Enjlhronkm OLmericanun rf.$du/ Bulletin of the American Rock Garden Society Vol. 36 Fall 1978 No. 4 The Bulletin Editor Emeritus DR. EDGAR T. WHERRY, Philadelphia, Pa. Editor LAURA LOUISE FOSTER, Falls Village, Conn. 06031 Assistant Editor VIKI FERRENIEA, Twin Brooks, RFD #1, Mason, Greenville, N.H. 03048 Contributing Editors: Roy Davidson Anita Kistler H. Lincoln Foster Owen Pearce Bernard Harkness H. N. Porter Layout Designer: BUFFY PARKER Business Manager ANITA KISTLER, 1421 Ship Rd., West Chester, Pa. 19380 Contents Vol. 36 No. 4 Fall, 1978 Erythroniums of the Far West—W. H. A. Preece 145 Erythroniura Montanum—Robert Woodward 150 The Eastern Erythroniums—H. Lincoln Foster 151 Not All Plantsmen Are Men, Part I—Nan Ballard 153 From a London Flat—Roy Davidson 159 Preparing Plants for Winter—Betty Ann Mech 168 Book Reviews: Heathers in Colour by Brian and Valerie Proudley; Carnivorous Plants of the United States and Canada by Donald E. Schnell; Wild- flowers of North Carolina by William S. Justice and C. Ritchie Bell; Wildflowers of Alabama and Adjoining States by Blanch E. Dean, Amy Mason and Joab L. Thomas; Wildflowers of Louisiana and Adjoining States by C. A. Brown 172 The Genus Sedum, Part 4: The Mexicans—Ronald Evans 175 The Show Bench—Fran Lubera 179 Rock Gardening in the South, Part I—Elizabeth Lawrence 181 Two Tough Natives from Arid Regions—Mrs. P. H. Gourley 186 Of Cabbages and Kings: Deer Problems, Anyone?—James Cross; Overseas Membership—James R. Le Comte 188 Front Cover Picture—Erythronium americanum—Mary R. Bell, Tenafly, N.J.
Published quarterly by the AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY, incorporated under the laws of the State of New Jersey. You are invited to join. Annual dues (Bulletin included) are: Ordinary Membership, $7.00; Family Membership (two per family), $8.00; Overseas Mem• bership, $5.00 each; Patron's Membership, $25.00; Life Membership, $150.00. Optional 1st cl. delivery, U.S. and Canada, $3.00 additional annually. Optional air delivery overseas, $6.00 additional annually. Membership inquiries and dues should be sent to the Secretary, Box 183, Hales Corners, Wi. 53130. The office of publication is located at 5966 Kurtz Rd., Hales Corners, Wi. 53130. Address editorial matters pertaining to the Bulletin to the Editor, Laura Louise Foster, Falls Village, Conn. 06031. Address advertising matters to the Business Manager at 1421 Ship Rd., West Chester, Pa. 19380. Second class postage paid in Hales Corners, Wi. and additional offices. Vol. 36 Fal 1 1978 No. 4
Bulletin of the Am ERYTHRONIUMS OF THE FAR WEST W. H. A. PREECE Drawings by Rosemary Rurnham, Rurnaby, R. C. The genus Erythronium, or Dog's- of grass, which has not even the tooth Violets, is represented in Europe, strength or energy to throw the seed- Asia and eastern North America, but case off its tip, and a bulb but little the real cradle of the race appears larger than the proverbial bee's knee! to lie between the Rocky Mountains Under present circumstances the large and the Pacific Ocean; this region has majority, if not all, the bulbs sold are, given us several times as many species I believe, collected material; some of as are to be found in all the rest them may have been grown for a year of the world. Vancouver Island alone or two in nurseries before being retail• can boast of five distinct species. ed, but that does not alter the fact. The normal, and in most species the Wildflower conservation, particularly in only, means of increase is by seed, the United States, is receiving ever- which is a slow process. Under natural increasing attention and drastic steps conditions it seems to require about have already been taken to ensure the seven years for a seed to produce a protection of many rare plants threaten• flowering bulb; under cultivation this ed with extinction; consequently it is period can probably be reduced to five by no means improbable that the collec• years, perhaps even to four, but I very tion for sale or export of a number much doubt if it can be done in less of the rarer Dog's-tooth Violets will since all that the first season's growth be banned in the not far distant future. produces is a narrow leaf like a blade It is, therefore, definitely advisable for 145 gardeners in general and nurserymen my hands the blossoms were too in particular to get busy and start rais• withered for me to come to a difinite ing their own stocks from seed; some, conclusion, but I strongly suspect that no doubt, are already doing this. some of them number all three species Most species of erythronium set seed among their ancestors. quite freely in cultivation and, if the I cannot recall ever having seen an ground around them is left undisturbed, erythronium hybrid that was not well volunteer seedlings frequently appear worth growing, and very many of them in fair quantity. Needless to say, have been outstandingly lovely; but, perhaps, far better results are obtained while one feels that great possibilities if the seed is harvested as soon as should lie here, their future as garden it is ripe; it may be sown immediately plants is hard to predict. Assuming or held over until early autumn. In that the hybrids set seed — and I my opinion, the best plan is to sow must confess that I have no reliable the seed thinly in drills in specially data on this point — selecting and prepared beds in the open ground where fixing a strain would require far more the bulbs may remain undisturbed until than the span of a lifetime, owing to they reach maturity. The seed beds the tortoise-like pace adopted by the should be very well drained and the seedlings in attaining flowering size. normal compost used in raising lilies It seems to me that, instead of con• from seed will be found eminently fining our hybridizing activities to spe• suitable. While it is not essential, I cies of the western erythroniums, we am strongly of the belief that it is might more likely obtain satisfactory desirable to have these beds in light results by using E. dens-canis of shade. Europe, for example, or E. americanum There seems to be very little informa• of eastern North America, as one parent tion available on the subject of erythro• and a westerner as the other; it is nium hybrids: it is known that some surely not unreasonable to hope that of the species will intermarry when at least a fair percentage of the resulting grown in close proximity in cultivation progeny would inherit the offset- and it is also on record that some producing capacity of the non-western of them will do likewise where their parent. All this, of course, is entirely ranges overlap in the wild, but hy• suppositious and, so far as I am aware, bridization in the natural state seems it is not even known if such crosses to be the exception rather than the can be made; still it seems to me rule. In the case of E. oreganum and that it would be well worth someone's E. revolutum var. smithii on Vancouver while to try. Island hybridization appears to be The western erythroniums have re• distinctly spasmodic; their ranges run cently been divided into two sections: side by side over considerable distances the Concolorae, which have entirely and overlap quite frequently, but in• green, unmottled leaves and are mostly termarriage appears to occur only in of alpine distribution; and the Pardali- a few very restricted localities. nae, which have handsomely mottled In one spot near the Cowichan Rivei foliage and are usually found in light E. howellii meets the two above- woodland. With one or two exceptions mentioned species, and from there my the species of Concolorae do not appear son brought me some very interesting to be exactly amenable to cultivation, specimens. By the time they came into but those of the Pardalinae are perfectly 146 happy and long-lived in the garden if Unlike the bulbs of the Pardalinae accorded the treatment and conditions section, which appear to yearn for the normally provided for lilies. Antipodes or some other spot on the You will be relieved, perhaps, to hear other side of the earth, those of the that I have no intention of taking the Concolorae are usually to be found western erythroniums in alphabetical order and discussing and describing them one by one; it always seems to me a wearying business to have to wade through an article which reads like a page out of a trade catalog or an annotated check-list, and I would simply loathe having to write such a thing! There are a few species, never• theless, which I do propose to discuss briefly. As I have already indicated, most of the species of the Concolorae have proved distinctly intractable; exceptions are E. tuolumnense and the robustum form of E. grandiflorum, both of which have been happily established in sunny pockets of my rock garden on Van• couver Island for quite a number of years, but so far I can claim very little success with any other species of the section, though there are several I have still to try. Several times I have planted bulbs of the lovely white Avalanche Lily, E. montanum, and on each occasion I ought to have read the burial service over them. My luck with E. parviflorum has been very little better: usually they have come up, and some have even condescended to bloom in the following spring, but after that they have in• variably disappeared from the scene. E. revolution I think it altogether likely that I have hitherto given these species quite quite close to the surface. This may the wrong treatment —• sunny scree. be due to their having a shorter season On Mount Arrowsmith, Vancouver for ripening, or on the other hand Island, E. parviflorum appears to be it may be simply because they very confined to steep, stony, northern slopes frequently grow in situations where they at high altitudes, so into a steeply slop• can get no deeper without burrowing ing scree facing full north are going into bedrock. Whatever the reason may the bulbs my son collected for me on be, the grizzly bears take full advantage that mountain. of the fact, digging up and devouring 147 large quantities of the bulbs of which stained with orange-pink outside. it appears that they are particularly I think that the white-flowered E. fond. oreganum, formerly known both as E. The Pardalinae group, though giganteum and E. watsonii, is my naturally denizens of light woodland, favorite species and it is possibly the I have found to be perfectly happy most stalwart and sumptuous of the in full sun; indeed, they are probably tribe; it is also very long-lived. I know best grown there, particularly in regions which have cooler and moister summers than those to which they are accustomed on the shores of the Pacific. Eastern gardeners, of course, had better be cautious about giving them such sun- bath treatment. They appreciate a well drained soil rich in humus with plenty of moisture available during the grow• ing season; absolute aridity during the summer does not appear to be necessary to ripen the bulbs. I have the various Pardalinae species planted in groups and colonies, hither and yon, throughout my rock gardens where they are subjected to regular artificial watering all through the sum• mer months; this has been going on for years and they show no signs of disapproval. By-the-way, bulbs of the western erythroniums intensely dislike exposure to the air and should never be kept out of the ground a single minute longer than is absolutely necessary. With the exception, so far as I know, of only one species, the flowers are carried singly or in scapes of two to several, each mature bulb producing a pair of leaves and one flowering stem; the exception is E. multisca- of a group, planted close to forty years poideum, still more familiar to most ago in a garden near here, which shows of us as E. hartwegii, which appears not the slightest sign of deterioration; to send up a number of blossoms on in fact, it becomes more and more individual stems of about equal height, magnificent as the years roll by. though close examination shows that Established bulbs, if the flowers are they are actually carried in an umbel not cut, will usually produce three or of which the main stem only just about four and just occasionally five recurv• reaches ground-level. This is a very ing blossoms three inches wide, lovely species with creamy blossoms beautifully marked around the eye with suffused with yellow on the inside and a circle of gold and brown. 148 Among the numerous forms and parentage with as brilliant a yellow varieties of E. revolutum we find blossom as any of the Concolorae and blossoms in many exquisite shades the usual heavily mottled foliage of of pink; smithii, johnsonii, 'Pink the woodlanders. E. helenae (syn. E. Beauty' and 'Rose Beauty' are all per• californicum var. bicolor) comes closest fectly lovely. None of these are quite to true yellow, with blossoms half as robust as E. oreganum and under yellow and half white, the white being natural conditions very rarely produce the outer half of each segment. This more than two flowers to a bulb. Actual is a very lovely species, but even if count made in the wild showed that it were the dowdiest member of the E. r. smithii averaged only three bulbs clan it would still be well worth growing in a thousand with three blossoms and for its strong delicious fragrance. none with more than three. In its From the statements of various natural habitat this form is found grow• authorities it is evident that the western ing in sandy silt on the banks of erythroniums have proved perfectly har• streams and rivers where it is often dy in regions afflicted with extreme completely submerged throughout the sub-zero temperatures and that no great winter months. difficulty need be anticipated in grow• Of the cream-flowered species I like ing successfully the various species of E. californicum best; its blossoms are the Pardalinae section of the genus in flatter than those of most of the other the northern or eastern states. species, since the segments are only Of the Concolorae, E. tuolumnense slightly revolute. In my experience this seems to me to be the species most holds the record for flower production. likely to prove a success in eastern One in my garden actually displayed gardens. In some gardens it seems less fifteen blossoms. floriferous than other westerners, but Prior to this specimen of E. califor- with yet other growers it has proved nicum putting on this astounding the most generous of all species in display last spring, E. hendersonii is blossom production. I do not pretend perhaps the most consistently free- to know the reason for this, but my flowering and, at the same time, one guess is that there are more than one of the loveliest and most satisfactory strain in cultivation and that bulbs col• of the tribe. It is quite unique in lected in some localities are more its coloring, the strongly recurving amenable to cultivation than those col• blossoms being a delicate, cool pinkish lected in others. lilac with a deep blackish purple eye. Reprinted with permission from Real It comes from Oregon where it has Gardening, Jan. 1940. a wide altitudinal range, from the depths of the Rogue River Valley to A number of lovely and not difficult the high alpine meadows of the Cascade erythronium hybrids and selections Mountains. have been made available to gardeners True yellow selfs do not seem to since Mr. Preece's article was written. occur among the species of the Pardali- Among these are 'White Beauty', 'Pink nae, though I have a hybrid of unknown Beauty7, 'Pagoda' and 'Kondo'. — Ed. 149 ERYTHRONIUM MONTANUM Vancouver Island Form ROBERT WOODWARD West Vancouver, B. C, Canada For those addicted to the genus were true why was E. grandiflorum Erythronium and desirous of growing so easy?) just plain cussedness? it, Erythronium montanum has always In any case we arrived at no conclu• been a lodestar. The epithets which sions and abandoned the idea of swaths come to mind are: pristine, aristocratic, of E. montanum in our wild gar• stately, wilden, untameable. The last is den. Until along came the 'Vancouver surprising when one considers the drifts Island' form. What follows about this in the thousands on certain peaks in particular plant comes mostly from the Cascade and Olympic ranges. But those two superb Vancouver Island E. montanum is never so ubiquitous growers, Ed Lohbrunner and Vern as E. grandiflorum; and until quite Ahier. They introduced us to this ver• recently it was always thought of as a sion, which is definitely a growable plant of the high meadows whereas one if not exactly an exuberant one. E. grandiflorum can descend to quite Erythronium montanum grows on mundane elevations, as for instance in Vancouver Island, at apparently a much the Wenatchee mountains. lower elevation (about 3000 feet) than For those who do not know E. mon• is usual for this plant. It grows in tanum let me give you a brief descrip• a logging area in the Port Renfrew tion. The foliage is shining and un- region in a patch approximately two mottled. more cordate than in other acres in extent. The area is a logged species; the flowers are white with a forest and therefore is not densely yellowish-orange base. There are defi• shady. The companion plants of nite auricles (also in E. grandiflorum) Erythronium are such usual subalpine and a boss of golden yellow anthers. things as Rhododendron albiflorum, The shape of the flower is unusal: the menziesia, Cornus canadensis, etc. But perianth segments are recurved and face no E. grandiflorum. (Aside: why when outward but, as it were, on a shepherd's these two erythroniums do grow in the crook of a stalk, making the plants flut• same region are they so rigidly ter• ter and nod in the high breezes. In na• ritorial. Also why no hybrids?) The ture E. montanum propagates by means soil is woodsy duff, with a deal of of succeeding tubers. rotted wood. Rotted wood, in our ex• Not so in the garden. Although its perience, is often an efficacious medium oft-companion E. grandiflorum is a for difficult-to-grow subalpine plants. readily adaptable garden plant we had I have never seen this area but the never succeeded with E. montanum. We description does not sound too unlike had even tried on several occasions the conditions we might find on our from seed with dismal results although local mountains. One significant factor, the seed is not difficult to germinate. however, reported by Mr. Ahier, is that What was the problem? a mycorrihizal the plant grows only in a thirty-foot association? one of those plants which Avide band and has been covered four refuse to descend? (although if this feet deep by bulldozers. 150 Several growers in this area have proceed apace, and then suddenly stop, experimented with this plant. The as if to say 'O-to-hell-with-it', and Ahiers have grown it for several years promptly die down. Squinny leaves, no and it is a regular performer with flowers, and yet each year they come up to ten flowers on the stalk. This up. number is not usually observed on the I can't derive any conclusions from Olympic form of E. montanum. The all this. But at least in some gardens Lohbrunners have also grown the plant E. montanum is now thriving and and notice now that it is beginning beautiful. I know few, if any, gardens to multiply by offsets. Susan Watson where plants from other stations have in Brunswick Beach has a nicely estab• even begun to thrive. I should think lished clump and in our old garden we if one were to acquire E. montanum had flowered the plant (after the first- from the Vancouver Island source (or year mimps ... so common to almost seed thereof) it should be grown in all erythroniums), but since the bulbs a deep foresty, rotting-woodsy duff, and Avere moved to University of Columbia planted deep. Perhaps the classic peat- Botanical Garden they have done noth• bed would be the answer. E. montanum ing but sulk. As they have in Mrs. is one of those rare beauties one should Thelma Chapman's garden in Van• shake the stars in order to tame. couver (City not Island — Ed.) where Perhaps Stardust is exactly what it each year they rise from the ground. needs. THE EASTERN ERYTHRONIUMS H. LINCOLN FOSTER Falls Village, Conn. It is generally known that in the and goat grazing. evolution of plant structures bulbs were But how do we explain that in eastern developed according to doctrine as un• U.S.A. the plants that have evolved derground storage organs for plants bulbous or rhizomatous structures that were subject to prolonged periods generally are not plants of rapidly of drought. In fact (or is this just drained and droughty sites, but almost a conceit) most bulbous or cormous exclusively inhabit moist sites along plants inhabit areas of the world where stream banks or even in swampy there are definite dry seasons. One ground. One thinks of Lilium canadense thinks, for instance, of the flora of and Lilium superbum and then there the Mediterranean world where follow• is our eastern Trout Lily, Erythronium ing the fall and winter rains with an americanum, also known as Fawn Lily early spring flush of growth, the vegeta• or Dog Tooth Violet. tion generally recedes below ground in• By whichever name, this last is a to food storage plant segments that curious plant. It is not uncommon in are bulbous or rhizomatous. This moist woods and along stream banks scheme makes proper sense, and is for• over a very wide geographical area, tified by the added stress of sheep from New Brunswick west to Minnesota 151 and south to Florida and Oklahoma. It may be significant that this variety, Where it grows it usually produces ex• unlike either E. albidum or E. ameri• tensive carpets of mottled lance-form canum, produces its new bulb at the leaves with here and there clusters of base of the old one, not on a stolon. yellow lily-like flowers nodding and In order to encourage more abundant solitary. development of bulbs of E. albidum It is not entirely clear why in a or E. americanum capable of producing large dense colony of this bulbous plant the two-leaved flowering plant various of the Lily Family, even where the schemes have been devised with varying colony is known to have existed for but never consistent success. One a number of years, there are so many grower buried a short wooden plank one-leaved non-flowering plants. These about six inches beneath the surface do not appear to be merely immature and planted collected bulbs of the Fawn seedlings that will eventually blossom; Lily just above the plank. This was otherwise established colonies would in to discourage new bulbs from going time, as the bulbs matured, produce deeper and deeper. He reported some more and more flowers each year. But temporary increase in flowering. Plant• this is not observed to occur. ing above a large flat rock or tree Nor does the explanation seem to roots also seems (at least temporarily) be in the splitting up of the bulb after to increase flowering. flowering as happens in some tulips. Another grower, knowing that the It is known, however, that as the wild bulbs were always found deep and leaves are withering, one or more long believing that the secret of flowering white fleshy stolons grow from the base was lack of fertility at greater depth, of the bulb, each producing upon its dug a foot-deep trench and placed in tip a new bulb. In deep, easily pene• the bottom some well-rotted manure. trated soils these new bulbs may be On the manure he put a layer of rich produced more deeply each year into soil in which he planted bulbs of col• less and less fertile layers of soil. It lected E. americanum. The second year is certainly true that when one attempts there was a fair display of flowers, to dig bulbs from the wild, one finds but thereafter the proportion of flower• that most of the bulbs, where conditions ing to non-flowering plants diminished. permit, are as much as a foot beneath There may be room for more experi• the surface. ments to encourage this charming Somewhat west of the range of spring wilding to grace our gardens Erythronium americanum is a white- with more abundant flowers. But it flowered species E. albidum, with a may be possible that there has evolved dry-site variety mesochoreum. This in this species such a successful method variety in the wild has a much higher of vegetative propagation of offspring proportion of flowering to non- that it cannot be readily diverted to flowering plants in a colony than either the usual method of increase by flower the straight species or E. americanum. and seed. 152 NOT ALL PLANTSMEN ARE MEN Parti NAN BALLARD Issaquah, Washington Drawings by Sally Dickman, Kirkland, Wash. In 1853, a small group of influential San Francisco citizens met to discuss the possibility of founding the California Academy of Sciences. At this meeting, Albert Kellogg made a rather revolu• tionary proposal: "Be it resolved that we highly approve the aid of females in every department of natural history and that we earnestly invite their cooperation." Such a suggestion must have been prompted by knowledge of a good many talented and knowledgeable "females" already active in natural sciences even at that time. Early botanical literature abounds with the names of women recognized as plant so collectors, as gardeners, and students. Kate Sessions Considered one of the finest of the great plantswomen of the west was Kate Ceanothus cyaneus Sessions, born in 1857 on Nob Hill in San Francisco. Asked how she got recognized the horticultural importance her start in gardening, she replied "I of some plants endemic to Southern was always started. I grew up in a California, plants such as the popular garden." She was graduated from the San Diego Lilac, Ceanothus cyaneus, University of California, Los Angeles, and Fremontia mexicana. According to in 1885 and taught a few years before Lester Rowntree in Flowering Shrubs opening a nursery and florist shop in of California, C. cyaneus was found San Diego on city owned land. In lieu growing scattered over a few acres at of rent, she furnished the city park about 1500 feet elevation on the highest department with plants and soon hilltops in San Diego County. It was established a place for herself in hor• shown to Kate Sessions and she, in ticultural circles of that city. turn, brought it to the attention of Miss Sessions specialized in rare and Miss Alice Eastwood of the California unusual exotic plants which she im• Academy of Sciences who gave it its ported from all over the world, in• name. It was henceforth propagated and troducing to California gardens more grown by Miss Sessions in her nursery than one hundred of the ornamentals where it could be easily seen and ob• now common to that area. Though not tained. Miss Rowntree cites this as a a specialist in native plants, she perfect example of sensible procedure 153 with new found plant treasures — no periments until, ten years later, he was hoarding or jealous bickering, but a able to provide the spectacular display simple and direct program of discovery, welcoming visitors to the San Francisco naming, propagation, and distribution, Fair. each step following closely upon the Fifty years after she first met Alice heels of the one before it. Eastwood, Kate Sessions said that their Miss Sessions is generally credited lifelong friendship had developed with the successful re-establishment of through flowers — "our children, which Fremontia mexicana. In an old I am growing and you are naming." overgrown garden, she came across an outstanding specimen that had been in• Katharine Brandegee troduced into cultivation many years One of the women receiving early before, propagated it from seed and, recognition for her work at the Califor• through her nursery, soon distributed nia Academy of Sciences was Katharine it to private and public gardens; Brandegee. She was born Mary another early example of making native Katharine Layne of pioneer parents in plants available through seed propaga• Tennessee in 1844. With them she tion rather than field collection by the crossed the plains behind an ox team and masses. spent her childhood in the Sierra Kate Session's influence was still felt Nevada foothills. She married Hugh in California horticultural circles at the Curran who died when she was thirty. time of the World's Fair in San Fran• It was after this that she began the cisco in 1939 when she, along with study of medicine, graduating in 1878 Alice Eastwood, was the inspiration for from the University of California. Her the "Magic Carpet": a planting of Afri• interest turned to botany as she became can mesembryanthemum at the entrance aware of the fine collection of plants to Treasure Island. According to Carol at the Academy and she began to study Greene Wilson in Alice Eastwood's under Dr. Behr. In 1883, she gave Wonderland, Miss Eastwood sent Eric up her small practice to devote full Walther of Golden Gate Park to San time to the Academy as Curator of Diego with a letter of introduction to Botany. Three years later she married the then elderly Kate Sessions. All three Townshend Stith Brandegee in San of them were enamoured of rare and Diego and spent her honeymoon walk• unusual exotics so it was small wonder ing with him all the way back to San that he was enthusiastic about the me• Francisco, botanizing all the way. sembryanthemum growing as a bright Mrs. Brandegee was instrumental in and unusual ground cover in her own the founding of the California Botanical garden, and, in addition, samples of Club, the first of its kind in the state. each color variation growing in a She wrote frequently for numerous separate pot. This extraordinary array scientific publications of the day as of shades had been developed by Alvin well as for ZOE, a general journal Berger, the famous German botanist, of natural science that the Brandegees and Miss Sessions had obtained them published for many years. According as cuttings from the Hornby Gardens to John Thomas Howell (Huntia, 1969), on the Italian Riviera. From the cut• her pithy and pointed comments against tings which he received from Miss Ses• some of her contemporaries make in• sions and took back to Golden Gate teresting reading. She expressed herself Park, Walther carried on his own ex• with the stinging directness of the fron- 154 tier. This is evidenced in some of her of the flora of California." diatribes against E. L. Greene, the first Lupinus layneae was named by Alice professor of Botany at Berkeley, with Eastwood in her honor. whom she disagreed frequently and Alice Eastwood vehemently. Acknowledged queen of American Veronica J. Sexton ("Books and Bo• plantswomen, Alice Eastwood was a self- tany, Leaflets of Western Botany," Vol. taught botanist who rose in her chosen 7) says that Mrs. Brandegee was far field to win the respect of scientists advanced for her day in a knowledge throughout the world. Born in Toronto, and appreciation of botanical literature. Canada, she moved to Denver in her During her tenure as Curator, the early childhood. Here she completed Academy became the proud owner of her education and taught in high school. a truly great pre-Linnaean library con• In Colorado, she was so widely ac• ceded to be the finest in North America. claimed as a plant explorer and collector Almost all of these books were lost that in 1888 when Alfred Russel in the great fire of 1906. Wallace, friend and collaborator of Philip A. Munz ("A Century of Charles Darwin, visited the Rocky Moun• Achievement, Leaflets of Western Bo• tains, it was Alice Eastwood who was tany," Vol. 7) tells how Mrs. Brandegee asked to be his botanical guide to Gray's summarized species that had been pro• Peak. In 1891, she visited California, posed by Kellogg, Behr, and Bolander, getting acquainted with plants and peo• giving her opinion as to their identity. ple important to the horticultural world. "Subsequent workers," he said, "may Word of her work with Colorado flora not always agree with her opinions, had preceded her and she was warmly but the paper is valuable since she welcomed. had before her the orignial material It was on this trip that she first met on which the species had been based." Her later "Studies in Portulacaceae" and "Studies in Ceanothus" are of great interest to students of those families. Another of Mrs. Brandegee's claims to fame is her recognition of the unique qualities of Alice Eastwood and it was she who persuaded Miss Eastwood to join the staff of the California Academy of Sciences in 1892. When the Bran- degees moved to San Diego in 1893, Alice Eastwood became Curator of Bot• any in her place and also followed her as editor of ZOE, which the Bran- degees continued to publish for a num• ber of years. During the last fourteen years of her life, Katharine Brandegee worked in the University of California her• barium at Berkeley, refusing compensa• tion; "content to feel she had contributed her quota toward a better knowledge Eastwoodia elegans 155 Kate Sessions, beginning a close were the types that eventually became friendship which would last more than the core of the new herbarium. Then half a century. Carole Greene Wilson came April 18, 1906. in Alice Eastwood's Wonderland credits In a personal letter written to Dr. the drawing of Alice Eastwood out of Britton (Torreya) dated April 28, 1906, the cloisters of pure science to the prac• Miss Eastwood told about the disaster. tical field of horticulture to this rela• "No words," she said, "can give you tionship. Certainly Miss Eastwood's an idea of the ruin and desolation influence extended from individual gar• of our city ... I managed to save deners, professional seed and nursery most of the types but had very little people, to research scientists. time, not more than half an hour. Hav• She visited San Francisco, drawn ing them in a case by themselves was by the intriguing reports of what was their salvation. They, together with the being done at the California Academy records of the Academy, are at Fort of Sciences and became acquainted with Mason, where I took them for safety." Katharine and Townshend Brandegee. She tells of desperately trying to get She spent much of her visit pouring into the building over the fallen mason• over the plant collections and working ry and finally reaching the almost with the staff. The following year she demolished staircase with a friend she was asked to return as joint curator recruited from the street. "We had to of botany and soon thereafter, when the climb up the staircase to the sixth floor Brandegees left San Francisco, became mainly by the iron bannisters which Curator, a position she held for the seemed to be firm. I got out the bundles next fifty years. She wrote extensively and Porter tied them up ... I could for ZOE, serving as editor. Later with not save a book. We lowered things John Thomas Howell, she published down by string doubled to the floor "Leaflets of Western Botany." Her con• of the museum six stories below and tributions became an important part I was there to receive them . . . When of the Proceedings of the Academy. we reached the street the building next Its "Occasional Paper No. 9, A door was on fire and the soldiers had Handbook of the Trees of California," come to keep people from crossing the 1905, became a collector's item since street or getting into the buildings . . . it was published just before the fire The greatest loss to the city is the of 1906 and most of the stock was loss of all libraries and the scientific burned at the bindery. Of the small collections. Buildings can be replaced especially bound prepublication edition, but these never can be ... It is best which she was distributing to close not to think of what is lost but of friends, only a few had been mailed what is saved and best of all to think out. of the kindness of those dear friends In the twelve years prior to the earth• who give us help and sympathy. quake, Miss Eastwood had so developed Everyone is deeply grateful for the help the herbarium collections at the that is coming to us from everywhere." Academy that they were known as the She saved 1497 types that day and richest and most important in Western moved them from place to place as America. By chance, she had just the fire swept the city before taking selected the most important of the types them to Fort Mason. and collected them in a special case Dr. Mortimer Adler said "Her for particular care and handling. These heroism constitutes a bridge between 156 what was left after the 1906 fire and nomic depth of California Arctosta- what is here today." From an even phylos." more meager beginning, Miss Eastwood In "Horticulture and the California established a new scientific library. Academy of Sciences, leaflets of Here, again, she influenced by her Western Botany," Centennial Issue, enthusiasm and example donations of 1953, Victor Reiter, Jr., paid her this many valuable volumes from public and tribute: "It was not until Alice East• private sources, culminating in what wood became head of the Department Veronica Sexton called "the crowning of Botany that ornamental horticulture gift of all, Miss Eastwood's own library, had its champion. We know from her given by her on the day she retired, to remain as a perpetual monument for the benefit of those who follow after her." ("Books and Botany, Leaflets of Western Botany," Vol. 7) John Thomas Howell was at the University of California working with Willis Linn Jepson before he (Howell) became a member of the Academy staff. In 1954, in "I Remember I Think . . . Leaflets of Western Botany," Vol. 7-8, he compares Dr. Jepson and Miss East• wood, each of whom he felt had a profound influence on western hor• ticulture over approximately the same number of years. He describes how Dr. Jepson's reserve and Miss East• wood's openness explain their different approaches to truth. "Fear of making a mistake was undoubtedly a causative factor in Jepson's reserve; freedom from fear was part of Alice Eastwood's strength. Their concepts of species were so far apart that the two could never have been close scientifically. He either Antirrhinum ovatum reduced or ignored most of her specific proposals; she never discarded another notes that Alice Eastwood was in• botanist's proposal until she was per• terested in cultivated exotics before the suaded it was not good, so hesitant fire in 1906 but in 1915 in the was she of wronging the opinion of Academy's new home in Golden Gate a fellow-worker. Miss Eastwood would Park, she was able to make this interest maintain a species until it was proved a special feature in developing a new false; Dr. Jepson would accept no spe• herbarium collection that is so impor• cies until it was proved good. Miss tant to California horticulture today. Eastwood could never have written a The major botanical role of a California manual on California plants; Jepson institution should be the study of the could never have plumbed the taxo- native flora, but to those in horticulture, 157 the cultivated flora of gardens (which num ovatum, which she described and is for the most part exotic) is of named in 1902 was so rare that scien• primary importance. The native flora tists searched for it for forty-six years has certainly not been neglected at the before it was found again. In a letter Academy, but the addition of this broad written for the Academy celebration interest in cultivated exotics has been of her 80th birthday, Dr. Carl Wold a unique and valuable boon for the said, "No better plant than Eastwoodia plant-conscious California gardener and could have been selected to bear your it has welded the common interests name, since it so aptly expresses your of local horticulture and botany more exceptional botanical career, explora• intimately. "Miss Eastwood, a specialist tion, and study of plants in hard-to-get- in certain aspects of the California at areas of the West." flora, was able to see beyond her imme• In her 95th year shortly before her diate specialty and to initiate an impor• death, she was still receiving honors, tant service to horticulture. Not only awards, and recognition. She once did she establish the herbarium of cul• said,"The older I grow, the more cer• tivated exotics, but she was able to tain I am of mortality. I am convinced accumulate a library which includes that body and soul are two different many books for their study." entities. My spirit grows stronger with Contributions from Alice Eastwood the years, but my legs won't take me were sought by many publications other where I want to go.'" than those of the Academy: Western In a tribute written shortly after her American Scientist, Erythea, Bulletin death in late 1953, Dr. Howell, her of the Torrey Botanical Club, Botanical protege, fellow associate, close friend, Gazette, Muhlenbergia, contributions to and successor as curator, wrote, "Alice the Gray Herbarium, and National Eastwood was a memorable botanist, Horticultural Society Magazine, to men• but probably more people remember tion a few. her because in some way or other she She named many plants and a few revealed herself to them as a great were named for her by others. Antirrhi• person." The cool nights of late summer and early fall bring into bloom the gentian blue flowers of the Chinese Leadwort, Ceratostigma plumbag- inoides, a deciduous groundcover that will continue to brighten the garden until heavy frost with its blossoms and the bronze and red color of its fall foliage. Ceratostigma should be planted on a hot drv slope and protected in winter by gardeners in the north. It is slow to appear in spring so care should be taken not to dig or scratch it up while doing the first enthusiastic spring gardening. Leadwort tends to ramp where happy, but is fairly easily controlled by digging up the advancing edges and passing them over the fence to the neighbor or potting up the rooted bits for plant sales. Do not plant it among rocks, however, or among choice plants. 158 FROM A LONDON FLAT ROY DAVIDSON Seattle, Washington Drawings by the author This is an account of the author s line. The summer and autumn, 1977, saw seven month search for flora in England a steady flow of plants — first up and following his recovery from the illness then down — at the end washed clean which cut short his explorations of the and packed up for export. flora of Turkey with John Watson.—Ed. Even the natives had to agree it was an uncommonly cool summer, and British gardens and nurseries support if one was to speak of it the stock that not-so-old gardener's adage that reply was: "You should have been here "No matter where they originate, the last year." But the drought that went best plants come from Britain." This along with the lovely summer days of is as true of rock plants as in any the season before was particularly cruel other branch of ornamental horticulture to the nurseryman growing pot plants and seems to have come about — not in open frames, and that of course through any random combinations of included most who deal in rock garden chance — but rather as the effect of material. Recovery was evident most the will and the taste of many everywhere, however; the current cool plantsmen, both amateurs and profes• conditions promoted good growth on sionals together, shaping the product the roof and good flowering as well, over a succession of generations. Al• so that a succession of interesting plants though they may draw heavily on im• came and went; there was even a seed ports, continental and other, British harvest. plantsmen are uniquely equipped for One learns very early-on never to evaluating these and quick to reject pass a market, a fruiter's stand or the second-best, and then just as quick to most unseemly salesyard without check• refine the rejects a step further so that ing it out. The local street market proved they will measure up as first class plants. a continual source of wonderment at I shall commence this seven month the variety of small plants that ap• peregrination along some of the by• parently thrive in window-box cultiva• ways of present day British horticulture tion, and none other than variegated from a pot-garden in London's West Yucca filamentosa came from very posh End, all but in the shadow of Television Kensington High Street. City and hard-by two of its enormous Days from May to December brought sports stadiums, a very busy and very a variety of opportunities that began congested part of the great metropolis. with the Chelsea extravaganza, which When an American friend offered to was in 1977, of course, an occa• share his Shepherds Bush flat, I was sion to salute the Queen's Silver An• at first hesitant, that is until I found niversary, in commemoration of which the building was the only flat-roofed the industry was urging the planting one in the vicinity, with a vacant area of something enduring and silver. Had about twenty by eighty, with both sunny I been allowed my druthers it would and shaded areas, and water supply have been Pyrus salicifolia 'Pendula', 159 the weeping silverleaf pear, but all of never so memorable anywhere as when its sort are denied entry into this coun• I returned to Wales in mid-autumn try. A little "silver" (actually woolly when the burnished beech hedgerows white) that I had continuously just were glowing softly in the fine rain, read over in the lists quite caught my the wet bracken almost a fierce red eye, and I shortly had rooted numerous against emerald fields and pastures of cuttings to use as bulb cover or in all the hills. other ways. It is the refined and non- When I speak of going down to rampant Cerastium columnae. "A dwarf Battle —• and I did often — you must and delectable form of that invader C. remember that in 1066 the Battle of tomentosum" Beth Chatto says of it Hastings was not fought at Hastings, in her well-selected list. but in a little vale between two high dune-like ridges of the oak-forested rise Travels From the City several miles to the north and inland There were other plant displays, the at the hallowed place now known as plantings in public parks and devices Battle. It is near this charming village such as RHS lectures where one could that John and Adrienne Watson and meet the similarly afflicted, and, of two little girls now live, about an hour course, the country is famous for its and a half from Charing Cross station. uncountable numbers of fine nurseries. There were blue-bell woodlands and Except for going down to Battle, the primrose copses all along the rail route first opportunity to taste the coun• in spring, and in autumn the staunch tryside of these isles came with an red-fruited stalks of Cockoo-Pint or invitation to celebrate Fourth of July Lords and Ladies, Arum maculatum, with some fellow Americans down in absolutely loomed out of the bush. On Wales. The route chosen took us rather one of these visits there was also a deviously to the great Georgian city stop at Sissinghurst Castle, and another of Bath (my mother's family traces time at Christopher Lloyd's Great Dix- back to contemporaries of William Penn ter garden and clematis nursery; still near Bath who settled in Pennsylvania) another brought a delightful visit with and to the ruin of the abbey at Glaston- Miss Strangman who now operates the bury wherein is marked the last known old Washill nursery and was having resting place of the semi-mythological quite a success with C o ryd alis Arthur and his Guinivere, a beautifully cashmeriana much to my surprise and kept shrine, and the only such I allowed delight. On the glowing pink brick walls myself. An historical pilgrimage this of Sissinghurst I found what was to was not. Since it was past the best become my favorite clematis, C. viticella season for flowers, the ferns remain 'Elegans Plena', like a mellow old wine vividly in memory, particularly the brocade with silvery-mouldy inner glow north wall of our host's charming old to each of its multiplex blossoms of stone cottage adorned with clumps of which it bore a burden. Mr. Lloyd Hartstongue clear up to the eaves. Old had made a feature in one of the court• limestone walls and bridges were rimed yards using the rich purple forma, with a soft grey lichen, the mortared an unusual one, of one of the native joints cross-stitched with wall-rue, and orchids, Dactylorhiza fuchsii, increased often spotted too with bright green slowly from offset and division. It failed Asplenium trichomanes and rusty to seed for me, but some of the usual ceterach. The ubiquitous bracken was lilac from Wales bore the expected 160 millions of tiny seed. There was even one with a reflexed Jim MacPhail and I did get to Wisley corolla like a wind-blown umbrella, in• during the brief time we had before side-out. The one I myself singled out he left to be my replacement in Turkey. was just an ordinary campanula-blue, We had taken rooms to be near Kew medium-sized carpatica 'Loddon Blue', gardens and herbarium where we shared research projects, both of plants he hoped to locate and some I had just seen. We thus did see the display in the Kew woodland garden of one of the strangest and prettiest of Euro• pean wild flowers, the great sheet of Toothwort, Lathraea clandestine/,, and though it was said to be of even greater impact about the parking lot at Wisley we failed to find it; perhaps we were too late or it may have suffered in Campanula x the expansion and building there. From 'Lynchmere' earliest March and well into May spring-wet willow and popular woods are often richly purpled with the large, hooded flowers of this member of Oro- banchaceae, all the more striking be• cause there are no leaves. Though con• sidered by some to be indigenous, my guidebook apparently regarded it as introduced from the Continent; it is well established also on roots of willow at Cambridge where I first fell. Some may wonder at anyone who would court but with perfect form and poise plus a parasite, while others freely admit an extra glisten to the enamel surface to such weird tastes; I do covet and that is so irresistible. The late Rae do so admit. But how to establish it? Berry once gently chastised me, "What When I got 'round to checking on seeds . . . you dont grow campanulas? . . . the birds and/or squirrels had quite Why, you heathen!" and I am just now ruined the lot. learning. Every summer garden can be How could I possibly sort out just and should be a bower of bellflower; one of twenty irises to tell you about? furthermore it can be, I have learned, Or just a few of twenty-eight gera• if the gardener scrupulously fends off niums? Or which of more than fifty slugs and snails; we had none on the campanulas? Some years back the roof. Of the bellflowers I watched un• RHS conducted a Wisely Trial of fold through the summer, none pleased bellflowers, and eagerly the nurserymen me more among the little ones than and breeders sent along their best for a frail looking hybrid called 'Lynch• evaluation and subsequent awards. Most mere'. Crook wrote of it (1951) that were of such sturdy stand-by species it was of recent advent, with an AM as carpatica and persicifolia, mostly given in 1948; but of late years it easy, floriferous and mostly gross. has all but disappeared from the trade. 161 Since I was so keen on campanulas where I first saw it there in Windsor Robinson's of Crockenhill made me a Great Park gift of one from their precious stock, Geraniums are of course another saved from the drought. Visualize a widespread and variable lot, even to perfect Scots Harebell and then turn the almost cactoid sort. But an alpine your telescopic view-finder end-for-end; gem from the Himalaya, G. stapfianum you get the impression of an inscrutable 'Roseum' was particularly an intrigue miniature about five inches tall, the for its deep rose flowers topping six- up-facing, eager-looking little violet-blue inch plants of lacey, cream-mottled bells, out-rolled at each of five star- leafage; it is spread about on a thin points and with long extended whitish rhizome strung with tiny growth buds pistils, as many as seven or eight of like strands of beads. Another fine small them up a still uncrowded thread-thin one of unusual coloring is G. sub- stem. It is nothing short of impossible caulescens 'Splendens', a warm salmon- that these thinnest of stalks support orange with rounded grayish leaves. the campanulas. A real thrill in any sort of plant A couple of iris finds are noteworthy hunting comes with finding that some• in that they represent superior color thing long anticipated measures up to forms in species whose usual colors the delicious build-up and mouth• are hum-drum. /. foetidissima is not watering pictures. Such a one was find• grown nearly to the extent it might ing Heuchera x 'Pretty Polly' along be, and probably because the name the perennial borders at Wisley, and implies that it stinks. But "One man's I thereupon marked my mental order poison ... "; that same smell also up from one to a half-dozen. From has given it the old name Roast Beef H. sanguineum, this is low and neat Plant. It will form elegant clumps of enough for any rock gardener's taste, polished evergreen-satin foliage and is with nicely showy coral pink bells of one of the few to appreciate shade. larger than average size — neat but Add to this the red seeds adhering not gaudy. Another sort of plantsman's to opened capsules for winter decor pleasure is perhaps best of all, that and you have three reasons for growing of a cultural triumph. I managed finally it. The usual flower color is dingy to get my Potentilla fruticosa 'Red Ace' so that the soft lilac colored butterfly to color up to the tomato-red of Bloom's flowers of the one I found beside a picture, which I knew was possible as Welsh farm cottage make a fourth rea• I'd seen it shown thus. I even put son. It is to be called 'Nant Gwilw' a tomato into the pot to encourage for the place of its origin, which rhymes (or shame) it, but I rather think it (in Welsh) with "want-grill-you." At was the advice Allan Robinson passed Savill Gardens the lovely pansy violet along that did the trick, "These highly form of /. setosa I had admired before colored forms must be kept very wet was shared, and I in turn will share, to color well." So it stood in a tray having given it the designation 'Savill' of water in the south stairwell; there to honor the man who created this was precious little sun there (or on lovely woodland retreat. Airily branch• the roof) so it must have been the ed, it gives as many as ten flowers water. Of these shrubby potentillas, on each of its stalks, a rich contrast so indispensable for color in summer to the pink and yellow candelabra and early autumn, it seems there must primulas along the small streamcourse be at least one new improved yellow 162 offered each season, and of late more amount of winter, barring an ice-storm of the colored sorts; one with an extra of course. set of petals is going as 'Prostrate Cop• But at Kew, the strangest of the per', but of them all I think I most variegated mysteries is represented by appreciate the soft fawn-pink of a barberry which had green leaves and 'Daydawn' developed by Robinsons. not extraordinary yellow flowers. Like 'Red Ace' may not be perfect, but it many another of its kind, it sported assuredly can be red; it forms a most purple leaves on certain branches, on attractive low-mounded, broad plant of which one would likely suspect yellow finely textured rich green. Patented, the flowers. But these were quite incapable American rights have been sold to one of any flowering, until in turn they of California's large wholesalers, so we had sported pink or partially pink shall likely soon be seeing a flood of leaves on certain parts and when these it. flower, they produce pink rather than yellow blossoms. Dappled and Doubled The variegation I found most Where to begin to describe some fascinating was through a catalog de• of the dozens of exciting vari-colored scription "most exciting of Japanese foliage plants? Or the equally exciting shrubs," and with an AM I had to variety of double-flowered things? A see. It is known by two names, Cleyera good many of the latter, like the lovely fortunei (preferred) or Eurya latifolia old garden auriculas, have endured for 'Variegata', and it belongs to Theaceae, generations in dooryards, to be loved which prepares one for the thickened, and shared, only perchance to be privet-like leaves, but the coloring has discovered and popularized. But of the to be seen — a random mix of bright variegated things, I myself have won• wine-red, silver-pink and creamy white dered at their fascination, and I found with several threads of various greens a total absorption in the collection Kew thrown in, and the leaves a bit undulate- keeps for the scientific study of the distorted (but only slightly) — sound• phenomenon. It may be quite true that ing quite garish certainly, but not look• certain of them only succeed in looking ing so. At shipping time, this was very very ill indeed, but I found some found snuggled up to a bundle of the of these same pallid ones, i.e. Thymus fine red Cornus alba from Westonbirt, vulgaris 'Aureus', to be the perfect foil and the effect was so very startling for the liver-black leaves of such things and pleasing that I vowed to grow as the Black Dragon Beard ophiopogon them thus, side by side. I fear though or the new hybrid sedum 'Vera that it may not come off for me as Jameson' that Joe Elliott is promoting I doubt the total hardiness of the Nip• (lovely warm rose flowers in Sep• ponese charmer, but — perhaps for tember). There are also many colorful someone. variegations of grasses and sedges, To justify a love for double flowers useful for texture as well as color in one need only see such lovely natural the landscape, none more striking than silk tissue pompoms as those of Fair golden-green Carex m o r r o w ii Maids of France, Ranunculus aco- 'Variegata-Aurea', also sold by the nitifolius 'Plenus', or Double Ladies easier name 'Evergold'. The sedges have Smock, Cardamine pratensis *Plena', as the advantage of being capable of stand• I first did in an old cottage garden, ing undamaged against almost any the latter with an unmistakable elegance 163 rather likened to that of the dowager from museum monotony in that there gardener, or a less fattened florist's are multiple specimens of nearly every• double scented stock. I am not quite thing and these are most often used convinced, however, that double in colonial groupings. Certainly this Doronicum 'Spring Beauty' is not just is a collection of woody plants that an enormous, pompous impersonation every visitor must try to see; it would of a dandelion. The old-fashioned dou• be very easy to spend several days ble forms of some of the meadow gera• wandering there at any time of year, niums have an undeniably better and and it is only an hour west of more durable garden effect, and that Heathrow. old double wallflower promoted by and named for Harpur Crew, though a Winners Circle splendid, short, bright thing, has not If small rhododendrons are your bag liked my coolish garden from its in• then those of Peter Cox, especially the troduction in 1974, and I wonder how yellow ones, will be familiar, but it can possibly have survived British perhaps they were all eclipsed by a circumstances for all these years, the red one shown at Chelsea in May and Rev. Henry Harpur Crew having died given an AM without hesitation I in 1883. It was cooler in August than should guess. But to say it is "red" in November in Shepherds Bush that is not telling all, for it is neither season. purplish nor blackish, orangey, rusty As for Westonbirt Arboretum, nor the slightest bit rosey — "red-red" whence came the superior red-osier dog• is the only way to describe it, and wood, I was unable to get there early it comes from the 'Bodnant Red' form enough, in both time of day and season, of Rh. cremastrum x Rh. calostrotum, for the famous show of autumn color. which ought to tell something of the This quite incomparable collection was plant and foliage. Surely it will be commenced nearly one hundred fifty in the Winners Circle for a long time years ago, and now under the jurisdic• to come. tion of the Forestry Commission, it It is always warming of course to does not enjoy such publicity as is find an old friend in an unexpected given National Trust properties. Since place, as I did on the Chelsea awards it was never "royal" there are no monu• bench nearby to Cox's rhododendron, ments nor other unnatural features, only down from Scotland for the event. Van• the contours of the land and the trees couver-born Cornus x "Eddie's White and shrubs arranged with incomparable Wonder", the florida-nuttallii hybrid foresight and taste. Soil and climate was sporting a brand new FCC. There have allowed simultaneous success to also was another American, reintroduc- both conifers and other materials, and ed from the southern hemisphere by a most artful balance has been achieved. Cheese & Watson, Sisyrinchium Just one image in my memory, that macrocarpum, wearing proudly an AM, of a great old pinky-gold maple against with good blue-green and surprisingly the high, round head of a black-green broad and glaucous leafage and a suc• pine and sky at dusk, will always cession of ample bright golden flowers, epitomize for me the extraordinary vi• each segment brilliantly bronze-blazed. sion taken in the placement of each (This one came home with me!) of hundreds and hundreds of such ex• Several stands were showing Califor- amples. The total impression is saved nian Brodiaea minor, a former winner 164 now increased to good commercial num• Dock, half a minute from the main bers by the cleverness of the Dutch gates of Kew (properly the Royal Bo• bulb industry, and appearing like leaf• tanical Garden at Kew). Kew is perhaps less and almost stemless Blue Lilies of the nation's greatest bargain; it still the Nile. costs but one pence to get in, and I can scarcely bring myself to belabor you may stay until nightfall. As it you with one of my personal crusades, was quite convenient, the grounds be• the bergenias, but it has been one of came my favorite exercise yard, and the best advanced projects of the sea• I became a pain to the constabulary, son. I'll only say that some grievous who were convinced I was pinching misjudgements by prominent taxon- something or other every time I scro• omists of the past has their names unged about for a label. in a muddle, and there has developed I could reminisce on meeting many a situation perhaps best called "un• another plantsman; I confess to being trustworthy" where names are concern• quite a single-minded bore on occasion; ed, which has of course affected their imagine being in London for all that popularity. Wisley has also conducted time and never once going to the thea• Bergenia Trials, possibly in hopes of tre, or to a gallery or concert hall. setting things to rights, and quite a I could tell though of the bitter night number of awards were made. Hence wind off the North Sea at Ipswich, I have been pleased not only to obtain or of one of the most marvelous days some of these latter, but also to locate of mid-autumn, with pale, warm sun authentic material of some of the true on pale, warm foliages and pale, warm species, particularly of interest to me buff stone Cotswold villages — and in that they are the smaller sorts, and Joe Elliott's Broadwell nursery right of them all, B. ciliata and its allies in the middle. Or I could tell of continu• are the gems of their kind, with apple- ing westward over the Severn and up blossom flowers, both in coloring and into the Malvern Hills to Percy Picton's, amplitude. Some of their fine new hy• and of almost failing to find the way brids combine these good traits with back to Shepherds Bush again in dense a hardiness which they themselves do cordons of fog that drifted about aim• not possess, as Pugsley's cross named lessly through a brilliantly moonlit for Margery Fish. nightscape, so dense at times as to "Come up to Kew in lilac time" stop motorway traffic. And I could — I did, then and frequentlv thereafter, blather away at the trials of learning but the first time will always remain to drive anew and of eventually coming a special occasion for not many reach to accept the roundabout as something there by boat. You board almost be• more than an obstacle on the course. neath Westminster Bridge, close by Big I could tell of half-formed plans that Ben's tower and only a couple of never came off due to nothing more minutes from the hubbub of fountains than the lazy enjoyment of the imme• and people and birds (and lions) of diate time and place. Or I might relate Trafalgar Square, and if the tide is some of the evidence of change in the full so is the Thames. Shortly you will British nursery tradition. I would doubt have passed upstream beneath more though that there is much difference than a dozen of the river's lovely old from at home, except probably of course bridges, each with its own personality that we had less of that tradition to and history, to be deposited at Kew begin with. The once famous old Floral 165 Mile at Twyford in the valley west by the Hutchinses of Hornchurch, spe• of London is now scarely more than cialists in New Zealand plants. And a shabby signboard. Waterer's doesn't then you can hope that someone you look prosperous, while at the far end have come to trust implicitly will ask, Carlile's Loddon Nursery is bravely "You have been to Percy's . . . Oh, maintaining one of the four of Carlile's you must." It was thus I met Percy Corners, the designation of the intersec• Picton and also Elizabeth Strangeman, tion where they once operated four nur• both with specialist collections of only series. At the opposite end a modern good, interesting plants. salesyard seems to be doing a brisk One of the most promising improve• business, and why not, one reflects on ments on a favorite plant already well seeing the diversity and quality of their established in the trade is the shortly merchandise? It was here that I shelled compact Daphne blagayana 'Wells out for some dwarf conifers on sight, Form' with better flowers, less strag• and I'll be content some other year gling growth and shorter, broader to try to puzzle out if they are rightly leaves. A very charming little amethyst named and by whose book. Due to cow-parsley of just a few inches is the mis-budgeting of time, I failed to Heracleum minimum 'Roseum' with reach the Welches and their conifers rich, crisp steel-cut foliage of good at the Pygmy Pinetum down at Devizes, value and subterranean increase. Of the but I did enjoy meeting them at a many and diverse qualities of plant's couple of the shows. One new conifer appeal, there is the funny-bone aspect. that did impress me as entirely distinct Probably no flower is so amusing as was a yew raised by Robinsons of the impossible Calceolaria darwinii or Knockholt, Taxus baccata 'Rushmore' the near-related C. fothergillii, just as they have named it, with short, thick, diffcult. For one of those unfathomable black-green, glistening needles. reasons the hybrid between them, 'Wal• There are so many gardens open ter Shrimpton' is far easier to manage to the public that it would be possible and just as strange, another clown. It to gad the time entirely away without is totally impossible to remain in a ever doing everything you wanted to gloom in the company of these funny- do. I found that going to the shows face South Americans, but you may was a good orientation, and there are need an alpine house for the two of still many places I did not get to: you. the gardens at Wakehurst, Borde Hill Autumn bulbs that should do well and Nymans, all quite close to London in moderate climates include some mar- and to each other, for example. Going velously vigorous improvements from to the shows provides an easy way selective breeding. The older forms of to get acquainted with the sort of things schizostylis are put quite in the shade a nursery grows as well as with some by those coming from the vigorous of its people, oftenest the owner. It form called 'Major', and the lovely was thus that I met Beth Chatto, a peach parfait 'Sunrise' has given in lady who is rather carrying on from turn a "Sunrise Strain" of lovely the late Margery Fish in the Gertrude pastels. This may be considered outsize Jekyll tradition and in the decorative in some rock gardens as will also be arts at the inspiration of Constance the crocosmia hybrids, of which I flip• Spry, I should think. And I also came ped over the orange-juice color of 'Sol- to look for the show displays put up fataire' from Bloom's as seen at Sis- 166 singhurst, with the pale-bronze-tinted half-believingly. The effect was uncan• leaves adding just the right magic to nily of being on a sunny fell and high the scene. meadow, the few large stones rather The oddest and most striking flower languorously placed in such a manner I saw all season was Sandersonia auran- as to suggest more than to reveal, and tiaca, first at Kew and then in Brian a thin trickle of a stream made its Mathew's collection. The plant is that way down in a gentle manner proclaim• of a small lily, to about twenty inches. ing as it did so that it alone was From the uppermost leaf axils in lily- responsible for the stones being expos• fashion a few flowers are produced ed. It was such an utterly pleasing, on short pedicels. They are precisely believable composition that perhaps like inflated silk Japanese lanterns, many who had been frightened off at causing me to question their family the idea of rock garden construction ties, since all six of the floral segments might have taken heart in that, after are united to form this corolla and all, it need not be monumental to be therefore, it would seem, must spring a rock garden. One could hope so. from the same whorl on the floral axis. When this is well understood many The RHS dictionary refers it to more persons will find greater enjoy• Liliaceae all right, but the illustration ment and success, and the art of the must have been made from an her• cult will have been advanced im• barium sheet. The color is pure orange, measurably. the texture is of silk and there are Well, I can't go on much longer six little spurs at the base, forming without becoming quite homesick for a tiny corona about the pedicel. Shepherds Bush. The last two weeks were spent bent over the kitchen sink fifteen to eighteen hours daily — it now being much too cold to work on the roof for long. Neighbors who could see in might have wondered at the hundred-weights of potatoes being peel• ed, or at the untold dozens of dozens of tea things washed up; I wonder what the next tenant will make of the half-ton of potting soil on the premises. If one has a hankering for foreign plant shopping, I can heartily advocate Sandersonia aurantiaca the BBA approach; it will cost you a round-trip air ticket, but bringing But I must tell of a totally fresh back alive with you can ensure one concept of a rock garden put up by hundred percent success; a few things a new exhibitor on that famous bank sent ahead have not fared so well. toward the river at Chelsea. It seemed What the season amounts to is a so utterly simple that I felt people might thousand-and-one such tales, only a very be of the opinion he was only fooling. few of which it is possible to share, What, no towering cliffs ... no great but of the plants, most are in the hands cascade ... no vast pond? When of propagators and well on the way I complimented him on its appeal, to sharing. Among them are some he beamed modestly, perhaps sort of things quite new to the American scene, 1*7 PREPARING PLANTS FOR WINTER As Practiced in Minnesota BETTY ANN MECH Minneapolis, Minn. When someone here asks, "Is it and will not have to spend all summer necessary to cover your rock garden?" making up for a bad winter. it is not easy to say yes or no. The The big three enemies of plants in answer depends on how much is at winter, as explained in Peter Cox's book stake in your particular garden. In this Dwarf Rhododendrons, are cold, sun climate a bank of sedums and sem- and wind. Cold dessicates the leaves pervivums can be left to the vagaries as well as causing physical damage of weather, but after the "collecting- to all plant parts. Some scientists bug" bites it is advisable to study and believe that last winter's severe damage carry out the best protection methods was caused by the prolonged cold which possible. Although not every winter is ruptured plant cells and allowed them disastrous to plants this is always a to dry out. time of stress. When the plants are Sun also dries the leaves causing covered one can be fairly sure that winter burn when the ground is frozen nearly all of them will be there the and water cannot be replenished. Wind next spring in the same condition as worsens both these conditions, besides they were when they were packed away breaking brittle cold branches. Ideally 168 a mulch serves to protect dormant alpine to that of the hugest Redwood, plants from too much cold, sun and comes from only three elements: car• wind. The mulch should be light and bon, hydrogen and oxygen. (The other airy, keeping plants cool, moist and five percent comes from elements in partly shaded. the soil.) Carbon comes from carbon Snow is the perfect mulch and, in• dioxide in the air and there is usually deed, where many rock garden plants plenty of that. Most oxygen also comes originate snow is present all winter and from air, including that in the soil only melts when spring really comes. as well as that above its surface. Water, Around Minneapolis, however, snow however, is the main source for often comes only after some severe cold hydrogen and when water is lacking in the autumn and early winter has plants can't grow or store food. When already done a lot of damage to un• plants go into their winter sleep protected plants. In the spring snow "hungry," they are disadvantaged. Al• cover is usually gone by March 20 though they are dormant they are still when we often experience unpredictable respiring, at least at temperatures above weather; either cold, dry winds from 0°F., and depend on stores of carbohy• the Arctic, or hot, dry winds from drates to resist death. Not only that, the Southwest can plague us. So in a high concentration of carbohydrates this area, even though we have good in the sap actually lowers its freezing snow cover in mid-winter, there are point, just as sea water freezes at a two times of the year that call for lower temperature than fresh water. protection. This is what good gardeners have Although plants cannot move to always noticed anyway; the plants that escape dangerous weather they are not make vigorous growth in summer are completely helpless. In fact they go most likely to make it over the winter. through complex changes to prepare Those in a weakened condition from for winter. Most importantly, the leaves drought, age — either too young or manufacture quantities of food during too old — or whose growing conditions the growing season, storing it as car• have been less than ideal are apt to bohydrates in the roots. Pulsatillas and suffer the most damage. These are also spring bulbs are classic examples of the plants that respond best to winter plants that store food. In fact they covering. Of course too much water store so much in their thick roots and in the fall, especially on woody plants, bulbs that they can be "firstest with can cause sappy growth that is suscepti• the mostest," blooming outrageously ble to winter injury. while others are just cautiously begin• As the days get shorter and nights ning to grow. get cool plants prepare themselves in But all perennial plants must store a variety of ways for winter. Cacti food in summer and fall. This is what do this most spectacularly. Many people makes drought so disastrous, for think their cactus are dying when in without enough water carbohydrates September even without a frost they cannot be produced. (Now if all the begin to wilt and shrivel like prunes. plant physiologists will avert their eyes By the time winter comes the plants I'll attempt an explanation.) are lying flat on the ground, well below Because of the action of chlorophyll snow line. In the spring they become in photosynthesis, ninety-five percent of turgid again and rise off the ground. all plant tissue, from that of the tiniest Campanulas send up basal growth in 169 the fall and many plants form rosettes. if they are covered and the weather The rosette form is a good shape in turns warm. On the other hand if the which to pass the winter because it fall has been warm and a sudden drop sheds water, concentrates the leaves in temperature to below 20° F. is ex• near the source of sustenance (a pected, it is better for plants to finish thickened taproot) and brings the plant the hardening process under a mulch below snow level. The outer leaves of even though ideally, the ground should a rosette can be lost but the center be frozen before covering. Gradual is protected. cooling is the concept to pursue. Plants Minnesota usually has very pleasant, can take a lot more cold in November sunny fall weather. Since many plants than they can in September and it prefer cool weather for growing it is is a good idea to have mulching possible for some to double their size material on hand early in case of from September to November if they emergencies, but our usual date for have good soil and adequate moisture. covering is about November 20. This is the time they put on their After trying several kinds of mulches best root growth with no need to make I recommend three: Oak leaves are quantities of top growth and flowers. easily available here and stay satisfac• The roots are a bank from which the torily light and fluffy over winter; last plant draws energy in winter and early fall over a hundred bags of leaves were spring. used. These were frequently gleaned in Growth gradually slows as frosts be• the dead of night from areas where come more frequent, but plants in the oaks drop prodigeous quantities of rock garden keep growing long after leaves and suburbanites dutifully rake the "growing season" is over and they them up to enrich the landfills of the start into growth early, considerably county. Everyone is usually happy to before true spring begins. A useful con• give them to me; their generosity is cept for rock gardeners is that of "sea• almost touching. son of vegetation." This is the time Another useful covering material is of year when the daytime temperatures marsh hay. (Minnesota is not called are consistently above 43° to 45°F., the land of 10,000 lakes for nothing!) which is the temperature soil must be Here the name is used for a kind to support growth. The "growing sea• of thin reed with broad, grassy leaves. son" is that period of time between It cuts easily with a sickle and stays the last frost in the spring and the firm all winter. It can even be reused first frost in the fall — which is nice because it does not get soggy as straw to know if you are growing tomatoes does. It is also weed-free and for anyone or zinnias — but the "season of vegeta• that has picked wheat seedlings out tion" can be up to three months longer, of the beds after using a straw mulch and corresponds to the actual time dur• this is a real point to consider. Pine ing which rock garden plants are active. needles and boughs are also excellent. Now that we know how the plants We cover our gardens about six to are doing their part, our task is to ten inches deep with leaves. Evergreen help them continue this yearly cycle boughs by themselves or on top of without damage. If we cover them too leaves are excellent for windy spots. early the soil stays warm and the plants Small rhododendrons are covered with do not receive the proper signals to bags of leaves that have a vent hole slow down. Also, green plants will rot torn near the top or by a bushel basket 170 filled with leaves. Recently I saw a gradually, so should they awaken a most ingenious and successful covering little at a time in spring. The first for large rhododendrons. Fiberglass in• step is to fluff up the top layer of sulation bats with aluminum foil on the mulch where it has thawed. Because back were wrapped around the bushes it has been covered with snow and which had been tied up. Then a is flattened and wet it has lost much large plastic bag was slipped over of its insulating value. Leaves, other the top and securely tied. After the then those of oak, are particularly prone worst winter we ever had every one to becoming soggy and this is the kiss of the plants produced full bloom, and of death for alpines because soggy, many were four foot high specimens packed leaves cut off air which en• of quite tender kinds. courages mold. Any plants sticking Container gardens and other potted above the mulch get re-covered at this plants are sunk in sawdust or sand, time. preferably in a coldframe. Roots are If the mulch is removed too soon much more susceptible to cold damage the tender leaves can get whipped by than are tops. Many common plants the cold dry winds of early spring cannot take less than 22°F. on their and can even be frozen or sunburned. roots. Surprisingly, a few inches of We have found that the ground should snow or mulch can protect them from be thawing before the mulch is removed very low temperatures. Therefore leaves entirely. The principle is the same as are used to cover the potted plants gradually thawing a frozen turkey in as well as those in the garden. a paper bag. You don't want the leaves A trick that works well for especially left high and dry while the roots are precious plants such as Calluna vulgaris still encased in ice; the whole area 'Foxii Nana' and Pices abies 'Little where the plant grows should warm Gem' is to completely cover them with gradually. The old leaves of Polyanthus sawdust. Then there is no chance of Primulas are particularly tender after winter winds "blowing their cover" and winter and need gentle care to save in the spring they will emerge in perfect them. Others need the mulch removed shape. The pine sawdust seems to very quickly or they will rot. Spring inhibit mold also. Some poisoned wheat bulbs, androsaces, drabas, Kabschia in tin cans will discourage mouse dep• Saxifragas and tiny wooly alpines are redations. in this class. Cactus are better left un• The aim is to duplicate the sure covered. The pads will rot with any snow cover of the mountains. If the covering but snow. snow cover comes and goes a layer After a few days it is possible to of mulch will cut off sun and wind take off some of the mulch though and keep the plants cold and/or frozen it will get cold again. During the next until they are re-covered by snow or warm spell more can be removed. When spring arrives. A January thaw is just the plants appear turgid and lively- a dirty trick as far as plants are con• looking and the soil is thawing, it is cerned. time to remove it all. April 1 is the About March 20 our winter snow approximate date for clearing up all the is gone or going. We will have occa• coverings here. Someone from Penn• sional snows in April or even May sylvania said he keeps pine boughs but they do neither harm nor good. over a tender broom until the buds Just as plants should prepare for winter begin to swell — even if it is May 171 1 before that happens! This might be might force unseasonable growth, but the correct treatment for tender would like to experiment. daphnes. Covering and uncovering a rock gar• den takes more time than not covering About the time growth begins I have but it seems a small inconvenience when seen a Scottish alpine nurseryman it insures not only the survival but spraying all the plants with a weak the robust good health of a wide variety fertilizer solution. Apparently in earliest of plants including many of the "im• spring most available nitrogen is tied possibles." Other, less tangible benefits up in the soil organisms, which as to this job are that it keeps you in they die return it to the soil so the touch with the outdoors a greater num• plants can use it. But for a short, ber of days of the year in addition critical period plants may need a bit to giving you the satisfaction of protect• of nitrogen to help recover from winter ing your treasures. It is rather like stresses. I have not tried this yet, closing a good book that you look perhaps because I was afraid too much forward to re-reading. HEATHERS IN COLOUR thusiasts in the U.S.A. (not "consul• by Brian and Valerie Proudley. 1974, tants" but practical gardeners) took London, Blandford Color Series, repre• place when the book was in preparation. sented in USA by Sterling Publishing "In the United States" . . . they state Co., New York, N.Y. correctly . . . "heathers thrive along the two seaboards, particularly in the Brian and Valerie Proudley have northwestern States, extending to Nor• grown and sold heathers in England thern California, and in the north-east for many years. Several cultivars bear from Maine to Virginia, although many the Proudley name, Calluna 'Lyndon do not stand the test of time due to Proudley', for instance, of rock garden the bitter winters and sizzling sum• proportions, and the gold foliaged Erica mers." vagans 'Valerie Proudley'. Their prac• Heathers in Colour is a concise, tical experience has been obtained in pocket-sized guide, 7-1/4" x 4-3/4", of England, and this they make clear, but hardback, stitched, open-flat construc• their interest is international. An ex• tion. The 192 pages are divided into change of letters with heather en• three sections. Origin, nomenclature, 172 cultivation and propagation are covered on eastern Long Island by wholesale in the first section. For American grower James E. Cross. The results growers I would stress the importance are detailed in Vol. 9, No. 6 of The of pruning the plants every spring, just Avant Gardener. This would make a as they show signs of starting to make useful supplement to Heathers in Colour new growth. Do not prune in autumn and can be obtained for fifty cents and winter. Peat is a useful soil im• from Horticultural Data Processors, prover but should not be used as a Box 439, New York, N.Y. 10028. mulch. Pamela J. Harper The center section contains 141 color pictures of good quality, many of them close-ups of individual plants. With one CARNIVOROUS PLANTS OF THE exception (ARGS member D. Metheny's UNITED STATES AND CANADA Seattle heather garden) the landscape by Donald E. Schnell. John F. Blair, pictures were taken in Europe, as the Winston-Salem, N.C. captions make clear. Such massed plant• ings are rarely achievable here save Plants which invite guests to lunch on Long Island, Cape Cod and in the only to eat them have long held a Pacific Northwest. fascination for gardeners. Most of them The third section contains descriptive remain in the realm of things read lists of heathers. Do not be misled about in passing but seldom seen. Only by the figures for height and spread rarely does a book come along that (e.g. Calluna 'Foxii Nana', 10 x 18), combines fine photos with easily which are given in centimetres. Many digestable reading matter. Dr. Schnell, of the cultivars listed are not obtainable in his book on native American car• here, many cannot be grown in most nivorous plants, has skillfully managed parts of the country, and a few good in both fields. His book has 125 pages ones are missing . . . Calluna 'Alys with one to six superb color illustrations Sutcliffe' for one. on roughly half of them. Range maps Obviously a book of such large scope and a few pen and ink schematics are and small size must have its limita• also included. tions. At the modest price of $5.95 it This small but spectacularly illus• is, nevertheless, recommended as a trated book lures one into the fascinat• "good buy". There is a great need ing field of carnivorous plants. The for garden books of a regional nature, color photographs are so clear and crisp but the trend is the other way, with that one almost expects to be able to the economics of publishing seemingly reach into them and touch the plants. calling for national (and, if possible, It is quite outstanding in the quality international) sales. Publishers guilty of the reproductions. of foisting on tiro American gardeners The text manages to be at once in• English books with their origin careful• teresting, detailed and accurate without ly concealed should take a look at falling too far into the morass of Heathers of Colour as an example of biological terminology which leaves far a book honestly, helpfully, and suc• too many of us floundering or scurrying cessfully written for an international for cover. Discussed are forty-five spe• market. cies and numerous hybrids of Dionaea, Comparative testing of sixty-five Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, Drosera. Pin- heather cultivars has been carried out guicula and Utricularia. 173 In addition to plant descriptions of North Carolina and the North there are detailed instructions on how Carolina Botanical Garden and con• to grow them in both the bog garden tains 400 color photographs of very and as pot or terrarium specimens. good quality. A number of trees and Pests, diseases, and propagation are gi• shrubs are included in addition to the ven full attention. Included at the end herbaceous wildflowers. The text is is a generous list of additional reading rather minimal but for those buffs who material, glossary, explanation of the wish to dive more deeply into anything meaning of names and a list of firms mentioned, there is a code number which sell carnivorous plants. which refers to the Manual of the Interested readers may wish to Vascular Flora of the Carolinas by A. subscribe to the "Carnivorous Plant E. Radford, H. E. Ahles and C. Ritchie Newsletter", a quarterly publication of Bell, also published by the University interest to the gardener as well as to of North Carolina Press. If a good the botanist. Co-editors are J. A. Maz- photo is worth a thousand words, this rimas, 329 Helen Way, Livermore, book far exceeds what one would expect Calif. 94550 and D. E. Schnell, Rt. from its 205 pages. Among the plants 4, Box 275, Statesville, N.C. 28677. illustrated are Shortia galacifolia, E.D. Monotropa uniflora, Clethra acuminata, Viola villosa, Stewartia malacodendron, Cleistes divaricata and Trillium WILDFLOWERS OF discolor. NORTH CAROLINA Wildflowers of Alabama and Ad• by William S. Justice and C. Ritchie joining States is a somewhat similar Bell. University of North Carolina Press, volume though there is not much Chapel Hill, N.C. overlapping in the species discussed. Generally the reproduction of the WILDFLOWERS OF ALABAMA photos is not of the same quality as AND ADJOINING STATES in the above volume but the text more by Blanch E. Dean, Amy Mason and than makes up for the deficit. Included Joab L. Thomas. University of Alabama in the discussion are comments on such Press, University, Ala. seldom mentioned species as Uvularia WILDFLOWERS OF LOUISIANA floridana, Erythronium umbilicatum, AND ADJOINING STATES and Aletris aurea. Photos include Trillium decumbens, Trillium stami- by C. A. Brown. Louisiana State Uni• versity Press, Baton Rouge, La. neum, Erythronium rostratum and a number of others which I have not seen illustrated elsewhere. Between the These three illiustrated floras would North Carolina and the Alabama floras be a valuable addition to the library there are illustrated fourteen species of anyone interested in the wildflowers of trilliums, many of which are seldom of the Southeast. mentioned much less illustrated. This Wildflowers of North Carolina also is but a small example of the merit covers the states of Virginia, South of these books. Carolina, and areas of Georgia, Tennes• Somewhat similar to the above two see, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland books is the Wildflowers of Louisiana and Delaware. It was published under and Adjoining States. the sponsorship of the Garden Club Edith Dusek, Graham, Wash. 174 THE GENUS SEDUM Its Life and Habits PART 4: THE MEXICANS RONALD EVANS London, England If the botanists are to be relied upon be broadly classified into "tree sedums" Mexico is even richer in sedums than (including those stout and openly Yunnan and W. China, those described shrubby in growth), the massive-leaved by Froederstroem plus Kew Index addi• species, and the thin-leaved species. tions to 1970 totalling over ninety spe• The massive-leaved species are those cies. However, since only about half more commonly in cultivation. They are in cultivation and the rest have have an opulent look and their foliage been described from herbarium speci• is colorful. Few, however, can put up mens this count has to be treated with with the winters in "temperate" some reservation. climates. They prefer the open air dur• In Mexico the authenticated species ing summer, but in winter must seek reach their farthest limit south, apart refuge under glass. One of the most from the few isolated African ones; popular, S. morganianum, is, oddly conditions are obviously favorable. enough, found so far only in cultivation Mexico is essentially a sub-tropical in Mexico itself. This is the Burro plateau averaging about 6,500 feet with or Donkey's Tail, with long pendulous mountain ranges rising to 18,000 feet, stems imbricated with pale glaucous an overall quite adequate annual pre• green leaves. It can be grown properly cipitation ranging from 30 inches to only in a hanging basket; pots produce 60 inches (sedums are not desert poor specimens. A basket can produce plants) and a limestone foundation an abundance of fat tails up to two heavily overlaid with volcanic material. feet long, which have a sort of com• Temperature ranges are difficult to fortably well-fed look. generalise about; at such altitudes in Another is S. rubrotinctum, an these latitudes diurnal fluctuations tend upright shrubby plant bearing towards to be much greater than annual ones. the stem-tips large, almost ovoid leaves There can be night frosts all the year which readily fall and root. This has around on the mountain tops, and the its own built-in soil humidity tester. world's hottest temperature (136°F.) In dry soil the leaves quickly turn is reached around Tampico, but on bright scarlet. In moist soil they revert average it does not fall much below to a rich glossy green again. At the 50°F. half-way stage the effect is most color• Though all fibrous rooted and peren• ful. The plant also flowers fairly nial, the sedums of Mexico exhibit a readily, which S. morganianum does fascinating diversity of habit, of growth not. and — as with the rest of the genus S. stahlii, a prostrate species, looks — are sometimes not easy to recognise rather like the product of a "Malteser" as being succulent plants. They can factory. Its large, egg-shaped, opposite, 175 deep reddish-brown leaves seldom take and has thus suffered the indignity of on more than a dark greenish shade. being alternately thrust out of and then This also has yellow flowers in mid• drawn into — the elect family of se- summer. S. adolphi and S. nuss- dums. It is often seen in cultivation, baumerianum, bearing terminal rosettes is an attractive species, and has most of thick, fleshy, almost elliptical leaves of the attributes of a sedum; and so on short stout stems, are closely related; I align myself with those who welcome but the latter is much the more or• it in. Let it henceforth be known as namental. The leaves of S. adolphi are S. weinbergii. It will adorn the genus. a dull green strongly flushed red, and The flat rosettes of large, fleshy, broad- it seems a shy flowerer. 5. nuss- ovate greyish-green leaves, margined baumerianum has banana yellow leaves, with white, are borne at the tips of and a pan of this makes a striking stout but slender ascending stems, bran• contrast with pans of other glaucous ched and open in growth. The — and rich-green leaved species. In inflorescence (which is what most of fact, these massive-leaved species the fuss is about) is unusual in being generally lend themselves well to foliage a long bifurcating peduncle with flowers contrast effects. S. nussbaumerianum distantly spaced. The flowers themselves also has a radiant head of white flowers are white, pink-tipped, with conspicuous on long pink pedicels. It is a pity orange carpels. that the suffix -erianum was added to Clausen, whilst prospecting in Central the 'nut-tree'; it results in a clumsy Mexico, came upon a sedum in the name for a rather elegant plant. Tiscalatengo Gorge which he later called When 5. pachyphyllum comes into "S. clavatum". This has turned out to flower it wears on its cluster of be a really fine plant in cultivation. glaucous-green leaves a tiara of amber It is prostrate, with very stout stems, and rubies. Its leaves are thick, as and closely packed flattish rosettes of the name implies, and clavate in shape. fleshy, narrowly-clavate leaves, pale It is a stout and vigorous grower, nor• green-glaucous in color. It seems very mally forming a dense mass of ascend• free-flowering; the inflorescence being ing and much-branched stems; but if lateral, compact, and with clear white allowed to get "drawn up" it looks flowers with purple anthers. I think elongate and anaemic. I like this plant because it grows and With the same clavate, light glaucous- flowers well, is little trouble to cultivate, green leaves as S. pachyphyllum, but and seems quite satisfied to be where of more erect and open growth is S. it is, instead of pining for some Nirvana allantoides. This has a terminal and more like Mexico. rather dainty inflorescence of greenish- The true "tree-sedums", with single white flowers. S. treleasii is another stout boles, stoutly branching above, of this glaucous leaved group, very such as S. frutescens and S. ox- erect and stout in growth, less branched, ypetalum, are interesting, but not much and with oblong leaves. The seen in cultivation. There is one, inflorescence is lateral and yellow- however, much to be recommended if flowered. In bloom the plant could re• it can be gotten — S. retusum. It semble a candle, with the flame coming- grows about six inches tall, is compact, out of the side. somewhat conical in shape, with clusters There is a plant called "weinbergii", of spathulate fresh-green leaves at the which is rather on the edge of — branch-tips, and in mid-summer is cov- 176 ered with pinkish-white flowers. Another favourite, at least in the Akin to these are S. griseum, a bushy south of England, is S. bellum; but white-flowered species, and the S. this again is a bit of a problem to praealtum group. The members of this grow well. When the fancy takes it, group are shrubby, with long slender it can produce magnificent large heads fleshy stems, sinuous, and tipped with of white flowers with purple anthers. elliptic to oblanceolate, flattish, but Next year it may sulk and do its best fleshy glossy green leaves. The flowers to expire. It is in fact a semi-evergreen. are yellow. They include SS. praeal• New leaf-buds arise each year (one tum, dendroideum and confusum. S. hopes) from the base of the withering praealtum is fairly hardy, and has long flowering stems, and grow on to flower been in cultivation under various the next year. The stems are arching, names, sometimes in gardens and often and have flat obovate glaucous-green on window ledges, in cottages and leaves. houses in the United Kingdom. It can There are a number of these semi- become quite a large plant, two feet evergreen species, which grow in or more across and eighteen inches various parts of Mexico. Some are quite high. S. confusum is the hardiest, with vigorous. S. greggii is a quaint little lower tangled growth, and difficult to plant, easy to propagate, and — since distinguish from S. dendroideum, it drops rooting leaves abundantly — (which is tender.) it will spread around quite freely. The Another group of species much re• leaves are tightly packed, small, or• sembling one another comprises S. pal- bicular, and light green. The young meri, S. compressum and S. ob- growth ascends like a church steeple. cordatum. They come from the eastern Then the flag-poles go up, lengthen, side of Mexico, and have long ascending fall over with their own weight, become bare stems in open growth, tipped with procumbent, and finally produce at the flat rosettes of flat green- or blue- end small flags of yellow flowers.. The glaucous leaves. The inflorescence of flowers are nothing to speak of, but S. obcordatum is terminal, and of the the rather lime-green foliage looks re• others lateral, and all have yellow freshing. flowers. S. palmeri is often seen on S. alamosanum is another semi- the benches at English shows, as its evergreen. The first year's growth ap• open heads of yellow flowers are quite pears as little basal tufts, in colour dainty; but I find it the most diffident and appearance much like a young S. grower of the three. 5. compressum hispanicum. Next year these stems leng• is very similar and as floriferous, but then and become decumbent, the leaves more vigorous and — surprisingly, are flushed purple, and a small terminal since it comes from Tamaulipas at inflorescence of a few silvery-white about 1,000 feet —• at least half-hardy. flowers is produced. At the same time The leaves of S. palmeri are spathulate the new growth arises as a hub in and those of S. compressum oblong the centre of the cartwheel of flowering in shape, whilst those of 5. obcordatum stems. It is a small plant which in• are retuse at the tips. I came across creases slowly but steadily, and is not S. obcordatum in a neglected too difficult to grow. I should think greenhouse at Crathes Castle in Aber- it might form an interesting addition deenshire. If only the plant could have to an indoor trough. told me how it found its way there. If you dipped some pipe-cleaners into 177 green dye and twisted them into a of the "Mexicans" in cultivation, of little bush you might win a prize for which I myself have about fifty — a specimen of S. cupressoides. This some still unidentified. One of the has very small, imbricate, bright green "mysteries" is a plant received under leaves, grows quite compactly, and in the name "comixum" — a name I mid-summer is covered with bright have so far been unable to trace in yellow flowers. I have also seen this any available reference. This is a very used as a trough garden plant, but distinctive plant, with stout upright the little bush would need to be clipped stems about six inches (or more) high, back occasionally. I have also seen it tipped with very fleshy ovate leaves, growing on a rockery, but would not flat on the face and convex on the expect it to survive many years out• back, and of a markedly purplish color. doors. It gets rather brownish in winter, It has always attracted attention. If but soon breaks out again in spring. any reader has come across this plant S. potosinum, from St. Luis Potosi, I should be grateful for any further is an attractive foliage plant. The slen• information. It is not S. craigii, which der, pink, ascending stems are densely has elliptical fleshy leaves, semi-circular clothed with narrow pale-green leaves, in section, and of a much less pronounc• themselves often tinged pink, giving an ed purplish tinge. overall apple-blossom effect. The plant If the definition of an "alpine" is is compact and about four to five inches a low flowering plant which grows at tall. The inflorescence, from the top high altitudes, then most of the "Mexi• of the stem, is in fact lateral, though cans" can be called "alpines". They appearing terminal, and has white, red- can be found up to 11,000 feet, "and keeled flowers. that's as high as many alpine plants A species which often appears on can fly". At such altitudes the very the show-benches in the United King• fleshy and sappy leaved species must dom — and wins awards — is S. be exposed at least to severe frosts humifusum, a carpeter as minute as at night, as the dasyphyllums are in Raoulia australis. The tiny, tight, green the Atlas Mountains. And yet they need rosettes of S. humifusum are so closely to be overwintered under cover in more packed together that they sometimes temperate climates. This, to me, seems climb on top of each other. In late odd. Various suggestions have been ad• spring the carpet becomes covered with vanced for their survival in their solitary, sessile, bright yellow flowers natural habitats. At high altitudes there nearly one-half inch across. The rosettes may be pockets of warm air pushed seem to sit on the ground almost root• up by the cold air descending into less, and can easily break off. They the valleys. The volcanic soil may ab• can then be pushed into the soil sorb enough heat by day to warm the wherever a gap appears (which is sel• ground level air sufficiently during the dom), to spread out and fill up the night. The sugars (derived from star• space. When a small pan is full one ches) in solution in the relatively large can start a larger pan by transferring quantity of liquid contained in the small clumps and waiting for them to leaves may depress the freezing point grow together. Part of the show com• thereof sufficiently to prevent actual petition seems to be, how large a full freezing. Against this is the point that pan can you eventually get. I have kept such succulent leaves in These, of course, are just a selection the 'fridge for a fortnight or more 178 in darkness, that they have come out of the largest of all — and it is easy frozen solid, and at once thawed out to get tediously absorbed even in a without any apparent damage, internal• narrow one. But in so many accounts ly or otherwise. It may be that it is of plant-hunting expeditions one may the stems which perish in prolonged read lists of plants carefully described frost, rather than the leaves, (which and accurately named which conclude in many species readily drop and root with "and some sort of sedum"; and — nature's safeguard?) and that the I am sure the sedum is distressed by stems flag from root failure. The this nonchalent dismissal of its right fibrous roots of these species do not to participate in the general scheme penetrate far below the surface. A short of things. So, being, as I suppose, period of frost, though severe, may inclined to root for the underdog, I not reach below the surface of volcanic have tried to take an interest in its soil strongly heated up during the day, affairs. In this the sedum has been and so not disturb the root system, singularly uncooperative, and the more whereas a prolonged, though less severe, I attempt to acquaint myself with it frost over a long period of little or the more I feel as if submerged in no sunshine may well do this, especially cold porridge. with a soil not so heat-absorbing. No doubt this question has already been Nevertheless it has done me one favor satisfactorily resolved some place that for which I must ever be grateful to I have not yet stumbled upon. it. It has brought me in touch with In conclusion, when an article on a host of new friends, to whom I ac• sedums was first mooted I doubted knowledge my indebtedness for much whether the subject could be contained of the foregoing information. within two parts and in the event it This is the last of four articles on has extended to four. The subject itself Sedum. The other three appear in Vol. is wide — in fact this genus is one 35 pp. 88, 136 and 183. — Ed. THE SHOW BENCH Annual Meeting 1978 — Plant Show Class I: 3 pans of rock garden plants of distinct genera, in flower — 8 entries: 1st Rhodohypoxis 'Albrighton', Erigeron aureus, Asperula suberosa — Joel Spingarn; 2nd Arisaema sikokiana, Trillium gran- diflorum florepleno, Dactylorhiza elatior — Class III: 1 pan rock garden plant, new, Harold Epstein; 3rd Berberis irwinii rare or difficult in cultivation — 10 entries: 'Corallina Compacta', Carduncellus pinnatus 1st Primula nipponica — H. Lincoln Foster; acaulis, Lithospermum oleifolium — Frank 2nd Primula allionii x carniolica — Fender- Cabot. son; 3rd Trillium sessile quadriform — May Class II: 1 pan of rock garden plants Turk. in flower — 14 entries: 1st Alpine primula Class IV: 1 pan Saxifraga — 9 entries: in variety — Kris Fenderson; 2nd Ramonda 1st Saxifraga cebennensis — Porter; 2nd myconii — Howard Pfeifer; 3rd Gentiana Saxifraga hybrid seedling — Paul Palomino; acaulis — Howard Porter. 3rd Saxifraga cymbalaria — Fran Lubera. 179 Class V: I pan Primula, species or hybrid, Hypoxis hirsuta, Houstonia caerulea, in flower — 14 entries: 1st Primula 'Gold Erigeron sp. — E. LeGeyt Bailey. Laced' — Palomino; 2nd Primula darialica Class XIII: 1 pan rock garden plant grown —- Lubera; 3rd Primula marginata 'Ame• from seed — 7 entries: 1st Mimulus sp. thyst' — Foster. C W 5257 Andes — Bailey; 2nd Phyteuma Class VI: 1 pan Primulaceae — 5 entries: comosum — Palomino; 3rd Aquilegia sp. 1st Dodecatheon species — Lubera; 2nd An- — Buffy Parker. drosace imbricata — Bill Brown; 3rd An- Class XIV: 1 pan silver foliage plant — drosace sempervivoides — Foster. 10 entries: 1st Raoulia hookeri — Cabot; 2nd Primula marginata — Spingarn; 3rd Class VII: 1 pan bulbous or rhizomatous Primula farinosa — Lubera. plant suitable for the rock garden — 10 entries: 1st Fritillaria acmopetala — Ron Class XV: 1 pan Ericaceae •— 11 entries: Beckwith; 2nd Rhodohypoxis sp. — Palo• 1st Cassiope lycopodioides — Palomino; 2nd mino; 3rd Calochortus uniflorus — Cabot. Loiseleuria procumbens — Bailey; 3rd Rhododendron radicans — Halladin. Class VIII: 3 pans Crassulaceae, distinct Class XVI: 1 pan dwarf shrub other than species — 8 entries: 1st Sempervivum arach- Ericaceae — 10 entries: 1st Daphne cneorum noides Tomentosa', Sedum spathulijolium pygmaea — Cabot; 2nd Poly gala vayredae 'Rosea', Rosularia pallida — Lubera; 2nd — Foster; 3rd Acer palmatum coraliformis Sedum spathulifolium v. purpureum, Sedum — Spingarn. laxum 'Mina', Sedum spathulifolium 'Capa Class XVII: 1 pan dwarf conifer — 8 Blanca' — Palomino; 3rd Sempervivum entries: 1st Tsuga heterophylla 'Iron Springs' arachnoides x rubicundum, Sempervivum — Spingarn; 2nd (tied) Chamaecyparis ob- 'Crested', Sedum spathulifolium v. purpureum tusa 'Hage' — Anita Kistler; Chamaecyparis — Michael Dodge. obtusa flabelliformis — Foster; 3rd Pinus Class IX: 1 pan bun, cushion, polster strobus 'Witch's Broom' — Lubera. — 7 entries: 1st Asperula nitida puberula Class XVIII: Container of 3 or more plants — Porter; 2nd Androsace carnea x pyrenaica of distinct genera arranged for effect — — Palomino; 3rd Draba mollisima — Paul 9 entries: 1st — Kistler; 2nd — Foster; 3rd and Marg Halladin. — Lubera. Class X: 1 pan Lewisia — 8 entries: Special Awards were as follows: 1st Lewisia cotyledon — Foster; 2nd Lewisia First highest aggregate score — Fran Lubera pygmaea — Herbert Kaufman; 3rd Lewisia Second highest aggregate score — H. Lincoln tweedyi — Cabot. Foster Class XI: 1 pan hardy fern — 12 entries: Third highest aggregate score — Paul Palo• 1st Adiantum pedatum var. aleuticum — mino Paul and Marg Halladin; 2nd Pellaea trun- Best in Show: Planter Class 18 — Anita cata — Panayoti Callas and T. Paul Maslin; Kistler 3rd Phyllitis scolopendrium — Gladys Zim• Connecticut Horticultural Society Award: merman. Class 16 — Frank Cabot Class XII: 3 pans of plants native to Delaware Valley Chapter Award: Class 1 the U.S., distinct genera — 8 entries: 1st — Joel Spingarn Trillium grandiflorum flore pi en o, H. L. Foster Award, presented by the Con• Anemonella thalictroides, Phlox subulata necticut Chapter: Class 12 — Fran Lubera Sneewitchen' — Lubera; 2nd Dodecatheon Pennsylvania Horticultural Silver Certificate: amethystinum, Anemonella thalictroides 'dou• Class 13 — E. LeGeyt Bailey ble white', Trollius laxus — Foster; 3rd Fran Lubera — Show Chairman Seed Exchange Don't forget! The deadline for sending in seeds for the Seed Ex• change is October 31. Clean properly. Label correctly. Look up the name and spell it right. Send to Frances Roberson, 1539 NE 103rd Street, Seattle, Wash. 98125. 180 ROCK GARDENING IN THE SOUTH Parti ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Charlotte, N. C. Concerning the Gardener border, and to put them where stones All rock gardeners are snobs. I say can protect their flowers from the this without fear of offending, for no weather, and keep their roots cool and one will take it to himself. "How right moist. One by one special corners are you are," he will say. "I have often singled out for special treasures, until noticed it in one or another, and there they become so numerous that they are times when I think you are some• must be drawn together. In this way thing of a snob yourself." the rock garden is created, and for Some snobbery is to be expected, this reason it is the most personal of for all are agreed that the cultivation all forms of horticulture. of rock plants is the highest form of A delight in the individual plant, the art of gardening; and rock gar• a desire for the rare and choice and deners are essentially individualists, a love of the miniature are traits com• each with his specialty, his own dear mon to all lovers of rock plants. From delight. That every gardener should be long intimacy with the earth and all a specialist is very right and proper, that springs from it they become aware and that the specialist should hold him• of the way a stem curls or a leaf self a little above the common flower unfolds. To those whose thoughts are grower is understandable, but the spe• "one with wind and leaf and mist," cialist is perilously near the expert, beauty has an elusive quality that de• and the expert is apt to put skill above pends more upon the texture of the enjoyment. Gardening ceases to be an petal than the size of the bloom. They art when the gardener admits that the take pleasure in the frail, the perishable "choicest subjects are generally the ones and the uncertain flower, "seldom com• presenting the most difficulties, and ing in the long year set." But above are therefore the ones most sought for." all else they love these plants because But gardening is an art and the rock they are small. garden, at least according to rock gar• A passion for the minute and perfect, deners, is its purest form. Here the and a desire to possess the smallest plants are grown for themselves alone, thing of its kind are not traits confined not for exhibition, not for cutting, and to gardeners. Do you remember how not primarily for display. All gardeners the old king in the fairy tale promised become rock gardeners if they garden his kingdom to the son who could bring long enough. They may not mean to, him a dog small enough to lie in a or even desire it, but it is natural walnut shell? None of the tiny to one long familiar with plants to creatures they produced was able to single out certain individuals too newly do so. Always a paw or a tail, or come from wood or waterside to ac• at least an ear protruded. At last the commodate themselves to the perennial youngest son handed his father a hazel 181 nut, begging him to crack it very gently. of the little boy in the limerick, When this was done, a beautiful little Infinitesimal James snow white dog jumped out and wagged Had nine unpronounceable names. his tail and licked the king's hand, He wrote them all down and barked at the other little beasts With a terrible frown, in the most graceful manner. The And then threw them all in the delight of the king and the whole court flames. was indescribable, and the king told his people to throw all of the other Concerning the Garden little dogs into the sea. Years ago, when I first thought of The old king reminds me of the making a rock garden in North rock gardeners who search for years Carolina, I felt as if I were left all for a tiny form of a forest tree, who alone to face the rocks. Everything that desire a rose small enough for a thimble was written seemed to be written for vase, or a primrose smaller than a the North. Nothing was written for buttercup, or a four-inch thalictrum me. For rock gardening has been so with flowers like fine mist, or an iris long associated with the culture of al- an inch high, or a sedum that is less pines that it is hard to learn to think than an inch. The rock garden is a of it in terms of regional material. world of dwarfs and creepers and Southerners have been slow to resign trailers, frequently with names that in• themselves to the fact that alpines can• dicate their size. Nanus, pumilus and not be depended upon in a section pygmaeus mean dwarf; minus and min• where the winters are snowless or nearly imus, smaller and smallest; parvus, so, summer nights hot and humid, and parvulus and parvissimus, small, very the growing season a long seven months small, and smallest; minutus means instead of the bare three or four that minute, and minutissimus means most plants from the mountain tops are ac• minute. Then there is the unflattering customed to, and require. Only after pusilla for the small and insignificant; years of disappointment and failure, and exiguus, small and poor, while are we now learning to grow material humilis means low-growing; demissus, adapted to our region. "Time was," low and weak: humifusus, sprawling, a Virginia gardener writes, "when I and procumbens, lying on the ground. felt that no plant that grew below the The creepers have names like repens, timber line held any interest, and that reptans and serpens. When these terms, only seeds grown by Monsieur Correvon denoting a low or small form of a were worth planting; but now with plant, are added to the generic and my third rock garden in its fourth a specific name, and perhaps to another year, I have learned that it is futile varietal name describing the color or to weep over a blighted Edelweis, when form of the flower, it sometimes seems so many lovelier plants rejoice in our that the smaller the flower the longer summer heat and grow naturally close and more complicated the name. A tiny to our native stone." primrose is Primula veris lilacina flore- The growing of alpines is suited plena; an inch high stonecrop is Sedum neither to the habitat nor the tempera• dasyphylum glanduliferum; while a ment of the Southerner, who is not houseleek that does not grow above given to fussing over flowers. One of a quarter of an inch is Sempervivum the most endearing traits of your true arachnoideum cottettii. They remind me alpine gardener is his tender solicitude 182 for the comfort of his plants. "The never grows old. Rock plants for the alpine primrose," Anderson McCulley South must be sought in country gar• warns its lovers, "is better watered from dens, they must be gathered from the beneath, but it will get along nicely wild, and imported from foreign coun• if the hose or watering can is laid tries, and culled one by one from the on the soil surface. When watering lists of dealers in rare bulbs. They nearby neighbors a jar can be inverted must be collected one by one, and they over the crown of the plant to protect need not belong to the traditional types it. And when the temperature soars that we think of as saxatile. I would to the nineties, I usually stand a rock not even call them rock plants if there to the south of it for temporary shade." were any other term to cover the little When the temperature soars to the nine• bulbs, the perennials that creep and ties, few Southerners will be thinking crawl, and the delightful low-growing about the alpine primrose. They will shrubs that are, or should be, charac• be seeking shade for themselves. teristic of the gardens of the South. This is not to say that alpines cannot "Rock gardening among Southern gar• be grown south of Washington. If I deners must be an independent art, made any such statement good gar• developed to meet peculiar climatic con• deners would rise up on all sides to ditions," Violet Walker once wrote. contradict me. "I do not guarantee that "This opens up an enormous field of you can grow a mossy saxifrage in rarely beautiful material which can give full sun in Virginia or Missouri, or to the Southern rock garden an indivi• Primula mistassinica on pure sand in duality of its own." Ohio," Mr. Mitchell of Barre, Vermont Dear Voilet. Her pioneering spirit remarked in the introduction to his found an outlet not only in her pro• catalogue of rock plants for New vocative articles, but also in putting England, "but these difficult plants are her theories to the test in Piedmont, being grown by skillful gardeners in Virginia. From her teeming rock garden all of these states." Which is all very in Woodberry Forest came flowers that true. I suppose that you can grow any now bloom in mine, and through her plant anywhere if you have determina• endless enthusiasm and generosity I tion. But I am not writing for determin• learned to search out and grow the ed gardeners. It is for gardeners who plants and bulbs that were dismissed would rather spend their energies on as unsuited to gardens because they finding the plants suited to their region, are not hardy in the North. than in devising ways to grow those I am writing for the South in general, that are not suited to it. but primarily for gardens in Zone 8 If alpines will not grow in the milder of the Plant Hardiness Map of the sections of this country, what will? Agricultural Research Service, U.S. I asked myself this question long ago, D.A., where the average annual min• and it is only partly answered. It cannot imum temperatures range from 10° be answered in a word, it cannot be to 20°F. In Charlotte, N.C., we occa• answered by one gardener, or even by sionally have temperatures nearer zero one generation. It is the pleasure of and in 1940 there was a short period each gardener to ask it anew, and al• of sub-zero weather. Roughly speaking ways there will be a new answer. It Zone 8 begins in Virginia along the is seeking that makes gardening, par• shores of Chesapeake Bay and winds ticularly rock gardening, an art that in a narrow strip along the coast 183 through North and South Carolina, wi• Here in the corn belt the air is heavy dening through Georgia and the Gulf with moisture even when the ground States, then narrowing again to end is parched, and we have heavy dews in Southwest Texas. It starts again in when there has been no rain for weeks Arizona on the Mexican border and on end. meanders in a thin stream up the West In so vast a region as the southern Coast all the way to British Columbia. half of the United States there are, The main thing that these areas have of course, great differences in the plant in common is that the plants best suited material suited to various sections. In to them are those that withstand more the mountains a greater number of al- heat than cold; but temperature is not pines can be grown than at lower eleva• the only factor that determines where tions, even though in midsummer G. a plant will grow, although it is the Latta Clement's gardens, at Niknar one that you can do least about. Ex• Nursery in Biltmore, N.C. look as par• posure, soil, and the amount of water ched as mine. When we came to a plant gets can be controlled to some Charlotte, which is Piedmont, from extent, but not much can be done about Raleigh, which is at the edge of the the heat of the sun or the furious Coastal Plain, I was amazed at the winter rages. number of plants I could grow that Gardeners in the three most southerly I had not succeeded with before. This zones also have in common their short is partly because the soil is better in and mild (or comparatively mild) win• the new garden, and because things ters, and their long hot summers, but grow better under pines than under they differ in the amount of moisture oaks, though the slight change in eleva• that comes to them. "A general state• tion does make some difference. There ment which I believe is true," Claude is even a difference in gardens in the Barr once wrote me, "is that all east same neighborhood, but in general the of the eighteen hundred foot level plants in my garden will grow wherever where, roughly, the Great Plains begin, the winters are short and mild and is moist and points west are dry. This the summers long and hot. notwithstanding that there is much talk As Dr. Orland White, former Direc• of heat and drought all of the way tor of Blandy Experimental Farm, to the East Coast. 'Hot' on the Plains Boyce, Va., pointed out, "There are means not a humid or smothering heat, plenty of opportunities for rock garden• but a dry, almost burning, dwarfing ing in this region . . . Andrew Jack• atmosphere. Sometimes a light shower son's country is naturally a superb Se- doesn't create any humidity. Sometimes dumry. In late April and early May, refreshing raindrops fall upon your Sedum pulchellum in pink perfection hand while the air about your hand reminds one of Europe's heather . . . is hot and dry. In July (and rains efforts should be made to preserve the mostly don't occur in July) the natural rock gardens, the Peaks of Ot- humidity following a good rain doesn't tar, Crabtree Falls, Catesby's Mountain last thirty hours. The only relief is and Stone Mountain." Even where there in the fairly cool nights. Most summers is no natural stone in the neighborhood have no hot nights as in the corn" rocks can sometimes be salvaged from belt. But these nights are sometimes an old house or a chimney that is so dry for weeks on end that there being torn down, or curbstones and is no dew." cobbles from a street that is being 184 paved. And these need not be used of rock plants very nicely. Of course in the conventional way, for the affinity I have to fix my soil to their liking, between rocks and plants applies to and give them the advantage of sun walls and steps and paved terraces, as or shade where possible." well as to ravines and mountain-sides. When it comes to design there are In the South we must be allowed as many opinions as there are gar• some latitude in design as well as in deners, but the majority are with choice of plants. Even where there is Reginald Farrer; "The rules of the no stone at all in the neighborhood garden itself are the rules of art: the the gardener need not forego the rules of the rock garden are the more pleasure of growing tiny bulbs and awful rules of nature." dwarf shrubs, creepers and trailers and Dr. Orland White said it should "so tufted perennials that luxuriate in the fit the world in which it exists that long sweet nights of summer, or come any grocery boy will tear through it to life on winter days when the air without thinking it other than a stony is as soft as spring. hillside," but unless it is part of a "We have not many hills about here," natural landscape, as his garden at Mr. Wyndam Hayward wrote from Blandy was, it would be difficult — Winter Park, "so the Florida rock gar• if not impossible — to take him literal• den is pretty likely to be on the level ly. It seems to me that the awful rules and with no rocks, which is pretty of nature can be followed even in a unorthodox; although I believe at one small back yard. It is enough that each of the meetings of the American Rock mossy stone, with plants that cling to Garden Society they thrashed it all out, it, look as if it were inevitable; that and decided that it is all right to rock it should be where it is and nowhere garden without rocks!" else. It is impossible to make a rock In Louisiana Mrs. U. B. Evans grows garden from a preconceived plan, or rock plants on a "shady slope of a to do it all at one time. It must be cypress slough, miles from any rocks," created by fitting the rocks to the and from northern Missouri Mrs. For- ground as a costume designer molds dyce wrote, "I have always wanted a the cloth to the figure; and it is more rocky hillside for a garden, but here natural for it to come into being as I sit on a level prairie farm, my garden the plants mature, than to emerge all as flat as a table top. Have to dig at one time in its final form. drain ditches, raise my beds, do all This is the first of a series of articles the work myself; yet I have hundreds about rock gardening in the South by of plants and get away with the raising Miss Lawrence. Woe is me! The experts who say that the soil mix in a Nearing Frame should be changed yearly are so right. If left in the frame too long the mixture gets mildewed and moldy in the closed atmosphere and northern light. D. DeV., Easton, Conn. 185 TWO TOUGH NATIVES FROM ARID REGIONS MRS. P. H. GOURLEY Umatilla, Oregon Gardeners beset by drought and fac• the end of the stems and are accompa• ing water shortage and water rationing nied by purplish bracts, which give could consider experimenting with the color leading to the plant's common natives of arid regions. Such plants name, Purple Sage. The flowers them• might well prove a boon to the rock selves are blue. It is very hardy, having gardener. Many plants make their home withstood —20°F. with no snow cov• in areas of low humidity, little er. In fact it is often found on road precipitation, hot and cold winds, ex• embankments where snow does not col• tremes of temperature and sandy and lect, even if there is some on the stony soil. Such are the conditions in neighboring fields. the Columbia River region east of the I have grown Salvia dorrii successful• Cascade Mountains. ly in my garden. The first plants I Salvia dorrii is a small shrub well extracted from a rather stony site, deserving a trial in the rock garden. wrapped them in a plastic bag without It seems also to bear the name Salvia soil, and planted them immediately carnosa. McMinn's An Illustrated Man• upon arriving home. They took hold ual of California Shrubs states that quickly; when I planted them they were typical Salvia carnosa is found from single-stemmed, about six inches tall Walla Walla to Spokane and on the and with roots about the same length. stony banks of the Klamath River By fall they were about ten inches as well as in other states. Peck's A tall and very bushy. They bloomed the Manual of the Higher Plants of Oregon next spring. The winter and spring were lists only one shrubby salvia, 5. dorrii, very dry and they received no water but gives Salvia carnosa as a synonym. until about the middle of April. I do In Wildflowers of Sagebrush Country water my desert plants to help them by Taylor and Valum there are illus• maintain that "alive" look and ensure trations, one of which, on page 91, a long blooming period. The soil here is an excellent likeness of the plant is virtually sand; there is little danger in full bloom though it gives very little of over-watering. idea of the handsome shrub itself. I have since acquired more plants This salvia has a wide distribution and find they reestablish readily here throughout the western states, often in the Umatilla area. Many grow on being the dominating plant, which private property but the owners are should indicate its adaptability. It is usually willing to share a few small less than three feet in height. The plen• plants. Collecting natives from public tiful leaves, with entire margins and land may soon be impossible without not wrinkled, are about an inch long, a permit. less in width, gray-green and hairy. My salvias are not yet mature enough The bushy plant is very aromatic, but for me to be positive that they will with an entirely different smell from retain the same dimensions they have sage brush (Artemisia). in their natural dry environment; time The flowers appear in whorls toward will tell. My experience with seed is 186 zero, but cuttings in summer root quite plants have flourished in light soil, with rapidly. The youngsters, however, are or without rocks. I have grown fine, less hardy than the mature plants their shapely, floriferous plants in extremely first winter. light sandy soil. Another native of our area worthy Scarlet Globemallow, this sphaeral- of attention is Sphaeralcea monroana. cea's common name, indicates both its Unlike Salvia dorrii, which is seldom family and its flower color. Many mentioned in rock garden literature, American books of wildflowers and S. monroana is consistently included. rock gardens have somewhat sketchy It is very widely distributed in nature descriptions. The stems and lobed leaves in arid regions. I have seen it in abun• are almost white in hot dry weather dance by the roadside on the highway but gray-green at other times. The inch- from Toppenish to Satus Pass, near wide "mallow" flowers are a lovely Prosser. and on the flats near the Co• apricot-red or salmon-orange, borne lumbia River between Pasco and Wallula abundantly in the leaf axils and in in Washington. In Oregon I have found terminal spikes. It blooms almost con• it near Umatilla, west of Boardman, tinuously; as the first stems finish and near lone. I do not hesitate to blooming and go to seed, new stems identify these locations specifically in spring from the crown to blossom just the fear that hordes of people will rush as lavishly if the plants receive some in to dig the plant up for I believe water. This is one native of our arid it renews itself abundantly from seed; region that accepts summer watering there are always more seedlings around although it normally endures severe the older plants than can survive to drought. I have had fine results by maturity. This is especially true where giving this plant the same treatment pastures and such have been flood- as I give annual phlox. They do not irrigated; the seedlings come up thickly get watered artificially in winter, on the banks of the irrigaton ditches however, though despite some rain and from whence they can easily be ex• snow, the soil is often dust-dry, with tracted and moved. They also come cold winds and low temperatures. up in the dirt roads on farms where Although there seem to be numerous there always seem to be small plants seedlings in this globemallow's natural just getting their first true leaves. They habitat, I have never succeeded in grow• do not reproduce this lavishly where ing them in a flat; the probable reason they grow in rocky places without may be too much water. However, a moisture, however. Large plants should few youngsters have appeared from seed not be moved as their roots go deep scattered among the plants in the gar• but young plants present no problem. den and these may be easily moved Sphaeralcea munroana is generally to other spots. 5. munroana is rather described as floppy, or even sprawling, shrubby, leaves and flowers reappearing but as it grows here, both wild and on old stems, but I generally cut them "tame", it makes an attractive mound, back to the ground because there would producing innumerable wand-like stems, otherwise be an over abundance of older, which are upright in the center though woody growth. they may touch the ground on the outer This plant does not like shade, any circumference of the plant. Reference shade. Shade, rich soil, or even much is also made to its growing among watering will produce a rank, soft rocks and in clay, but my adopted growth, which may have led to the 187 conclusion that S. munroana has a lovely blossoms. Sphaeralcea munroana sprawly nature; hard conditions pro• and its kin deserve a spotlight in the duce a graceful, symetrical mound of summer rock garden. • • • of Cabbages and Kings • • • How important are the seed ex• the Seed Exchange could not exist, the changes? harvest starts much earlier, sometimes Vitally important. It is our own seed as early as late May. All summer these exchange and those of our sister so• patient gatherers circle the garden cieties that mainly furnish the gardens weekly picking the pods as they ripen. of which we are so proud. Without Some search the woodlands and high them, particularly in the United States, mountain meadows and scramble up we would be reduced to growing only cliffs. Here, paper bags in hand, they those few, fairly commonplace, easily crouch crabbed over the turf in hot handled staples available at the corner sun and in rain, slapping the while nursery. In fact it was mainly for this at mosquitoes, to glean a few precious reason that the ARGS was founded: seeds of the rare wildlings we treasure to disseminate the rarer rock garden in our gardens. plants. Those truly dedicated ones (may they To disseminate: to scatter abroad as be thrice blessed) check also in the in the sowing of seed. And this is literature, in so far as they are able, precisely what happens. Though only to make sure they have correctly identi• about one third of our membership fied the plants from which they collect requests seeds from our Seed Exchange, the seed, be they garden grown or it is their sowing and growing that found in the wild. Their seed will not supplies plants not only for their own disappoint the recipient with Gentiana gardens, but stocks the tables of our decumbens in lieu of the Gentiana seedling sales, plant sales, and swaps. scabra he hoped to receive. And one need only attend one of these And then, the harvest gathered in, affairs to know how avidly the other each kind in its own carefully labeled two-thirds of our membership depends bag, the hours of pod cracking begin on such sales for their plants. And and the sifting and sorting of seed all this dissemination results from the from chaff goes on and on into the Seed Exchange, a dedicated group of night until the hard-gained pinches of volunteers who gather, sort, list, package living grains are safetly sealed and la• and ship out the harvest. beled and sent off with a prayer to the Fall is the traditional season of Seed Exchange Chairman. harvest, when the riches of summer These are the people to thank, these growth, blossoming and fruiting are few, a mere fifteen percent of the mem• garnered and stored in barn and crib, bership, who are willing to give days rootcellar and pantry. And it is also of patient, tedious work so that we the season when the Seed Exchange may fill our gardens with rare and goes into high gear. But for those mem• beautiful plants from all over the tem• bers who supply the seed without which perate world. 188 Blessed are the seed gatherers; may spoon hot sauce (Tabasco Sauce would they dwell in the Gardens of Paradise do nicely) to 1 gallon of water and forever. 2 tablespoons of Wilt-Pruf o r Vaporguard. The temperature should be above 40° F. at the time of spraying. Deer Problems, Anyone? Spraying the mixture on the trunks of shrubs and young trees is also sup• Jim Cross of Cutchogue, L.I., N.Y. posed to prevent debarking by rodents sends in the following note on how and rabbits. (perhaps) to discourage some of the Another method to prevent deer from varmints that eat our plants: dining on shrubs reported to be suc• "I recently learned of a repellent cessful at the Cary Arboretum in method for deer (rabbits and mice), Millbrook, N.Y., which is infested with which might be worth trying. It is Bambi and his relatives, is to decorate certainly a much, much more economic your shrubbery with balls of human approach than any we have used here hair. (I have already made arrange• up to the present time. Moreover, it ments with Sue's Clip Shop and would appear to be a harmless, riskless Margaret's House of Charm to save procedure. It comes out of several years all their floor sweepings.) This is rolled of work by an exceptionally practical into balls about the size of a baseball fellow, Dr. Frank Gouin of the Univer• and put in bags made of plastic mesh sity of Maryland. He uses: (onion bags or plastic shading cloth.) 100 gals, water Bob Hebb of the Cary Arboretum says 2 qts. of "Vaporguard" as a sticker you should hang about three balls on 40 oz. Louisiana Hot Sauce!! each shrub and that these will prevent "I just bought a gallon of Trappy's the deer from nibbling that shrub all Indi-Pep Pepper Sauce which is suppos• winter though they may denude the ed to be the equivalent of the recom• ones next to it. They plan at Cary mended item (from the local pub). I to leave these balls on all summer and will let you know what takes place. on into next fall to see how long they At worst it Avill be one of the few keep their repellent (to a deer) odor. pesticides which permit use in the kit• Unfortunately we received these chen for any leftovers." various recipes too late last winter to I assume kitchen testing will take try them out and the deer had already place without the addition of the come down off the mountain and reduc• "Vaporguard." I think this recipe ed our yews, laurel, azaleas and small would be strictly for ornamentals; it leaved rhododendrons to ragged leafless might prove a bit too flavorsome on stubs. Even the carpets of Bearberry the salad greens. We pass this on and creeping juniper were moth (deer)- without proper testing either by Jim eaten by spring as the starving brutes or ourselves in the thought that some had pawed down through the drifts of our members, who suffer as we to get at them. They even pulled up do from the depredations of varmints, Line's treasured Shortia uniflora and might like to try it and let us know left its remnants scattered on the snow. the results. The previous winter we had hung For those of you with only a few creosote smeared burlap rags from plants not a whole nursery to protect, posts scattered throughout the garden the recipe could be reduced to 1 table• and it seemed to work — no deer. 189 This past winter we did the same but numbers. If comparisons must be made, the creatures merely pushed the smelly would it not be far better to calculate rags out of their way and continued membership on a per capita basis? chomping unperturbed. We therefore New Zealand, with only 3 million assume that it was the heavy acorn population, has 59 members and that crop in the forest that stayed the deer's must be the highest percentage of all. appetites, not the creosoted rags fes• New Zealanders are a race of gardeners, tooning our landscape. Last year, no as overseas visitors will have noticed, acorns, hungry deer. This year . . .? and there is an ever increasing upsurge of interest in the growing of miniature Overseas Membership plants so that, with a little promotion, it should not be too difficult to at James R. Le Comte, New Zealand least double the membership. Representative on the Committee of In• ternational Relations, sends in the following: We treasure all our overseas and Canadian and Central and South Ameri• In the Secretary's Report (Bulletin can members. Their contributions to Board, Summer, 1977) much was made the pages of the Bulletin and to the of the total of 135 members in Japan Seed Exchange, and through personal and how that country ranked first in contact, whether by letter, plant ex• membership outside the U.S.A., having change, or as friendly hosts to our surpassed England with its 125 mem• more peripatetic U.S. members, adds bers. This is no doubt impressive but a considerable dimension to the ARGS. is based entirely on sheer weight of We would be the poorer without them. Query to City Gardeners Some of you must do your rock gardening in the city (at least you have city addresses) and it has occurred to us that an article on rock garden plants that will grow in a city garden might be of interest to some of our readers similarly situated. We'd be happy to get brief notes on rock garden plants that do in cily gardens (big cities, not suburbs) and what, if any, special cultural practices are necessary to keep them happy. DISPOSING OF OLD BULLETINS? The Society's reserve stock of back Numbers is seriously depleted or exhausted in the following. These are URGENTLY NEEDED to keep a supply available for Members who seek to build up their own libraries. If you have no further use for yours, others do. Many thanks to past donors; many more are needed to meet demands. Vols. 1-10, inclusive — Vol. 20, Nos. 1, 3 & 4 any and all Numbers Vol. 21, Nos. 1, 2 & 4 Vol. 11, No. 3 Vol. 22, Nos. 1 & 2 Vol. 12. Nos 2, 3 & 4 Vol. 24, Nos. 1 Vol. 13, Nos. 1 & 2 Vol. 23, No 3 Vol. 14. No. 1 Vol. 25. NOSL 2, 3 Vol. 15, Nos. 1, 2 & 4 Vol. 27, No. 3 Vol. lfi. all 4 Nos. Vol. 28, No. 3 Vol. 17, all 4 Nos>. Vol. 29, No. 3 Vol. 18, Nos. 1, 3 & 4 Vol. 31, Nos. 1 Vol. 19, Nos. 2 & 3 Vol. 32, No. 2 Please send to BUSINESS MANAGER, ARGS, 1421 Ship Rd., West Chester, Pa. 19380, who will also entertain offers for extensive "runs". Postage will be refunded. 190 WE SURE DO HAVE... Hortus III, Hillier, Bacon, Leach, Rehder, Hartmann & Kester, Jaynes, Wyman, Hoshizaki, Harrison, Bloom, Pirone, Westcott, Symonds, Dirr, and of course, the Klaber VIOLETS with literally hundreds of other New Books. If you'd like to receive our Catalog Lists and our mailings for a year, send us $1.00. (We'll include a Dollar-Off coupon!) If you missed us at the Convention, don't worry . .. we ship! HHH HORTICULTURAL 68 Brooktree Rd. Hightstown, N.J. 03520 UNUSUAL SEED Rock Plants, Alpines, Dwarf Conifers, Over a thousand different species, many collected in the wild. Dwarf Shrubs etc. Many Rare * PLUS * "Get Acquainted Special" BARNHAVEN PRIMROSES Seed & Transplants 6 Hardy Sedums Labeled $3.00 Postpaid 1979 Catalog 50c will offer many new kinds from both North and Descriptive Rock Plant Catalog 50< South of the Equator. FAR NORTH GARDENS RAKESTRAW'S PERENNIAL GARDENS 15621AR Auburndale G 3094 S. Term St., Burton, Michigan 48529 Livonia, Ml 48154 NATURE'S GARDEN "PLANTS FOR DRY SUNNY AREAS AND THOSE SHADY CORNERS" NURSERY Groundcovers, Alpines, Wildflowers Species Primulas — Gentiana and Wildf lowers — Some Ferns Succulents in variety Large Assortment of Sedums and Sempervivums Catalog — 50c Send $1.00 for Informative WOODLAND ROCKERY Culture Catalog 6210 Klam Road Route 1 Box 488 Otter Lake, Michigan 48464 Beaverton, OR 97005 Sorry, we cannot accept Foreign orders. 191 SCARCE and INTERESTING BOOKS . . . on gardening, botany, natural history, birds, etc. bought and sold. Secondhand reference works, color plate and rare anti• quarian. Send $1.00 for catalog, sent air mail. Want lists wel• comed. Books quoted without obligation. BOOKS BOUGHT . . . Please send details of any books you wish to sell. Good quality collections/libraries espe• cially wanted. Peter Kennedy 702a, Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, England Telephone: Bournemouth 301461 Hardy Named SEMPERVIVUMS SEDUMS & JOVIBARBA & ROSULARIA Red, Pink, Purple, Blue & Green O&KA.y New American Hybrids—Imports from Europe NURSERIES Wholesale and Retail OAKHILL GARDENS I960 Cherry Knoll Road Specialists in Dallas, Oregon 97338 (Same location—new address) Phone 503-623-4612 before 9:00 AM or Azaleas, after 5:00 PM Visitors Welcome — Picnic Area — Garden Rhododendrons, Clubs welcome (please by appointment) SORRY, WE NO LONGER SHIP Dwarf Evergreens Helen E. & Slim Payne and Rock Plants PLANT JEWELS OF THE HIGH COUNTRY For sale at nursery only. Sempervivums and Sedums Catalog 50tf by Helen E. Payne 1159 Bronson Road 111 Full Color Photographs Autographed Copies $8.50 Postpaid Fairfieid, Conn. 06430 192 PLANTS FOR THE CONNOISSEUR DWARF CONIFERS—for troughs and rock garden that will not outgrow their site in a short time. JAPANESE MAPLES—only the finest are grown. Dwarf in growth—exquisite foliage. The above for mailorder or pickup. CATALOGUE 50?: The following for pickup only. ROCK PLANTS—ALPINE HOUSE PLANTS—DWARF RHODODENDRON Many rarities in quantities too small to list are available to those willing to visit the nursery and extensive rock gardens. By appointment only on Tuesdays—Saturdays and Sundays, call 516-MA 3-7810 after 8:00 PM. JOEL W. SPINGARN 1535 FOREST AVE. BALDWIN, N.Y. 11510 STOriECROP NURSERIES Cold Spring, NY 10516 (Just off Rte. 301—between Rte. 9 & Taconic) Offering a wide selection of Alpine plants and wildflowers for the Rock Garden and Alpine House; Trough Gardens; Unusual Perennials and Dwarf Shrubs. Cash and Carry—No Catalogue By Appointment only—914-265-2000 Display Gardens and Alpine House Frank Cabot—Prop. 014-265-3533) Sara Faust—Mgr. Grower of ROCK GARDEN PLANTS ROCK PLANTS, HERBS PERENNIALS Androsace ANNUALS Dianthus Large Selection Gentiana and many others No Catalog All Plants for Sale at Nursery Only No Catalog—Cash & Carry SAMUEL F. BRIDGE, JR. Please call (617) 883-6697 437 North Street FRANK A. JARVIS Greenwich, Conn. 06830 Quaker Street, Millville, Mass. 01529 GREER GARDENS More than 600 varieties of Rhododendrons Rock Garden Material—Lewisias, Dwarf Conifers Japanese Maples, Meconopsis, Sedums & Sempervivums Color Catalog hailed as being a worthy addition to your Gardening Library—$1.00. Shipping a Specialty. Dept. R, 1280 Goodpasture Island Rd., Eugene, OR 97401 193 GULL HARBOR NURSERY A special issue of Specializing in Rock Garden and PACIFIC HORTICULTURE Perennial Plants Over 200 species, including devoted largely to Rock Gardening has LEWISIA COTYLEDON, contributions from Fred Boutin, Molly PULSATILLA VULGARIS, Grothaus, Lester Hawkins Will Ingwersen, GENTIANA ACAULiS and Owen Pearce, Chris Rosmini, Ray Wil• CYCLAMEN NEAPOLITANS liams, Jean and Joe Witt, and others. 3944 Gull Harbor Rd. Illustrated color quarterly: Olympia, Wash. 98506 Annually, $6 U.S., $7 Foreign. Write to By Chance or Appointment—tel.: 943-0394 Weekends Only — March 1-July 15 P 0 Box 22609, San Francisco, CA 94122. MINIATURE BULBS We have an extensive collection of MINIATURE and SPECIES BULBS and HARDY CYCLAMEN from many countries, it includes OLD FASHIONED WILD DAFFODILS, a unique collection of SPECIES and HYBRID SNOWDROPS, CYPRIPEDIUMS, PLEIONES, EUROPEAN and other GROUND ORCHIDS. Many are UNCOMMON and RARE — COLLECTORS ITEMS We offer speedy deliveries by air freight and U.P.S. Our catalog, over 40 pages of fascinating reading, is available from BLACK and THOMPSON, 124 N. 181 ST., SEATTLE, WA 98133 Price 50c including postage J. A. MARS of HASLEMERE, Kaslemere, Surrey, GU27 2PP, England ORCHID GARDENS ALPENFLORA GARDENS Over 150 Native Plants, Ferns, Club-mosses 1798540th Ave., Surrey, B.C. Canada V3S 4N8 Shrubs, Ground Covers, offered in our New list in 78; many new & rare plants, Copyrighted Wildflower Culture Catalog. colorful primroses, many dwarf & species Send 50V for your copy irises, alpines, floriferous rockery plants, All plants carefully dug and expertly choice perennials, ornamental grafted trees, packed to arrive in top condition evergreens, rhododendrons, ground covers, miniature roses. Mr. and Mrs. Clair Phillips 6700 Splithand Road Buy Canadian, U.S. $ at premium! Quality plants in 4" pots; Grand Rapids, Minnesota 55744 quantity discounts Sorry we cannot accept foreign orders Open weekends & holidays only FRESH SEED OFFERING Paraquilegia grandiflora, Queen of the Himalayan Alpines One packet approximately 25 seeds — $5.00 Seed collected in three locations in Kashmir, Himalayas August, 1978 Send orders to: H.K.S. COLLECTORS P.O. Box 4492 AAedford, Oregon 97501 194 THE ROCK GARDEN PUSKAS WILDFLOWER NURSERY Maine Hardy Plants Native plants—Perennials Choice Cultivars — Uncommon Species Wildflowers from all over the world Grown and Mailed in Peat-lite Groundcovers New Varieties Annually Alpines—Ferns—Herbs Seedlings from Several Exchanges Rare bulbs and other European Sources Many Ericas and Callunas Kent Hollow Rd. Mail Order Catalog 40? RR #1, Box KH-37A Kent, Conn. 06757 LITCHFIELD, MAINE 04350 Phone (203) 927-3680 GARDEN ROCKS FOR SALE Wholesale & Retail Dwarf Evergreens at location in the ILION GORGE, ILION, NEW YORK 13357 Holly Calcareous Tufa, also called "Horsebone" The proper kind of stone for rock gardens and Unusual Trees and Shrubs Religious Grottos. Large variety in size, shape and appearance. Send 520 Stamps In large quantities—$25.00 per ton for lots of interesting information In small quantities—$2.00 per Bu. 2t per lb. Selected specimens somewhat more DILATUSH NURSERY Depending cn size and appearance 780 Route 130 JOSEPH T. FERDULA Robbinsville, NJ. 08691 300 Litchfield St., Frankfort, N.Y. 13340 WATNONG NURSERY THE WILD GARDEN The place to find some Box 487 "HARD TO FIND" PLANTS Bothell, Washington 98011 Gaylussacia brachycera Offers some 300 new plants this year— Dwarf Conifers, LeiophyHum, dwarf & low growing Rhododendrons, R. yakusianum & alpines and perennials of middling height several of its hybrids —in a 500 Catalog Supplement (ready By Appointment, at the Nursery Only early spring). The $1.00 Main Catalog Hazel and Don Smith (1976-1977) is current and still available. 201 — 539-0312 -G.S. Morris Plains, New Jersey 07950 DWARF CONIFERS, ALPINE PLANTS RARE PLANTS and SEMPERVIVUMS, HOSTAS, SHRUBS BAMBOOS, ORNAMENTAL Dwarf slow growing conifers that GRASSES, EXOTIC MAPLES stay dwarf and other shrubs all suitable for Bonsai culture. Large illustrated Catalog 500 Large collection of Alpines as well Plants also available at the nursery as unusual plants are listed. Telephone: 215-536-4027 PALETTE GARDENS Please send $1.00 for catalog. ALPENGLOW GARDENS 26 West Zion Hill Road 13328 King George Highway Quakertown Pennsylvania 18951 Surrey, B.C. V3T 2T6, Canada 195 THE ALPINE GARDEN SOCIETY Membership of the Alpine Garden Society puts the American alpine gardener in close touch with those throughout the world who share his interest in one of the most absorbing branches of horticulture. The Quarterly Bulletin of the A.G.S. is respected internationally as one of the most informative publications of its kind. It will bring into your home a distillation of the experience and ideas of some of the finest gardeners, plant explorers and horticultural thinkers of our time. Among the many other benefits of the Society, its uniquely comprehensive seed list alone is worth more than the modest subscription of $10.00 for Overseas Mem• bers. Apply to:— The Secretary, The Alpine Garden Society Lye End Link, St. John's, Woking, Surrey, England THE SCOTTISH ROCK GARDEN CLUB Otters you . .. its twice yearly Journal, well illustrated and containing au• thoritative articles on all aspects of rock gardening, rock plants, and their world wide haunts. Its excellent annual scheme for the distribution of rare & unusual seed, amongst its international members. for £2.50 per year ($5.00) R. H. D. Orr, C.A. 70 High Street, Haddington East Lothian, Scotland will be glad to send particulars. THE ALPINE GARDEN SOCIETY'S PUBLICATIONS, WRITTEN BY ACKNOWLEDGED EXPERTS IN THEIR OWN SUBJECTS, OFFER OUTSTANDING VALUE THE GENUS LEWISIA By R. C. Elliott The only monograph on this fascinating American genus $3.50 SAXIFRAGES By Winton Harding A guide which should be read by every rock gardener $3.00 ALPINES IN SINKS AND TROUGHS By Joe Elliott A most useful guide by one of our best known nurserymen $2.00 THE GENUS CYCLAMEN By D. E. Saunders The most up to date book on this wonderful genus $2.00 ASIATIC PRIMULAS By Roy Green $7.00 DAPHNE By Chris Brickell and Brian Mathew $7.00 ANDR0SACES By George Smith and Duncan Lowe $7.00 (All prices postpaid) AGS Publications are available ONLY from: 0. K. HASELGR0VE, Distribution Manager, 278/280 Hoe Street, Walthamstow, London E17 9PL, England 196 DIRECTORATE AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY President Emeritus HAROLD EPSTEIN, 5 Forest Court, Larchmont, New York President JAMES A. MINOGUE, Rt. 1, Box 126A, Bentonville, Va. 22610 Vice-President ROBERT L. MEANS, 410 Andover St., Georgetown, Mass. 01833 Secretary DONALD M. PEACH, Box 183, Hales Corners, Wise. 53130 Treasurer FRANCIS H. CABOT, Cold Spring, N.Y. 10516 Directors Term Expires 1979 Harry Elkins Wayne Roderick Sharon Sutton Term Expires 1980 Norman C. Deno Mrs. Louis (Molly) Grothaus Ms. Deon R. Prell Term Expires 1981 Elizabeth Corning John Kovalchik Charlotte Ray Director of Seed Exchange Director of Slide Collection Frances Kinne Roberson Quentin C. Schlieder 1539 NE 103rd St., Seattle, Wa. 98125 Box 1295-R, Morristown, N.J. 07960 ARGS-PHS Library Service Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Library 325 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19106 CHAPTER CHAIRMEN Northwestern SHARON SUTTON, 8235 NE 119th St., Kirkland, Wash. 98033 Western WILLIAM S. FOLKMAN, 2640 San Benito Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94598 Midwestern AILEEN MCWILLIAM (Acting dim.), 711 Magnolia St., Mena, Ark. 71953 Allegheny DR. ROBERT MCDERMOTT, 1507 Mifflin Rd., Pittsburgh, PA 15207 Potomac Valley MRS. WILLIAM G. BANFIELD, 15715 Avery Rd., Rockville, Md. 20853 Co-Chairmen MRS. HERBERT L. KINNEY, 3611 King William Dr., Olney, Md. 20832 Delaware Valley ANITA H. KISTLER, 1421 Ship Road, West Chester, Pa. 19380 New England EDWIN F. STEFFEK, Cedar Hill Rd., Dover, Mass. 02030 Great Lakes HARRY W. BUTLER, Rte. #1, 2521 Penewit Rd., Spring Valley, OH 45370 Wisconsin-Illinois VAUGHN AIELLO, 2322 North Wayne, Chicago, IL 60614 Columbia-Willamette ..... KENNETH J. LOVE, 3335 N.W. Luray Terrace, Portland, Ore. 97210 Connecticut RICHARD W. REDFIELD, RFD #1, Hampton, CT 06247 Long Island JOHN BIEBER, 185-8th St., Bethpage, NY 11714 Hudson Valley JOHN TREXLER, c/o Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Box 1295-B, Morristown, NJ 07960 Minnesota MRS. HUGH COCKER, 4140 Highway 14 East, Rochester, Minn. 55901 Siskiyou CATHY KING (MRS. DON KING), 1101 Comet Ave., Central Point, OR 97502 Western-No. Carolina FRED REES, Rte #1, Saluda, N.C. 28773 Rocky Mountain T. PAUL MASLIN, 819 14th St., Boulder, Co. 80302 Adirondack KATHIE LIPPIT, 6 Glen Terrace, Scotia, NY 12302 YOUR ARGS STORE 1. ARGS BULLETINS, back issues. Refer to CUMULATIVE INDEX and listing in this issue for subjects, availability and prices. 2. ALASKA-YUKON WILDFLOWER GUIDE, Helen A. White (Ed.), paper only, many color plates and b & w sketches $6.00 3. SEED GERMINATION REPORT, Dara E. Emery (Ed.), data on selected species and forms by various reporters $1.00 4. THE ROCK GARDEN, Henry T. Skinner (reprint) $1.00 5. LIBRARY BINDERS, each holds two years $3.00 6. ARGS EMBLEMS, lapel or safety-clasp pins. Specify $3.00 7. ARGS SHOULDER PATCHES, washable $2.00 8. CUMULATIVE INDEX to ARGS Bulletins, Vols. 1-32, incl NC 9. ARGS SLIDE LIBRARY CATALOGUE NC 10. MEMBERSHIP LIST NC 11. LIBRARY SERVICE LIST NC Please order from Anita Kistler, 1421 Ship Rd., West Chester, Pa. 19380. All orders prepaid (foreign orders in U.S. funds, please); make checks or Postal Money Orders payable to "ARGS," (no cash). U.S. destinations must show ZIP code. Orders will be sent surface mail, postpaid; airmail charges billed at cost. BULLETINS FOR SALE —Back Numbers Available at $1.00 each Vol. 22, No. 3 Vol. 30, Nos. 2 & 4 Vol. 24, Nos. 3 & 4 Vol. 31, Nos. 2, 3 & 4 Vol. 26, No. 2 Vol. 32, Nos. 1, 3 & 4 Vol. 27, No. 1 Vol. 33, Nos. 1, 2, 3 & 4 Vol. 28, Nos. 1 & 4 Vol. 34, Nos. 2, 3 & 4 Vol. 29, Nos. 1, 2 & 4 Vol. 35, Nos. 1, 3 & 4 All Nos., Vol. 1 thru 10, & any Nos. in Vol. 11 thru 33, not specifically listed above, are $2.00 each, when available. Please inquire as to availability. "BARGAIN PACKAGE" Large stocks of certain numbers permit %-price offer — ten numbers at $5.00, So• ciety's selection, but your stated preference will be observed, if possible. For specific articles as listed in the Cumulative Index, give Vol. & pages listed. Issue will be sent, if available; otherwise, a charge of 151 per page for duplication from file copy. Please remit with order; foreign orders in U.S. funds, please. Shipments postpaid, except airmail (billed at cost). Please make checks/money orders payable to: AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY 1421 Ship Road West Chester, Pa. 19380