sign in sign up
<<
Home , Jasmine

2D •Friday,October29,2010•NaplesDailyNews Neapolitan/Classified »naplesnews.com

Make it Green

It will be a blooming paradise at the 2010 Yard & Garden Show at the Collier County Extension offices this week- end. Cathy Feser Get Growing

2010 Yard & Garden Show This garden show includes , educational programs, demonstrations and a 6-foot- It’s not just a hibiscus. It’s Hibiscus rosa-sinensis L. “Chariots of Fire.” Only the botanical name will get you the exact you want. Hidden Valley Hibiscus by-6-foot living wall created by Faye Hunt. When: 9a.m.to4p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday Scientific names keep plants in check Where: Collier County UF Extension, 14700 Immokalee Road, Naples Before we get started this week, a couple of names not only identify individuals, but also distinct variation within a population and are Admission: Adult $3; announcements: place the individual in the march of evolution. essentially the same thing. Do note, though, Children under 12 free ■ Michael’s classes start next week! “What Let’s look at how the system works. that these terms have legal definitions protect- Information: Plant Is That” starts on Monday, and “Gar- ing certain rights. Write these varietal names (239) 353-4244 den Design” begins Thursday. Both are with an italic v. followed by the the name: six weeks long. See the website for more: The binomial system L. v. Variety. Butterfly www.msadesign.com. Remember high school biology? All crea- ■ And finally, there is Form. These in- ■ When you have the time, tures are described by a system of increasing dividuals show only minor, but persistent, conference do notice plantings on the specificity, starting with Kingdom, moving di!erences, and are sometimes related to Learn about gardening for south side of Pine Ridge Road, through division, class, order, family, and environmental factors. They are written as butterflies with experts and at Kensington; and have a look then genus and species. This last-species-is f. Horizontalis,maintainingtheitalics,and then, if you want, join them at plantings around the Inter- a population of creatures able to reproduce always precede the naming scientist: Genus, for lunch at the 10th annual state 75 interchange at Pine with fertile o!spring (no mules need apply). species, forma alba, Scientist Name. butterfly conference. There Ridge Road. I’ll cover both of We owe a debt to Carolus Linnaeus, the Swede is also a tour of Fort Myers these in a few weeks. who invented this ‘binomial system’ in 1753. Butterfly Estates after the Michael Beyond the species Spencer It’s the last two categories that have at- conference. Let’s make it hard tracted our interest this week because they are And just when you think you’ve settled on When: 9a.m.conference, the workhorses of plant names. Two words, talking about exactly the same plant: surprise! 12:15 p.m. lunch and Now: lots of people wonder why we bother though, may not be su"cient to describe a The name is changed! Ordinary wax myrtle is 2to4p.m.butterflyestates with the scientific names of plants. Why say plant. To that end, there are several accepted a native plant recently renamed by the afore- tour Nov. 6 asiaticum when Asian Jasmine ways to delineate the subject. mentioned pointy-headed folk from Myrica Where: 3406 Palm Beach is so much easier to remember and pronounce? cerifera to Morella cerifera.Why? Blvd., Fort Myers Some of the “old-time” gardeners — the folks who Precision. Admission: $10 in have the most knowledge about plants — ask this What else? Many plants have been named based on advance for conference, $12 question with a revealing smile, intimating that Scientists are rightfully jealous of their incomplete studies or apocryphal field obser- at the door; $5 for lunch (or scientific names are college-boy silliness. discoveries. In the botanical world, we recog- vations. Plant material is located on the tree bring your own free); $7 for Is this true? nize the naming scientist by adding the name of life based on the characteristics of sexual butterfly estates tour No. It’s just that they are delightfully polysyl- directly to the right of the species. When you parts, the study of which is tedious and time Information: labic, consistent with your design profession- see, for example, Myrica cerifera L.,youknow consuming although a source of endless joy (239) 533-7513 al’s merry philosophy of eschewing austerity that this plant was named by Linnaeus. Over to a certain personality type. There are about in favor of abstruse recheré. the course of time, though, many species a bazillion plant species on Earth, and only And there is this: The pointy-headed people have been named by virtue of a more cursory adozenorsoresearchbotanists,soyoucan are actually on to something here. Scientific investigation. see that there is a bit of a backlog. As each names, and the way they are written, are In the case of plant material, especially, ad- plant is properly studied and described a precise. The International Association for ditional subdivisions are quite useful: more exact placement can be made. In the Plant polices the e!ort, accepting ■ Subspecies are usually geographically last dozen years or so we’ve seen queen palm, names only when following particular rules, separated populations that may or may not for example, move from Cocos plumosa to and when published by reputable sources. become species, but do have di!erent char- Arecastrum romano!zanum. This is science For all of its precision, the system is actually acteristics. When describing them, use the moving forward for the good of humanity. quite straightforward. And, do remember this abbreviation “subsp.”. Most crop plants fall important fact: plants are forever evolving. into this category, and so do cat and dog Michael Spencer, ASLA, has been practicing land- Categorization is based on how closely they are breeds. scape architecture for 27 years and is president of related to a common ancestor. This means the ■ A cultivar or variety show some kind of MSA Design, Inc. Web site: www.msadesign.com

Extension »From 1D Getting an eyeful Anicereferenceisa98-page up into the tree tops where it is a booklet, “Brighten up Your Life struggle to remove them. Using with Bougainvillea,” by Eric Si- Made Wijaya, designer of these jasmine species for mon. Although much of the book- the Lea Asian Garden for the is akin to using a skinny marathon let is about foreign “bougies” and Naples Botanical Garden. runner when you need a big of- Malaysian soils, it is worth the fensive lineman. price ($10; available online) for Anyway, I don’t want to put land- the pictures (especially the Nong Botanical garden scape maintenance people out of Nooch Tropical Botanical Gar- designer speaks work, but these Jasminum, I feel dens, a 600-acre preserve near Made Wijaya, world- —pleasesendinyourcomments Pattaya, , and the info renowned tropical garden to the NDN website — are really a on ways to grow this variable spe- designer who is behind the silly choice for a unless you cies as: trees, (pages 61,63-wow ), soon-to-open Lea Asian can baby-sit them before they crawl bushes, bonsai, trellis, topiary and Garden at the Naples up into nearby trees. as road dividers! Botanical Garden, speaks at In fact, there are eight species of Naples Garden Club. He is Bougainvilleas — bougainvillea; but most of the variet- best known for his romantic or shrubs? ies’ heritage is from three species: Balinese garden designs. ■ B. spectabilis (hairy leaves, When: 1 p.m. Nov. 8 Another mystery to me was why canes, and prefers a cool dry Where: Moorings would anyone plant bougainvilleas season before it can flower well) Presbyterian Church, in roadway medians and prune the ■ B. glabra (no pubescence and Moss Hall, 791 Harbour heck out of them to keep them at Wax jasmine throws wild hairs and tends to get leggy as a hedge. flowers year-long in the tropics) Drive, Naples a3-footheight?Everyoneknows Doug Caldwell ■ B. peruviana. Admission: $10 they grow to a rambling 40 foot After looking at this booklet, one Information: 262-1272, , right? There are some prime grow more than 3 feet. compact and it should be planted cannot help but be dazzled by the www.naplesgardenclub.org examples in the trees at the Naples “But,” he told me, “on the west with some soil elevation to al- by the brilliance of the bougainvil- Zoo (Carribean Gardens) parking coast of Florida, we have found that low proper drainage and avoid leas — the more the better. Just To include your organization’s lot. I’d heard of a supposed dwarf they produce a ‘Helen Johnson’ chlorosis.” watch out for those thorns. gardening special event for variety called “Helen Johnson,” but variety that is bigger and some Aguado also mentions another the public, e-mail information many in the industry would wink people believe that it is a degenera- dwarf: “Tropical Bouquet,” that Doug Caldwell, Ph.D., is the commer- no later than two weeks in when they said “dwarf.” Fernando tion of the plant. It is possible that are “very pretty in the summer cial landscape horticulture extension advance, in the format shown Aguado (president of Bougainvil- they are actually growing another but in the winter they are a!ected. agent and landscape entomologist here, to news@naplesnews. leas.com, inc in Miami), however, variety called ‘Temple Fire.’ They grow about 3 feet.” with the University of Florida Collier com. Please provide a tele- confirmed that “Helen Johnson is “As far as the real ‘Helen John- The trick is to get accurately County Extension Service. E-mail phone number and name for a“classicdwarfbougainvillea,the son’ variety, it should be trimmed labeled plant material from the dougbug@ufl.edu; phone, 353-4244 further information. best for ground cover. They do not in the summer to make it more supplier. x203; or visit: collier.ifas.ufl.edu