicken soups and make bread, cakes, and mush. Some tribes combined sunflower meal with cornmeal and pressed it into seed balls. These were wrapped in buffalo heart skin and nibbled by hunters or warriors to sustain them on long treks. The Hopi of the Southwest used sunflower meal to bake piki, a waferlike bread cooked on a stone. The Hidatsa of North Dakota used sunflower meal in combination with beans, squash, and cornmeal to create "four vegetables mixed." The Hopi grew a variety with deep purple achenes that they soaked in water to produce a reddish purple dye, while sunflower ray petals were a source of yellow dye. The sunflower provided a calendar of sorts for Native American hunters: when sunflowers stood tall and bloomed, the buffalo promised to be fat and the meat good. The Hidatsas referred to the lunar month that corresponds most nearly to April as Mapi-o'ce-mi'di-the sunflower-planting moon. As they searched for treasures of gold and silver, early Spanish explorers were conscious of other sources of wealth awaiting discovery in the "New World." As early as 1510, sunflower seed was collected and transported to a botanic garden in Madrid. By the 1580s it had become established as a garden flower and curiosity. English and French explorers also imported the seed to their countries, where its bold, spectacular blooms delighted

'Teddy Bear', a dwarf ofHelianthus annuus.

AMERlCAN HORTICULTURIST 15 collectors of New World plants. In 1716 an crushed and boiled for oil. Seed oil was English patent was granted to Arthur Bunyan used to make soap, hulls were boiled to for the "invention" of sunflower oil for use make a coffee-type beverage, and the dried in manufacturing. He considered it " ... of leaves were smoked like tobacco. Chickens great use to all persons concerned in the were fartened on the seeds while leaves and woollen manufacture, painters, leather­ stems were fed to pigs and cows. Some dressers, etc ... . such oyle so to be made is early American settlers even planted sun­ to be expressed from the seed of the flowers flowers around their cabins, believing they commonly called & knowne by the name of would ward off malaria. sunflowers of all sorts, both double & single. " Widespread cultivation of sunflowers, The sunflower was further dispersed however, awaited the crop's reintroduction along trade routes of the day to Italy, Egypt, from the Old World. The breeding work in India, China, and Russia. By some ac­ Russia significantly increased the value of counts, it was Peter the Great who intro­ the sunflower as an oil crop. Mennonite duced it to Russia, where its value as an immigrants who settled in Manitoba and edible crop was exploited and refined. The Saskatchewan in Canada in the 1870s car­ Russian Orthodox Church can probably ried with them seed of 'Mammoth Russian' take some credit, albeit unintended, for its sunflower, a superior selection they had ready acceptance as a food crop. The grown in their native Russia. By the 1880s church traditionally was very strict in pro­ 'Mammoth Russian' sunflower seed was hibiting the consumption of oil-rich foods being offered in U.S. seed catalogs. It was during the forty days preceding both Christ­ grown in northern and western states pri­ mas and Easter. Because the sunflower was marily as a silage crop for livestock until newly introduced, it did not appear on the World War II, when interest increased in its list of forbidden foods and was quickly edible oil. Today acres of yellow sunflow­ The maximilian sunflower, below, is incorporated into the Russian diet. ers, grown for their high quality seed oil as a giant perennial that got its name As their use of sunflowers as a food crop well as for a snack food and birdseed, from a Prussian prince who studied increased, Russian peasants began selecting brighten the prairies across the Midwest. North American flora in the 1830s. varieties with a shorter growing season and Most of the ISO -odd species and subspe­ The common sunflower, right, is an a higher oil content. About 1915, organized cies of Helianthus are native to North annual with many natural varieties breeding programs were begun to improve America. They include both annuals and and garden cultivars. yield, develop pest resistance, and to con­ perennials, with fibrous roots and tap­ tinue raising the percentage of oil. roots. Some produce tubers and rhizomes. Back in its indigenous land, settlers Most of the annual species are native to the found that sunflowers answered many western states, while the numerous peren­ needs of pioneer life. Taking cues from the nial species are distributed from the East Native Americans, the settlers ate the seed Coast to the West. This diversity and the raw or roasted, ground into meal, and success of breeders with interspecies hy-

16 AUGUST 1993 bridization have given rise to a broad se­ are grayish green and up to twelve inches Sunflowers owe their success to their lection of ornamental sunflowers. long. Like the swamp sunflower, it devel­ seeds. An important source of cooking Perennial sunflowers grow wild in habi­ ops a large clump of branches. These some­ oil, the seeds are also used for tats ranging from roadsides and aban­ times dip so low their tips touch the livestock feed, snack foods, and doned meadows to the banks of shady ground. This produces quite an unusual birdseed. Above, a head ofHelianthus creeks. Cultivated selections can be found effect midsummer through fall when the annuus 'Mammoth Russian', brought in elegant borders and in casual wildflower dainty two- to three-inch flower heads ap­ to the United States by immigrants gardens. They flower from late summer to pear all along the stem at the leafaxils. H. in the 18705. early fall, and for the most part are quite maximiliani spreads by rhizomes and may tall, well suited for the rear of the garden. become invasive, so place this robust In recent years, the variety of perennial bloomer where it will not encroach upon sunflowers available from nurseries has in­ smaller plants. Effectively grown as a creased substantially. SCIeen or against a bare wall, it wants a lot The swamp or narrow-leaf sunflower of sun, but it is adaptable to a wide range (H. angustifolius) is frequently found in of soils and is impressively resistant to moist, often shady locations, east of Texas insects. In fact, H. maximiliani has been and south of New York. It is sometimes used in breeding programs to impart this confused with H. x simulans, a hybrid trait to other sunflower species. between H. angustifolius and H. maximili­ The hairy wood sunflower (H. atroru­ ani, but H. x simulans is taller and more hens) varies in height from about four to robust. Both produce glossy lanceolate eight feet. It is sometimes called the dark leaves along multiple stems and at six to red sunflower, a reference to its red disk eight feet tall are naturals for dressing up a flowers and purple-veined bracts. A good fence or garage, or for the rear of a mixed choice for the rear of the sunny wildflower border. Cutting them back by a third early border, it produces several five-inch blos­ in the summer will make them bushier with soms on each flower stalk from August more flowers. At Niche Gardens in North through October. Carolina, H. x simulans is the last peren­ The willow-leaf sunflower (H. salici­ nial to bloom, drawing late butterflies and folius) gets my vote for perennial sunflower putting on quite a show in OGtober and with the most to offer a herbaceous border. November amid other garden giants, in­ It sports attractive, slightly drooping, lin­ cluding a variety of perennial grasses, Joe­ ear leaves densely along its stem. Forming Pye weed, and Salvia leucantha. a clump of stems six feet high, it contrib­ The maximilian sunflower (Helianthus utes a fine, willowy texture to a garden maximiliani) was named for a Prussian throughout the growing season. The two­ prince who studied native North American inch flowers appear abundantly in August plants in the 1830s. This is another tall and September. species, easily reaching ten feet. The leaves Hybrids between species of Helianthus

AMERICAN HORTICULTUR1ST 17 cyaiyo', above left, a cultivar of the common sunflower, will make an effective summer hedge. It grows reliably to five feet. The Jerusalem artichoke or sunchoke, above right, is a dual-purpose perennial. If it becomes too invasive in the garden, you can harvest the excess plants for their edible tubers.

are common where their natural ranges of its knobby tubers on my front door thirds of the United States. But there are a overlap, which has led to some interesting stoop. Not recognizing them, I wasn't sure few others worthy of a gardener's attention. cultivated selections. The many-flowered ifI was supposed to eat them or plant them. The silver-leaf sunflower (H. argophyl­ sunflower (H. x multiflorus) is a naturally The neighbor suggested I do both. Their us) is prized as much for its downy white occurring hybrid between H. decapetalus flavor is delicate-reminiscent of arti­ foliage as for its bright yellow to orange and H. annuus. All of the progeny of this choke-while their texture is more like a flowers. Smaller than those of most species, cross are sterile triploids, so its cultivars potato. I like them best steamed and but­ with heads only an inch or two across, the must be propagated either by division or tered with a little parsley and chives, flowers are borne prolifically along its budding of the rhizomes. 'Flora Pleno' is a though they can be eaten raw or added to three- to nine-foot stalks from August particularly showy strain that produces soups or stir fries. through October. large sprays of double, bright yellow flow­ Native Americans introduced this food Unlike most annual species, the Italian ers from midsummer to fall. At a maximum to settlers, who found that it reliably pro­ yellow sunflower (H. debilis) is native to height of six feet (usually less), it adds color duced abundant tu bers year after year with areas east of Texas. Its multiple stalks grow to the rear of a sunny border, where its little care. Now commercially grown in six feet tall and bear an abundance of bright green foliage serves as a lush back­ California, it is said to be an excellent lemon -colored, fo ur-inch, cactus-type ground for earlier-blooming plants. carbohydrate food for diabetics because it flower heads. While it is a stunning per­ A perennial sunflower with a dual pur­ is rich in the fruit sugar called inulin. Some former in the garden, H. debilis makes a pose is the Jerusalem artichoke, or sun­ nurseries offer selections such as 'Mam­ poor cut flower-the stems are too short choke (H. tuberosus). Next to H. annuus, moth' (standard, white-fleshed tubers), and the flowers just don't last. this is the most widely cultivated species of 'Fuseau' (large, elongated tubers), and The annual sunflower (H. annuus) is sunflower. Common as a wildflower in the 'Magenta' (brightly colored tubers). found in gardens all over the world. It is eastern two-thirds of the United States and The sunchoke is remarkably resistant to also the commercial source of sunflower Canada, it develops many three- to four­ a variety of economically devastating pests. oil, birdseed, and the seeds used for snacks inch flowers from August to October. Because it crosses freely with several other and garnishes. There are a multitude of Though it may become invasive in a garden, species of Helianthus, it can be tapped for distinctive and delightful ornamental vari­ you can help keep it under control by dig­ this trait by breeders. eties, from the ten-foot giants whose ma­ ging and eating its tasty, enlarged tubers. Among our annual sunflowers, the most jestic blooms soar above the tomatoes in I discovered the Jerusalem artichoke familiar is H. annuus, whose varied forms my vegetable garden to the two-foot many years ago when a neighbor left a bag are common throughout the western two- dwarfs that brighten the front of my flower

18 AUGUST 1993 border. The problem lies not in finding one rounded by a circle of neat, pointed, bright 'Mammoth Russian' produces single suitable for your garden, but in selecting green bracts. The center of the head is dark heads up to fifteen inches across. the ones you like best. brown. No fancy arrangement beats a Developed as a commercial crop, it's They are fascinating plants for kids­ large vase full of these summer bloomers. a bit coarse, but if you have space it they grow very fast and are easy to care for. The stout main stem supports the four- to makes an interesting addition to the Children love the giant flowers and delight five-foot multiple branches with no need of vegetable patch. in harvesting the seeds to feed birds. When staking. Unlike many of the annual varie­ my daughter came home from kindergar­ ties whose leaves can look a bit ragged, the ten last year clutching the sunflower seed­ foliage of 'Italian White' is attractive, ling she had planted, we decided then and bright green, and neatly indented. there to establish a sunflower garden. We If you like lots of color, try either 'Color chose six different annual varieties. With Fashion Mixed' or 'Sunburst Mixed'. The her seedling from school as its centerpiece, blossoms range from pale yellow to gold, the sunflower garden maintained her inter­ bronze, and crimson, and include some est all summer long, provided the house bicolors. At six to eight feet, 'Color Fash­ with a continuous supply of delightful cut ion Mixed' is a bit harder to incorporate flowers, and fed the birds as well. into a mixed border than the 'Sunburst For a long flowering season, the branch­ Mixed', which only grows to four feet. ing types are the ticket. These are also the Both need lots of space. They develop mul­ varieties to choose for indoor arrange­ tiple branches bearing an abundance of ments (although van Gogh might take ex­ flowers that add panache to both the gar­ ception to my cut flower preference). Cut den and indoor arrangements. them freely-the more you cut, the more For a summer hedge, 'Taiyo' or 'Valen­ flowers you'll get. Dead-heading spent tine' are good choices. Each grows to a flowers will also increase the number of uniform five feet, producing flowers the blooms and extend the flowering season. size of an open hand. The blooms of 'Taiyo' My favorite of the branching types is are bright yellow with dark purple centers, 'Italian White'. The cream-colored, four­ while 'Valentine' is lemon yellow with inch petals of the ray flowers are sur- black centers.

AMERI CAN HORTICU LTURIST 19 'Sunspot' is a two-foot dwarf sunflower flower heads are golden yellow, but its that produces ten-inch, yellow blossoms on seeds are pure white. 'Sundak', an out­ sturdy stalks. It's a bit of an oddity with its standing seed producer, grows to about six dinner plate-sized blooms on such a short feet and flowers two weeks ahead of plant, but kids love it. 'Teddy Bear', three 'Mammoth Russian'. feet tall with five-inch flowers, seems more As if the beauty of their bloom and the in balance. Its blossoms are bright yellow utility of their fruit were not enough reason and completely double, like fluffy chrysan­ to grow them, sunflowers also discourage themums. My favorite dwarf is 'Music weeds. Many species of Helianthus, includ­ Box', a tough little performer in our sun­ ing H. annuus and H. tuberosus, are al­ flower garden last year. It grows just over lelopathic-that is, they produce two feet tall and bears four-inch flowers in substances that inhibit the growth of other a range of colors from creamy yellow to plants. These substances inclLlde a number mahogany red. of phenolic compounds and fatty acids. Of course, if you cut all these flowers for The weed-suppressing action is rather indoor arrangements or deacl-head them to complicated because so many compounds prolong their blooming season, you'll sac­ are involved, and results may vary with the rifice seed. If you are more interested in climate, soil type, and interactions with feeding the birds than in growing flowers soil-borne microorganisms. Furthermore, for cutting or bedding, the non branching, only certain plants respond to the al­ single-headed varieties are your best lelopathic compounds. choice. They also provide a sp€ctacular, if Broadleaf weeds are more susceptible short-lived, flower display. than narrow leaf or grassy weeds. Wild 'Mammoth Russian', the variety intro­ mustard, jimsonweed, and bindweed are duced in 1875, is still well worth growing. significantly reduced in fields where sun­ Under favorable conditions it may reach flower refuse has been left on the soil. Dr. ten feet or more, with twelve- to fifteen­ Gerald Leather of the United States De­ Sunflowers don't have to be yellow inch, single heads. Its texture is too coarse partment of Agriculture's Agricultural Re­ anymore. Cultivars like cColor for my flower beds, but I love to plant a search Service has seen this phenomenon Fashion Mixed' extend the genus's row across the back of my vegetable gar­ dramatically demonstrated in Colorado, ornamental possibilities, but be den. The giant heads shine down on the where bindweed is a serious pest. In areas careful to check the maximum height tomatoes and zucchini where they seem to otherwise infested with bindweed, a per­ before you plant. cColor Fashion fit in perfectly. 'Tarahumara White' is an­ fect circle, free of the weed, forms around Mixed' can reach eight feet. other giant, reaching ten to twelve feet. Its sunflowers.

20 AUGUST 1993 Using sunflowers to help control weeds sunflowers in your own garden. A single species can serve both can reduce the need for herbicides. In field The complex nature of the mechanism commerce and ornament. Left, the studies Leather demonstrated a direct re­ responsible for allelopathy in sunflowers common sunflower, Helianthus duction of certain weeds where sunflower and the potency of the compounds involved annuus, in production. Above, H. leaves and stems were left in and on the have so far limited its applications. But it's annuus 'Italian White' is so elegant soil. He used both sunflowers and herbi­ possible that someday these substances will it can be used as a cut flower. cides to control weeds over a four-year be used in developing organic herbicides period and found that the weed biomass that don't persist in the environment. was reduced equally in plots planted with Few plants can boast the interesting past sunflowers, whether or not herbicides were and present usefulness of our native sun­ applied. flower. With a better understanding of its Many other allelopathic plants lose this allelopathic potential, it may rise to even trait when cultivated varieties are devel­ greater heights. It is already a garden giant oped, but cultivated varieties of sunflowers in every sense of the word. seem to have as much allelopathic potential as their wild parents, Leather has found. Rita Pelczar grows her sunflowers in Ches­ On the down side, another crop planted apeake Beach, Maryland. where sunflowers have been growing may also be susceptible to this allelopathic in­ teraction. The sunflower also demon­ SOURCES strates autotoxicity-its residue in a field actually inhibits the growth of subsequent Andre Viette Farm and Nursery, Route 1, sunflower crops when they are grown in Box 16, Fishersville, VA 22939, (703) successIOn. 943-2315. Catalog $3. H. maximiliani, In 1982 researchers at the University of H. salicifolius, and H. annuus 'Flore Saskatchewan made a misguided attempt Pleno'. to establish another use for sunflowers­ Native Gardens, Route 1, Box 464, Green­ incorporating the hulls into a potting mix. back, TN 37742, (615) 856-3350. Cat­ Thanks to allelopathy, the results were de­ alog $2. H. angustifolius, H. atrorubens, cidedly negative. The mix with the hulls and H. maximiliani. inhibited both root and top growth in Park Seed, Cokes bury Road, Greenwood, snapdragons and coleus, and hull extracts SC 29647, (803) 223-7333. Catalog reduced germination of lettuce seed. free. H. annuus 'Italian White', 'Taiyo'. In the home garden sunflowers are Richters, Goodwood, Ontario, LOC lAO, known to adversely affect morning-glories, Canada, (416) 640-6677. Catalog $2. radishes, and several varieties of beans. It's H. annuus and H. tuberosus. likely that many other plants are adversely Thompson & Morgan, P.O. Box 1308, affected, but little research has been done Jackson, NJ 08527, (800) 274-7333. to identify them. Therefore it's worth not­ Catalog free. H. annuus 'Italian White' ing any problems with plants growing near and 'Sunburst' hybrids.

AM ERICAN HORTICU LTURI ST 21 A Garden With an Altitude How many plants will grow at 8,200 feet? Two thousand and counting.

B y M A R T y ( A R L o ( K

t's July, and it's springtime in the to the adjacent garden. The Fords now Rockies. own a home in Beaver Creek, Vail's sister Developers of the Betty Ford Alpine community a few miles down the valley. Gardens in Vail, Colorado, say that Fritch says Vail landscaper Marty Jones at 8,200 feet, this is the highest pub­ was the originator and spark plug for the Ilic alpine garden in the world. One of them, garden's development. Others say Fritch, Helen Fritch, is with me in the perennial who with her husband Bob owns the Sitz­ garden, gazing up at even loftier ridges, the mark Lodge in Vail, deserves credit for Gore Range. In midsummer the sun is making Jones's vision happen. warm but mountain chill is latent in the air. Fritch calls Jones "a long-time local." "July and August are the peak months No one over 30 is a native of Vail, a com­ up here," says Fritch, president of the munity created from scratch just three de­ board of the Vail Alpine Garden Founda­ cades ago. Fritch came here from Illinois tion. "People come from other places twenty years ago; Jones transplanted him­ where spring is long gone, and they have a self from Omaha about the same time. second spring here." In the early 1980s, Jones began stirring Eight years old and still in progress, the interest in alpines with his slide shows of gardens lie in a wide and open valley east "these cute little flowers from the moun­ of this resort town, the first in America tains," recalls Fritch. Their alliance began developed specifically as a destination ski the day that she and a friend saw Jones by resort. The garden is a half-mile walk from the side of the road with his truck broken Vail's center, but a pleasant one, along down. They gave him a ride. They talked. paved paths that border the churning wa­ Fritch took up the cause. An informal ters of Gore Creek. Fritch estimates that group, Friends of the Alpine Garden, was the half-acre developed so far boasts more organized in 1984. than 2,000 plant varieties. "We get a lot of Gerald R. Ford Park, extensive acreage older visitors, people who can't hike up into intended to encompass playing fields, tennis the mountains," says Fritch. "Here they can courts, and an amphitheater, was in the see what the mountains have to offer." planning stage. "Our group strongly Betty Ford, the former first lady, was not pushed the idea of an alpine garden," Fritch involved in founding this garden, as she was recounts. "There are so many sports here, in her famous alcohol and drug treatment people are so active, we thought it would be centers. During Gerald Ford's presidency nice to have some quiet activities." the couple owned a vacation home in Vail, The town agreed to set aside an acre of and local officials, pleased by the Fords' open space for the garden and by 1985, occasional presence in their town, gave his when the supporting foundation was in­ name to a park and amphitheater, and hers corporated, garden advocates had raised

22 AUGUST 1993 Left: Sempervivums are outstanding performers in a rocky wall. Above: The alliance between garden founders Marty Jones and Helen Fritch began when she rescued him from a roadside truck breakdown.

AMERICAN HORTICULTUR IST 23 Above: Penstemon linarioicles is $50,000, enough to build a showpiece and larger flowering perennials. . among the Colorado natives featured minigarden in 1987. During a break between directing volun­ in the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens. "Fund-raising has always been a chief teers and receiving a delivery of twenty Right: The garden is designed, says concern," Fritch says. "We wanted to show tons of rock, Jones joins us to talk about Helen Fritch, so that "you'll always the community what we had in mind, what the plants. "Marty will have to answer the feel like you have to explore. " the finished garden is going to look like." horticultural questions," Fritch had told So in an oval at the amphitheater entrance, me. "I'm just an organizer." Jones built a minimountain, about twenty Although the garden contains Rocky feet high, and anchored its summit with a Mountain plants, it isn't limited to them. dead Utah juniper Uuniperus osteosperma), "We have South African plants, Mediterra­ commonly seen at this high altitude. The nean plants, Mexican plants, Australian juniper has become the Betty Ford Alpine plants," says Jones. He fingers one of his Gardens' picturesque logo. Then adjusting unusual specimens, fleece-form Raoulia soils knowledgeably, he created four micro­ australis. "This grows bigger up in the climates that host some 500 plant varieties mountains of Australia, and if you look up within a few square yards. at it, it looks just like a flock of sheep." Here On the south side is the semiarid habitat, aho are as many species of gentians as Jones where the soil is 70 percent gravel. Here are could find. "And edelweiss, of course." penstemons and paintbrushes, Mexican He points out pink-flowered Acanthol­ ball cactus, and hardy ice plants. To the imon from Turkey, Rolax glebaria from the north, in the shade of the central mound, Falkland Islands, and an ice plant, Delo­ Jones mimicked cooler woodlands with an sperma congestum, from South Africa. 80 percent peat soil that satisfies rhodo­ "Then we have this Phlox hoodii from dendrons, primula, and heather. At the east right here in Eagle County. And Penstemon and west edges of the minirnountain, an linarioides, another Colorado native." equal mix of gravel and loam provides cliff Jones received no formal education in gardens for alpine and subalpine plants, horticulture, but elicited much of his and the top of the hillock is filled with loam knowledge from another self-educated for dwarf conifers, small deciduous trees botanist, Panayoti Kelaidis, curator of the such as the amur maple (Acer ginnala) and rock alpine section at the Denver Botanic purple-leaf sand cherry (Prunus x cistena), Gardens. Fritch says that Andrew Pierce,

24 AUGUST 1993 densum var. amani (partridge feather), Veronica incana, V. 'Crater Lake Blue', four varieties of Cerastium, and lamb's­ ears (Stachys byzantina) started from cut­ tings from the Denver Botanic Gardens. The beds are punctua ted with Yucca glauca and ornamental blue fescue. This "alpine" garden is not limited to mountain natives. The perennial garden, the second area to be planted (between 1988 and 1989), is intended to demon­ strate what kinds of ornamentals can be grown in mountain-area gardens, says Fritch, "instead of what we call the three 'p's'-pansies, poppies, and petunias." Just inside the gate of the perennial gar­ den is an artificial mountain spring, a gift from the Fords. The spring seeps from rock that comes, with Forest Service permission, from Camp Hale, a site Coloradans know as the training ground for the Tenth Moun­ tain Division, which invaded Italy during World War II. Camp Hale provided the warm-toned quartzite that forms walls and cliffs in the perennial garden. The perennial garden is subtly sunken, "1 doubt if there are more than a shielding visitors from the traffic noise of handful" of Meco no psis horridula, Interstate 70, a few hundred yards distant. a Himalyan blue poppy, in North "You never see the entire garden from one America, says Marty Jones. chief propagator at the Denver gardens, spot," Fritch observes. "You'll always feel has also been a crucial advisor, particularly like you have to explore." in helping design beds for the perennial Strolling gravel paths where smooth garden. river-washed boulders artfully intrude, we The Vail garden has had "wonderful stop to admire a wall whose crevices sprout cooperation" from the Denver garden in beautifully healthy sempervivums, their obtaining many of its plants, says Fritch. blossoms rising on scaly, muscular stems. Jones grew the rarer plants himself, from "These bloom fantastically here," says seeds obtained through exchanges, or cut­ Fritch. "We also have a superb primula tings. A rancher who gave them permission collection, an iris collection, twenty-two to collect on his land was the source of their varieties of poppies." trademark juniper. Asked about the rarest Some plants just won't grow at this alti­ plant in the garden, Jones points to a shady tude, however. Visitors receive a list of spot behind a bench. "Right there. Hima­ garden plants coded according to how they layan blue poppy, Meconopsis horridula. have fared, and while G for "good" pre­ Grew them from seed I got in a seed ex­ dominates, there are also some D's for change. I doubt if there are more than a "dead." "We're learning by experience," handful of those in North America. Fritch says. "The rose garden looks shaky. They're in the Northwest, if anyplace." Bush roses do very well here, but certainly Jones says this species is even harder to not all roses. When we wanted a forsythia, grow from seed than the better known M. we had to get an especially hardy one from betonicifolia. "And the color is often Minnesota," Forsythia x intermedia muddy, so we're pleased that we have such 'Northern Sun'. a bright clear blue." Because the montane growing season is We linger beside the silver-foliage garden short, plants that might bloom in different Jones designed to the right of the entrance months at lower altitudes will bloom to­ gate. Most of these plants bloom white or gether here. Many herbaceous perennials blue. "But there's this Mexican phlox winter surprisingly well, Fritch says. (Phlox mesoleuca 'Arroyo'), this pink "Snow is a wonderful mulch." Although color I like with the silver." He points out most of the Rockies are in USDA Zone 4 white-flowered Salvia argentia, Tanacetum and the highest elevations are Zone 3,

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 25 some Zone 5 plants have done well here. using Rocky Mountain plants instead of Jones comments that there are two winter rocks, sand, and water. A waterfall and climates here-one above the snow surface, pool are surrounded by a carpet of ground and the other below it. "Below, it's 32 de­ phlox, blooming hot pink. There is little grees. Above the snow, it could be 20 below else in the space except an occasional iris or colder." In summer, he says, blooms seem or exclamatory yucca, a weeping crab to last longer in the cool air-"It's kind of apple, a few judiciously placed rocks-the like a florist's refrigerator"-and higher grayer granite here also came from Camp levels of ultraviolet light make the colors Hale-and a bench or two. more vibrant. There are also fewer of the Fritch pauses to chat with two volun­ insect and disease problems that plague teers who are weeding industriously. They lowland gardeners. On the other hand, it's confess that it's their first day and they hard to grow deciduous trees, he says. don't know much about the garden yet. She "They get sunscorched. The perennials stay invites them to tag along. under the snow, and if the voles don't We walk to a small hill on the north edge chomp 'em up they do very well." of the garden. It was formed from dirt Voles aren't the only rodents that wreak excavated from the amphitheater and the havoc here. Gophers, ground squirrels, sunken perennial garden. An area as large and moles join winterkill as forces that as the other three gardens put together, this constantly reshape the gardens. "Their nat­ spot is destined for the fourth habitat, the ural predators-the hawks, coyotes, and Rock Alpine Garden, and a visitors' center. owls-don't come into the garden, so we Right now the area blooms with yellow have to bait for them," says Jones. "The and white clover and the blue-eyed flowers ground squirrels are listed as pests here. of prairie flax. Below: Aquilegia caerulea, a blue They're not your cute little chipmunks." Where the hill towers over our heads, native columbine, is the Colorado From the perennial garden, designed in Jones would dearly love to create an artifi­ state flower, but the garden the English tradition, twisted dead junipers cial canyon. "I'm still not sure what direc­ features many species and cultivars, act as gateway and transition into the tion its style should take," he says. "I really including 'Alba'. Right: Silver Mountain Meditation Garden, finished in wanted to create a dryland slot, typical of foliage predominates in this garden 1991. Lush blossoms give way to a severe what you might see in our four corners designed by Marty Jones. minimalist landscape of oriental style, area," where the states of Colorado, New

26 AUGUST 1993 Mexico, Arizona, and Utah come together. winter ball, which has featured both the But creating such a different climate may Denver and Colorado Springs chamber or­ prove too difficult, so his eventual canyon chestras. There is no admission fee to the may be more typical of the central Colo­ gardens, so Fritch has no idea how many rado Rockies. people the garden draws, but she knows We climb up, survey the sunny land­ there are more every season. "Our only scape, and descend to find a bench under a indication is the voluntary donation box," tree, near another waterfall. Cascading she says, "and there's no way to know water is an important component of the what percentage of visitors puts something gardenscape, echoing the rushing moun­ in. We do know it's increasing. It used to tain streams nearby. be, we might get $50 all summer long. We Jones and Fritch calculate that the Vail got over $2,000 last year." Alpine Garden Foundation spent about In late June, Vail was the site of the $400,000 building the first three gardens. annual national conference of the Ameri­ And the heart and soul of it, the Rock can Rock Garden Society, "for one rea­ Alpine Garden, is still on the drawing son," Fritch says with satisfaction: "the board. This year the foundation launched garden." The meeting was sold out, with an ambitious "Campaign to Complete the 500 attendees. Gardens," aimed at raising $750,000 to Jones bids farewell; it's time to take his build the Rock Alpine Garden, $1.5 mil­ rock delivery. I pause to talk to a volunteer lion for an earth-sheltered visitor educa­ who wears a no-nonsense garden tool belt, tion center, and $1 million to endow the cut-off jeans, a straw hat, and a name tag gardens and support a strong educational identifying her as Nancy Rondeau. It turns program "to tell people more about what's out that she is director of volunteers; she's here," Fritch says. Besides the gardens, the been grubbing around the garden once or foundation sponsors seminars and work­ twice a week each summer since emigrating shops and an annual beautification effort from Greenwich, Connecticut, five years ago. during which it recognizes landscaping ef­ "It's kind of a dream come true," she forts of businesses and private individuals says. " I've always loved gardening, and in the Vail valley. here I have this." She's transplanting some The foundation's major fund-raiser is a sage that has become too aggressive in the silver garden. Top: Edelweiss is a must for any Rondeau tells me that some fifty volun­ alpine garden. Above: Cascading teers work here. Last year, they put in a water echoes Colorado's rushing collective 4,500 hours. At least ten or mountain streams. twelve show up for the work mornings, usually Mondays and Thursdays. It rained this Monday, so they are making up lost time today. "It's a new garden, so you have total weed control," says Rondeau. "!fyou keep after them." She keeps after the la bor force, too. Ron­ deau wants to set up a visiting volunteer program by placing brochures in the inns and hotels to invite tourists to come help. "Even if you're only here for a week. You can't play golf all the time. And you could learn something." Remember that if you're in Vail. Mon­ day mornings. Tools provided. And the ambience is exquisite.

Boston free-lancer Marty Carlock writes about nature, art, and education for the Boston Globe and other publications. The Betty Ford Alpine Gardens are open "dawn to dusk, snowmelt to snowfall." For more information write the Vail Alpine Gar­ den Foundation, 183 Gore Creek Drive, Vail, CO 81657, or call (303) 476-0103.

AMERICAN H ORTICULTURIST 27 A Pro's Library Secrets I n building a garden book collection, think love, not money.

uilding a horticultural library B Y K E I T H ( ROT Z picture later; the proper route now is the is very much like the art of interlibrary loan desk at your local library. gardening. It takes planning, Order your most interesting titles in small patience, time, and knowl­ is one of the most extensive lists of garden batches, say three at a time, so that you'll edge gained from experience. titles on particular types of plants. be able to compare them easily. Look for BBut like gardening, the first steps can be a Capability's catalog includes other completeness, ease of reading, and good little intimidating: you glance through the publishers' books as well as their own. It illustrations. Keep notes on your reading: bibliographies of your first few books and lists nearly every really good garden book start building an annotated bibliography realize that you'll never master the literature available, from recreational reading to the of your own. And of course, check the completely. So how do you decide which principles of landscape architecture. If books' bibliographies for even more prom­ books will best answer your interests? these catalogs aren't in your library, you ising titles. Begin by deciding what you expect your can get them directly from the publishers Don't expect to buy your library all at library to do for you. What's your focus? Do (see " Resources," page 33). They will al­ once. You probably know a few gardeners you enjoy growing a particular type of plant, most certainly contain a few promising afflicted with what I call book buyer's like dwarf conifers? Do you concentrate on titles. Check for the titles in the library'S virus. These people must have each and a particular type of garden, like the rock card file and if they aren't there, ask for every new garden book as soon as it's garden? Or do you have some broader per­ them through interlibrary loan. published, and they have an answer for just spective, like the history of garden design? The bibliography of a well-written tome about any question you ask them-if you Whatever your interest, you need to will launch you on the path of knowledge. give them time to "look it up." Don't let haunt the library for relevant bibliogra­ Suddenly a vast array of authors and titles the virus infect you. In libraries, small is phies. Resist the temptation to pull out is offered for your perusal. But then you often better. Take your time and tty to Books in Print at this point: its vast unan­ will realize that some of the most interest­ master the relevant bibliographies before notated listings won't get you anywhere. ing books were published in the 1920s, or you start laying out serious money. Instead, check the most recent catalogs of the teens-or even before the turn of the Right now, for instance, I'm in the pro­ publishers that print horticultural litera­ century. Since I'm a bookseller specializing cess of building a collection on growing the ture. Two of the best are Timber Press, in in out-of-print books, you might be expect­ genus Dianthus-pinks and carnations. Portland, Oregon, and Capability's Books, ing me to offer my services in finding these Why carnations? I don't know; maybe it's in Deer Park, Wisconsin. Timber's catalog hard-to-locate titles. Not! I come into the all the memories of high school dances or

28 AUGUST 1993 AMERICA HORTICULTURI ST 29 Assembling a collection around a particular interest is one of the best ways to build your expertise-and that new expertise can really pay off in the garden.

maybe I just like their colors and good your homescape, thanks to what you've looks. So far my collection numbers thirty­ learned from out-of-print books and little­ three titles and includes works published known seed catalogs. from 1839 to 1988. I've spent three years You might object that my approach can putting together this little library. That only lead YOI!l backwards-ever further might seem like a very long time for collect­ into the past, as you look through those ing just thirty-three books, especially for a forgotten bibliographies. But backwards is professional. But it isn't really: I take the usually the best way to build a horticultural time to read and learn from each volume I collection. Older books often prove the buy. After all, that's what they're for. most useful because their authors are more Assembling a collection around a partic­ likely to have labored long in the garden ular interest is one of the best ways to build before taking up the pen. No recent work, your expertise-and that new expertise for instance, even approaches Fearing can really payoff in the garden. More and Burr's Field and Garden Vegetables of more people who own older homes, for America, originally published in 1865, and instance, are reorganizing their home­ reprinted by my press. Or take Louise scapes to reflect the design tastes and plant Shelton's Continuous Bloom in America choices popular when their homes were (1915): no one has ever bettered her expla­ built. This individualized form of restora­ nation of how to maintain masses of gar­ tion has a lot to teach. Homeowners be­ den bloom from May to September. Good come better versed in landscape techniques introductions to otlr "heirloom" writers, and methods. How were sweeping borders irlCidentally, are available in The American and star-shaped patterns made and main­ Gardener: A Sampler, edited by Allen Lacy, tained? And they learn some garden his­ and American Garden Writing, edited by tory. What plants were popular in your Bonnie Marranca. area a century ago? Actually tracking Modern "coffee table" writers often lack down the plants can be a challenge, but the depth of experience evident in the many botanic gardens and arboreta can works of their antecedents. Instead, we assist you. Contact the Council on Botani­ often get stunning photos of plants that will cal and Horticultural Libraries for a list of grow as showtl only if you live in just the member libraries that maintain seed and right spot-say, England. These coffee table nursery catalog collections (see "Re­ wonders have done more harm to Ameri­ sources"). You may discover heirlooms can gardens than any soil nematode or that are little used today, but worthy of a overdone dusting of an insecticide. spot in your plan. Unusual plants will grace Actually buying the books is simple

30 AUGUST 1993 YOU R REF ERE N ( E SHE L F

very library needs a few basic reference books. But with Jensen gets a lot of source questions, for which she refers to so many on the market, you might feel you need a the library's extensive collection of nursery and seed catalogs. Ereference book to choose your reference books. The As for the library's own publication, the Source List of Plants problem, however, is not as tough as it seems. People who and Seeds, "1 use it all the time. I wouldn't say that an hour answer gardening questions for a living say they find them­ g0es by thatl don'~ use it." selves reaching again and again for a small number of volumes. 'I Maureen Heffernan directs the Gardeners' InJiormation 'I Chris Beairsto listens to gardeners' problems at the Massa­ Service at the American Horticultural Society. "A book we use chusetts Horticultural Society's library. Some of his standard all the time," she says, is The National Arboretum Book of references might be too pricey for most gardeners' shelves. "The Outstanding Garden Plants by Jacqueline Heriteau with H. home gardener doesn't really need Hortus Third," he says. And Marc Cathey-a concise guide to a broad range of proven although the New York Botanical Garden Illustrated Encyclo­ garden performers. "Of course we use Dirr a great deal, and pedia of Horticulture "has really good cultural information," we use Steven Still's Manual of Herbaceous Ornamental Plants it's a ten-volume set. More affordable and still very useful, he as the herbaceous equivalent to Dirr." Heffernan thinks "ev­ suggests, is Wyman's Gardening Encyclopedia. Rodale's All erybody should have a seed book." She uses Park's Success New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening recently appeared on With Seeds by Ann Reilly. Both the Reilly and Heriteau books his shelves and he finds himself reaching for that too, but mostly are available from Capability's Books (see "Resources"). in conjunction with Wyman's. He also finds the Manual of Like Beairsto, Heffernan tries to solve disease problems first Woody Landscape Plants by Michael Dirr very valuable. from Pirone. Also on her shelf are Rodale's Color Handbook For pest and disease problems, Beairsto suggests Pascal P. of Garden Insects by Anna Carr and The Healthy Garden Pirone's Diseases and Pests of Ornamental Plants, Rodale's Handbook by the editors of Mother Earth News. Both are Encyclopedia of Natural Insect and Disease Control, and excellent organic guides to handling pest problems. For look­ Westcott's Plant Disease Handbook. ing up sources, Heffernan uses Barbara J. Barton's Gardening 'I Renee Jensen assists puzzled gardeners at the Andersen by Mail and the Andersen source list. "Andersen," she says, Horticultural Library of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. "is one of our bibles." She relies heavily on The Random House Book of Perennials, 'I Chip Tynan is a garden columnist for the St. Louis Post by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix. Dirr's manual is a standard Dispatch and an advisOf at the Missouri Botanic(\J1 Garden's recourse there as well. Horticultural Answering Service. "If people could only own Jensen says most of her questions have to do with the one book," he says, "it should be the Reader's Digest Guide to problems of gardening in the north central states. For northern Creative Gardening." The book won Tynan over because it's orchardists, she recommends Growing Fruit in the Upper comprehensive and has good plant lists and clear drawings. Midwest, by Don Gordon. "A lot of fruits can be grown in Another of Tynan's favorites is The New House Plant Expert Minnesota," she says-if you know what you're doing. An­ by D. G. Hessayon. "It's British," he says, "but house plants other important refercmce work for the northem zones is Trees are house plants the world over." Doris Hirsch's Indoor Plants: and Shrubs for Northern Gardens, by Leon Snyder, late direc­ Comprehensive Care and Culture is unfortunately out of print tor of the arboretum. Unfortunately, Jensen says, it's out of but still widely available in used book stores. Very useful for print. But Snyder'S Flowers for Northern Gardens is still in trouble-shooting is Commonsense Pest Control by William print arnd well worth having. Jensen considers this a first-rate Olkowski and othClIS. There are two more books that Tyrnan reference for species, but since Snyder died in the late 1980s, says he "can't live withollt"-Dirr's manual and the Andersen it doesn't cover the more recent cultivars. Northern flower Library'S source list. -Chris Bright gardeners would also profit from John and Evelyn Moyle'S Northland Wild Flowers. Chris Bright is assistant editor of American Horticulturist.

enough when they are in print-order print bookseller and request a search for Crook's Campanulas and Bellflowers in them from a local bookstore or directly the titles you cannot possibly live without. Cultivation (1959), you should expect to from the publisher. The real trick, of Assembling your library shouldn't cost pay up to $50 for a copy in perfect condi­ course, is getting the out-of-print titles. an arm and a leg. You're after books that tion. A well-worn copy might cost just half Your first step should be to make sure they will mirror your interests in the garden, not that. In a case like this, buy the perfect copy really are out of print. The past few years investment-quality books. Unless you have if you can find it. But if a battered copy have seen the reprinting of many an old large sums to spend and twenty years to turns up first, don't hold out for a better garden classic-often as a facsimile of the wait, buying books as an investment can­ specimen. It might take a decade before original edition. And the reprints are al­ not be justified. Your returns would almost you get another chance to add the title to most always cheaper than a copy of the certainly be less than those from your pass­ your library. original edition. To see if your titles have book savings account. Since you're aiming But just how far can you let condition been reprinted, go ahead and check Books for books yo u can use, some defects in slide when the book isn't all that rare? If in Print, along with the most recent issues condition shouldn't put you off. the cover is worn, torn, or stained and the of its bimonthly supplement, Forthcoming But condition is an important determi­ contents are perfect, yo u should never hes­ Books. If you can't find yo ur books, now nant of price. If, for instance, you are look­ itate. But what if the first page of the is the time to contact your friendly out-of- ing for a really scarce title, like H . Clifford introduction is missing? What if two of the

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 31 WHAT THE WRITERS ARE READING

b€st books ever written about designing a garden on a city lot." 'i Ken Druse is a photographer as well as a writer, and both of his talents are 0n display in his latest book, The Natural Shade Garden. Druse's tastes in reading run to reference works and to some basic environmel'lta.l texts. Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines for Urban and Rural Amer­ ica by Gary :ff,ightshoe (1987) is a horticl:lltural account of Am€riGan WGlQdy plants. Druse finds it especiaJ:ly useful for the Northeast. '! A!.tholJgn ~his is a refeli€nCe, tt is the book which is cUffently wearing.a dent ill my eheSll at bedtime." T.his incomparable Lande (1989), a coll!;lction of American ~atulie:w:,titing €ciit€d t¥Thomas Dyon, is'''a book to r:€ad and ie-tead, g00d for the bedside and to read aloud in the car (by a

moveJJUent. " Requiem (elf a Lawnmower by S~lIy and Apdy Wasowski (1:~92) is "a terrjJje lie ad. It is reatly funny -and incredibly I:lp-to-the-miIl1l..\,te. " Siftings by Jens JeRseR (1939) is an "American classic of c:mviroruneRtal consciousness and conservation. Jensen has been called the Frank Lloyd Wright 0f landscape architectl:lre." 'i Tovah Martin is seRior horticulturist at Logee's Greenhouses in Danielson, Conn€cticut. A contributor to many Rational magaziRes, her m.ost rt;!cenl' book is The Essence of Paradise. "It was mighty hard to keep my list down to a mere hali dozen favorite titles," Martin says. But apartfrom the refenmce bQoks she I!lses a.twork, she offers selections from three categories: new books~ books to travt'd with, and a dr€am book. The new titles alie Druse's The Natural Shade Garden (1992) and The Garden Tourist 1993, edited by Lois Rosenfeld. Druse's '

32 AUGUST 1993 The perfectionist will

insist that the dust jacket,

cloth cover, and contents

all be in mint condition.

If perfection tempts you,

bear in mind that it's

an expensive way to

build a library.

illustrations have crayon marks? And what Street, P.O. Box 823, Newport, RI if that color photo you saw in the interli­ 02840, (401) 846-6890. brary loan copy, the photo that proves your Beth L. Bibby Books, ABBA, 1225 Sardine specimen really is Oenothera fruticosa and Creek Road, Gold Hill, OR 97525, not the inbred O. tetragona-what if that (503) 855-1621. precious photo is gone? Now the deci­ Capability's Books, 2379 Highway 46, sion-to buy or not to buy-gets difficult. Deer Park, WI 54007, (800) 247-8154 Where pages or illustrations are lacking, or (715) 269-5531 or (715) 269-5346. my advice is to pass, with regret, and hunt Council on Botanical and Horticultural Li­ for a better copy. The perfectionist will braries, Inc., c/o John F. Reed, New York insist that the dust jacket, cloth cover, and Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458, contents all be in mint condition. If perfec­ (718) 817-8705. tion tempts you, bear in mind that it's an Elizabeth Woodburn, Books, Booknoll expensive way to build a library. Farm, P.O. Box 398, Hopewell, NJ As you buy your books, take the time to 08525, (609) 466-0522. measure them against your own interests. Gary Wayner Books, Route 3, Box 18, Fort How well do they serve your purposes? No Payne, AL 35967, (205) 845-7828. doubt you will modify your interests some­ Hortulus Books, 139 Marlborough Place, what as you read. As this process matures, Toronto, ON M5R 3J5 Canada, (416) so will your library. And since yours is a 920-5057. horticultural library, the potential rewards Hurley Books, 1752 Route 12, Westmore­ are as great as all outdoors. land, NH 03467, (603) 399-4342. Raymond M. Sutton Jr. Books, P.O. Box Keith Crotz is owner of American Botanist 330, Williamsburg, KY 40769, (606) Booksellers in Chillicothe, Illinois, and a 549-3464. member of the American Horticulturist Second Life Books, P.O. Box 242, Quarry Editorial Advisory Board. Road, Lanesboro, MA 01237, (413) 447-8010. Timber Press, 9999 S.w. Wilshire, Port­ RESOURCES land, OR 97225, (800) 327-5680 or (503) 292-6607 or (503) 292-0745. American Botanist Booksellers, P.O. Box V.L.T. Gardner Botanical Books, 625 East 532, Chillicothe, IL 61523, (309) 274- Victoria Street, Santa Barbara, CA 5254. 93103, (805) 966-0246. No catalog; re­ Anchor & Dolphin Books, 30 Franklin quests only.

AM ERICAN HORTICU LTURIST 33 The Catlllint Muddle Name confusion is rampant among these pungent herbs.

B Y E L S ABE T H SHELDON

or many years I've been grow­ though a couple of the dragonhead species ing, but not particularly enjoy­ are native to North America, all those clas­ ing, a catmint I got as Nepeta sified as catmints come from hot sunny faassenii (mussinii) or N. mus­ areas of Europe, Asia, and North Africa sinii (faassenii). The catalogs al­ where the soil is somewhat sandy or gritty. waysF seemed to imply, by means of So naturally, they want to be planted in parentheses, that these plants are the same light soil in well-drained, sunny parts of thing. I would look at my floppy 1ittle plant our gardens. Surprisingly, most of the gar­ with its grayish green leaves and idly won­ den varieties are hardy through USDA der why the British gardening books made Zone 4. such a fuss about it; it wasn't even "grey," Of the 250 spe€ies in the genus, the best as they said it was. I did like its pungent known is probably catnip, Nepeta cataria, aroma and its spikes of lavender flowers. an Eurasian native that has gone wild in Only a few nepetas an: generally used in Then, a few years ago, I began to acquire America and elsewhere. While most of us flower gardens, although many of them different species of the genus and now I'm gardeners find the aroma of other nepetas deserve to be. We gardeners have got in a deep into nepetas, wanting to sort them out pleasing, I find that of catnip revolting. To rut, as we so often do. and find more garden-worthy kinds. me, catmints smell pungent, minty, or at The most widely grown is the N. As soon as I got out the books I found worst, medicinal, while catnip seems rank mussiniilfaassenii that I spent so much time that the taxonomy is fairly mNddled, with and almost poisonous. TheFe is a subspe­ puzzling over. Imagine my surprise when I the same nepeta going by several names, or cies, N. cataria subsp. citriodora, said to found the following sentence in a scholarly even being listed alternatively under Draco­ have a faint lemon scent, but I'm not sure article in an old volume of Baileya at Cor­ cephalum (dragonhead), a closely related this would help. nell: "For somewhat over 100 years it has genus. The distinction is a subtle one, relat­ Catnip is no beauty either. It has a weedy been known to botanists and horticultur­ ing to the dragonheads having a calyx-the habit and its negligible pink flowers fail to ists that all was not well with the plants flower part made up of sepals-that has lift the soul. But because of its herbal qual­ that were passing under the name Nepeta two lips and fifteen nerves, and an upper ities it has a place in the herb garden, rather mussinii. " If it's been known for a centmy, stamen pair longer than the lower pair. than the ornamental garden. The sweet-fla­ wouldn't Y0l1 think they would have done The catmints are aromatic perennial or vored catnip tea is said to induce a good something about it? annual herbs in the Labiatae, or mint fam­ night's sleep and cure colds and fevers . The It appears that the species N. mussinii ily, with square stems, opposite leaves, and Shakers sold concoctions of it that they was introduced into western Europe in small tubular flowers of lavender, white, or claimed would cure infant diseases, regu­ 1803 by a Russian count named Apollos yellow in whorls on long racemes. Al- late menses, and settle upset stomachs. Apollosovich Mussin-Pushkin, who

34 AUGUST 1993 brought it back from an expedition to the Nepeta x faassenii or N. mussinii? Caucasus. It was named in his honor, as In spite of what many books and was Puschkinia, the genus of spring-flow­ catalogs intimate, they're not the ering bulbs. same. A deciding factor is the leaf. Apparently, Nepeta mussinii later The rounded leaves of the plant at left crossed naturally with the small white­ indicate that this is the more easily flowering N. nepetella, which had been obtainable N. mussinii. introduced into British gardens about 1760. The resulting hybrid, superior to both of its parents, was at some point named N. x faassenii. When British gar­ deners began to use it, however, its name was confused with that of the species and they've been confused ever since. This is odd, since in appearance and be­ havior the two are quite different. N. x faas­ senii is twelve to eighteen inches tall while N. mussinii is around eight to ten inches high. N. x faassenii has one-and-a-half-inch long, narrow, wedge-shaped silvery leaves and

AMER1CAN HORT1CULTURlST 35 and like it well enough, but don't consider it a wonder. A summer or two ago I grew several nepetas from seed I obtained through seed exchanges. Plants from a packet labeled N. sibirica grew one and a half feet tall (if you can call a flopping stem "tall"). The cren­ elated leaves are one and three-quarters inches long al'ld the lilac flowers grow in ten- to twelve-inch racemes on dark red stems. Not many flowers open at the same time. The seeds may have been mislabeled, however, since some references des(;ribe N. sibirica as about twice as tall and with lONger leaves than mine produced. N. grandiflora is quite tall-two and a half feet, and uFright-and its scalloped green leaves are two and three-quarters inches long. The stems are green and the lilac flowers on long open spikes are similar those of N. mussinii are one-inch rounded to those of N. sibirica. and grayish green. N. x faassenii is sterile, These are both pleasant plants, but while N. mussinii sets seed and even seeds don't, I feel, deserve a place in the border. itself around the garden. I have raised several that do. One is N. How could they possibly be confused? nervosa. It is low (six to eight inches), Yet one of England's greatest plantsmen compact, and has small, dark green, lal'lce­ wrote in 1960 that "faassenii is the new shaped ribbed leaves. Its dense spikes of name for mussinii" and Roy Hay and Pat­ lavender blue flowers with a paler lip are rick Synge, authors of the Color Dictio­ held straight up and close to the plant. nary of Flowers, imply that the names are Their color is more nearly blue than that of interchaNgeable. any other nepeta I've seen, and certainly its I ordered N. x faassenii from several habit is the best-at least the neatest. I find nurseries, hoping to get the real thing, but that, while I enjoy the sight of plants inter­ received n0thing but more N. mussinii - twining with and embracing nearby plants, they're smaller than N. x faassenii is de­ I have a deep-seated fondness for those that scribed as being, their foliage isn't really keep to themselves. They're so easy to tend, gray, and they self-sow. Then last season I so controlled, so organized. I'm putting placed an order from Carroll Gardens for some of these small catmints in the front of what they described as "the true sterile the border with mat forms of Dianthus, species; vegetatively propagated." I may Armeria, and other self-contained subjects. have succeeded at last. l'hese plants are Another fine nepeta came from seed la­ taller and bigger all around than N. mus­ beled Nepeta 'Souvenir d'Andre Chaudron' Gardeners usually relegate catmints to sinii, and so far they're not making babies. (or alternately, 'Blue Beauty'). Since culti­ the herb garden. Top: The author feels There's a larger form (or possibly a hybrid) vars rarely come true from seed I doubted catnip is one that deserves to remain of N. x faassenii called 'Six Hills Giant' the name, although I liked the way the there, but here it has been used to (sometimes called N. gigantea) offered at last French name rolled off the tongue. How­ create bold swaths in a formal garden by a few U.S. nurseries, and if it is the real ever, mine matches the descriptions of with boxwood and wisteria. Above: A thing, it will be a silvery plant three feet tall 'Souvenir' that I've found in books. This is Eurasian native, catnip has gone wild by three feet wide that should have a lot of one of the catmints that some people want in America and elsewhere. eager gardeners lined up to buy it. to classify under Dracocephalum. Others All three of the nepetas I've mentioned say it is a form of Nepeta grandiflora, some so far billow about a good deal, distrib­ say N. sibirica, but it doesn't resemble ei­ uting th.eir many lilac-colored blossoms ther of them. It does resemble a plant that generously on and aroul'ld their neigh­ Liberty Hyde Bailey, in his Standard Cyclo­ bors. If they are sheared back halfway pedia of Horticulture, calls N. veitchii. My when the first floweril'lg is over they'll do plant is about two feet tall (taller when it again in late summer. A couple of se­ flowering); has smooth dark green leaves lected forms of N . mussinii-'Blue that are jagged, pointed, and two to three Wonder' and 'White Wonder'-are inches long; and produces tiered racemes widely available. I've got the white one of wonderful deep violet-blue flowers each

36 AUGUST 1993 THE CHEMISTRY OF CATNIP one and a half inches long. The leaves have our eat sniffs, then bites his catnip mouse. Soon he's caught up in an orgy a strange, wild aroma, and the whole plant of purring, Fubbing, rolling, leaping, and batting at butter}lies that dOI'l' t is a great success, unless you want to hold Y exist. He's obviously having a good time, but what exactly is going on? against it a tendency to sprawl (only aft er Catnip (Nepeta cataria) is ecstasy for about two thirds of all cats, according to a storm, I quickly note in its defense). It Arthur and Sharon Tucker, whose 1988 article in the journal Eoonomic Botany does spread from the roots, but since every remains the definitive overview of catnip research. But catJlip's effects seJdom last piece is welcome, who's to complain? longer than fifteen minutes and they are usually followed by a one ~hout "rdractory Another seed-exchange nepeta is one that period," during which the mint loses its nip. A cat's talent for intoxication is known came as N. camphorata-a lovely, pungent, to be inherited, but mood is important as well: friendly, happy cats get higher than small-leaved, very silvery creature that pro­ nervous, withdrawn ones. duced cascades of pale lavender blooms in Catnip's main active ingredient is a chemical called nepetalaetom~ . Cats that like its first year. I'm not sure how many years catnip are so sensitive to airborne nepetalactone that they can detect it at concen­ I'll be able to keep it, since it's from southern trations of one part per billion. And it's not just the domestic cat that comes under Greece. The temperature here in upstate the chemical's spell. Thanks to a few brave and energetic scientists, we know that New York (two da ys before I wrote this) catnip will seduce many other members of the Felidae, including lions, leopards, went from 70 degrees during the day to 19 ocelots, and bobcats-although their enthusiasm varies considerably. Jaguars are at night. The next night it was 12 degrees. reportedly crazy about catnip; tigers react but dom't usually seem to like it; cheetahs I did pot one of the plants and bring it in to may not be affected at all. my enclosed but drafty back porch, but I Besides nepetalactone, thirteen other chemicals are known to trigger the ecstarjc think I shOiald have taken it to bed with me behavior that scientists call the "catnip respoflse." Some of these other substances instead. It must have been about 20 degrees also occur in catnip or in other on the porch. Are these plants ever dealt Nepeta species. But many are pro­ such cruel blows in Greece? duced by entirely unrelated plants. One of the catmints in the garden is a Valerian (Valeriana officinalis), for real mystery. It was gi ven to me as N. instance, is commonly cited as a fe­ 'Dropmore', but it looks very much like N. line intoxicant. Valerian attracts camphorata-small, cordate, stalked, and other animals too. One researcher deeply notched gray leaves, racemes of pale has even suggested that valerian is purply flowers flung about with complete what the Pied Piper used to lure the abandon. Very floriferous, very long­ rats away from the town of Ham­ blooming. elin. Actinidia species, including the A couple of years ago, one major catalog kiwi (A. chinensis), also attract and listed a 'Dropmore' described as having intoxicate cats. It is reported that the roundish green leaves rather than long Chinese used to burn plants of this notched gray ones. Another perennial cat­ genus in order to round up un­ alog describes their 'Dropmore' as having wanted stray cats. gray and toothed foliage, like mine. What these chemicals act\,lally do And although 'Dropmore' was said to be for the plants that produce them is still hardy to Zone 3, while it has staggered a mystery. But it is known that sop:}e triumphantly through quite a few nasty insects pl'oduee sitnilar compounds, winters with the help of evergreen boughs, apparently to repel other insects iliat it sometimes doesn't pull itself together p(t~y on them. Since some bugs don't here until the end of May. Who was I to seem to like compounds of this sort, Cats can detect airborne nepetalactone believe? oue theory holds that the plants, too, in a one part per billion concentration. The name 'Dropmore' marks it as an are engaged jn chem'ical warfare. This (me has found the catmint N. mus­ introduction of Canadian breeder Frank ,Pel'haps their anemicals evolved as a sinii 'White Wonder'. Skinner. In his book, Horticultural Hori­ defemse against lea£-eaning insects'. zons, Skinner says that his 'Dropmore What the chemicals do in the cats isn't well understood ei~her, but the Tuckers Hybrid', a cross between N. mussinii and suggest that they may stimulate the brain in the same way that some of the Gat's N. ucranica, has "neat grayish foliage, own: scents do. Cats have several scent glands and an extensive vocabuhry of odors quite a bit like that of N. mussinii." That that they lase to spell out territorial and sexlaal ambitions. The Tuckers base their solves one puzzle-the first catalog was hypothesis on the fact that many elements of the catnip response also occur in right-but creates another. Exactly what is scent-stimulated behavior. it that's growing in my garden? Whatever the explanatiofl, catnip appears to be a harmless pleasure, although An almost white-foliaged little nepeta, some authorities warn against overindulgence. Not all of the pleasurable plants, N. phyllochlamys, came from a botanic however, are as innocuous. Cat-loving gardeNers should be aware that at least garden seed exchange. Its leaves, on long one-the silver vine (Actinidia polygama)-is thought to be addictive to cats and petioles, are perfect triangles, not more repeated exposure may cause brain damage. -Chris Bright than a quarter-inch on a side, crinkled, soft, and furry. I have this native of Turkey in

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 37 This is one catmint that likes a cool moist spot. English writer Graham Stuart Thomas uses the words "beautiful," "charming," and "graceful" when describ­ ing it, and is mystified at its lack of popu­ larity, since it's been growing for all to see at Kew for years. None of the nepetas in my garden seem to concern themselves unduly with the con­ fusion about nomenclature but get on cheerfully with their job of being decora­ tive and aromatic. Well might they be cheerful, as they seem not to suffer at all from any diseases or imsects. They should probably be divided once in a while so as to liberate their crowlils from crowded growth, but other than that-Iilo problems. When the taxonomists finally succeed in straightening out names and origins, per­ haps more nurseries will make more catmints available to us. Meanwhile, my plants couldn't be happier.

Elisabeth Sheldon is author of A Proper The common catmint species, N epeta gritty soil in a raised bed where it huddles Garden. mussinii, will self-sow and has itself into a rosette about three inches high. rounded leaves (left). The hybrid, It seemed to die the first winter, three years N. x faassenii, is sterile, and its leaves ago, then last summer it rose from the dead SOURCES & RESOURCES are narrower (right). There are a lot on the old roots. You can be sure I potted more catmints to try, but they're not it up last fall before the hard frosts began For information on the Hardy Plant Soci­ easy to find. and put it in the bay window in the parlor. ety write membership secretary Simon It hasn't yet produced flowers, which are Wills, The Manor House, Walton-in­ described as pink and white or pink and Gordano, Clevedon, Avon, England red spotted. BS217AN. The Hardy Plant Society seed exchange Busse Gardens, 13579 10th Street N.W., recently included ten nepetas, several of Cokato, MN 55321, (612) 286-2654. which are described by garden authorities Catalog $2. N. x faassenii, N. 'Six Hills as being excellent candidates for the bor­ Giant'. der. I'm hoping their next list will repeat Carroll Gardens, 444 East Main Street, those offerings. Since nurseries don't carry P.O. Box 310, Westminster, MD 21157, them, we'll have to raise our own. (301) 848-5422. Catalog $2. N. cataria, Not on that list or available from nurseries N. 'Dropmore Hybrid', N. x faassenii, is N. nuda, which one writer describes as N. mussinii 'White Wonder', N. sibirica, reminiscent of the white Verbascum chaixii N. 'Six Hills Giant'. with its grayish basal leaves and five-foot Garden Place, 6780 Heisley Road, P.O. branched stems, spikes of small white flow­ Box 388, Mentor, OH 44061, (216) ers, sometimes tinged with lavender, with 255-3705. Catalog $1. N. 'Dropmore bronzy lilac calyces. I wonder why such a Nne Hybrid', N. mussinii, N. 'Six Hills plant isn't in circulation? Sounds like a per­ Giant'. fect subject for a dry garden. Milaeger's Gardens, 4838 Douglas Ave­ In Perennials for American Gardens, nue, Racine, WI 53402, (414) 639- Ruth Clausen and Nicolas Ekstrom praise 2371. Catalog $1. N. mussinii, N. Nepeta tuberosa, a catmint from Spain and mussinii 'White Wonder', N. 'Six Hills Portugal that bears spikes of purple flowers Giant'. with deep rose calyces. Would it have a Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery, 2825 Cum­ chance of being roardy? The Hardy Plant mings Road, Medford, OR 97501, (503) Society had the seed for it ~nd for a bushy 772-6846. Catalog $2. N. phylh;hlamys. three-by-two footer, N. govaniana, a Thompson & Morgan, P.O. Box 1308, Kashmiri with rounded green leaves and Jackson, NJ 08527, (800) 274-7333. racemes of small creamy yellow blossoms. Catalog free. N. cataria, N. grandiflora.

38 AUGUST 1993 The Plains Cottonwood A naturalist pays homage to this giant native, and to the hollow tree that once saved his life.

BY ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE

here are stars in cotton­ woods. If you grasp a cotton­ wood twig, neither too green nor too rotten, and snap it at a wrinkled growth node, a Tperfect five-pointed star may be revealed on the broken ends. The star is the darker heartwood contrasting with the paler sap­ wood and new growth. The Arapaho people believed that the stars in the sky, like all else, came from the earth. They moved up through the roots and trunks of the cottonwoods to wait near the sky at the ends of the high branches. When the night spirit desired more stars, he asked the wind spirit to provide them. She then grew from a whisper to a gale. Many cottonwood twigs would break off, and each time they broke, they released stars from their nodes. As the only tall tree encountered fre­ quently by the Arapaho and the Cheyenne, the plains cottonwood naturally assumed a powerful and procreative role in their cosmos. They observed how summer brought snowstorms of "cotton" from the trees' catkins, which gave rise to ranks of new cottonwoods along the prairie water­ courses. They found that its white wood could be easily worked and hardened by fire. Maker of stars and trees, giver of starlight by night and welcome shade by day, provider of bowls, bows, and arrows, the cottonwood must have inspired rever­ ence and affection among the High Plains' first residents. European settlers, too, took pleasure and comfort from the plains cottonwood, The plains cottonwood can reach heights of sixty to ninety feet. adapting it as well to many uses. In A

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 39 THE COTTONWOOD: NOT IN MY BACK YARD

lthough beloved by naturalists, the plains cottonwood gets low marks as a Natural History of Trees, Donald Culross landscape tree. Not even we natives of the plains, so short-changed in the Peattie related that Missouri River pi­ Atree department, are unqualified in our adoration of this fuzz-generating rogues were fashioned from them, and that giant. Burton Barnes of the University of Michigan, who has made Populus species two such craft lashed together could trans­ his life work, feels the roots of most make them simply too troublesome under port ten to fifteen tons on the river. He drains and sidewalks. "The plains cottonwood," he says, "might be okay in a park." went on to describe the wagon trains' de­ "Impressive in river bottoms and should remain there," says Michael Dirr's pendence on the great trees: Manual of Woody Landscape Plants of the eastern cottonwood, P. deltoides. "This cottonwood grows I}aturally in Donald Wyman's Trees for American Gardens lists only the Fremont cottonwood, low moist ground, in the vicinity of P. fremontii, and recommends it "only for the dry, alkaline soils of the southwestern streams, water holes, and old buffalo wal­ part of the country where it is difficult to get any trees to grow." For James E. lows. So in the days of prairie schooners Eckenwallder, a professor of botany at the University of Toronto and a taxonomist immigrants sighted their way on the Santa specializing in Populus, it's the fragile branches faUing in such profusion that mak€ Fe trail and the Oregon trail, from one the cottonwood an irritation in the landscape. Sipeewe had found P. sargentii listed grove of the Great Plains Cottonwoods to under two other botanical names, we asked Eckenwalldel; which was correct. "I the next, sure that they would find water, prefer the subspecies nqlTle, P. deltoides subsp. monilitem," he said. "But maybe fuel, and shade in the burning day. Upon you should just list P. sargentii and the varietal nalRe, P. deltoides var. occidentalis. that shelterless sea of grass 400 miles wide, Otherwise it will be too confusing." these Cottonwood groves were the way­ By any name, if you hope to ignore the exp€rts and obtain a plains cottonwood side inn, the club, the church, the newspa­ of your very own, you might do better to find a wild seedling and ask the property per, and the fortress when the wagons drew up in a circle beneath the boughs. Whether The fragile twigs of the traveler 'nooned it' or by night sent the Populus deltoides, far left, sparks of Cottonwood logs flying to the and other cottonwoods stars, here he was sure to meet other trav­ can litter a landscape. elers and with them exchange the vital P. fremontii, left, is news of the trail." !1:ecommended only fop the The Arapaho had long since been herded Southwest, "where it off to Oklahoma by the time the cottonwood is difficult to get any my brother and I would come to call the trees to grow." Thunder Tree was a sapling. In 1890 or so, pioneer William Smith wanted to green up owner if you can dig it up. The nursery trade apparently agrees that no one in his the district of his arid homestead in Aurora, or her right mind would groW the plains cottonwood intentionally. Colorado. He pulled up seedlings from Kevin Mosley is a sales representative for Little Valley Nurseries, Inc., in Brighton, Cherry Creek and carried them back to plant Colorado, whiGh offers the plains cottonwood wholesale. In spite of following many along the High Line Canal in saddlebags of leads from Mosley, we failed to find a retail mail-order source. Mosley, a big fan of wet sand. A few, subjected to a range of the plains cottonwood, says it's now illegal in Colorado to sell any seed-beariflg forms stresses, would become hollow. The Thunder of the ttee, so Liftle Valley's customers won't £iRd themselves plagued by big drifts of Tree, the greatest of the cottonwoods in cotton. "It's feally very popular here," says Mosley. "We've been sold out since last Smith's domain, would also become the year, because it was used extensively in the new Denver airport." hollowest, offering shelter to two small boys He conceded that the plains cottonwood's height, girth, and particularly its caught in a hailstorm sixty-four years later. spreading crown, make it too big for most home landscapes. Some alternative Each of the poplars along the High Line choices he suggested are P. x acuminata, the willow-leafed cottonwood, which has Canal has given me its patticular gifts, but a more oval head; F. angustifolia, particularly the cultivar 'Empire'; and P. only one would offer life itself. balsamifera, "but it's hard to come by." But Eckenwallder says the first is really The plains cottonwood is otherwise suitable only for higher elevations, and the latter two species sucker badly. Nor known as Populus sargentii. The genus does he know of anyone trying to breed a cottonWood for the suburban back yard. Populus belongs to the willow family and "Most of the bl1eecling work is aimed at improving fiber production," he says, includes the black, silver, and willow­ particwlarly for use in paper puLp. leaved cottonwoods, the Lombardy and Here are a few r(\\~ail sources that we did find: other poplars, and the aspens of montane P. x acuminata, Plants of the Southwest, Aqua Fl'ia, Route 6, Box l1A, Santa Fe, and northern boreal forests. The specific NM 87501. Catalog $1.50. epithet honors Charles Sprague Sargent, P. fremontii, Forestfarm, 990 Tetherow Road, 'Williams, OR 97544, (503) 846- author of the classic Manual of the Trees 6969. Catalog $3. of North America. America's greatest den­ P. fremontii 'Bakersfield' and 'Zapata', Las Pilitas Nursery, Star Route BX 23X, drologist of the day, Sargent served as pro­ Santa Margarita, CA 93453, (80S) 438-846-7357. -Kathleen Fisher fessor of arboriculture at Harvard University and director of the Arnold Ar­ Kathleen Fisher is editor of American Horricwlturist. boretum. In describing "his" tree in his 1905 man­ ual, Sargent says that P. sargentii normally

40 AUGUST 1993 grows sixty to ninety feet in height, often becoming six or seven feet in diameter. The Thunder Tree exceeded both these dimen­ sions. The species grows erect, with spread­ ing branches forming a broad, open head, its profile not unlike that of an English oak. Pale brown bark, thick and deeply fissured into broad ridges, ascends the stout trunk. The leaves are ovate, almost heart­ shaped. They can be two or three inches long, three or four broad. Light green above, bluish below, and lustrous as they quiver on the prairie wind, the leaves bear rounded teeth along their margins. They spring from buds coated with balsam, a volatile resin, sticky and aromatic, though not as cloying as the balsam poplar of the north woods. In autumn the leaves of cottonwoods go bright yellow, warm dirt brown, or the color of old gold, before falling away. Un­ derfoot, they give off an aroma of cured tobacco sweetened by the slightest tincture In summer, female trees create snowstorms of cotton. of balsam. Then the tree stands bared, silvery, shadowed by its own deep furrows. vegetated that potential new ground for galleries of pallid trunks meeting in a closed Almost luminous, it blends into the winter seedlings is severely limited. canopy of shining green. Elsewhere their sky, and only against snow at a distance on Nor do cottonwoods rely strictly on distinct domes, clumped or single filed in the moonlit night does it look dark. In the their seeds. Like willows, their frequent loopy lines, trace the path of moisture gaunt days before spring, the cottonwood consorts, they possess a second elegant through the drylands. Following water makes a gray frame for the black-and­ mechanism of colonization. The trunks, across the plains, the green ranks of cotton­ white magpies who have nowhere else to branches, and twigs of cottonwoods tend woods define a countryside otherwise light or a perch for the survey of rough­ to be brittle. As the Arapaho legend con­ nearly featureless. Often the mere presence legged hawks, immigrants who will disap­ firms, storms rend pieces from the trees and of one or two great poplars gives away the pear before the buds swell with balsam and scatter them over the ground. Some spear location of a buried lateral ditch of a long­ tender green leaves once more. the rain-soft soil, rooting directly. Should forgotten homestead. Groves of cotton­ Cottonwoods bear their sex in catkins they fall into a stream below, the orphaned woods on the lone prairie almost always on separate trees. The male trees put out branches might be swept far downstream. secrete a farmhouse, or its remnants. two-inch staminate catkins, fuzzy caterpil­ Coming to rest on a muddy bank not yet Tiger swallowtails and Weidemeyer's ad­ lar-type danglers that seed the spring skies occupied, such a castaway might take root. mirals are only the most conspicuous of the with vast batches of pollen. Pistillate cat­ Stumps send up new shoots and bright red hundreds of species of insects that feed on kins launching four to eight inches from suckers spring from waterside roots. its foliage. Many birds nest here­ twigs on the female trees are lined with The plains cottonwood ranges through Bullock's orioles in their woven scrotal green capsules that burst fine white hairs. the foothills and the plateaus on their hems bags hanging from branches over water, These seeds float great distances from their from Saskatchewan and the Dakotas to magpies in their flimsy stick tenements, mothers, filling the summer sky with the Texas and New Mexico. It is the signature and red-shafted flickers in holes of their cottony fluff that gives the trees their name tree of these zones. The lowlands ecosys­ own making among them. The flickers dig while making soft summer snow. tem sometimes known as the cottonwood for wood-boring beetles, part of an insect Like thistledown or dandelion para­ community is also characterized by medley performed beneath the bark. Kes­ chutes, cottonwood seeds are capable of peachleaf and sandbar willow, wild plum, trels, chickadees, and many other cavity spreading the species across many miles. rose, snow berry, milkweed, poison ivy, and nesters occupy abandoned woodpecker Spiderwebs and pools become clogged Virginia creeper. Since Europeans arrived, holes. Such hollows grow-through influ­ with the sheer mass of kapoklike stuffing American and Chinese elms, green ash, and ence of fire, fungi, and insects-into homes released at seed time. Any patch of suitable tamarisk have moved into many cotton­ for owls, bees, spiders, and raccoons. soil is likely to receive one or many seeds. wood communities. The amount of cotton­ Mourning cloaks hibernate in hollows, It seems surprising that cottonwoods do wood has changed, varying with the width while thirteen-lined spermophiles dwell in not cover the plains, given this fertile fall­ of the floodplain, agriculture, grazing, log­ burrows among the massive root systems. out, until one realizes that they cannot ging, and burning. Still, on certain rivers Squirrels tumble leaves and twigs into nests grow except where sufficient moisture ex­ such as the lower South Platte that runs among the branches. Ants, beetles, and ists-in other words, along the water­ through Denver, forests of plains cotton­ other invertebrates flourish among fissured courses. And these tend to be so thickly woods grow along the floodplains-broad bark, feather, and fur.

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 41 a spectacular exception, and Tom and I were its beneficiaries. In the spring of 1979, a quarter century after that lethal hailstorm, I visited my fa­ ther in Aurora, arriving at night. The next morning, as he drove me around Del Mar Circle on an errand, I looked across the park to take in the familiar comforting form of the beloved cottonwood. But it wasn't there. Instead of the great green globe of its canopy, I saw a hole in the horizon with Mount Evans showing through. I was in­ credulous, then inconsolable. It was the first time my father had seen me cry for years. He held my shaking shoulders. Through Bruce Waldo, director of the Aurora Parks Department, I learned that a severe windstorm accompanied by heavy snow had split the "historic hollow cotton­ wood" down the middle. Half fell across the High Line Canal, and the other half was leaning to the west in a very precarious position. The city forester concluded that the tree could not be saved and presented Cottonwood seeds, like dandelion For years after the devastating hailstorm significant danger to any person in the area. parachutes, can float for great in which the Thunder Tree saved my life Waldo enclosed the work orders that distances, spreading the trees and my brother's, I'd assumed it was hol­ documented in clipped and clinical terms across many miles. But the seeds lowed chiefly by lightning. Then longtime the cutting, brushing, and removal of the will only grow in areas with High Line ditchrider George Swan told me Thunder Tree. The foreman's notes re­ sufficient moisture. what happened. By 1938 the hollow tree vealed that the diameter at twelve feet was was a flicker tree and a bee tree, though not forty-nine inches. A three-foot stump was yet very hollow. One day, Swan saw smoke left at first. Sadly, they cut this too, flush to along the lateral and found flames leaping the ground, where the diameter expanded from the old cottonwood. Farm kids had to seventy inches. The remains of the great apparently built a fire at the base, hoping tree were disposed of without ceremony. to smoke out the bees and snatch the The work order reads "Levell cotton­ honey. But the woodpecker holes and in­ wood & haul logs to dump." sect workings caught fire from sparks, Last summer I took !l1Y brother Bud to acted like flues to fan the flames, and the site of the hollow tree to show him the turned the whole area into a blazing chim­ cottonwood stars. We searched together ney. The tree survived but smoldered for and he found some good ones. Then we two days. That was when the reaming of gazed up at the gap in the skyline where the hollow tree began in earnest. that tree once stood. I thought of the Summer winds and winter gales scraped hundreds of descendants it must have left and planed the ebony cracked throat of the all the way to Nebraska from branches great tree. Rot and insects ate away at the carried downstream, the thousands from bole. Tom and I, sucked out of the storm its copious cotton seeds. And I thought of and into the belly of the hollow cotton­ all the stars released into the winter night wood that day in July 1954, were just when the wind spirit finally brought the another minor tool of erosion. Rubbing up Thunder Tree to earth. against the wet charcoal within, we helped the wind and the rain and the rot to shape Robert Michael Pyle holds a PhD in ecol­ the graceful contours of this grand plant we ogy and lives in Gray's River, Washington. came to call the Thunder Tree. One of his five previous books, Winter­ Though tree holes are common in cot­ green, won the John Burroughs' Medal for tonwoods, they tend to be of a size suitable the best natural history book of 1987. for squirrels or kestrels, raccoons at most. From The Thunder Tree by Robert Michael Hollowing trees usually fall to the current Pyle, published by Houghton Mifflin Com­ or the cutters before their homes get big pany, Boston. Copyright © 1993 by Robert enough for kids. The Thunder Tree made Michael Pyle. Reprinted by permission.

42 AUGUST 1993 LET'S CLASSIFIEDS GROW TOGETHER

Classified Ad Rates: $1 per word; mini­ BULBS mum $20 per insertion. 10 percent dis­ Dutch bulbs for fall planting, 12cm Tulips, DNl count for three consecutive ads using same Daffodils, Hyacinths and Miscellaneous. Cata­ copy, provided each insertion meets the log Free. Paula Parker DBA, Mary Mattison van Schaik, IMPORTED DUTCH BULBS, P.O. Box $20 minimum after taking discount. Copy 32AH, Cavendish, VT 05142. (802) 226-7653. and prepayment must be received on the CACTI AND SUCCULENTS 20th day of the month three months prior SEMPERVlVUMS! Colorful, hardy succulent to publication date. Send orders to: AHS rosettes. Ten-variety collection, $12 check or Advertising Department, 2300 South money order, or send SASE for com plete descri p­ Ninth Street, Suite 501, Arlington, VA tive list. STRONG'S ALPINE SUCCULENTS, 22204-2320, (703) 892-0733. P.O. 2264-C, Flagstaff, AZ 86003-2264. CARNIVOROUS PLANTS Carnivotous (Insectivorous) Plants, seeds, sup­ plies, and books. Color brochure free. PETER PAULS NURSERIES, Canandaigua, NY 14424. SHARE THE JOY OF THE AVANT GARDENER COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR THE GARDENER WHO WANTS MORE NEW DOS DATABASES for study and selection GARDENING WITH OTHERS. FROM GARDENING! Subscribe to THE of ornamental grasses, hosta, and culinary GIVE A MEMBERSHIP IN AVANT GARDENER, the liveliest, most useful herbs. $3 for large catalog. TAXONOMIC of all gardening publications. Every month this COMPUTER, Box 12011, Raleigh, NC 27605. THE AMERICAN unique news service brings you the newest, most practical information on new plants, ptoducts, EMPLOYMENT HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. techniques, with sources, feature articles, special PROFESSIONAL CARETAKER AVAILABLE. issues. 25th year. Awarded Garden Club of Expert property care. Horticultural expertise. Share the unique range of AHS member­ America and Massachusetts Horticultural Soci­ Upkeep and improvement skills. Estate, farm or ety medals. Curious? Sample copy $1. Serious? ranch position sought in Rural West or Rocky ship benefits with your family and $12 full year (reg. $18). THE AVANT GAR­ Mountain states. L.S., P.O. Box 761, Ojai, CA friends: American Horticulturist maga­ DENER, Box 489M, New York, NY 10028. 93024. "SIMPLE" THE ROVING GARDENING zine and News Edition, toll-free ARTIST specializing in horticulture art, garden Gardeners' Information Service, Annual BOOKS illusion, facade, topiary, trompe l'oeil, espalier, HORTICA-All Color Cyclopedia of Gar­ trellis work, personalized teaching and training. Free Seed Exchange, Educational Pro­ den/Flora, with Hardiness Zones, also Indoor Box 69AH, Honey Brook, PA 19344. grams, Horticultural Employment Ser­ Plants, 8,100 photos, by Dr. A. B. Graf, $238. We at the American Horticultural Society are TROPfCA 4 (1992), 7,000 Color photos of often asked to refer individuals to significant vice, Horticultural Book Program, plants and trees for warm environments, $165. horticultural positions around the country. We Environmental and Conservation Pro­ EXOTIC HOUSE PLANTS, 1,200 photos, 150 are not in a position to offer full placement in color, with keys to care, $8.95. Circulars services to candidates or employers. However, grams, Official AHS Membership Card, gladly sent. Shipping additional. ROEHRS CO., as a service to our members-jobseekers and special events at River Farm, our Societis Box 125, East Rutherford, NJ 07073. (201) employers alike-we are very glad to receive 939-0090. reshlmes and cover letters of individuals seeking headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and job changes and employers seeking candidates. All responsibility for checking references and much more. Plus New Member Dues are determinng the a pptopria teness of both position discounted to only $35! Save up 10 80% on publishers' overstocks, imports, remain­ and candidate rests with the individuals. AHS's ders. Choose from up to 8,000 titles including 600-1,500 participation in this activity is only to serve as a I new arrivals each month. Gardening, Cooking, Biography, I It's so easy to give an AHS membership! History, Art, Fiction, SCience, Literature, Nature-something connecting point for members of the Sociery. Inquiries and informational materials should be I for everyone. Fast shipment, FREE C OG I Simply call our Membership Depart­ moneyback guarantee. Write for ATAL sent to HORTICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT­ ....I Haml:ton Box15-881,FalfsViliageCT06031..... I AMERICAN HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, menttoll-free at (BOO) 777-7931 to _-----_ __ ... Dept. 893, 7931 East Boulevard Dr., Alexan­ place your gift membership orders. dria, VA 22308-1300. Trees & Shrubs of Distinction GARDENING SUPPLIES Glistening Hollies, Cold-hardy Camellias, Wondrous Witch Hazels. Fragrant Wintersweet. HAND-CRAFTED GARDEN TOOL HOUSES Bright-berried Viburnums, and much more ... (post opt.). HOUSE-SHAPED cedar planter A cornucopia ofplants for fall and winter allure! boxes, holds 6" pot. T. SAWYER PICKET Descriptive Catalogue $3.00 FENCE cedar planter boxes 3 sizes. Brochure P.O. Box 330·A $1. MAGALIA MILLWORKS, P.O. Box 1517, Gr een\Vich~ NJ 08323 Magalia, CA 95954. (916) 873-4124.

AMERfCAN HORTICULTURIST 43 RAPID COMPOST AND SOIL SC REEN­ ING-Motorized Trommel (Revolving) THE AMERICAN Screen-Screens cubic yard dry compost in 20 HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY minutes. H eavy duty and portable. Build for about $175. Detailed Plans, Parts List, Con­ ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING stru ction and Operation Manual-$20 and $2.95 S&H. WILLIAM C. STEWART, 4900 Join the With 3,500 Rinearson Rd ., Gladstone, OR 97027. Master Gardeners illustrations, in­ cluding 400 se­ GERANIUMS in San Antonio ries of step-by­ Scented geraniums from specialist and grower. Seventy plus varieties. Send #10 SASE fO!; li st. The 1993 Inte rnation al Master Gar­ step photos, The GERANIUMS, P.O. Box 182, Washington, KY dener Confe re nce a nd Trade Show, American Horti­ 41096. "Gardening for a Better World," w ill cultural Society be held in San Antonio, Texas, from Encyclopedia of HOUSE PLANTS August 12 to 14 . The program in­ Gardening is the ORCHIDS, GESNERIADS, BEGONIAS, cludes over 60 classes, clinics, and only gardening guide you'll ever need. This CACTI & SUCCULENTS. Visitors welcome. tours . Programs focus on horticul­ 1992-1993 ca talog $2. LAURAY OF SALIS­ tural a nd volunteer program topics. 64B-page companion volume to The American BURY, 432 Undermountain Rd., Salisbury, CT The trade show w ill feature 65 cor­ Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Garden 06068. (203) 435-2263. porate and educational sponsors. Plants is packed with basic and advanced In kee ping w ith the confe re n ce gardening techniques-everything from NURSERY STOCK theme, participants w ill consider transplanting to hybridizing-ond includes Choose from 1,500 varieties of exciting and Mexican and Russian initiatives practical and informative tips on creating and hardy plant varieties. Many exclusive. Rhodo­ through Master Gardeners of North dendrons, azaleas, conifers, shrubs, trees, peren­ maintaining your garden. nials, and much more. Mail-order catalog $3. America. And awards will be pre­ ROSLYN NURSERY, Dept. AH, Box 69, Ros­ sented in the areas of youth garden­ The American Horticultural Society Encyclope­ lyn, NY 11576. (516) 643-9347. ing , e n vironment a l programs , dia of Gardening, which will be published in cons ume r edu cation, a nd Master October, retails for S59.95 but AHS members PALMS Garde ner education. can receive it for just S49.95 plus S5 shipping. RARE AND EXOTIC H AWAIIAN GROWN The conference w ill be held at the Use your Visa or MasterCard to preorder your PALM AND CYCAD SEEDLINGS from Marriott River Center, downtown o n copy. Just call toll-free, (800) 777-7931. arOUNd the world-Carefully shipped to any­ San Antonio's famous Riverwalk. where in the USA. Please send for price Ii st­ For more info rmation call (800) KAPOHO PALMS, P.O. Box 3, Pahoa, Hawaii, 96778. Nursery Hours 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. M-E 633-2862 or (210) 228-0417. Visitors welcome by appointment (808) 936- 2580.

Give Yourself Extra Clout With The American

Horticultural Society MasterCard ®

Carry the credit card that gives you the recognition oSupplemental Auto Rental Collision/Loss Damage of being a caring, active member of the American In surance Horticultural Society. Thi s is th e only card o Up to $3 ,000 Supplemental Lost Checked that enabl es you to add your support to your Lu ggage Protection fa vo rite non-profit organ ization! Accepted at o Emergency Cash & Airline Tickets 9 million locations worldwide, the AHS Gold MasterCard®ca rd gives you unmatched trav­ Thi s plast iC passport, recognized around th e world, is being offered exc lu sively to AHS e lin g, shopping and entertaining convenien ce. members and their families .. "AHS is making Get these extra advantages at NO RISK! this card avai labl e because it has the power, oN o annual fee for th e first year ($40 for the practicality and prestige of a premium Mas­ Gold card , $20 for th e Si Iver card thereafter; terCard," explained Darlene Oliver, AHS Di­ 17.9% Annual Percentage Rate)+ rector of Membership . "And , each time you o Up to $50,000 line of credit make a purchase with your AHS MasterCard, olmmedi ate cash ava ilability you add support to AHS programs - at no cost oTol1 free access to 24-hour Customer to you!" Service department Why not make this card th e one yo u reach for oCredit card registration servi ce when shopping for ga rdenin g supplies, din­ Extensive travel benefits and services including>: CALL NOW TO APPLY ing at a favorite restaurant, purchasing travel oUp to $1,000,000 Common Carrier Travel 24 hours a day,7 days a week ti ckets or check in g into a hotel? Choose th e Accid ent In surance' card that makes a difference.

'Certain resuictioos aw/vto these benefits. The stm"f'Iafy of oed"rtcard benefits

44 AUGUST 1993 PERENN[ALS TOURS BEAUTIFUL PERENNIALS at a pleasing price. IRELAND'S GLORIOUS GARD ENS: Fa ll The Cactus & We at Bluestone have grown and shipped our 1993. Leisurely escorted tour with special gar­ specialty perennials for over 20 years. Let us den and casrl e visits. $2,800 includes la nd, most Succulent Society of help beautify your home with o ur economical mea ls, charming hotels. Call XO TRAVEL plants, bulbs, and shrubs. Write today for our CONSULTANTS for brochures: (800) 262- America free color catalog. BLUESTONE PERENNI­ 9682 or (212) 947-5530. ALS, 7231 Middle Ridge, Madison, O H 44057. Invites You to Join! As a member, you will be part PLANTS (UNUSUAL) GARDENING QUESTIONS? of an international Society OVER 2,000 KINDS o f choice and affordable founded in 1929 to promote a pl ants. O utstanding ornamentals, American na­ better understanding and ti ves, perennials, rare conifers, pre-bonsai, wild ­ Call AHS 's Gardeners' Information Service appreciation of cacti and life plants, much more. Descriptive catalog $3. Your daylilies are drooping and there are spots on the succulents. The Society is also FORESTFARM, 990 Tetherow Rd., Williams, leaves of your roses. Amy sterious weed-or is it a OR 97544-9599. dedicated to the protection and wildflower?-just appeared in the perenniol bed. GIS preservation of these most unique (on help. Coli toll·free (800) 777 -7931. creations of nature. ROSES HORTICO ROSES: Antique roses; Engli sh By joining you will enjoy many roses; ha rdy Explorer, Pa rkla nd, a nd Pavement benefits, including: roses. Over 600 varieti es to choose from, includ­ Embroidery ~tudio ./ A Subscription to the Cactus ing: Ace of Hearts, Ave Maria, Bambey, Brides and Succulent lournal_ A Dream, Blue River, Loving M emo ry, Canadia n Offering a unique collection of totes, T -shirrs, sweatshirtS, and turtlenecks with embroidered bi-monthly publication fea­ White Star, Dr. Dick, Dutch Gold, Feli ci ty botanical designs. Send $1 for a color brochure. Kendal, Herfla, Keepsake, Liebeszauber, Lin ­ turing a balanced presentation coln Cathedral, Maid of Honor, McCartney P. O. Box 5729, Greensboro, NC 27435 of scientific and cultural Rose, Elina (Peaudouce), Pinta, Savoy Hotel, Phone/Fax (919)273-894 1 articles_ Advertisers in the Schwarrze Madonna, Stephanie Diane, Su nsa­ Journal offer a wide variety of ti on (Veltfire), Tifton, Wimi, Rennie's new min­ plants, seeds, literature and iatures: Blushing Blue, California Sun , Innocent supplies_ Blush, Silver Phanto m, and Surfer Girl. Catalog $3. H ORTI CO INC., 723 Robson Rd., · · ~CHIP2 ./ Membership Voting ' . . Computerized Horticultural Privileges Waterdown, ON LOR 2Hl. (41 6) 689-6984, Information Planner Fax 689-6566. Call or write: PH/ FAX: 1-800-544-2721 ./ CSSA Newsletters - or PH/ FAX: 516-324-2334 PARADISE INFORMATION, INC. ./ Opportunity to obtain rare SEEDS P.O. Box 1701 , East Hampton, NY 11937 seeds at a nominal cost EXOTIC TROPICAL SEEDS. Fun & easy to 4 Annual Dues: grow. Affordable prices. Free catalog. TROPI­ CAL, Box 986-AH , West Palm Beach, FL $30--U_S_A" Canada & Mexico 33402. $35--0ther Countries Corne grow with us! (surface mail) GARDEN FURNISHINGS & ARBORS Grow new plants and new friends $55--0ther Countries (airmail) in the Journal subscriptions commence with r;l>etite /Fleur AMERICAN DAFFODIL SOCIETY the first issue of each year. Wrought Iron Discover the diversity of To begin your membership, Double Rose Arch DAFFODILS send your name, address, and a Arbors check or money order in U_S_ Modular Trelliswork from tiny winter bloomers to dollars drawn on a U_S_ bank to: Teak & Mahogany the dramatic new forms and colors Garden Furniture of the latest hybrids. CSSA, Inc. Free shi pment from stock Discover new uses for P.O. Box 35034 this most durable perennial, Des Moines, IA 50315-0301 Country Casual and more, in our U.S.A. 17317 Germantown Rd . Suite 550 award-winning quarterly Journal. Germantown, MD 20874 - 2999 56 page colour catalogue $ 3.00 1-301-540-0040 Special Offer Affiliated Clubs Daffodil Handbook FREE with There are more than eighty CREATIVE GARDEN TOURS 3-year membership An unforgettable experience awaits! affiliated organizations located _ 1 yr. $20 _ 3 yr. $50 We custom-design unique flowet and throughout the United States, garden tours worldwide for Horticultural Canada and other countries, For Societies, Garden Clubs, professional and more information on organizing name non-profit organizations. Call us now to an affiliate club, or on the plan a special trip for your group. address location of a club near you, write 1-800-262-9682 to: ----- X.O. Tra vel Consultants Ltd . CIty state ZiP Affiliate Committee X,Q. TRAVEL 38 West 32nd Street, Suite 1009 c/o Mary Jo Gussett New York, NY 10001 mail to: 11807 Dover Mrs. Paul Gripshover, Exec. Dir. Co NSl'LTA:\TS, LTD. Telephone: (2 12) 947-5530 Houston, TX 77031 l!!aI!IlI_~ Telex: 4955784 1686 Gray Fox Trails 1iIf~ FAX: (2 12)971-0924 Milford, Ohio 45150

AMERICAN HORTICULTURIST 45 Plant AUttle Heaven PRONUNCIATIONS In Your Acantholimon ak-an-THOL-ih-mon Own Acer ginnala AY-ser jih-NAY-Iuh Actinidia chinensis ak-tih-NID-ee-uh chy-NEN-sis Backyard. A polygama A. pol-IG-ah-muh Aquilegia caerulea ah-kwi-LEE-juh seh-ROO-Iee-uh Armeria ar-MEER-ee-uh Campanula kam-PAN-yew-Iuh Cannabis KAN-nuh-biss Cerastium seh-RASS-tee-um Delosperma congestum del-oh-SPER-muh kon-JES-tum Dianthus die-AN-thus Dracocephalum drak-oh-SEF-uh-Ium Forsythia x intennedia for-SITH-ee-uh x in-ter-ME-dee-uh Helianthus angustifolius hee-Iee-AN-thus ang-gus-tih-FOE-Iee-us H. annuus H. AN-yew-us H. argophylluS H. ar-go-FIL-us H. atrorubens H . at-row-ROO-benz The willow-leaf sunflower. H. debilis H. DEB-ih-liss H. decapetalus H. dek-ah-PET-al-us Penstemon linarioides PEN-steh-mon H. maximiliani H. maks-ih-mil-ee-AN-eye lin-air-ee-OY-deez H. x multiflorus H. x mul-tih-FLOR-us Phlox hoodii FLOKS HOOD-ee-eye H. salicifolius H. sal-iss-ih-FOE-Iee-us P. mesoleuca P. mez-oh-LOO-kuh H. x simulans H. x SIM-yew-Ianz Populus x acuminata POP-yew-Ius Help save Walden Woods by H. tuberosus H. too-bur-OH-sus x ak-yew-min-A Y -tuh planting a tree that is a direct Juniperus osteospenna joo-NIP-er-iss P. angustifolia P. ang-gus-tih-FOE-Iee-uh offspring of trees from ah-stee-oh-SPER-muh P. balsamifera P. bal-sam-IF-er-uh Ligularia lig-yew-LAIR-ee-uh P. deltoides subsp. monilifera P. Thoreau's Walden Woods. Meconopsis betonicifolia me-kah-NOP-siss del-TOY-deez subsp. mon-ih-LIF-er-uh Each purchase will help save bay-tah-nih-kih-FOE-Iee-uh P. deltoides var. occidentalis P. this national treasure. M. horridula M. hoe-RID-yew-Iuh del-TOY-deez var. ahk-sih-den-TAL-iss Nepeta camphorata NEP-eh-tuh P. fremontii P. free-MON-tee-eye Call today to order your tree kam-for-AY-tuh P. sargentii P. sar-JEN-tee-eye or to receive a full catalog. N. cataria subsp. citriodora N . Prunus x cistena PREW-nus x siss-TEEN-uh 1-800-766-1055 cat-AH-ree-uh subsp. sih-tree-oh-DOR-uh Puschkinia push-KIN-ee-uh N. x faassenii N. x fas-SEN-ee-eye Raoulia australis row-OO-Iee-uh or write: N. gigantea N . jy-GAN-tee-uh aw-STRAY-liss FAMOUS & HISTORIC TREES N. govaniana N. go-van-ee-AN-uh Rolax glebaria ROH-Iaks glee-BAR-ee-uh 8555 Plummer Road N. grandiflora N. gran-dih-FLOR-uh Salvia argentia SAL-vee-uh ar-JEN-tee-uh Jacksonville, N. mussinii N. mus-SIN-ee-eye S. leucantha S. loo-KAN-thuh N. nepetella N. nep-eh-TEL-uh Stachys byzantina STAY-kiss by-zan-TY-nuh Florida 32219 N. nervosa N. ner-VOH-suh Tanacetum densum var. amani N. nuda N. NEW-duh tan-uh-SEE-tum DEN-sum var. N. phyllochlamys N. fil-oh-KLAM-iss uh-MAN-eye N. sibirica N. sigh-BEER-ih-kuh Trachelium caeruleum trah-KEE-Iee-um

AMERICAN FORESTS N. tuberosa N. too-bur-OH-suh seh-ROO-Iee-um N. ucranica N. yew-CRANE-ih-kuh Valeriana officinalis val-air-ee-AN-uh oh­ Ci§5AL , j N. veitchii N . VEE-chee-eye fiss-ih-NAL-iss WALDEN Oenothera fruticosa ee-no-THEE-ruh Verbascum chaixii ver-BAS-kum ~LJ2Ar ,.·WOODS•.••• w, Jv..kwll'l'oIltwISIS F....,d froo-tih-KOH-suh SHAY-zee-eye O. tetragona O. teh-trah-GO-nuh Veronica incana ver-ON-ih-kuh in-KAN-uh Passiflora pass-ih-FLOR-uh Yucca glauca YUK-uh GLAW-kuh

46 AUGUST 1993 © THE WALT DISNEY COMPAN Y

© THE WALT DISNE Y COMPANY © THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY AMERICAN HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 1993 ANNUAL MEETING ~ OCTOBER 8TO 11

DISNEY'S VILLAGE RESORT .... EPCOT®Center will be our living classroom during DYes! I'mintere sted in attending the 1993 Annual Meet­ LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLORIDA the "Gardens of the World" Program. Horticulturists ing at Disney'sVillage Resort. will highlight specific plants and gardening techniques o I'm interested in information about the AHS Young Our Annual Meeting is AHS's event of the year, when and explore the importance of landscape themes People 's Program at the Annual Meeting. we honor our Annual Award winners, undisputed lead­ during this 3l;2-hour walking field trip. Nome:· ______ers in horticulture from across the country. Chosen for Address: ______high achievement in plant breeding and development, .... During "Planting Ideas: The Art and Science of landscape design, horticultural therapy, communica­ Gardening otthe WALT DISNEY WORLD Resort," we'll City: ------tions, plant conservation, and new technologies, this explore the 120-ocre WALT DISNEY WORLD Nursery State: ------year's winners will present a series of lectures during and Tree Farm for on up-close look at the extensive Zip: ------our 48th Annual Meeting at Disney's Village Resort. horticultural operations at MAGIC KINGDOM®Park . Daytime Phone: ______

Our 1993 Program, designed especially for AHS We expect agreat deal of interest in this year'sAnnual m members, also includes two special horticultural tours Meeting. If you're planning to attend, please fill out MAIL TO : 1993 AHS Annual Meeting, Dept. M, 7931 at the WALT DISNEY WORLD ®Resort the coupon at right and moil it as soon as possible. Ea st Boulevard Drive, Ale xandria, VA 22308-1 300.