Bulletin of the American Rock Garden Society Vol. 38 Spring 1980 No. 2 The Bulletin Editor Emeritus DR. EDGAR T. WHERRY, Philadelphia, Pa. Editor LAURA LOUISE FOSTER, Falls Village, Conn. 06031 Assistant Editor HARRY DEWEY, 4605 Brandon Lane, Bellsville, Md. 20705 Contributing Editors:

Layout Designer: BUFFY PARKER Business Manager ANITA KISTLER, 1421 Ship Rd., West Chester, Pa. 19380 Contents Vol. 38 No. 2 Spring 1980

Erigenia Bulbosa—W. J. Hamilton Jr 53 The Mount Evans Region: Overview—Stanley C. Mahoney 55 Cacti: America's Foremost Rock Plants, Part III—Allan R. Taylor and Panayoti Callas - 59 The Bog—Deanna K. Hagen 66 Not All Plantsmen Are Men: Mary Gibson Henry, Part I— Josephine deN. Henry 68 In a Southwestern Garden—Ray Williams 74 Garden Visits in Czechoslovakia—Hans W. Asmus 80 Seed Preferences, 1978 and 1979—Betty J. Lowry and Ned M. Lowry 82 A Superb Hardhead—Zdenek Zvolanek ~ 86 Book Reviews: Mountain Flower Holidays in Europe by Dr. Lionel J. Bacon 87 Rock Gardening in the South, Part 3—Dwarf and Pygmy Conifers— Elizabeth Lawrence 90 Gardening in Sand—Norman C. Deno 95 Of Cabbages and Kings: Note on Phlox Bifida—Mina Colvin 97 Front Cover Picture—Erigenia bulbosa—William C. Dilger, Freeville, N.Y.

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, $9.00; Family Membership (two per family), $10.00; Overseas Mem• bership, $8.00 each to be submitted in U.S. funds or International Postal Money Order; Patron's Membership, $25; Life Membership, $250. Optional 1st cl. delivery, U.S. and Canada, $3.00 additional annually. Optional air delivery overseas, $6.00 additional annually. Member• ship inquiries and dues should be sent to Donald M. Peach, Secretary, Box 183, Hales Comers, 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. Bulletin of the American Rock Garden Society (ISSN 0003-0864.) Vol. 38 Spring 1980 No. 2

Bulletin of the merican Rock Garden Society

ERIGENIA BULBOSA

W. J. HAMILTON JR. Ithaca, N.Y. Drawing by William C. Dilger, Freeville, N.Y.

Many of our small native plants add to its very early bloom and diminutive great interest to the rock garden and size, the purplish black flower clusters woodland border in late March or early barely protruding a few inches above April. Unless rarities, they are often the ground and then often hidden by free for the taking. There is one little dead leaves. Thus it is easily overlooked native charmer that seldom appears in and not often seen or collected while the garden; indeed, it is little known in flower. Erigenia is the earliest even to the field botantist. Erigenia flowering umbellifer in the eastern bulbosa, often called Harbinger of United States. The monotypic genus was Spring, has a wide distribution, oc• first described by Andre Michaux in curring from Alabama to eastern 1803, from plants collected by himself Maryland west to the mountain uplands, near Knoxville, Tennessee. and from Mississippi to Kansas, Min• Roland Harper (Torreya, 1932: 141) nesota, southern Ontario and western found the plant about ten miles from New York. It is not uniformly Tuscaloosa, Alabama in rich shady distributed through this apparently woods, on soil of weathered shale mixed large range, but must be more common with humus. This was on March 4, than our records would indicate. This 1932. Six weeks later he found plants presumed scarcity is undoubtedly due with fruit nearly fully developed, but

53 not quite ripe. Erythronium a m e r i c anu m and In his Flora of Missouri, Julian Sanguinaria. Steyermark states that Erigenia and At Ithaca, the pinkish buds pierce Trillium nivale are the two earliest of the frozen earth usually from March the herbaceous native plants to bloom. 13 to 18. The leafless plant stays in Usually, however, this Harbinger of good flower for about ten days. As the Spring precedes the Snow Trillium by bloom fades the ternately decompound as much as three weeks. Steyermark and airy leaves unfold. They will persist gives its habitat as rich woods, usually for three or four weeks, then disappear. at or near the base of slopes, or in Then no mark is left in the site which alluvial woods and soils along streams has provided the gardener with several and in valleys, alluvial thickets and weeks of pleasure. at the base of rocky bluffs. Erigenia is such a diminutive beauty 0. E. Jennings (Wildflowers of that I grow some in tubs, the better Western Pennsylvania) well remembers to observe them more closely. Others his boyhood when he worked his grow at the base of shrubs in fairly grandfather's sugar bush in north cen• heavy soil. Increase is not rapid. If tral Ohio. He watched eagerly for the one would propagate this little gem, Pepper-and-Salt, blossoming in late a determined effort must be made to February or early March, and often gather seed. Do not delay until the buried by late snow. The anthers are globular seed pod has softened and first a rose purple, changing to dark lost its greenness, for dehiscence is abrupt. purplish brown against the white A jar top or petri dish should be placed petals; they look like a sprinkling of beneath the ripening capsule, or the pepper on salt, hence the name, Pepper plant lifted with a generous sod of earth and Salt. The tubers, which have a and brought into shelter for the ripen• pleasant aromatic taste, are eaten raw. ing process. Jennings states that it prefers deciduous As for the deep seated tuber, I do woods, particularly the climax beech- not know how it multiples, for no off• sugar maple forest. sets have been observed. Bulbs, tubers My friend, Dr. John 0. Whitaker and corms change form and ap• Jr. of Terra Haute, Indiana writes that pearances at different seasons. Indeed, the plant appears to prefer loamy soils their dependent roots may differ especially along ravines in woods where substantially in structure and function sun filters through the trees. Less often at the same season. It is interesting it occupies more open areas. It flowers and instructive to dig bulbous plants from mid to late March, before Clayto- at various times of the year, if for nia. In the severe 1976-77 winter, no other reason than to ascertain how blossoming was not delayed, but in the underground parts of the plant are the 1977-78 winter, intense cold and functioning. Perhaps our failures with long snow cover was cause for delayed so many plants may be attributed to bloom. The snow disappeared on March a lack of understanding of how these 27, but Erigenia did not flower until subterranean parts function. In early April 9, and all bloom was gone by November, 1978 I dug six tubers of April 15. All early flowers were delayed Erigenia. All were somewhat irregular about Terra Haute, and it finally held in form, measuring 17-18 mm. in company with Claytonia, Dentaria, Lin- diameter and having a similar depth. dera, Isopyrum, Dicentra cucullaria, A short warty neck supported the new

54 yellow-tipped white shoot. The tuber, bring all the little treasures of late then, is not dormant in autumn, but winter and early spring nearer to the preparing itself to make quick new eye, and give some protection from growth with the advent of a mild spell slugs. in late winter. The tubers were Thanks are due my colleagues, Dr. replanted in my oak barrels. When these William J. Dress who provided several tubs are cut in two and provided with references and Dr. William C. Dilger drainage holes, they serve as ideal plan• for his drawing of a freshly dug plant. ters and are as durable as sinks. They

The Mount Evans Region: Overview

STANLEY C. MAHONEY Westminster, Colorado

In the summer of 1982 the ARGS plans to hold its Annual Meeting in Boulder, Colorado, an area about which very little has appeared in the pages of the Bulletin in recent years. The editor, therefore, plans to run from time to time articles about some of the mountainous areas and the rich alpine flora in the vicinity of Boulder. In addition we hope to publish a few stories about those who have explored and written about this botanical paradise. The following is excerpted by John G. Worman of Boulder from a booklet Mount Evans Above Treeline by Stanley C. Mahoney. The map was drawn by Evan Lucas and the booklet is published by Johnson Publishing Company of Boulder.

The Mount Evans region is located ed Pikes Peak lies about sixty miles about 35 miles west of Denver. There southeast of Mount Evans and Longs is an elevation gain of approximately Peak in the Rocky Mountain National 9,000 feet from Denver, which is Park is about fifty miles to the north. already a mile above sea level, to the These three peaks, all rising over four• Mount Evans summit. The entire trip teen thousand feet, can be seen from can be made on excellent roads since many points in the Denver area. Mount Evans has the distinction of The Mount Evans area above tim• having the highest paved road in the berline contains two named summits United States. rising above fourteen thousand feet, six Mount Evans itself is not on the named summits between 13,000 feet and Continental Divide. It lies about eight 14,000 feet, eight summits between miles east of the Divide. However, you 12,000 feet and 13,000 feet, and sixteen can go on foot from Mount Evans summits between 11,000 feet and 12,000 to the Divide without dropping below feet. The two highest peaks are Mount timberline at any point. The more fam• Evans at 14,264 feet and Mount

55 Bierstadt at 14,060 feet. Although these and rocks that go back millions of figures change from time to time be• years still exist in its high regions. cause of changes both in the mountains The winds and storms still blow, and themselves and in surveying techniques, the snows still fall as in times of old. Mount Evans currently ranks as the Even today man is largely driven from 13th highest peak in Colorado and its uppermost reaches by the harsh ele• Mount Bierstadt as the 41st highest. ments of winter. Longs Peak at 14,255 feet ranks 14th But the Mount Evans region above and Pikes Peak at 14,110 feet ranks timberline, because of its very acces- 32nd. Actually the differences in al• sability, does provide an opportunity titude among the approximately fifty- for a person to experience something four peaks in Colorado rising to over of the vastness and solitude of the high fourteen thousand feet are quite small, mountain country without having to with the highest being Mount Elbert camp out overnight to do so. It provides at 14,431. an intermediate choice between making By way of further perspective, Mount a long backpacking trip or not ex• Evans ranks 16th in altitude among periencing the high country at all. the named mountains in the United Hopefully those who experience some• States excluding Alaska. California's thing of the country above timberline Mount Whitney, at 14,495 feet less than on Mount Evans, even if for only a 300 feet higher than Mount Evans, few hours, will be more inclined to ranks first. All fifty-four mountains appreciate the need for protecting the above 14,000 feet in the Rocky Moun• little true wilderness that still exists tains are located in Colorado, amply in this country above timberline. justifying the state's nickname of "High The Mount Evans region is bounded Country U.S.A." When the world scene on the north, east, and south by paved is considered, however, even the four• highways. Major towns lying along teen thousand footers shrink somewhat. these highways include Georgetown Mount Everest, the world's highest (5745 below Mount Evans at 8419 mountain at 29,028 feet, is over twice feet), Idaho Springs (6724 feet below the height of Mount Evans. Alaska's Evans at 7540 feet), Evergreen (7224 Mount McKinley rises to 20,320 feet, feet below Evans at 7040 feet), Conifer Africa's fabled Kilimanjaro to 19,340 (5994 feet below Evans at 8270 feet), feet, Mexico's Orizaba to 18,700 feet, Bailey (6514 feet below Evans at 7750 and Europe's famed Matterhorn to feet), and Grant (5684 feet below Evans 14,690 feet. at 8580 feet). A gravel road runs for Mount Evans is not a wilderness area. 25 miles between Grant and Georgetown This giant west of Denver rather ap• over Guanella Pass (11,665 feet) to propriately looks stoop shouldered since the west of the Evans region. It is it bears the shackles and scars of the almost 100 miles around the Evans ventures of man. Power lines cross its region via these roads and towns. ridges, a paved road runs to its summit, Two paved roads provide direct ac• trails and jeep roads abound, and there cess to the Evans timberline area. State is even a restaurant on its top. Despite Highway 103, also known as the Squaw the marks of man, however, the Mount Pass Road, runs from Bergen Park Evans region above timberline still ex• on the east 18 miles to Echo Lake. ists in large part as it has for centuries. The road runs along the crest of the Trees dating back over a thousand years northeast ridge and provides easy access

56 to several timberline peaks, State High• bristlecone pine at timberline out onto way 103 continues on from Echo Lake the high tundra. After passing Summit 14 miles down to Idaho Springs on Lake at 12,830 feet the road makes the north and thus also provides easy the final ascent to the summit up the access from Interstate 70 and Idaho relatively gentle but boulder-strewn Springs. south slope of Evans in a series of State Highway 5, better known as switchbacks. Construction was started the Mount Evans Road, runs 14 miles on this road in 1922 and the final from Echo Lake to the summit of stretch to the summit was completed Mount Evans. The road, which is paved in 1930. The original road was not all the way, climbs over 3600 feet from hard-surfaced and black-topping was the 10,000 feet altitude at Echo Lake applied in later years. Additional as• to the Evans summit. Because of phalt is needed in the paving at these weather conditions the road is open high altitudes to make the surface more for only a few months in the summer, weather-resistant. generally from mid-June to Labor Day. The Mount Evans Road has several A unique drive, the road winds upward turn-outs for viewing the peaks and through dense timber past stands of lakes. On a clear day the peaks along

57 the Continental Divide to the west are as does Echo Lake below timberline. visible as well as many peaks in the The federal lands are administered by Evans area. In the Goliath Peak area the Forest Service of the U.S. Depart• there are two nature exhibits accessible ment of Agriculture with the northern from the road. The bristlecone pine area in the Arapahoe National Forest stand in this area is truly superb. Sum• and the southern area in the Pike Na• mit Lake, part of the Denver Mountain tional Forest. An information and Park System, is an excellent example display office is maintained just south of a high alpine lake. It lies in the of Idaho Springs on the road to Mount cirque just to the north of Mount Evans Evans. The Forest Service maintains and the cliffs rise up from the lake several campgrounds and many picnic to both Mount Evans and Mount Spald- grounds in the Evans region. ing- The Mount Evans region above There are two eating facilities in 11,000 feet can be conveniently describ• the Mount Evans region itself. Echo ed as consisting of five areas: central Lake Lodge, located just east of Echo area, northwest ridge, northeast ridge, Lake, is a large rustic building with southeast ridge and southwest area. We huge timbers and a magnificent central are interested in the central area. This fireplace. It is usually open from is the high core of the Evans region, Memorial Day to the last Sunday in an area well above timberline charac• September. The Mount Evans Crest terized by tundra and rock, cirques House, constructed in 1940-41, is and tarns, peaks and cliffs. Centrally located on the summit and is usually located, it contains the two fourteen open from mid-June to Labor Day. thousand foot peaks, Mount Evans and The Mount Evans road terminates at Mount Bierstadt, and the rugged the Crest House. Heavy snows, as in Sawtooth ridge connecting them. Mount 1969, sometimes delay the opening until Evans is named after John Evans, se• early July. (Crest House unfortunately cond governor of the Colorado Ter• was destroyed by fire during the late ritory, and Mount Bierstadt after the summer — Ed.) artist who painted many Colorado With few exceptions the land above mountains. timberline in the Evans region is Reprinted with the permission of federally owned. Summit Lake belongs Stanley C. Mahoney. to the Denver Mountain Park System

Information Wanted Anita Kistler would like to chronicle individual results of seed germination from the Watson-McPhail Expedition to Turkey. She'd like to know the number of shares bought, results, what germinated grew on. bloomed, lived, died. Also: how they were planted, where, in what mixture, at what temperature, etc. Send the information to her at 1421 Ship Rd.. West Chester, Pa. 19380.

58 Cacti: America's Foremost Rock Plants Part III

ALLAN R. TAYLOR and PANAYOTI CALLAS Boulder, Colorado Photographs by Anthony Taylor, Boulder, Colorado

The "Prickly Pears" One could specialize, indeed, in the different shapes if they are subjected genus Opuntia alone (although we do to different conditions of moisture, soil not necessarily advocate it) which or exposure. inlcudes a vast number of bone-hardy From the sand dunes of the species and varieties exhibiting a vast Southeastern States, north to Canada range of variations. The flat-padded and across to the Olympic Peninsula Opuntias constitute a sort of ar• and everywhere to the South, the chetypical cactus. This is the cactus Prickly Pears have plagued livestock which would come to mind if the man and careless hikers for years. This is on the street were asked to draw a reason enough for the crankier gardener picture of a cactus (assuming he mo• to begin to like them. Lewis and Clark mentarily forgot about Saguaros.) marvelled at the vast expanses carpeted The variation among Prickly Pears with Gpunlia polyacantha along their is more than disconcerting, it beggars route. What visitor since then hasn't description. Flower color varies fan• been intimidated by the omnipresent tastically, straw yellow to deep lemon Opuntia clan that dominates so much and gold-flushed hues, green, white, of our American landscape? And yet, orange, copper, bi-colors, rose, purple every one of the dozens of fuzzily and even deep red occur. The spines delimited species can yield garden can be several inches long, produced plants of exceptional interest. Many are thickly enough to hide the pad, tiny decorative in all their forms —- like and concise or completely lacking as 0. clavata, 0. basilaris or O. pulchella. in most forms of Opuntia basilaris. If many other Opuntias manifest This variation of flower, superficial ap• themselves as floppy, bug-eaten, pearance, spine and pad shape and col• endlessly ramifying swarms in the wild, or varies almost as much within the this doesn't mean the genus is hopeless larger specific groups as it does within in the garden. The trick to growing the entire genus, for the Prickly Pears Opuntias in the garden lies in selecting are still in an active state of evolution. the proper form for the proper spot. Not only are Opuntias remarkedly They should be placed where the gra• plastic genetically, but the entire genus dually growing mound will not be press• is remarkably responsive to en• ed upon by neighbors, where the pads vironmental influence. Since most mem• can ripen sufficiently in the sun to bers of the genus grow quickly, they remain sturdy through variable winter are far more subject to the vagaries weather and where the roots will not of weather, soil and climate. Cuttings be subject to rot in the winter. Although from the same plant can assume entirely in the wild a Prickly Pear is just as

59 likely to be found on alkaline flats, (barbed bristles, sometimes almost in• in short-grass prairie, on sand dunes visible) at the base of each spine are or even river benches that are a unique feature of this genus. The periodically flooded, all members of this cactus gardener quickly learns to genus look and thrive especially well respect them. If other gardeners choose when they are elevated in the garden, to reject the entire genus because of placed among rocks for the swelling some painfully close encounter, or pre• mound to embrace and cascade over. tend that the whole mess doesn't exist Properly situated, in a somewhat fertile just because their relationships are com• and porous soil, a plant of almost any plicated, the loss is entirely his. species of Opuntia will assume The Opuntias are divided by taxo- unsuspected grace and remain healthy nomists into two large groups: those for many years. In early summer, when with flat pads (Platyopuntias) and such a plant produces a wealth of showy those whose stems consist of cylindrical salvers, the genus comes into its own. segments (Cylindropuntia). The latter For the flowers of most Prickly Pears are often called by their Spanish name, are of such a size and scintillating "Cholla." There are numerous hardy, brilliance as to challenge the descriptive eminently cultivatable plants in both powers of a poet. groups. When Ball Cactus or Hedgehogs are One of the most beautiful of the grown, they are usually massed in for• platyopuntias in terms of its form and midable battalions that detract from flowers is Opuntia polyacantha, which the intricate patterning of the individual occurs all over the Great Plains and plant. Opuntias, on the other hand, into the Great Basin. The pads of this are never allowed more than a token cactus are rather longish and covered appearance in the garden, and usually with spines grouped in a kind of relegated to the dingiest and most un• crowfoot pattern. The color of the pads wholesome spot at that. We feel that and spines varies considerably over the for the cold climate dryland garden, range of the species, but the generalized the Opuntias are supreme architectural "Hunger Cactus" is typically gray in plants that should be used much in the color of its pads with fine, pure the manner of dwarf shrubs and con• white spines. The plants are low and ifers in the alpine garden: to provide sprawling (they must support heavy sculpturesque, bold relief from a winter snows throughout much of their monotony of detail. Several contrasting range) and a single plant can become Opuntias — upright and procumbent, a patch a yard wide. The satiny flowers shaggy spined and naked, rose and can be any color in the "warm" range yellow flowered — planted in proximity from pale yellow to deepest red. Most to one another will eventually blend frequently encountered are yellow and into a symphonic counterpoint that can purplish rose. In some individuals the greatly enhance the interest of a rock stamens are also colored: brilliant garden at all seasons. yellow-flowered specimens with dark If Opuntias incite anger and frustra• ruby stamens are among the most tion, it is through no fault of their beautiful in the genus. own. Of course, their armaments are Another Opuntia famed world-wide the most cleverly devised of all the for its beauty and hardiness is Opuntia cacti to inflict the maximum pain. The rutila, which some authors treat as tiny tufts of harmless-looking glochids a variety of the previous species (O.

60 Opuntia polyacantha *Mm$m polyacantha variety rufispina), while puntia it would probably be the Mojave others lump it with Opuntia fragilis. Desert native, Opuntia basilaris. Many It may comprise a transitional phase named and unnamed forms of this between these two very different plants, striking plant are fully hardy to -10°F. but is distinctive in its own right. It As the name implies, this plant tends is one of the most frequently en• to branch from the base, although countered cacti in the Great Basin, grow• plants with pads stacked on pads are ing at practically alpine elevations on also common. Apart from the magnifi• some of the desert ranges. The spines cent flowrers, the outstanding feature of in 0. rutila are stiff and a rich, dark 0. basilaris is its total, or near-total, brown or purple. The typical flower lack of spines. The thick, smooth, is a brilliant rose and often measures purplish pads of the spineless varieties more than three inches in diameter. are very reminiscent of beaver tails, The pads are quite variable in shape, and "Beavertail" is the common name although they tend to be rather small for this cactus wherever it is grown. compared to other species in its range Many varieties, while lacking long and sometimes almost cylindrical in spines, nevertheless have bundles of glo- form. It's not surprising that 0. rutila chids, which give the pads a tufted is widely sought by gardeners in nor• or quilted appearance. The flowers of thern Europe, the U.S.S.R. and Japan this complex are large (in variety where it withstands -20°F. without a brachyclada the flowers are larger than whimper and blooms as lustily there the pad), very double and typically as it does on the sun-drenched mesas a scintillating rose, although they are of western Colorado. an equally brilliant lemon in variety If we had to pick a favorite Platyo- aurea. White flowers predominate in

61 Opuntia basilaris var. aurea yet other populations. If you have ever variety. The consistent spinelessness of wondered why the desert photographs variety denudata, along with the fact in Arizona Highumys are so breathtak- that its range overlaps with that of ing, the chances are good that it is 0. basilaris var. aurea suggests that because they so often include in the the peculiar traits that characterize this foreground a blooming Opuntia anomalous plant derive from a hybrid basilaris. ancestry. This plant, which tightly fills Opuntia fragilis may be the least crevices between rocks with its sym- loved Prickly Pear, thanks to its metrical, gray mounds, can be com- flimsily-jointed pads which fall apart pared favorably with any mimicry at a touch and hitch a ride with every plant, and it is certainly one of the passing creature. (If you hate picking choicest subjects for the well-drained gumweed seeds from your socks, try rock garden. the fava-bean size pads of 0. fragilis!) Space does not permit the description This asexual reproductive strategy has of all the hardy Platyopuntias, but men- spread this plant far and wide across tion must be made of several forms the West, and also (apparently) and varieties of O. erinacea. This re- selected for paucity of flower, since sembles the Prickly Pears so far this species rarely blooms. One form discussed in producing a dry seed cap- of O. fragilis, variety denudata, native sule, rather than a fleshy fruit. The to southwestern Utah, departs from the most famous variety of this species rule for the species, for it is quite is certainly the famed "Grizzly Bear" floriferous. Its large, pale yellow cactus (Opuntia erinacea var. ursina) flowers contrast beautifully with the which hails from the Death Valley area blunt, steel-gray, spineless pads of this of southeastern California. Plants of

62 this variety, which includes both yellow Pears of the Southwest evolved from and rose-flowered forms, are so com• Opuntia erinacea with other species. pletely covered by long, hair-like spines It has also bequeathed magnificent up to four inches in length that the flowers and short, stiff, white marginal pads are completely obscured. The bristles to its half-caste descendants. white to gray color of these tousled Some varieties of Opuntia violacea spines would certainly have merited — Opuntia santarita complex ("Purple the specific name senilis, but the com• Prickly Pear") must also be mentioned, mon name (invented by a nurseryman) if only briefly. Besides the nearly was already well enough established to smooth, round, lavender pad, some with influence the choice of the specific when magnificent long, dark brown or black the plant was officially described. The marginal spines, these cacti are famous beautiful var. utahensis is widespread for their brilliant yellow, ruby-centered along the eastern fringe of the species' flowers. Cuttings taken from a roadside overall range. It has a more procum• plant (var. macrocentra) near Carlsbad, bent habit and smaller pads. Its New Mexico, have proven to be perfectly superceded appellation of Opuntia rho- hardy in Boulder. A problem yet to be dantha neatly described its charac• overcome with this beautiful plant is the teristically cerise flower color. Most of breakage at the joint caused by the hur• the members of this complex of O. ricane force winds that plague our area erinacea share a rather more upright in the winter. Since the plant is upright habit than others of the flat-padded and retains considerable turgidity all cacti. This trait has been imparted to winter, it obviously needs to be grown in the many hybrid swarms of Prickly the lee of an effective wind shield. An-

Opuntia erinacea

63 other clone, from far into the Great Basin (reportely from near Wendover, Utah — far outside its recorded range) has fared better with the wind here than its southern relative. Opuntia phaeacantha, the fleshy fruited "New Mexico Prickly Pear" is a variable complex that cannot be pass• ed over in silence. This group is widely distributed throughout the Southern Great Plains and far into the Southwest. Plants in this complex vary in height from one to three feet. The pads are at least as large as a man's hand and are typically long-spined, with dark brown spines often bristling along the margins of the pad. Most of the mem• bers of this species have rather unin• teresting yellowish flowers, but all have Opuntia hystricina very attractive, burgundy-colored fruits. Unusually attractive flowers occur in their lustrous spine sheaths. In O. local populations of var. pliaeacantha davisii these are a rich amber color, found in certain canyons i n while in 0. echinocarpa the sheathes southwestern Colorado. Although many are either straw-colored or white (in plants in these populations have yellow different individuals) yielding the com• flowers, others have large, dark rose mon names "gold" and "silver" flowers while still others have flowers cholla. Properly grown, any of these of brilliant scarlet. A salmon-flowered can attain the stature of a man. Need• variety has also been reported from the less to say, care should be taken in Virgin Mountains of southern Nevada. placing them in the rock garden for If we have only scratched the surface a mature cholla does not take kindly of what could be said about the flat- to humans. padded Opuntias, much less can be Probably the choicest of this group said about those with cylindrical seg• for the desert rock garden is Opuntia ments. First of all, there are fewer clavata, a mat-forming cholla which species and varieties of chollas; consists of short, prostrate, drumstick- moreover, many of these are scarcely shaped stems that are armed with wide, appropriate as rock garden subjects due very stiff, bone-white dagger-like spines. to their near arborescence. For desert A single plant can cover a large area, gardens of sufficient size to warrant in time. Although 0. clavata rarely the inclusion of such large cacti there blooms, it is not obliged to do so: are Opuntia imbricata, from the cold it more than justifies its keep by its northern portions of the Chihuahua fascinating appearance. This is certainly desert, O. davisii from much the same one of the most threatened species in range, and O. echinocarpa from the the genus, since it is restricted to a Mojave Desert. O. imbricata is justly rather limited habitat mostly near the famous for its large purple flowers, exploding city of Albuquerque, New while the others are largely grown for Mexico.

64 Ihree additional, shrubby chollas are and greenish — of little consequence. of some gardening interest, especially The third shrubby cholla which where heavy snowfall is not too great grows well in cold climates is 0. kleinii. a threat. The most attractive of these It, too, suffers from the affliction of in our opinion is Opuntia leptocaulis, slender stems that break under heavy the "Pencil Cholla". Although most snows. If it is to be attempted — forms of this lovely cactus are tender, and its purple flowers are worth the some quite short northern populations effort — it must be provided with stout are found far up in the Texas panhandle support. The most naturalistic support where the climate is rigorous. This fine for these weaker chollas are the sturdy stemmed plant grows by preference un• canes of their robust relative, O. im- der and among stouter plants, such bricata, which can bear a heavy load as Creosote Bush, or Berberis trifoliata, of snow. A mixed planting of chollas so that its long, slender stems find is the stratagem we have resorted to something to lean against and so remain in order to beat the problem of the erect. A casual glance often fails to heavy, late spring snows of Colorado. detect the plant hidden in the center One thoroughly charming Opuntia re• of its "host", unless the cactus happens mains to be mentioned. This is 0. pul- to be in fruit. The small, berry-like chella. This plant is so different from fruits turn bright red after frost and other members of its genus that one it is this characteristic which has earned taxonomist has even set up a special the plant the name the "Desert section for it. This native of the Christmas Cactus." The flowers are Western Great Basin has tiny, cholla- small and greenish and somewhat rare. like stems which sit atop a tuberous We have never had any on our plants root that looks like nothing more than in Boulder. a large, bulbous radish. In its native Opuntia whipplei occurs widely all habitat the neck of the tuber often over northern Arizona and neighbor• protrudes from the soil and affords ing regions, having its center in the a perch for green and orange lichens area of the Kaibab Plateau. Many forms which help, presumably, to camouflage of this viciously spiny plant are found, the plant. Not that it needs this protec• some serving as dune catchers in the tion, for even the tuber is covered below Four-Corners area, others forming the ground with a dense covering of lovely, rather tall, candelabras on the painful glochids. The spines are long, western edge of this distribution. The black and flexible. The flowers are very plants are a dark green color, enlivened large (in comparison with the plant) with thickly set spines that are relatively and purplish in color. This plant is short and white-sheathed. The taller very difficult to grow. Collected tubers forms are highly vulnerable to damage are almost impossible to reestablish; by heavy snow, which crushes the slen• cuttings are relatively easy to root, but der stalks, as happened here in Boulder take a long time to produce a noticeable in May of 1978. One of the more specimen. A gardener who manages to interesting forms of this cactus in our grow 0. pulchella in his garden is garden is a nearly spineless dwarf lucky indeed, for it is certainly one which forms a creeping mat of tiny, of the most fascinating cactus, if not erect rattails. This was found among the queen of the genus. typical plants in the Four Corners Area. The treatment given here to the The flowers of 0. whipplei are small Opuntias has been scandalously brief,

65 and we know that those of our friends through the magnificence of the who know this genus will note that Hedgehogs, around the jungle thickets many worthy species and cultivars have of Prickly Pears, he may still harbor not been mentioned. We beg their in• Reginald Farrer's sentiments about dulgence and forgiveness, for this is these "flattened little columns of hate." not, after all, the magnum opus on If so, (and each is entitled to his own gardenworthy Prickly Pears! Few who opinion) we can only regret his con• come to the West with unjaundiced tumacy and mourn, for him, his loss. eyes would question the assertion that But for rock gardeners like ourselves, it would take a garden as untrammeled born and bred among the mesas and as the Western skyline and as glorious canyons of the West, the perfectly as the canyonlands to do justice to adapted cactus remains the quintessen• these undeservedly neglected plants. tial symbol of the drama and beauty At this point (if he has stayed with of our landscape. It is an indispensable us this long) the reader of the Bulletin ingredient in that part of it which we may yet be unpersuaded. Having pro• weed and choose to call a garden. gressed with us from the tiny huddled ball cacti with flamboyant flowers, Final installment of three part article

THE BOG

DEANNA K. HAGEN Richfield, Minnesota Illustrated by Allan Stavos, Wayzata, Minn.

A trip through a bog is an experience I've scouted through a number of all its own. Once you have ventured bogs, both during severe drought and in, it calls you back time and again. at times of normal rainfall. It is very A bog is soft, moist and spongy. easy to get around during a drought: A marsh or swamp is sometimes called in some cases all you need as footwear a bog and to get directly to the center are street shoes; however, under normal of a true bog, you usually go through weather conditions, rubber boots are an area of marsh or swamp, but a a must. Always use caution when going true floating peat bog consists of a into bogs. There are frequently open, thick mat of vegetation rooted in semi- very soft spots and when the bog is decayed and living sphagnum moss or formed over or on the outskirts of sedges, usually growing over water. ponds and small lakes, you can sink This mat is completely saturated and through the mat quite easily. In any floats upon the water beneath it, un• case, never go alone. dulating like a huge water-bed as you The bogs I have visited in our area walk across it. The term "peat", ac• have certain similarities. They all have cording to Webster's Dictionary, is an overstorey of spruce, birch, Pin partly decayed turf of water absorbing Cherries, alders, White Pine and plant matter found in ancient bogs and Swamp Oak while the understorey con• swamps. sists of osmunda ferns and such shrubs

66 as Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium hispidula,) and Leatherleaf angustijolium) and Labrador Tea (Le- (Chamaedaphne calycidata.) Another dum groenlandicum.) The ground is bog along a roadside had cotton grass clothed with a web of cranberries, Mud and Bog Rosemary (Andromeda glauco- Plantain (Heteranthera reniformis), philla), while on the verge of yet an• and mosses, jeweled by brightly colored other bog site Downy Rattlesnake mushrooms. However, in addition to Plantain (Goodyera pubescens) raised these, each bog has its own special its spikes of waxy white blossoms above plants. mats of tessallated leaves. One, located at the bottom of a steep These plants are much more easily hill, rewarded me with Goldthread discovered at the season of their bloom• (Coptis groenlandica) growing around ing. In addition to those I have found, the base of ferns, Buckbean (Menyan- there are many other beautiful ferns, thes trifoliate), its starry white blooms orchids, and gentians known to grow furred with crystalline hairs. Pink in our bogs, which I have not yet Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), come across. When spring comes you pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea,) will undoubtedly find me in a bog Starflowers (Trientalis borealis, ) in the hope of locating plants I have Creeping Snowberry ( Gaultheria not yet seen.

67 NOT ALL PLANTSMEN ARE MEN MARY GIBSON HENRY

Part I

JOSEPHINE deN. HENRY Gladwyne, Pennsylvania

This reminiscence about Mrs. Henry, whose explorations for especially fine forms of our native flora, particularly in the Southeast, have contributed many excellent plants to our gardens, is written by her daughter, who is presently the head of the Henry Foundation for Botanical Research founded by Mrs. Henry in Gladwyne, Pa. Here, in the extensive wild gardens and rock gardens planted by Mrs. Henry around her home, many of the plants she found and introduced into horticulture can still be seen. Mrs. Henry, one of the early members of ARGS, was a regular contributor to the Bulletin and her many articles about her garden and some of the native plants she particularly treasured are a delight to read. These were illustrated, in the main, with photographs taken by her friend and mentor, Dr. Edgar T. Wherry. Among some of the better known plants introduced by Mrs. Henry are Phlox 'Chattahoochee', Phlox stolonifera 'Blue Ridge' and 'Pink Ridge', and Phlox nivalis 'Gladwyne'. —Ed.

My mother, Mary Klett Gibson was born to John Howard Gibson and his wife, Susan (nee Pepper), on August 15, 1884, at the summer home of her ma• ternal grandparents, "Fairy Hill", near Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. From this time on she spent a portion of her early summers upon this property, which her mother subsequently inherited. Interrup• tions to these visits were stays at Kineo House on Moosehead Lake in Maine until the untimely death of her father on April 6, 1894. Here it was that, under her father's tutelage, she truly fell in love with the outdoors, the native plants, and particularly the exquisite wee Linnaea borealis which trailed contentedly upon the moss cushioned forest floor. She was Phlox 'Chattahoochee —Henry photo also thrilled with the wonderful scent of Abies balsamea although she and her Her uncle, John Pepper, bought prop• sister did not enjoy the sticky task im• erty adjoining "Fairy Hill" and built a posed upon them of making balsam pil• handsome house in the then very new Old lows for the older members of the family. English timbered and stone manner. The

68 gardens were superb. One was in the for• awarded the honorary degree of Master of mal Italian style with pergolas, pools, Science from the University of Pennsyl• seats, and gravel walks edged in box, vania. and there was an old fashioned garden She had a horse-drawn red dog cart for her aunt bounded by walls and hedges which she drove until she, her sister and with winding paths of grass and an ir• brother acquired a curved dash Oldsmo- regular pattern. All the beds were of bile about 1902. She was an early driver diverse forms in an ever constant riot of and was able to recall many tales of the color provided by annuals and peren• difficulties encountered whenever they nials. This was used in part as a "pick• went for a drive, almost never with the ing" garden. In the lower land there was intention of arriving at a specific place. a pond bordered with a water garden. My I only remember her driving an auto mother spent considerable time with her once when my father persuaded her to uncle wandering about the place al• take the wheel. He was afraid that she though she felt that the plants in such would drive off the road upon being formal settings were too remote. Never• overwhelmed with the beauty of a mem• theless, it was he who encouraged her ber of the blossoming world. From 1927 and gave her books. Without doubt, it Ernest Perks, the family chauffeur and was from one of his catalogues that she subsequent gardener, drove on many col• ordered her first plant by mail, a "pink" lecting trips and was with her in that violet, Viola cucullata 'Pink Gem'. She capacity for thirty-nine years. was about ten, and this peripatetic Viola In 1909 she married my father, J. is still with me! Thank Heaven for its Norman Henry, M.D. Five children were cleistogamous nature because we had born to them. Alas, the youngest, Port, thought it gone three or more times. lived only until the age of seven. For My grandmother provided my mother several years after their marriage my with a small spot for a garden upon the mother was unable to indulge in garden• lawn, as well as one for her sister and ing although she continued to read eager• an observatory for her astronomically in• ly. It was not until they bought 1906 clined brother. I well remember these Spruce Street in Philadelphia that she three oases. The miniscule gardens each could at last lay out her garden, a con• had a different summerhouse or pergola tinuous undulating bed all about the festooned with grapes such as the Con• "green" grass center. This was backed by cord, a red Catawba and a green, no a tall stuccoed wall with trellises at in• doubt Niagara. The gardens were not tervals, one struggling under the weight fenced, and my mother's accommodated of a 'Silver Moon' rose. All the others Hemerocallis, Iris fulva, the "pink" vi• suffered under our feet so Clematis and olet and a native water lily happily float• other vines could not compete with us ing in a half barrel sunk next to a tiny above the first rung. The eastern bed path. These were kept in order until the which received lots of sun boasted Iris death of my grandmother in 1926. susiana; and Iris fulva provided coppery My mother attended The Agnes Irwin brilliance next to the faucet for the hose. School but never graduated because of Some Crocus did their best to offer illness. However, she obtained a superior sparks of color in the grass under the one education on her own by intensive pur• tall lilac near our swing. Against the suit of knowledge of plants and botany neighboring house on the west grew in books and through the generosity of Parthenocissus tricuspidata and P. quin- botanical friends. Late in life she was quefolia. These in summer provided a

69 green curtain behind and above the small the margins of a great number of her kidney shaped pond bordered with a few books with a sketch of a pointing hand very large weatherbeaten boulders of to indicate her "wants." Some of these Baltimore gneiss which supported pockets she never obtained, but I did bring her of soil to make a small rockery. Here the a few bulbs ticked long ago of Stenomes- small Dianthus deltoides made brave ef• son viridiflorum which I collected in forts to outpace us. Nothing else was as Peru in 1955 — a long wait! Dr. Traub willing or vigorous. The younger genera• has placed this genus in Hymenocallis. tion was not very sympathetic to the During the day my mother was in• efforts of the plants to be beautiful or to clined to sit in the great bay in our the gardener, our mother. library upon the wide seat upholstered in There was a small greenhouse with burgundy velvet sewing or making lists curved glass attached to the house. Here from catalogues. She indulged in cross my mother grew some choice plants and stitching our towels and washcloths with orchids, among which were Sophronitis a mouse for my sister, a bird for me and grandiflora offering those glorious ver- a dog for my brother so that we were million flat flowers and a Choisya, prob• able to recognize our own before we ably C. ternata. When various plants could read. She was skilled with a needle, were in flower, she would place them and I treasure a beautifully made boxed upon the window sill of the sun porch, mattress, a satin bound viyella blanket which was on the landing between the with an embroidered center motif and a first and second floors. Against the green• lace edged bedspread with my initials in house there was a most hazardous coun• the center, all of which she made for a terbalanced double cold frame bordered seven inch bed for my favorite doll. with steel where she kept many pots of In the afternoons and early evenings, bulbs for winter fragrance and brilliance when we children were out of the way, and also seeds promising to germinate. my mother read and often sat cross- Upon her desk in the oak panelled legged upon the floor next to the book• living room there were invariably myr• case in which she kept many of her iads of catalogues and packets of seed favorite volumes. In particular she would from Correvon, Barr, Charlesworth, Pur- sit for long periods with her grand• dy and others. She habitually examined father's volumes of The Orchid Album many of the tiny seeds by cutting them upon her knees. She read avidly and con• in half with a knife and then studying stantly of the plant world. I can remem• them with her Zeiss 8x loup. I can still ber her reading only two novels. "hear" many of the miniscule seeds strik• Another lingering memory while in ing an object or the floor as they were this home was her playing the harp. She catapulted about the room. She was in bought a lovely Erard one summer in the habit of checking all the less common Paris and took lessons there. I loved go• seed. When there were few in a packet, ing to sleep hearing her play and oc• it was necessary to locate these escapees casionally sing in the library below my on the floor! room. As she increased her gardening As far back as I can remember, my activities, she had to abandon the harp mother had a great love for bulbs. She because the soil abraded the callous on imported many kinds from Holland, her finger tips. Great Britain and South Africa. She was From the time we were tiny tots my never satisfied with the usual offerings. mother eagerly played tennis and was on During her thorough reading she ticked the Huntingdon Valley Club team. My

70 parents frequently played tennis on week• to six hundred acres skirting Piney Creek ends and both loved swimming. They Cove with nearly a mile of shoreline. never minded cold water, even the waters They had planned to build a home there, off the islands of Mt. Desert in Maine but World War I broke out and caused whenever we spent an August in that a change of plans when my father im• state, and maintained a record of having mediately volunteered for overseas duty. been swimming every month of the year For the duration we stayed for long pe• in the Upper Chesapeake Bay. riods from spring to autumn in bunga• About 1915 my father and mother ac• lows close to the water's edge, and my quired a large farm in Maryland of close mother supervised this farm on horseback. Gardening was occupying more and more of my mother's time even though there were then four of us to concern her. 1 There was a large vegetable garden, so considerable produce was preserved for winter use. A portion of the area was dedicated to many plants from foreign /< shores, which were often set in the cold frame upon arrival. I do not remember many of the plants growing there, but they were for the most part ornamentals, one of which was the Glastonbury Thorn. On a north facing slope above our bun• galows she attempted to make some of her beloved rock plants happy, a few natives and a few from Correvon and Purdy. There were some tiny Narcissus, Ophrys apifera, Leiophyllum buxifolium and some of her selections of Epigaea repens. These latter were my earliest rec• ollections of her seeking superior colors and forms in the wild. She was much interested in all the outdoor creatures and early showed us how to handle snakes. The most vivid introduction occurred one day when we spotted her walking home with a huge spreading adder dangling from her hand. There was a bulge in its middle which was obviously proving a discomfort and as we watched, fascinated, the snake slowly and rhythmically disgorged a spittle-covered toad. It dumbfounded us even further when the toad slowly hopped away. In 1923 we spent the summer in Scot• land a short distance outside Edinburgh. This gave my mother opportunities to

71 visit the Royal Botanic Garden a number many "firsts" to arrive in this country of times, but she did not then meet the but, alas, we have scant records. Regius Keeper, William Wright-Smith, By the time 1926 appeared on the cal• later knighted. However, upon her re• endar my parents had begun a search for turn home, she began a correspondence a country place where my mother could at which time she sent some tokens of her indulge her great obsession. With trowel enjoyment. From then on she and Sir in hand they would set out. Upon find• William exchanged seeds and plants, and ing a rather run-down farm in Gladwyne later she sent some of her duplicate some dozen miles from the center of herbarium specimens. It was not until the Philadelphia, she stuck her trowel into summer of 1927 that they met when we various spots and found her "test bor• were once more in Edinburgh. From that ings" to her liking. They promptly time until his death they remained very bought some ninety acres of very hilly close friends. There is no doubt that he land, but at that time they were unaware had the greatest overall appreciation of of all the marvelous rocks because they every sort of plant among her corres• were submerged under honeysuckle. pondents. He and Lady Smith visited us The house was barely finished when early in the spring of 1939. There was we moved. The architect always claimed snow upon the ground, and Sir William that it was a house built around a green• and my mother spent hours sitting on the house because it was the growing of edge of her six sash cold frame while plants which mattered most to my moth• she picked up each potted plant, almost er. With heightened interest and un• every one leafless and seemingly lifeless. bounded energy and enthusiasm she set I checked their progress at the end of an about gardening section by section as the hour and a half and found they had rough spots were cleared. She imported progressed just ten feet. I quipped that it all sorts of choice rarities from among did look a bit like a cemetery, but Sir the new Asiatic finds made by Forrest, William looked up beaming above his Wilson, Rock, Farrer, Ward and others. muffled neck and said, "It is just won• After several years of painful and vig• derful to see these plants about which I orous efforts on her part, it seemed have heard so much". What optimists we impossible for these fabled beauties to gardeners are! provide us with their reputed glory. Some time after the USDA had severe• These treasures balked at our summer ly restricted the importation of plants, heat with scant relief at night and our my mother obtained a plant import per• often cold, naked winters. mit as an "accredited experimenter". Although the planting of shrubs was This took place just after a friend of mv her initial occupation, she soon turned to father's, a Washington lawyer, had re• a rocky spot high upon the bank above plied, when asked how she might obtain the house. Here there already were a fine such a permit, "Lady, don't ask the im• group of large native rocks so the spaces possible". His response angered her and cracks between were dug out to give enough to agitate on her own, and the more importance to each and, too, to sub• resulting permit has been held and used stitute a gravelly mix suitable for rock from that time to the present without garden residents. For some ten years this interruption. She was soon happily im• spot was the site for the planting of an porting many of the plants she had noted odd mix of Monarda mollis v. menthae- in the various journals, catalogues and folia from the Peace River in British books from foreign lands. There were Columbia, Canada, Iberis sempervirens

72 A carload of treasures. —Henry photo for an evergreen, Clinopodium coccinium, ance, and it was no doubt he who gave Amorpha nana, Iris cristata, Penstemon her the name of a knowledgeable man, grandiflora and a select number of other J. A. Berckmans of Augusta, Georgia. beauties. She then took off in a car with spade My mother had long desired Rliodo- and trowel and a great deal of hope. In dendron native to our east coast so de• due time she returned with about seven cided to seek our brightest deciduous selected color variations of this glorious shrub, Rhododendron speciosum. It is plant which may long ago have contrib• now being returned to its earlier name, uted some of the vivid color to a fine R. flameum. She had sought this species race of hybrids known as the Ghent Hy• for some time but had not been able to brids. This trip was the first of her many obtain it from commercial sources or any collecting trips. The result was so suc• botanical garden in either the L nited cessful that she was scarcely home before States or abroad. There remained but one she had another jaunt planned. From this thing to do — go get it in the wild. She point she set off periodically on collect• appealed to Dr. John K. Small at the ing trips as her interest in native plants New York Botanical Garden for assist• increased.

73 IN A SOUTHWESTERN GARDEN

RAY WILLIAMS Watsonville, California Photograph by the author

Mr. Williams, a professional landscaper and nurseryman, lives on the outskirts of Watsonville, an agricultural community in the Pa jar o Valley on the northern fringe of Steinbeck country about one hundred miles south of San Francisco. His is a maritime climate tending to be foggy except for four or five hours of sunlight in the afternoon. Daytime temperatures average in the high sixties to low seventies in summer, rising into the eighties and occasionally higher in the fall. Except for an occasional light thunderstorm, the Pajaro Valley is rainless from mid-May to mid- November. During this period, in order to accommodate a wide range of plants, watering is essential. Winters are wet as a rule with sunshine between storms and night temperatures averaging just above freezing, though occasionally dropping to 18 or 20°F.

One of the first books on the sub• could clear enough of our property ject of gardening to come our way of the jungles of brambles, the delicious after my wife and I first acquired our but highly invasive Himalaya Berry. property here in 1929 was the Pleasures One of our first projects was to build and Problems of a Rock Garden, by a lath house for starting seeds and cut• Louise Bebe Wilder. This book was very tings and this was no sooner completed well written and exceedingly informa• than we decided to replace the wooden tive to even rank amateurs, which we north wall with one built of stone, certainly were. One thing Mrs. Wilder not a masonry wall, but one built with stressed was that the problems could a wide base and filled with earth with be just as rewarding as the pleasures. just enough cement to hold it together. Getting one's hands in the soil, weeding This wall soon became the home of while on hands and knees, and all the some of our most treasured rock plants, rest were far from drudgery while in the including a healthy specimen of Ramon- company of the cherished treasures here, da myconii (pyrenaica), finally crowded whether from nearby hills or the far-off out by more robust neighbors. mountains of many lands. A sharp earthquake some time in the This was a start that led to other late thirties brought down a section books, such as the works of Farrer, of the northwest corner of this wall, Clay, Hills, Mansfield and many others. leaving it more picturesque than be• These and a membership in the Alpine fore. Finally a portion of the mid- Garden Society, along with their most section was pried apart by the roots inspiring bulletins, helped to keep alive of a burgeoning Fuchsia magellanica a passion for the wonderful world of and it too came tumbling down. The plants. Thus we started our garden some ruins are today far more attractive than forty-five years ago; the date is un• the original and are the home of a most certain but it was just as soon as we interesting plant association, though not

74 a single rarity. below, a plant which has defied all Clinging to the almost perpendicular efforts to banish it. north face are two thriving colonies of Felicia petiolata clings to the east fac• Polypodium vulgare occidentale planted ing wall, living and thriving in un• there sometime in the mid thirties and believable aridity. Pterocephalus parnas- still vigorous and healthy. This fern sii once shared an adjoining crevice, is a denizen of the nearby canyon of but after many years finally succumbed Corralitos Creek where it covers mossy to the crowding of the felicia. banks and damp rock faces as well as At the base of the wall, where a fallen logs. It is widespread and in all built-up section fans out into a sort of such places throughout the Santa Cruz make-believe talus slope, which the Mountains. helxine has not yet invaded, some of Erodium pelargonifolium also shares the plants requiring more moisture find this wall, its seedlings coming up every• a home. Among these, Alchemilla mollis where they can gain a foothold. It is a is prominent. This Lady's Mantle is at rather robust but always attractive spec• its most attractive when its gray-green ies of the easiest possible culture in leaves are loaded with droplets of dew climates such as ours where it comes held captive by the fine, almost invisi• to life with the first winter rains and is ble hairs that cover their surface. Carex perhaps the most persistent winter buchanani, a two-foot sedge from New bloomer in the entire garden. Like most Zealand, whose cluster of smooth, pol• of our own natives it goes dormant in ished stems gleam with a rich amber summer drought; it comes, however, glow when struck by sunlight, shares from the lower mountain region of this place as does another New Zealand- Cilicia in far off Turkey. This erodium er Dianella intermedia, a slender grassy gets its specific name from the resem• species, generous with its brilliant blue blance of its leaves to those of the well- berries in season. Campanula poschar- known Pelargonium zonale, though in skyana grows here too and tries hard to the erodium these are without the zon• invade everything; drastic thinning ing. Its clusters of pure white flowers takes place quite frequently to prevent with their purplish red centers are al• this. ways attractive no matter what the Perhaps the most surprising denizen weather and are produced in profusion of this east end of the wall is a thriving for months on end. colony of Freesia refracta which has A thriving clump of Heuchera maxi• somehow managed to wedge its corms ma has established itself at the base of between the stones as high as four feet the wall on the northeast corner where from the base and has scattered seed• it gets the morning sun. Alyssum saxa- lings from there on down. These come tile, an old-time garden favorite seldom up among everything and bloom with seen around any more, clings to a scrap joyous abandon in midspring at which of earth on a narrow ledge above and time their rich fragrance of ripe apri• has lived here in robust health, many cots pervades the air for yards around. times its normal life span, so long in On the northwest corner of this north- fact that we no longer remember when facing wall, which receives the full it was planted. The amazing thing is force of the afternoon sun, reside two that it has never produced a single self- plants of no rarity at all but so unde• sown seedling; no doubt because of the manding and so rewarding when in lush growth of Helxine soleirolii just bloom that their season of glory is al-

75 ways anticipated. The first of these, know as Lychnis s. B.S.W. 5486 on a two-foot wide shelf of considerable S.S.W. This plant was first grown by aridity, is Saponaria ocymoides, which, William Rawson, formerly of Los Gatos, confined to this frugal position, seldom California, now of Vancouver, Washing• reaches a height of more than a few ton. Bill (as his friends know him) inches and sheets itself with bright pink and his mother became frequent visi• blossoms for a lengthy period in sum• tors to our garden and many were the mer. In winter it huddles on its rocky treasurers exchanged between us. One shelf, glum and disconsolate, its foliage day he brought a lush looking plant a dull frost-bitten red as it awaits the and wanted to know if we would care coming of spring. The other plant on to bother with it. He had planted it in this northeast corner of the wall is his choicest scree bed and the un• Muscari armeniacum growing under grateful thing was threatening to over• much the same conditions in a like power everything; banishment was in area of sun baked soil at the very top order. Since I was engaged in land• of the wall. This position receives little scaping and most of my work was not or no water and enforces a long period concerned with rock gardens I thought of total dormancy that no doubt con• this thing might be of value to me and tributes to the brilliance of this bulb's I was delighted to try it. It was im• comparatively short period of bloom at mediately potted up and set on a bench which time it becomes a glorious dome with others on trial. It soon became of brilliant blue, especially effective evident that no matter how much water since it is viewed from below. this plant was given it always seemed At the base of the wall where, even thirsty. It was first repotted to give it in summer, the sun seldom strikes and more root room in the hope this would in winter not at all, there is less evap• satisfy its craving for moisture. Its oration and moister conditions prevail. happiness was short-lived, however, and Here a purposely dripping faucet within a month or so it had to be moved makes conditions ideal for quite a dif• to a still larger container. It was not ferent type of plant. A four-foot high until we set the container in a shallow Eucryphia glutinosa commands the cen• pan of water that this plant seemed tral position flanked by a few clumps content and sent up its first flowering of old fashioned Primula veris., which stems. These were twelve to fifteen do very well despite the competition of inches in height, quite sturdy, sparsely the helxine that carpets much of this set with short stem-clasping leaves, area. Here too grows mimulus. Our or• topped by a two-inch corymb of tightly iginal planting was of Mimulus cardin- packed tiny lychnis flowers of deep alis from nearby canyons, but then currant red, of a particularly glowing Mimulus cupreus, a Chilean plant re• quality like embers in a dying camp- puted to be annual was introduced; we fire. This lychnis was then set out in now have neither species, but instead a the garden where we might be able to rather short-lived hybrid with a very keep it moist, but it is still not really dark red flower shading to almost happy and is now being tried where black in the throat. So far no varia• coolness and almost bog conditions pre• tions have occured but might well be vail at the north side of the wall. It expected. may yet be that Bill's ugly duckling of A newcomer to this area and still the scree will become a robust Cinder• awaiting final evaluation is a plant we ella of the bog. Experimentation is no

76 doubt one of the greatest joys of rock so much more demanding in its culture. gardening (or any type of gardening) With us it has shown no inclination to as long as it deals with plant introduc• set any seed although it surely must tion. where it grows naturally. Propagation is And now for a look at the rock easy: just divide, but beware; it will garden that surrounds this crumbling stand no winter sogginess, so keep its ruin of a rock wall. The newest and to crown high. I have it tucked in a tiny date the most interesting section is a pocket at the top of the miniature escarp• series of ridges running north and ment which looks down on this section of south, stepping the east-facing natural make believe bad-lands. Just below, in slope down by way of outcrops of red another crevice, is Sedum lydium, a lava, a comparatively cheap and easily crowded flopping tangle of bright red acquired stone in this area. This is not thread-like stems each ending in tiny a new, but rather a remodeled, section tassels of the brightest green, a scant of the garden that contained among two lines across. This does well where other things an Australian conifer, Acti- it has the protection of even a small nostrobus pyramidalis, which under rock that can give it a cool moist root California garden conditions is prone run and a trace of shade from the to producing more top growth than its afternoon sun. Both this and the fescue root system can support. As a result it come from George Schenk's Wild Gar• falls easy prey to every gale blowing den at Bothel, Washington. He is, in• in from the Pacific. After a few such deed, a collector of rarities matched by blow-overs it was removed and this few of our acquaintances. section of garden took on a new shape. Erysimum kotschyanum from the A small ledge of beautifully eroded rocky alpine slopes and screes of many sandstone of a subtle reddish brown Turkish mountains seems a finer, small• coloring (caused by its high iron con• er, and more refined version of Erysi• tent) blended in very well with the lava. mum pulchellum from many places in With a coating of coarse sand and the Near East. Both grow here and both gravel and a lusty scattering of half are of easy culture, seeming satisfied buried chunks of sandstone this area in almost any sunny place protected became the home of all the tiny treas• from invading weeds and grasses. Of ures we could collect. the two, E. kotschyanum is much the Cerastium alpinum lanatum is among smaller in stature and tighter in growth. these. It is a tiny clump of ashy Its vivid orange yellow blossoms are gray wool that must have the sharpest set so tightly above its cushion that it of drainage and at no time become appears like a jewel among pebbles mud splashed lest it turn into a tiny when compared with so many other lump of gray mold. The same treat• crucifers. ment is required for the successful cul• Calendrinia umhellata is a perennial tivation of Festuca ovina crinumursi. I portulaca with a more or less woody cannot verify this name but this festuca understock that branches at about an is altogether a treasure among tiny inch or so above ground into a loose ornamental grasses. A scant two inches cluster of ten to twenty curving stems, in height and spreading to as much as each tipped by a rosette of narrow, three or four inches in width and of a pointed, three-quarter-inch leaves. From silvery gray color, it is a tiny replica of these rosettes rise the wiry naked flow• the much used Festuca glauca and ever ering stems up to five inches high and

77 A corner of Ray Williams' garden bearing, in seemingly endless succession threatens to overrun its neighbors and from midsummer until hard frosts, a occasionally has to be cut back to size. profusion of brilliant red-purple blos• Hebe propinqua makes in time a soms. Although Peruvian, and perhaps, wiry little bushlet of the most distinc• Chilean also, this plant is unharmed tive aspect imaginable. Picture if you by night temperatures into the low can a foot high or less shrub consist• twenties Fahrenheit. ing of a tangled thicket of fine stems Bellium minutum, the Doll House each clothed with tiny, almost un- Daisy of English gardens, is a tiny measurable scales that serve as leaves. composite, which also goes by the name So far no flowers have been seen. Bellium rotundifolium according to Far- These, no doubt, are of the whipcord rer. It comes from rocky slopes of type and just as seldom producer!. This Greece and eastward to the Levant. It hebe finds a place at the south end of is of easy cultivation but is in constant our so-called scree garden where it danger of being lost, over-whelmed by merges into a jumble of red lava and weed and grasses, unless given a place Hebe glaucophjlla (of nurseries) which where these cannot invade. The well I understand is more properly Hebe cared for scree of sand and rock chips pimelioides var. glaucophjlla. It certain• is the safest place for it to spread its ly bears no resemblance to the Hebe inch high and not too wide mats of glaucophjlla of Hortus I. Our plants deepest green, generously sprinkled are of prostrate growth, mounding up with tiny almost stemless white daisies. to a foot in height and wide spreading. Saponaria pumilio, a reputed lime- Its close-set leaves are usually less than hater, leads a precarious life here for one-half inch in length and a quarter- our water cannot by any stretch of the inch in width. It is frugal with its imagination, be called soft. Nearby the blossoms: fat and dumpy little spikes tangled carpet of Minuartia recurva of white which add little to its attrac-

78 tiveness. Its frost hardiness is unknown closely packed rosettes of tiny leaves all to us but in really cold districts it is silvery with gray tomentum. It has probably suspect. never yet produced its cloud of yellow A sprig of Selaginella douglasii flowers and in our coastal climate may found clinging to a lusty chunk of red never do so, but we are hopeful just the lava that had probably been trucked in same. from northern California, where it is Here, also, is Thymus neicefeii, a dis• found in abundance, was carefully tinctly gray mat that looks suspiciously watched and tended. It survived in spite like a relative of the T. serphyllum of our attentions, which of course it clan. It is spreading aimlessly and hap• needed not at all, and so it is still with pily like an inebriated starfish, taking us, a considerable patch as of now. root as it goes. It too has yet to show Brown and sere in summer it revives its blossoms but no doubt will, come to a vivid green with the first rains spring. This is also from George and remains so until late in the spring. Schenk's Wild Garden. A clump of A flat topped mesa results at the top Sempervivum webbianum, set tight of this miniature ridge, bounded to the against the lava at the north end of east by the selaginella-covered outcrop. the mesa, completes this section. A tiny This mesa has been given a new look garden within a garden. by the removal of a rather ancient Among the larger sandstones at the clump of Coprosma accrosa. With new eastern end of the garden are some of soil and top dressing of sand and the older plants, some of truly venerable stone chips, it has become the home of age. These include such things as Pin- a select few; it has only an approxi• us mugo, not a true dwarf of the species, mate area of some seven or eight square but the common mugo of much of the feet. The spotlight here is held by two Swiss and Austrian alps. Even so it is cushion plants of undoubted merit in no giant, but really a shrub. This one any rock garden. The first is Scleran- is some eight feet in height and ten or thus biflorus, a hard tight dome of more across. Limonium cosyrensis, more vivid green that may attain a diameter than three decades in age and looking of eight or ten inches or more in more like a heather than a statice, also time. This comes from alpine Australia grows here, as does Jasminum parked, and from like places in New Zealand. a foot or less high sub-shrub from the Reported from bogs and fens and other Himalayas, which runs around under• such damp places on the high slope of ground, coming up here and there Mt. Koscuisko in New South Wales, it among the sandstones. Tweedia (Oxy- also submits to considerable drought petalum) caeruleum, an Argentine without flinching. The tiny, sparsely plant, also inhabits this section. It seems produced flowers are of almost no con• to be neither herb nor shrub but a suf- sequence and should not be anticipated; frutescent something somewhere be• it is the tight matted dome of a tween, not twining as suggested by Hor- remarkable solidity, smoothness and tus /, but floppily upright to two feet. beauty matched by few others that It is scantily clothed with softly fuzzy makes this plant a treasure. The other halberd-shaped leaves and bears trusses plant that is a feature of this mesa top of flowers of a blue that is as indes• is Eriogonum douglasii, a mat-forming cribable as it is startling—a blue that Buck Wheat from Nevada's mountains. has to be seen to be believed. Like oth• It forms flat inch-high gray mats of er milkweeds it has fat tapering pods

79 that open to release innumerable black onosmas, equipped with fine stinging seeds equipped with the purest and hairs. Very nettle-like, indeed, so best whitest of silken parachutes to carry observed from a safe distance, it comes them far and wide. Its neighbors are from Armenia and perhaps elsewhere in Cotoneaster micro phylla var. thy mi- the Near East. Thymus nitidus, aged and folia; mats of Juniperus communis col• woody; Hypericum orientale from hot lected many years ago at my father-in- slopes in the Levant; Helichrysum scapi- law's ranch near Cascade, Montana; forme from high in the Drakensbergs; carpets of Erica carnea 'Springwood and a seeming endless list of things that White'; and nestled just above a natural represent years of collecting and experi• sandstone arch, a silvery clump of mentation, are among the many plants Onosma albo-roseum, a rather rare thing doing well on these ledges. in gardens and, like so many of its sister

GARDEN VISITS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA

HANS W. ASMUS Mequon, Wisconsin

Have you ever tried to communicate and explore the rock gardens there. with someone from another country After visiting with relatives, my wife who doesn't speak your language? You and I rented a car and headed toward probably resorted to a variety of hand Prague. signals, phrases, and odd gestures, and This is a beautiful city. The magnifi• made as much progress as the "Salt cent buildings and Old World architec• Talks". Some communication is easier ture made quite an impression on me, than others, however, and words aren't but I didn't have much time for sight• needed to share an appreciation of a seeing, I had come to see rock gardens glowing sunset or the other delightful and meet people who were just as crazy miracles of nature — especially flowers. about mountain flowers as I am. And flowers are something special. Mr. Cmiral lives in the center of Who does not feel that he has found Prague, but has a quaint, cozy rock something wonderfully unique when he garden on the outskirts of the city. stumbles upon a patch of wildflowers His main interest is in growing sem- on a mountainside in the wilderness pervivums and sedums and I counted far above the beaten path. Flowers are several hundred species and hybrids a universal language, especial ly, in his beds. We next visited a good perhaps, among rock gardeners. This friend of Mr. Cmiral, Dusan Pangrac. is what I discovered on my visit to I have never in my life seen such Europe last spring with my wife, a great assortment of Kabschia sax• Christine. ifrages as were in his garden. Mr. Since I had planned to visit my Pangrac must have noticed the gleam relatives in Germany anyway, I wel• in my eye when I said that I, too, comed the invitation of my pen-friend, grow saxifrages and out came the Otakar Cmiral, to visit Czechoslovakia plastic bags and labels. He graciously

80 made close to a hundred cuttings of A little creek trickles through Mr. various Kabschias. These were left with Halda's property and I spotted several my friend, Otakar, who promised to trout in a large pool. The whole scene root them for me and send them to was very peaceful — the only sound America. was the gush of water moving over Before I go any further, I must men• rocks and the twirping of birds in tion how impressed I was with the the forest nearby. It was a scene I friendliness of the Czech people. will never forget. Whenever I showed the slightest interest As you follow the creek downstream in the plants, my hosts would insist the water becomes more boisterous and that I take some along, politely ignoring you come to a few waterfalls, and then my refusal to take such beauties from to another beautiful rock garden. This them. If only there were more rock one belongs to Mr. Gruhlich and is gardeners in politics, perhaps world quite different than that of his peace would be possible. neighbor. Well established and parklike, The next day we were off again, Mr. Grulich's garden was inherited this time to visit Josef Halda's rock from his father. The variety of plants garden which lies about one hundred is astounding; my camera never stop• miles northeast of Prague in a place ped clicking. Several dwarf mountain called Eagle Mountain. Mr. Halda has willows and conifers highlight this gar• worked hard to maintain a scenic den. In the sunny dry areas grow great naturalness in his garden and has suc• patches of Draba mollissima, raoulias, ceeded admirably. Though only four helichrysums. Douglasia vitaliana years old, one would guess that nature (Vitaliana primuliflora), and tiny, deep itself had crafted the landscape, con• rose flowered Dianthus microlepis. Near structed entirely from local rocks. These the creek Ranuculus alpestris, R. par- are arranged so they jut randomly from nassifolius, Gentiana orbicularis, the ground as if some glacier had rip• several forms of Gentiana acaulis and ped through the area. They are not many many more plants make their small rocks either; in fact, boulders home. would probably be the more ap• We saw many beautiful gardens in propriate word for them. Androsace our four day stay in Czechoslovakia, imbricata, A. hedraeatha, A. chamae- but an even more rewarding experience jasme, Draba mollissima and Draba was the forming of so many new politricha, Daphne arbuscula, Primula friendships. My wife and I are most auricula and many others are among grateful to Dr. Jareslaw Kazbal, who the treasures scattered in the artfully helped arrange our tour and also served arranged rifts and crevices among the as interpreter. rocks.

An Alternative Sometimes it is not necessary to saw off or dig out. Suddenly we noticed that our plant of Juniperus communis erecta, purchased in 1968, was too tall, out of proportion to the area where it was growing. We (husband) cut off several feet, shaping the top carefully. No stub is visible. The evergreen is now in scale and looks great. —D. De V.

81 Seed Preferences, 1978 and 1979

BETTY J. LOWRY AND NED M. LOWRY Renton, Washington

In the course of their arduous work, Director's Committee as it becomes past Seed Exchange Directors have necessary to limit the items listed ac• amassed considerable information cording to rock garden suitability. regarding the popularity and supply of various species submitted to the Ex• Mechanics of the Tally change. These records have included This compilation would not have been for each seed lot the date the supply possible without the cooperation of was exhausted, the total number of Frances Roberson, Director for 1978 packets distributed, and whether surplus and 1979, who made seed requests and remained following distribution. This certain statistics available to us. First information, however, fails to give a choice requests were chosen for tally complete picture of the demand for since it is always the intent of the any species regardless of supply. Exchange to give applicants their pre• Our original reason for undertaking ferences whenever possible. The tally this study was to assist the Seed Ex• was carried out for two years in order change Director in estimating how to review as large a number of species many packets of a given species may as possible, since each year the selection be required. A compilation of pre• varies. Each tally covered the entire ferences made available to the general main distribution, from first to last membership could also be used to ad• order filled, but excluded any surplus vantage especially by donors in upgrad• distribution. The number of first choice ing their selections for the Exchange. selections tallied did not equal the num• Finally, such data, which might be con• ber of packets distributed by the Ex• sidered an unsolicited popularity poll change because some members did not of participating members, could also use the seed request form as it was lend support to the Seed Exchange intended (c/. Table 1).

Table 1. Statistics for ARGS Seed Exchange and Tallies 1978 1979 Seed applicants 1,308 882 Items offered 3,496 4,267 Maximum allotment 42 32 Average packets per order 24 24 Total packets distributed (excluding salvage) 31,348 20,971 Total first choices tallied 39,264 20,454

The development of the computer ming, the computerized count still re• program for the tally on a home IMSAI quired that each first choice selection 8080 computer with limited memory be entered into the computer, a total was a challenge in itself. After program- of 59,718 entries over the two year

82 period. Woe to us when momentary specifically requesting lists in 1979. power failure or defective tapes re• More pertinent to normalization of the quired reentry of hundreds of numbers! tallies is the comparison of the total Lack of printing capability required items tallied: 39,264/20,454 or a factor that the final results be hand copied of 1.9. This factor takes into account from the CRT screen. Apart from these not only the larger number of applicants difficulties, computerization greatly ac• in 1978, but also the irregularities celerated the count process. Tally in reflected in the tallies caused by im• 1979 Avas more difficult since underlin• proper filling out of request forms. ed preferences were scattered Thus on the average, one could expect throughout a single grid request format, 1.9 times as many requests for 1978 whereas a separate grid contained first as 1979 disregarding any other effects. choices in 1978. As in any such opera• The actual average ratio of popular tion human errors are possible, but and strictly comparable items for 1978 a special problem was the difficulty and 1979 was in fact greater (2.2), in interpreting illegible numbers, a pro• which reflects the influence of other blem shared with those filling requests. factors. The especially large number of choice items offered in 1979, which Using the Tally distributed the demand over a larger variety of species, may well have had Since the 1978 and 1979 tallies are such an effect. Likewise, some reduction too voluminous to publish in the Bulle• in demand for preferred species might tin, copies have been sent to the ARGS be expected when offered for two con• Library as well as the Seed Exchange secutive seasons. Director. Each of these consists of a photocopy of the two seed lists with Significance of Tally the number of first choice requests handwritten to the left of the item num• Ten items received more than 100 first ber, with a brief explanation and direc• choice requests over the two year tions for use, and are entitled Tally period, the highest being 153 for A- of First Choice Requests, ARGS Seed quilegia jonesii x saximontana in 1978. Exchange, 1978 and 1979. We en• Paraquilegia grandiflora led the 1979 courage all interested parties to look poll with 114, closely followed by A- these over and hope they will be in• quilegia jonesii with 112. Since well formative. Our own examination of the over 100 members may vie for a tiny results revealed several desirable species bit of choice seed, applicants must previously unfamiliar to us. recognize the necessity of listing al• The 1978 and 1979 tallies are best ternates and for best results returning not compared directly with each other their requests promptly. In 1979, about without considering the statistics in three-quarters of all first choices involv• Table 1 for the two years. Consider ed only the top 30% of the items a typical example, Erigeron aureus, offered! Sometimes only one or two which received 65 requests in 1978 and packets of these are available, so re• 32 in 1979. The major factor influenc• questing only the most popular kinds ing the relative number of requests was is bound to result in disappointment. the much larger number of seed appli• What are the attributes of the most cants in 1978. This difference was the popular items? They are small plants result of mailing seed lists to the entire highly desirable for rock garden or membership in 1978 and only to those alpine house. Most are either rare or

83 difficult in cultivation, or otherwise sel• Donors may further conserve their dom offered because seed is difficult own effort and that of the Director to collect or scantily formed. Special and Staff by being selective in their forms of such plants receive particular donations. A few well-selected species attention. On the whole it is a matter are often more valuable than a long of supply and demand — the more list of borderline kinds. There is no precious the seed, the higher the de• prize for maximum number of dona• mand. tions. To reiterate, this study suggests On the other hand, some 121 kinds avoiding trees, tall shrubs and peren• in 1978 and a dismal 637 in 1979 nials, unspecified or unverified species received no first choice requests at all. or those kinds otherwise in question, Some of these, however, were or mixed seeds. If the plant is common distributed as alternates. Here we find in rock gardens and seeds copiously, a considerable quantity of trees and think twice about including it or at larger shrubs and other tall kinds not least show restraint in the quantity suitable for the rock garden. Another sent; there are likely to be many donors low-demand group consists of unknown of such a species. However, even a quantities — species with unconfirmed few seeds of rare or difficult plants names, questionable identification or no should be saved; we can hope they identification other than genus, and will add to the seeds of other donors. seed mixtures. Such questionables are By all means include choice low- seldom requested even though some growing species which are shy seeders may well be desirable plants. Numbered in cultivation (e. g. Viola pedata) or collectors' species are usually excep• whose seed is difficult to collect (Phlox, tions. Others not reqested simply suffer Geraniaceae, some Boraginaceae, La- from name unfamiliarity and deserve biatae, Violas, etc.) Appropriate species to be much better known. Many other collected in the wild are generally well suitable kinds do not make the grade received, especially if the species hy• because so many species are listed. It bridizes freely with others of the same is hoped that donors reviewing the genus in the garden. Previous seed lists tallies will not be discouraged by low can also be helpful in deciding which ranking of some of their favorites. species to save for the Exchange. Suitable unusual species are always Desirable species not offered previously needed by the Exchange for those with or by only one or two donors are extensive collections who wish to try good candidates. When no donor num• something different. bers are listed, this often indicates many Analysis of tally results shows that donors. Send your best! 61% of items in 1978 and 87% in 1979 received less than ten requests. Most Popular Items Therefore for most kinds, the large The top fifty items for 1978 and quantities of seed (sometimes ounces) 1979 are combined and summarized sent by donors are not only un• below along with the number of first necessary, but wasteful of time and choice requests for each year. Top fifty postage as well as of the seed. High- corresponds to a minimum of 60 re• preference items should be sent in quests in 1978 and 34 requests in 1979. whatever quantity is available as they An asterisk denotes seed collected in are seldom collectable in sufficient the wild. Of these 80 items representing quantity to satisfy demand. 60 species, 20 made the top fifty both

84 years. Some species qualified for the popularity. The select items on this list several times because more than list (Table 2) represent little more than two seed lots were available over the 1% of all items offered, and have been two year period and each was indivi• voted cream of the crop by you, the dually very popular. Lewisia tweedyi 1978 and 1979 Seed Exchange partici• and Shortia (Schizocodon) sol- pants. danelloides are examples of such

Table 2. Fifty Most Popular Items 1978 1979 1978 1979

Adonis vernalis 33 34 Glaucidium palmatum 68 22 Allium narcissiflorum 62 15 palmatum 'Album' 66 28 Androsace helvetica 102 Iris gracilipes 62 muscoidea 34 Jeffersonia dubia 95 47 Anemonella thalictroides 63 32 Kalmiopsis leachiana* 44 34 Aquilegia jonesii 49 Lewisia cotyledon jonesii* 112 'Sunset Strain' (apricot) 62 jonesii x saximontana 153 45 pygmaea 68 33 scopulorum 62 23 rediviva 63 36 Arisaema japonicum* 65 rediviva 'Alba'* 61 39 sikokianum 46 sierrae 57 35 Calceolaria darwinii 134 78 tweedyi 114 48 Calochortus kennedyi* 37 tweedyi* 131 75 Campanula piperi 130 tweedyi 'Rosea' 65 piperi* 106 Meconopsis bella 49 portenschlagiana 69 29 Narcissus cantabricus v. petunioid es 57 raineri 94 42 Paraquilegia grandiflora 114 Cyclamen cilicium 'E. K. Balls' 69 20 ? grandiflora OD fatremse 57 Phlox bifida (miniature) 86 mirabile ACW 2426 38 Phyteuma comosum 57 Daphne cneorum 'Eximia' 73 Polygala calcarea 36 petraea* 85 Potentilla nitida 'Rubra' 67 35 Dianthus callizonus 63 39 Primula minima* 72 41 microlepis * 34 parryi* 75 28 Diapensia lapponica* 73 reidii v. wUliamsii 40 Dicentra cucullaria 64 38 rosea x clarkei 74 peregrina v. pusilla 95 26 Rhodothamnus chamaecistus* 78 42 peregrina v. pusilla* 57 Saponarixi ocymoides peregrina v. pusilla f. alba 78 22 'Rubra Compacta' 73 39 Dionysia involucrata* 76 Shortia galacifolia 108 65 Douglasia laevigata v. ciliolata 61 soldanelloides (Schizocodon s.) 92 50 laevigata v. ciliolata* 75 41 soldanelloides 'Alba' 51 nivalis v. nivalis* 49 soldanelloides v. ilicifolia 61 Edraianthus pumilio 76 49 soldanelloides v. ilicifolia* 54 Erigeron aureus 65 32 soldanelloides v. magna* 60 Eritrichium nanum ssp. jankae* 87 uniflora 64 sibiricum 35 Silene hookeri* 63 33 Fritillaria michailovski 41 Soldanella pusilla* 60 34 Gentiana ornata 68 Thalictrum kiusianum 61 21 verna 82 Trillium grandiflorum 'Roseum' 71 Geranium argenteum 87 Viola pedata 83 55

85 Centaurea achtarovii

A SUPERB HARDHEAD

ZDENEK ZVOLANEK Prague, Czechoslovakia Drawing by the author

The limestone section of the North thick, gently felted leaves that are silver- Pirin Mountains in Bulgaria is very grey over the basic green but turn rich in alpine plants. It is warmer and black in the fall. The rosette is some drier there in summer and fall than three inches across and from its center in most alpine regions. Among the arises only one stalk with the wonderful many outstanding plants I have observ• flower at its apex. This blossom is ed in this area over the years is the about one and a half to two inches endemic Centaurea achtarovii. in diameter and I would describe the This superb Hardhead grows on the color as being a vivid violet-red with east slopes of the Palasica Range at an orange center. The stalk is only an elevation of about 2200 to 2500 about one and a half inches tall. This meters (7200 to 8200 feet.) The plants is a perennial plant with a few strong grow in horizontal fissures and in roots about eight inches long. deeper holes that contain a limy grit Centaurea achtarovii grows in asso• mixed with humusy soil. It forms a ciation with Linum capitatum, Viola decorative, nearly symetric rosette of grisebachiana f. lutea, Gentiana or-

86 bicularis, Saxifraga ferdinandi-coburgii, or two fertile seed in its seed head S. sempervivum, Genista subcapitata, and some had none at all. The seed Sempervivum erythraeum, Androsace vil- is relatively big (four millimeters by losa v. arachnoidea, Helianthemum can- two millimeters) and we are looking um balcanum, Daphne oleoides v. forward to its germination. My friend, glandulosa and Daphne velenovskyi (a Dr. Kazbal, has planted a few plants new species related to Daphne cneorum.) out of doors and at the moment they Pretty neighbors, indeed. are a first class delicacy for our robust When I collected its seed in Sep• Czech slugs. tember, 1978 I usually found only one

. o- &y J , ' ; r t < •J^rfto k» * '«« 0& *V^:** -^VT?^ / ^ .

" (Book [Reviews.^j rf : v5s •3J rfl ,» 4V'-'-'----'i''"- — V. -£" \y >J/ er '.'%*-^^r.v. \- •#:-#"Jf2£L -o- flkAj " ft, fift ^'^^SS&JS. v * ."• 'J*<7 A * w^F • <»• «. . yt/^^^* MOUNTAIN FLOWER HOLIDAYS IN EUROPE by Dr. Lionel J. Bacon, The Alpine Garden Society, England

How satisfying for the enthusiast that one can expect to find from the when a longed-for book finally is publi• Pyrenees through the numerous ranges shed and can be read and absorbed that make up the Alps, to the High at leisure. Such a work is Dr. Bacon's Tatra, which separates Poland from most useful compendium of information Czechoslovakia. The flora is decribed on the principal alpine plant habitats by habitat — the lower and upper of Europe. It will be an indispensable alpine pastures, the mountain reference that will not only accompany woodlands, rock faces, marshes and all who search for alpine treasures in stream-sides, turfy screes, snow valleys, those beautiful environs but that also acid heaths, screes, moraines and rock- will transport the rest of us from our fissures. armchairs at home to the highest With this background, and after aretes and pinnacles from Spain to some judicious advice on how to travel Bulgaria. It is rich and heady fare in the mountains and how to behave and needs to be digested slowly, the if one is compelled to collect plants, ideal bedside companion for the Dr. Bacon leads us country-by-country lowland-bound rock gardener. through the high Alps, the mountains Dr. Bacon avoids redundancy by first of the Mediterranean countries and the giving a description of the basic flora Balkans, with a fleeting glimpse of

87 Scandinavia. years ago. With the exception of a In the chapter devoted to each coun• few contributions from other AGS try there again is general background members (notably Mr. and Mrs. B. information covering its geology and E. Smythies and H. L. Crook and geography, its travel accommodations Messrs. I. B. Barton and G. E. Barrett) and other useful information such as the primary source of material has been when the mountain passes are usually Dr. and Mrs. Bacon's own "logs" of closed to traffic or guidelines on the their plant-seeking holidays in Europe best time for a visit. Then Dr. Bacon over the past thirty years. selects several principal areas where the Inevitably descriptions of some areas plant hunting is known to be of the are more complete and better than highest quality and proceeds to describe others. The Dolomites and Pyrenees are them in detail: where the best centers described in great detail and with devo• are to use as a base for one's rambles tion, while the Gran Paradiso area of and the special plants (as opposed to the Graian Alps (one of the very few the basic flora) that one can expect areas this writer has walked around) to find in each valley, with suggested is fleetingly referred to with no mention walking routes and key spots that one of the best village from which to ex• should not miss. A small and rudimen• plore, nor of the many valleys that tary map is included for each area one can fruitfully spend time in nor showing only the relationship of the of some of the interesting plants that towns to the mountain masses. In addi• abound there such as Saxifraga tombea- tion to two sections of photographs, nensis that is more usually found in one in black and white and one in the mountains to the west of Lake Gar- color, there are also charming line da. drawings of plants, executed almost en• The most intriguing descriptions deal tirely by Dr. Bacon, with an extremely with areas off the beaten path, the helpful guide to the scale of each draw• many Sierras of Spain and northeast ing indicated by a line representing Portugal, the Algarve, Corsica, Mon• one inch. tenegro in Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Dr. Bacon stresses the selectivity of the Peleponesus in Greece, the Bucegi his description and the impossibility range in Roumania and the Rhodope of including more than a sample of mountains of Bulgaria. The reader finds what is there for the plant hunting. himself yearning to take them all in, While he hopes his book will inspire but how? readers to visit the mountains he urges The book on the whole is excellent. them to leave the sometimes well-worn A someday second edition would permit paths that he describes and seek new the upgrading of area descriptions that fields and hills. Readers are also urged could be improved. An extremely useful to consult specific articles on a given complement to the book would be a area in back issues of the AGS Bulletin, supplement with detailed maps of the which are listed handily at the end areas described. One longs for good of each chapter, along with other sug• maps to refer to as one reads along. gested reading. And let us hope that Dr. Bacon's fine Mountain Flower Holidays in Europe example will result in a companion is the successor to Dr. Hugh Roger- volume that describes some of the areas Smith's Plant Hunting in Europe, which left out of Mountain Flower Holidays was published by the AGS some thirty — the Atlas Mountains, the British

88 Isles, the Caucasus, Turkey, etc. members would undoubtedly be glad In fact, Dr. Bacon's book should to help. inspire similar publications on alpine An interesting point is made by Dr. habitats the world around, the accessi• Bacon (who incidentally is the Presi• ble Himalayan valleys, New Zealand, dent of the AGS) when he mentions the Japanese Alps, Alaska and even that publication of his book benefited our own backyard. What could be more from bequests from AGS members useful to the members of the ARGS, including the late Mrs. Anna N. Griffith as well as other societies, than to (author of the excellent Collins Guide publish a comparable volume on the to Alpines). What a marvelous legacy key mountain and wildflower areas of for the rest of us and what better North America. If any reader has a way to be memorialized. background of plant hunting all over Mountain Flower Holidays in Europe the U.S. and Canada with the "logs" should grace every alpine plant en• to back him up he has Dr. Bacon's thusiast's bookshelf and provide him example of what should be done and (or her) with many hours of good how to do it. Any number of ARGS plant-hunting. —Francis Cabot

*V«s

Seed Storage Eloise Garcia of Brookings, Oregon sent in a clipping about a new method of seed storage developed by James Harrington at the Univer• sity of California. He puts them in canning jars with two heaping tablespoons of freshly opened powdered milk wrapped in four thick• nesses of facial tissue secured with a rubber band. The tissue keeps the milk from sifting out and prevents seed packets from touching the moist dessicant. The jar should be tightly sealed with a lid and rubber rings and kept in the refrigerator and the milk packet should be replaced with a fresh one once or twice a year. Seeds stored by this method should be sowed promptly after removing them from the jar.

89 ROCK GARDENING IN THE SOUTH PART 3 —DWARF AND PYGMY CONIFERS

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE Charlotte, N.C.

This is the third installment in a series of articles by Miss Lawrence. The first two parts dealt with the gardener and the garden. The remaining articles will deal with some of the plants for the Southern rock garden. —Ed.

When I first became interested in Handbook, Low and Slow-growing dwarf conifers, few Southern nurseries Evergreens (Vol. 21 No. 1), three hun• were growing them, and only two nur• dred varieties of dwarf conifers are serymen, Henry Hohman at Kingsville, described, among them a twenty-five Maryland, and Mr. Tingle at Pittsville year old specimen of 'Cole's Prostrate' on the Eastern Shore, grew a variety; hemlock, growing at Raraflora, the neither of these nurseries is still in country place and nursery of its guest business. In order to find out what editor, Helene Bergman at Feasterville, is available now, I sent for Joel Spin- Pennsylvania. garn's catalog, Dwarf and Pygmy I find H G. Hillier's Manual of Trees Conifers, which lists the more than four and Shrubs (Third Edition 1973) the hundred that he is growing on his most useful reference for dwarf conifers grounds in Baldwin, New York. Price as he has had so many years of ex• and size, he says are not shown, as perience growing them in the great they are not all available at a given English nursery which his father time. In our Bulletin (April 1966) he inherited from his father who establish• describes and gives the rate of growth ed it in 1864. I have also made use of about a hundred species, varieties of Welch's Dwarf Conifers (1966) and and cultivars that can usually be found Den Ouden's Manual of Cultivated Con• in one nursery or another, though some ifers (1965). grow so slowly they cannot keep up When I came to Charlotte to live, with the demands of collectors. Plants in 1948, there were no real rock gardens called nana or pygmaea or even mi• in this part of the country, and few nima, may in time outgrow their allot• people grew saxatile plants; but now, ted space, for some make up for their two of the most ardent members of small stature by growing in girth. Mr. the ARGS are Dr. Ernest Yelton in Spingarn says 'Cole's Prostrate' Rutherfordton, N.C. and Dr. Donald hemlock and Chamaecyparis obtusa Kellam in Charlotte. I have asked them 'Juniperoides' would never grow more to list the dwarf conifers that they than a foot in height. The have found satisfactory. chamaecyparis is small enough for a "I must tell you," Dr. Yelton wrote, trough, but the branches of the hemlock "that my experience only goes back continue to grow in length although about fifteen years. Several of the so- they lie flat on the ground. called dwarfs have since become small In the Brookland Botanic Garden's trees and have been moved or chopped

90 down because they do not fit in the I have ever seen was in the old rock landscape any more. Among these Fruitland Nursery in Augusta, Georgia. have been Chamaecyparis lawsoniana The nursery was acquired in 1857 by 'Fletcheri'; C. 1. 'Ellwoodii', now about Prosper Jules Berckmans who spent the six feet; and Chamaecyparis lawsoniana rest of his life introducing and pro• 'Nidiformis' to four feet. pagating fruits and ornamental trees Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Gracilis Nana' and shrubs for Southern gardens. In is a lovely bushlet but it is now about January 1937 my mother and I spent three feet, only good for large rock a warm sunny afternoon with Towne gardens. Co. 'Torulosa' is too big. Hall, the nursery's horticulturist. The Juniperus horizontalis 'Wiltoni' invaded Yulan was in bloom, though it normally every thing around it as did Juniperus blooms in March, and the fragrance conferta; neither has gotten more than of the large white flowers mingled with four inches high, but both make thick the perfume of Sweet Olive and Ja• rugs of foliage, which is death for panese Apricot. We saw many rare anything in their paths. Juniperus chi- shrubs in the arboretum, and in the nemis 'Torulosa' is too big for the fields there was a row of little cedars, rock garden. Juniperus s quamata Cedrus atlantica 'Pygmaea', which had 'Loderi' is too tall at five feet, but been growing there for a long time. makes a lovely Irish juniper shape." They were sturdy little shrubs, oval in shape, and about two feet tall, with Abies a stout trunk and bristling gray-green Dr. Yelton considers the Balsam Fir, needles. Mr. Towne said they could Abies balsamaea 'Hudsonia', one of the be propagated only by grafting. I have indispensable plants in his rock garden. never seen this cedar elsewhere or found It has been recorded as growing ten any reference to it. inches high and twenty across in fifteen Cedrus deodara 'Pygmaea' was found years; thirteen by twenty-three in seven• in a California nursery by Mr. Gotelli, teen years; and by Mr. Hillier as less and the original plant is now in his than three feet tall and more than three collection in the National Arboretum. feet wide in thirty years. Mr. Spingarn is growing it. It is The true balsam of the Southern Ap• reported as twelve inches tall and seven• palachians is Abies fraseri, which grows teen inches wide in seventeen years. in the boreal forest at altitudes of five thousand feet and more. A cultivar, Chamaecyparis A. f. 'Prostrata', a low wide-spreading "As to the dwarf conifers I would shrub "rarely exceeding four feet", was not want to be without in my rock introduced into the trade in 1938 by garden," Dr. Yelton said, "my first the Kelsey-Highlands Nursery. I wonder choice must go to Chamaecyparis ob• whether it is to be found anywhere tusa 'Nana,' the true form, which is now. a green tennis ball of tightly packed foliage. It reaches about six inches in Cedrus fifteen years. Chamaecyparis pisifera The Atlas Cedar, the Deodar, and 'Plumosa Minima' is apt to revert to Cedar of Lebanon are all trees that non-juvenile foliage, and must be con• flourish in the South, and I should stantly manicured; it is very lovely think their dwarf forms would do as and will stay in scale if given a regular well. Mr. Spingarn lists several small haircut." cultivars of all three, but the only one Dr. Kellam has Chamaecyparis ob-

91 tusa 'Pygmaea', a low spreading shrub, has grown to a height of ten inches and C. o. 'Reis' which is upright. He in eighteen years, and there is no telling also has Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Squar- how far it would have crept, rooting rosa Aurea Pygmaea', twelve by fifteen as it goes, if I had not cut it back inches in ten years — (the smaller frequently and drastically to keep it the plant the longer the name) which from covering a gravel path as it fans has yellow-green juvenile foliage, and out from the foot of a tall pine tree. C.p. 'Squarrosa Pygmaea', which I had Juniperus sargentii used to be grown in Raleigh. It came from Carl Starker, in the Fruitland Nursery (as a variety and in an unusually dry summer was of /. chinensis), but I have seen it the freshest looking shrub in the garden. listed lately only by West Coast nur• It is a plump little ball of fine blue-gray series. needles. Picea Cryptomeria "Picea abies 'Pumila' is the best "I am unhappy with Cryptomeria ja- spruce for me," Dr. Yelton says, "rea• ponica 'Vilmoriniana'," Dr. Yelton said, ching one foot in fifteen years. Picea "because it is now approaching the abies 'Pygmaea' is a lovely little bun exile stage, C. j. 'Lobbii' was removed about six inches tall. Picea abies long ago." 'Vilmoriniana' was brought 'Nidiformis' makes a bush four feet by Philippe de Vilmorin to France from in diameter over three feet high, but Japan about 1890, and in his garden is excellent and will withstand our near Paris it grew twenty years to climate. Picea abies 'Remontii' is a be a perfect globe two feet in diameter. better form for me. Picea pungens I had it in Raleigh from the old LeMac 'Montgomery' is a lovely soft blue plant Nursery in Hampton, Virginia, but I about a foot in height, and is not left it behind four years later. Mr. greedy; P. p. 'Moerheimi' is slightly Spingarn gives it ten inches by twelve larger and less beautiful. Picea glauca in ten years; Mrs. Bergman gives it 'Conica,' in spite of getting larger with about two and a half feet in height the years, is wonderful as a peripheral in forty years. In Dr. Kellam's garden plant for the rock garden." C. j. 'Lobii Nana' has grown to fourteen Some plants grow very slowly at first, by sixteen inches in two years. Dr. Kellam says, but when they find they like it here they begin to grow Juniperus rapidly; one of these is Picea abies "In spite of many opinions to the 'Mucronata', a compact globe when contrary," Mr. Spingarn said thirty young, but eventually becoming a tree. years ago, "I cannot detect any ap• preciable difference between Juniperus Pinus procumbens 'Nana' and Juniperus squa- "Among the Pines," Mr. van Melle mata 'Prostrata'. Undoubtedly time said in our Bulletin, in 1949, "the nicest will prove me wrong." Time must have thing known to me is Pinus strobus done so, for he now lists them as 'Nana,' an utterly dwarf, compact mass separate plants, and as such they are of grey White Pine foliage of irregular grown in Charlotte, although I am not form and indefinite width. Not many convinced that they are properly named. nurseries have it." This is still true; In Dr. Kellam's garden /. prostrata Mr. Spingarn's is the only one I know 'Nana' is four inches tall and three feet of now, but I saw it at the Tingle wide; in mine /. squamata 'Prostrata' Nursery long ago. The tallest of a row

92 of eight year old specimens was eigh• the mountain of Northern Japan, is teen inches, and most were not over a puzzle. In cultivation, Mr. Hillier twelve inches. says, it is a small horizontally-branched Dr. Yelton says, "Pinus cembra tree. I first saw it in Mr. Tingle's makes a very soft small tree but even• collection as a very small dense mass tually gets out of scale. 1 have a lovely of foliage; Mr. Mitsch describes it as dwarf pine in an elongated shape which "semi-dwarf, irregular, upright. Ends I have lost the name for; it was obtain• of branches somewhat twisted showing ed from the Raraflora Nursery near silvery reverse." In Dr. Kellam's garden Philadelphia, and has stayed in scale it has grown to a height of two feet on the top of a tufa ridge for three in seven years. years." The one in my garden came from Kingsville as "a very graceful Hemlock with crowded branches forming a Thuja pyramidal head." It was a small low The Oriental arbor-vitae is better shrub with horizontal branches, but I suited to the South than the American supposed it would grow in grace, and one. Thuja orientalis 'Aurea Nana' was make a screen where a screen was raised by Mr. Berckmans, and is still needed. But now, after twenty-five listed by John Mitsch as Berckmans years, the trunk is only four inches Golden Arbor-vitae. "It is popular on high, and not bigger than a man's the West Coast, deservedly so," Mr. wrist, and the spreading branches lie Welch says, "and should be in every on the ground or grow upward for collection, however, small; it is seldom a few inches and then grow out at over sixty centimeters high." In the right angles for as much as eight feet; Fruitland catalogue for 1952 its mature the branchlets turn upward, and the height is given as eight feet, though tips of the tallest are about three feet it is "ideal for small gardens, window from the ground. The glossy dark green boxes, and vases." needles are narrow and short, only an Thuja orientalis 'Juniperoides', a inch long; they are as fragrant as compact and columnar form, may grow balsam. It grows in deep shade writh to a height of eighteen inches or more a carpet of Vinca minor beneath it. in seven years. Mr. Welch gives its mature height as less than a meter. Yews and Plum Yews The most satisfactory yew for the Tsuga South is the English species, Taxus Dr. Kellam gets all his dwarf conifers baccata. There are numerous low grow• from the Mitsch Nursery in Oregon. ing forms, but the only one I have He has some interesting small hemlocks, grown is 'Repandens', which came from cultivars of Tsuga canadensis: 'Gentsch Tingle's and grew in my Raleigh garden White', with silver white tips, new and for a number of years without getting rare; 'Jeddoloh', very fine, stays low; to be more than two feet tall. When and 'Nana' — Mr. Mitsch is not sure I came to Charlotte Mr. Tingle sent of the name, as the same plant is listed me another; it had evidently been as 'Nana' and 'Gracilis', but it is a growing in the field for some time, beauty; 'Pendula' is a weeping form and was already four feet tall; in spite for large gardens. of being cut back, it is now about Tsuga diver si folia, a forest tree in eight feet tall and sixteen feet across.

93 I have learned that in seventy-five years a variety of C. harringtonia. As it it may grow to ten by thirty feet, suckers, I take it to be C. h. d. variety and I had better begin dealing with nana, which Ernest Wilson sent from it more severely. In addition to putting Japan to the Arnold Aboretum in 1916, up with heat, it is said to be the and which is the only form that I hardiest English yew, withstanding tem• know of that does; if so, it must have peratures well below zero. been a young plant in 1937 for it The most beautiful dwarf yew I have did not cover much ground when I ever seen is Taxus baccata 'Prostrata' saw it. In my garden, after twenty-five in Mrs. de Forest's lovely garden in years, three suckers have come up a Santa Barbara. It is a low, neat, slowly few feet from the trunk, which is only spreading ground cover, two feet tall seven inches tall, and from the trunk or less, with bright green needles. My the suckers stretch out horizontally to visit to California was long ago; I eight feet, lying down or slightly have searched in vain ever since, but ascending. The tips of the branches I have never found a source for it. are sometimes three feet above the In our Bulletin (January 1968) Anna ground. The needles are in two ranks; Sheets says another dwarf Japanese they are a bright and shining green, yew, Taxus cuspidata 'Minima', one of and to an inch and a half long. It the very smallest, is easy to grow in is hardy in zone six. sun or light shade in Piedmont North At one time Mr. Tingle grew, as Carolina It was raised in 1932 from Cephalotaxus repandens, a dwarf form a seedling selected by B. H. Slavin, of C. harringtonia fastigiata. When I Director of Parks in Rochester, New saw it in the nursery, a six or seven York. year old plant that had never been Mr. Hall told me that the dwarf cut was still less than a foot tall. I plum yew at Fruitland was Cephalotax- don't think he propagated it, and I us drupacea, which is now considered suppose it is now lost forever.

Seed List Syndrome Do others have self-delusion problems with the seed lists? At the moment I have a nice group of common foxglove in bloom. They were grown from a seed packet which certainly did not have Digitalis purpurea on it. The squirrels have made off with the label and I don't recall what it was supposed to be, but, from the location, I judge it should have been six to ten inches tall, with lavender, lilac or blue flowers in summer. I was thrilled to raise one Dipelta yunnanensis from seed. The other day, while strolling by, I remarked to myself, "My that poplar is doing well." Ten feet further along sense caught up with me. No dipelta. It seems impossible to let an entire growing season go by without realizing something is not quite right. Anyone else have this syndrome? —Shirley Klett, Bel Air, Maryland

94 GARDENING IN SAND

NORMAN C. DENO State College, Pennsylvania

One of the simplest and most satisfy• sand? There are several reasons. One ing methods for growing a wide variety of the most important is that sand of rock and alpine plants is the techni• naturally provides a well aerated soil. que of sand beds. To make a sand This is a much misunderstood factor. bed, select a reasonably level area It does not seem to be generally realized on the order of twenty-five by twenty- that plant roots, as growing organisms, five feet and have the nearest get energy from oxidation^respiration neighborhood lumber and building sup• and they need air, or more specifically ply company dump about twelve cubic the oxygen in the air. If they cannot yards of ordinary builders sand (the get oxygen, they die of asphyxiation coarse, sharp kind) on the plot. When just as surely as an animal. Many gar• the sand is raked even it will give deners achieve this aeration by striving a covering of about six inches overlay• for what they call drainage. The truth ing the soil. While it may be desirable is that the roots of plants really don't to eliminate some of the most vigorous care whether water flows past them weeds, such as dock and thistle, before fast or slowly; however misconceptions the sand is delivered, the fact is that sometimes work and soil with good these sand beds have been made on drainage will be well aerated, even an old field that had been cultivated well below the surface. It is evident but still held its quota of weeds; thus that the porous nature of sand provides rigorous elimination of weeds before one of these well aerated mediums. setting down the sand is not necessary. A second feature of sand is its loose• It is a fact that certain plants will ness. It is fun to run your fingers grow better in sand bed conditions than through sand and I like to imagine anywhere else and we shall inquire as that the mat-forming phlox and to why this happens. But first, let me arenaria also love to run their wide- talk of some other advantages of this ranging roots through the sand. This type of gardening. Ever try to dig ability to encourage root growth is well a dandelion or deep-rooted dock out known to propagators, who often use of hard soil: break them off at the pure sand to root cuttings. top and have five crowns for one a Another aspect and a surprising one month later; that is the usual story. is that sand does not frost heave; just It is different in sand. You can work why is not clear, but it is so. As a your fingers several inches down, get result, there is none of the tearing a good hold on the crown, and out of deep tap roots and upheaval of roset• it comes. Weeding becomes a joy and tes which is such a problem in some a pleasure instead of toil and frustra• loam soils. This is particularly impor• tion. Even chickweed and purslane are tant in species such as Phlox alyssifolia easily brought out whole rather than and P. andicola. Frost heaving tears torn off to sprout again. up their thin fleshy roots and the whole Why do some plants do so well in system can be shredded and thrown

95 to the surface if such heaving is exten• twelve months of the year despite sive. drought, burning sun, sleet, or snow. A factor that we know less about The arenarias are called sandworts is the presence or absence of bacteria meaning sand weeds. Species such as and fungi. The loose texture of sand A. montanum and A. saxosa form seems to discourage these micro• evergreen mats (deep myrde green in the organisms and some plants that grow case of A. saxosa), which disappear well in sand are debilitated by rots under masses of inch wide cups in and molds in ordinary soil. May. The question will soon be asked: Another group of plants, not as is there enough nutrient in sand? Here well known as the arenarias, that do is where the subtle feature of six inches well in sand but not elsewhere are the of sand overlaying soil comes into play. acantholimons or thornyfields. They re• The plant roots can penetrate through semble a very symmetrical, mounded the sand and invade the soil more or dianthus, but one touch will tell you less to the degree in which they need these are no dianthus; the needle-like nutrient. It should be apparent that leaves are stiff and piercingly sharp. shallow rooted plants will not fare well. Sprays of pink or white flowers develop This is, in fact, one of the features in June and the plants are evergreen of sand beds: shallow rooted grasses the rest of the year. and weeds do not establish easily. For real excitement, become a penste- What are some of the plants par• mon buff and join the American Penste- ticularly suited to the sand bed in full mon Society. Penstemons have long, sun? Any sandy desert in Wyoming thong-like roots, evergreen foliage, and will provide a number of possibilities. spikes or mats covered with tubular Try Phlox alyssifolia, andicola, and flowers. Some of the finest blues in hoodii. 7 hese send up little forests all the plant world are found in P. of stems from adventitious root buds. giaber and its allies and there is no In spring they are covered with gay finer sheaf of bloom than that produced flowers in whites, pinks, and lavender by the multitudes of one-foot spikes blues. Even the eastern phloxes such of P. laricifolius when covered with as P. suhulata and P.bifida do superbly salmon-pink trumpets. P. caespitosus in sand beds. P. bifida is a glorious lives up to its name by forming deep shower of bloom when grown in sand green, inch high, evergreen mats cov• whereas it is apt to be weak due to ered with lilac-purple flowers. The roots mildew in other soils. along the creeping stems go straight Eriogonums are a race of buck• down for twenty inches, enough to wheats of which many species are withstand any degree of drought. found in the Rockies. They have The Cactacaea are not everyone's evergreen foliage ranging from furry plants and many of the opuntia group white to russet red in winter depending are rather large and lack distinction on the species. They are mostly mat- of form. In contrast, the beauty and formers and have sumptuous bouquets elegance of Echinocereus pectinatus and of cream to deep yellow flowers in E. baileyi will satisfy the most discern• large heads. Try E. umbellatum and ing tastes. The flowers are bigger than E. flavum in sand for plants that look the little symmetrical ball of a plant- dressed-up all year long and never and are crystalline pink or lavender go ragged. They are decorative for in color. Unfortunately the flowers last

96 only two days, but the plants are hardy botanists, renamed Vitaliana primuli- to -20°F. and the spines are relatively flora) forms a mat of glaucous needle• benign compared to those of the fear• like leaves in the sand bed covered with some opuntias. yellow bugles in May. It belongs to the The Oncocyclus and Juno irises are Primulaceae and possesses all the neat• kings and queens of all iris. They are ness so characteristic of that wonderful spectacular and dwarf and enjoy the family. Pulsatilla vernalis, Our Lady of dry upper layer in sand beds. The the Snows, is a large white anemone on Oncocyclus iris have flowers as big or six inch stems over a mat of lacy ever• bigger than those of the usual German green foliage. It is not easy to keep in bearded iris on one-foot stems over regular garden soil but does well in sand. leaves only six inches tall. The blossoms Several companulas also take to sand are beautifully veined and there is a beds including the dwarfs with great large eye-patch on each fall. The Juno cup-shaped flowers such as the purple iris resemble little one-foot cornstalks C. pulla and the pink C. betulaefolia. with several orchid-like flowers at the Daisies are not everyone's choice but top. the two-to-three-inch flat lavender pin- Many other genera do well in sand, wheels of Aster alpinus and Townsendia among them the drabas. Draba aizaon parryi or the white pinwheels of Town- looks like a tiny yucca with yellow sendia strigosa will satisfy the most flowers in very early spring and Draba discriminating tastes. The first two hold dedeana is the perfect alpine rosette their flowers on four-inch stems while covered with large white flowers. Dryas T. strigosa has flowers nearly flat to octapetala also does well in sand. It the ground. forms yard-wide mats of little evergreen It is fun to see what will grow in oak leaves. The two-inch flat flowers sand beds. Who knows what old of this member of the Rose Family favorite or new challenge will reach resemble single white roses. Dryas is its peak of perfection there. In general, circumpolar in distribution and it gives plants are inclined to be low growing me a thrill to think of this plant grow• and more floriferous in sand beds than ing on mountain tops on the north in ordinary rock garden soil and that coast of Greenland. is what it is all about. Douglasia vitaliana (now, by some

• • • of Cabbages and Kings • • •

What is the why of a garden? Most and hire someone to keep it trim and gardens are created primarily as a set• flowering, much as they would purchase ting — a pleasant adjunct to a home, ornaments or pictures for their rooms a bit of landscape tamed and tidied or display on their side-boards maid- and made bright with color. polished silver. Others, though they may For some people this is the only wish the amenity of a garden, are reason for a garden. Those who are unable or unwilling to go to such ex• sufficently affluent will buy such a pense. They may, perhaps, have it pro• landscape, custom-designed and planted fessionally designed but will plant it

97 themselves and will plan to tend it the catalogs indicated, they develop personally a few hours each week with blights, are chewed by bugs; some even or without the part-time help of what vanish completely. It is all very frequently turns out to be an unknow- discouraging. And after a few heroic ledgeable, unwilling high-school boy. but sporadic attempts at cleaning up Many such garden owners even the mess, the beds are sometimes resod- believe they will learn to love garden• ded for the sake of tidiness and simple ing; indeed, a few will discover in upkeep; as frequently they are allowed themselves an affinity to horticulture. to go completely wild, a permanent But most will find it a disheartening reminder of unattained hope. chore. True, in the first warm days There are, it must be conceded, many of spring they may get an atavistic gardens planned, planted and cared for pleasure in poking about in the moist, primarily as settings for a house that richly scented soil and discovering un• are neither professionally tended nor curling, upthrusting stems among the allowed to become unsightly weed- soggy debris of winter. They will revel patches. For just as the conscientious in spading up a bed and sprinkling housewife will spend time and effort it with the contents of brightly colored — though frequently grudgingly — on seed packets, or in tucking nursery- the bedmaking, tidying, dusting, and bought plants into the newly turned vacuum-cleaning essential to main• earth. They will greet each sprout, each taining the inside of an attractive home, new leaf with the pride of creation so will she or her husband, or both, and cheerfully pull up the tiniest weeds. weed and trim the plantings which But soon this initial enthusiasm enhance the outside. dwindles. A day slips by, then a week A desired landscape is not, however, without so much as a glance at those the only why of a garden. Many are plants which do not seem to be growing created by those for whom gardening as fast as they did at first. Other in• itself is a joy, where the decorative terests impinge and suddenly that bed aspect is a result rather than the intent. — neat and clean only yesterday — And we rock-gardeners are definitely is filmed with weeds. Conscience- in this category. Gardening itself is stricken the gardener pulls and scrat• a joy and a relaxation. Our lives would ches to release his plants, only to find be diminished without a garden in that next week it has all to be done which to work. again. Gradually as the sun presses Happy gardening to you all. wth greater heat, even this minimal attention is begrudged. Summer Note on Phlox Bitida weekends are too short. Guests arrive. The children must be ferried to the Mina Colvin of Nashville, Indiana, beach. More appealing than weeding who discovered P. bifida 'Starbrite' and wrestling with hoses are the tennis (Vol. 32, p. 184), sends in the following court, the golf course, a trip to the note on the species: mountains, a shaded terrace. Besides summer is a time for friendship and On my way home from Bloomington, gardening is a solitary chore. Indiana recently I noticed that the And so the dream-garden becomes weeds were quite tall where I used increasingly unkempt: weeds shoot up, to see Phlox bifida and decided to the plants do not flower as well as stop where I used to see large patches

98 of it. They were gone, not a P. bifida If the grass grows and is mowed they to be found. In another spot, where do well but with Indiana's present the roadside is still being privately policy of only mowing roadsides twice mowed, I found nearly as many plants a year (they used to do it four even as in the past. This has about confirm• five times annually), the P. bifida can't ed my suspicion that this plant desires compete and dies out. disturbed soil. The area where I found 'Starbrite' After a bank has been scraped to has no P. bifida at all; the trees are bare soil, they will soon appear and so much more lush and the shade has get thick. If fallen leaves keep down become just too heavy. I've marked the growth of tall weeds, P. bifida plants in the wild and find they only thrives in the leaf mold, but when tall live a short time, three to four years weeds come in, no more P. bifida. at the most.

THE AMERICAN WASHINGTON WILDFLOWER PENSTEMON SOCIETY SAFARI Cordially invites you to join its growing list of enthusiastic members. See the fabulous wildflowers of the If you are interested in Penstemons, you CASCADES and OLYMPICS with Pro• will be interested in the activities of the fessional Naturalist society. Write to the Secretary, BRAD'S TOURS Orville M. Steward 401 E. Mercer #31 E P.O. Box 450, Briarcliffe Manor Seattle, WA 98102 New York 10501 for Particulars

PACIFIC HORTICULTURE a magazine about plants and Gardens of the West Illustrated Color Quarterly Annually: $6 U.S., $7 Foreign Write to P.O. Box 22609, San Francisco, CA 94122

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100 AMERICAN PRIMROSE SOCIETY Grower of Hardy Sempervivums and Sedums offers Purple, Red, Pink, Blue, Gold and Green Quarterly publications beautifully illustrated, LARGE SELECTION-MANY RARE an international Seed Exchange of approx• imately 100 different Primulas and a culture & UNUSUAL chart to assist in the growing of species WHOLESALE—RETAIL Primulas. No Catalog U.S.A. $7.00 per year CHARLOTTES G. K. Fenderson, Treasurer Alpine Gardens & Crafts Grout Hill 608 E. Frank South Acworth Darlington, Wisconsin 53530 New Hampshire 03607 Phone (608) 776-2646

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WATNONG NURSERY "PLANTS FOR DRY SUNNY AREAS The place to find some AND THOSE SHADY CORNERS" "HARD TO FIND" PLANTS Groundcovers, Alpines, Wildflowers and Gaylussacia brachycera Succulents in variety Dwarf Conifers, Leiophyllum, dwarf & low Catalog — 50c growing Rhododendrons, R. yakusianum & several of its hybrids WOODLAND ROCKERY By Appointment, at the Nursery Only 6210 Klam Road Otter Lake, Michigan 48464 Hazel and Don Smith Sorry, we cannot accept Foreign orders. 201 — 539-0312 Morris Plains, New Jersey 07950

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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 $12.50 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

Offers 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 £3.50 per year ($8.00) Hon. Subscription Secretary D. J. Donald Esq. Morea, Main Rd., Balbeggie, Perth PH2 6EZ, Scotland Please pay subscriptions by cheque in U.K. currency drawn on a British Bank or by International Money Order.

104 DIRECTORATE AMERICAN ROCK GARDEN SOCIETY President Emeritus HAROLD EPSTEIN, 5 Forest Court, Larchmont, New lork

President JAMES A. MINOCUE, 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 1980 Norman G Deno Mrs. Louis (Molly) Grothaus Ms. Deon R. Prell Term Expires 1981 Elizabeth Corning John Kovalchik Charlotte Ray Term Expires 1982 Pamela J. Harper T. Paul Maslin Quentin G Schlieder, Jr. Director of Seed Exchange Director of Slide Collection Kathy Freeland Quentin C. Schlieder, Jr. 541 Norfolk, Holliston, Mass. 01746 Box 1295-R, Morristown. N.J. 07960

ARGSPHS Library Service Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Library 325 Walnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19106

CHAPTER CHAIRMEN Northwestern MRS. MARGUERITE BENNETT, 17015 26th Ave. N.E., Seattle, Wash. 98155 Western WILLIAM S. FOLKMAN, 2640 San Benito Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94598 Midwestern AILEEN MCWILLIAM (Acting Chm.), 711 Magnolia St., Mena, Ark. 71953 Allegheny MARGARET H. WISNER, 338 Kemerer Drive, Greensburg, PA 15601 Potomac Valley DR. JOHN WURDACK, 4400 Samar St., Beltsville, Md. 20705 Co-chairman RUSSELL D. KIRK, 2709 Lime St., Temple Hills, MD 20705 Delaware Valley - ALAN P. SLACK, 908 Twyckenham Rd., Media, PA 19063 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 .WAID R. VANDERPOEL, 232 Apple Tree Lane, Barrington, TL 60010 Columbia-Willamette MRS. FAITH MACKANESS, Rte. 2, Box 981, Corbett, OR 97019 Connecticut MICHAEL H. DODGE, Hilltop Rd., Deer Island, Lakeside, CT 06758 Long Island „ „ JOHN BIEBER, 185-8th St., Bethpage, NY 11714 Hudson Valley JOHN TREXLER, C/O Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Box 1295-R, Morristown, NJ 07960 Minnesota Lois ECKLUND, Rte 5 River Haven, St. Cloud, MN 56301 Siskiyou „ PHYLLIS GUSTAFSON, 250 Maple St., Central Point, OR 97502 Western-No. Carolina HORACE K. FREEMAN SR., 2150 Woodridge Dr., Hendersonville, NC 28739 Rocky Mountain PANAYOTI P. CALLAS, P.O. Box 1071, Fort Collins, CO 80522 Adirondack ELVA G LINK, BOX 211 RD 2, Corinth, NY 12822 YOUR ARGS STORE

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