Welcome to Maryland

We just closed on our new property in Maryland.  It is in what I consider to be a pretty rural area near Harper's Ferry.  This is a new experience for me, since I have always been living in more or less suburban areas.  We have a mix of mowed lawn, unmown/early successional meadow and woodland edge.  Over the next couple of months I will be trying to ID the plants on the site and then deciding how to use the spaces for creating new gardens, plant production and possibly just letting go.

In this posting I'll share some of the plants and insects I've ID'ed so far.  There are a lot of Box Elder, Acer negundo, but they are all growing in thickets and don't stand out too well.  One of the easiest trees to pick out was this Tulip Tree in the mown part of the yard.  The leaves have a distinctive tulip-like shape.  I'm guessing it's about 20 years old.

There are a number of what appear to be ornamental cherries on the property but these are in need of some TLC.  What I'm pretty sure are the native Pin Cherry, Prunus pensylvanica, looks a lot healthier, despite being in a less managed area.

I think this is a Pin Cherry.  The fruits were in small clusters,
rather than on racemes as found on Choke Cherries

Further in the back or the property I noticed the distinctive leaves of a Paw Paw tree.  This small tree/shrub has large drooping leaves.  I did not notice any fruits, but I understand that they are favored by the wildlife, so I may never get a chance.  I did see some Zebra Swallowtail butterflies which use the Paw Paw as a larval host.

The upper wings of this Swallowtail were in constant motion.

Another small native tree/shrub I found appeared to be a Carolina Silverbell.  This was in a shrub border close to the house so I don't know if it was planted or naturally occurring.  I would not have noticed it if it weren't for the winged seed pods.

The previous owner planted a wonderful assortment of flowering plants near the house, including a bunch of Butterfly Bushes.  I will probably replace some of these with native alternatives, but for now we will enjoy the variety of insect pollinators they attract.

I found the website Gardens with Wings to be very helpful in IDing these butterflies.



There are also a number of invasive plants that I will need to deal with.  One of the first we noticed was a displaced mid-western native Catalpa Tree.  These huge leaves really make the seedlings stand out along the roadsides.

This tree is no more.

 Some of the more insidious invasives to deal with are Japanese Stiltgrass and Mile-a-Minute vine.  The annual stilt grass is pretty easy to pull out, the key will be to keep it from reseeding and spreading.  Mile-a-Minute vine is pretty nasty looking and will require more work, and protection, to remove.

Stiltgrass can be recognized by a silvery line
along the mid-vein on the top of the leaf.

I started to pull at this vine, but then I noticed
the barbs all over the plant.  This will have to
wait until I have my gloves on.

Native Plant Firsts....and Lasts

This past month I have celebrated several firsts!  After trying for a number of years I finally brought along several native plants from seed to maturity.

American Lady butterfly may be laying eggs on its host plant?

The American Lady is distinguished from
the similar Painted Lady butterfly by the
colored swath on the outside of its wings 

The first plant is Pearly Everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea.  I have been able to get these to germinate well, but they languished after transplanting into the garden.  I had success last year by planting them into the bark mulch surrounding the raised vegetable beds.  I think the rather sterile conditions there favored this plant that is common to 'old field' conditions.  (I have had similar disappointments with a related plant Sweet Everlasting, Pseudognaphalium obtussifolium).  The double bonus was that, not only did I get blossoms this year, the plant was visited by an American Lady butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis).  Pearly Everlasting is a larval host for that species of butterfly.











The second first, as it were, was having the Woodland Sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, come into bloom under my Norway Maple.  These plants were not particularly difficult to grow, it just took a long time to find a commercial seed source.  These did take a year in the ground to get established before sending up blooms this summer.

Brown-eyed Susan growing 3-4' tall in a sunny flower bed.

The Brown-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia triloba, was easier to find as seed but they were more difficult to get to germinate.  Moist stratification in soil-less mix for 60 days gave better results than using damp sand for a similar time.  (Since two methods were tried in successive years, cold storage for a year may have helped as well.)  These Rudbeckia did take a year to get established before blooming.  I have them growing in both sun and shade (Norway Maple), and in a pot; they are all doing well.

The easiest plant to bring along was the Partridge Pea, Chamaecrista fasciculata.  This annual germinated well after moist stratification and treatment with a bacterial innoculum that gives this legume its nitrogen fixing capability.  I have these growing in dry sunny to partly sunny locations, and they are all doing well.  This plant may be a solution to a road-side bed that I have been working with.  They tolerate dry road-side conditions and as an annual, they should be resistant to the effects of snow plows!

The yellow Partridge Pea here is holding its own with the
crab grass and inhospitable conditions

While not a first, we were thrilled to see this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail drop by our deck plantings yesterday and I wanted to share this action shot.    This butterfly was the first native insect I've seen to go after the Lantana and totally ignore the Mealy-cup Sage.

The reason that all of these firsts are also 'Lasts' for me is that we are in the process of moving south, down to Maryland.  This is an exciting move for us.  We will be getting quite a bit more land.  There will be room for larger native plant gardens and hopefully the opportunity to do some limited production of underutilized native plants that I can used in my design business.  So as we go through this transition I will be blogging about my new environs, the native plant communities there and the new challenges to establishing new plantings in the woods.

Early Summer Blooms

Bees visit American Bellflower in both sunny
and shady locations

Now that we are getting into the hot days of summer, blooming of many native plants and the associated pollinator activity are picking up.  Here at home I saw my first Monarch Butterfly in many years.  You'll have to take my work for it, since it was gone by the time I got my camera.

One plant that has been blooming for awhile is the American Bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum.  This is particularly attractive to a medium sized black bee, probably a Miner Bee.  This plant blooms nearly as well in the shade as it does in the sun.

This Miner Bee is the primary visitor to the Bellflower

This Miner Bee draws nectar from the open face of the flower.  To do this it lands on the stamen and style of the flower.  Apparently the flower's stigma is situated to receive pollen from the bee as it makes its approach to the flower.








Nearby, on the sunny side of the driveway the Echinacea is in full bloom.  These attract a variety of pollinators, such as this Green Sweat Bee.  The Meadowsweet, Spiraea latifoia, has finished it's first round of blooms.  This year I cut some of the plants back significantly to keep the growth in check.  (I'm pretty sure it will put out a second growth.)  So for now the bees will be visiting other flowers for pollen and nectar.

It's interesting to note that with all the activity on the native flowers, I have seen very few insects visiting the flowers on my nearby shrub rose (other than a couple of Japanese Beetles).

Another early bloomer in the dry shade of my Norway Maple is Rosin Weed, Silphium integrifolium.  I chose this species of of Silphium because it does not get as big as the more familiar Cup Plant, S. perfoliatum.  This plant has slowly been expanding its mass, but I have not seen it show up in other parts of the garden.

A Hover Fly monitoring a cluster of Rosinweed blooms.

The flowers on this particular plant tend to form on the shady side.
This makes for a difficult photograph.

A new native annual that I'm trying out this year is Partridge Pea, Chamaecrista fasciculata.  This plant will grow in poor, dryish soils.  So far I'm favorably impressed.  One grouping that I planted near a highway is growing and blooming, despite receiving no additional moisture, other than the small amount of rain this summer.  Like its relative the Sensitive Plant, its leaves will fold up when the plant is handled roughly.  The leaves also fold up when it gets dark.  I wonder if this behavior helps it to survive under dry conditions (by limiting transpiration).

Some drifts are still intact, like the lavender-color Beebalm, Monarda fistulosa;
the orange Butterflyweed has blown over from another part of the
Wildflower Meadow at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

A Monarch Butterfly passing over
some Beebalm and Hoary Vervain

Over at Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, MA, there is a good sized native wildflower meadow installed about 5 years ago.  Here I have seen many more butterflies than in my urban backyard.  This meadow features a number of native grasses as well as many showy flowering plants.  The original planting had the plants arranged in drifts, but the management plan is to let the plants move around as they will, to create a dynamic garden with plants finding there best locations.

In another part of the cemetery I noticed this Bottlebrush Buckeye, Aesculus parviflora, in full bloom.  While native to the Southeastern US, this shrub is very attractive to the bees up in the Northeast.  I spent some time watching how the bees interacted with the flower.  It was more like a mugging than a gentle approach to sip some nectar.  The bee grabs onto to the outside of the flower and extracts nectar from between the petals and the calyx.  In the process the bee's abdomen rubs all over the anthers and the stigma, thus achieving pollination of the flower.  

This bee on the Buckeye flower is about 1.5" long.

Other flowers are about to open up here, like the Scarlet Sage, Woodland Sunflower and Prairie Coneflower, so the show has only just begun.

North American Natives for a Patio Container

Last year I had spotty results using the combination of Mealy-cup Sage (Salvia farinacea), Phlox drummondii, and Bidens ferulifolia to do a Native-species planting box scheme using primary colors.  The sage performed well, but the Phlox didn't transplant well and the Bidens bloomed in cycles, so I rarely had all three color blooming at once.  This year I stuck with the Salvia (cultivar 'Victoria Blue') as my tall plant and used a Lantana cultivar 'Bandana-Rose Improved' as the 'spiller' and Zinnias from the 'Profusion' series as 'fillers.'

This Lantana starts out yellow and ages to a pinkish-red.
The Zinnias had not bloomed yet.

In this flower box I also got a surprize.  A Drummond Phlox reseeded itself and has grown much better than the ones I grew indoors last year.  This past winter was mild enough to allow the seeds of this Texas species to overwinter in the flower box.  I also got a bunch of Salvia reseeding themselves as well.  This was great, I got bonus plants for free!

Native species that I have found to work well in a sunny flower box are native to Mexico and the Southwest US.  The hot and often dry conditions encountered in these containers is not unlike their native environment.  At first, I hesitated to use the Zinnias.  They have been highly bred and manipulated, but then I remembered the these plants actually have their origins in the North America, Mexico to be more specific.  The ones you see in the garden centers have been horticulturally improved for features like color, long bloom and resistance to powdery mildew, to name a few.

The 'Profusion Series' are hybrids of Zinnia elegans (the common tall Zinnia) and Z. angustifolia (Narrow-leaf Zinnia).  They tend to be about a foot tall with 1.5 inch flowers in a wide variety of colors that are supposed to bloom all summer.  I am using the cherry- and the white-flowered cultivars.  So far the cherry-form matured more quickly and is a little larger than the white-flowered form.

In checking out the progress of this Zinnia the first thing I noticed was the intricacy of the flower bud.  Maybe all Zinnia buds look like this, but this is the first time I noticed.  So now I'll watch and see if these Zinnias keeps pace with their neighbors.

I was happy to see that this cultivar still has fertile flowers
 - a bonus for the pollinators.

In another sunny area a random selection of blooms caught my eye.  Here the magenta-colored Wine-cups (Callirhoe involucrata) have encroached on a new planting of 'Apricot Sparkles' Day lily (yes, not everything I have is native).  To these, some self-seeded Wild petunias (Ruellia humilis) have also popped up.  I don't think I would have planned on this color combination, but the three taken together work for me.

I don't think the Daylily and the pale lavender Petunia would work
together if it weren't for the intense color of the  Wine-cups.

Time to cut back the Asters

Driveway garden before cutting back...

If you are growing tall native asters or goldenrods, mid-June is a good time to cut them back by a third to a half.  This will give more blooms on a slightly shorter plant.  It also reduces the tendency of these plants to flopping over.  I did this yesterday in this driveway garden.  Prairie Aster (Symphyotrichum turbinellum) dominates the right side of this planting.  Cutting back not only reduces flopping, it also makes it easier to see some of the other plants, like purple coneflower and common milkweed.  

After cutting back its easier to see the shorter flowers

I have cut back asters as late as the end of June.  Goldenrods can get the same treatment, but I found that I severely reduced the number of flowers on the early blooming Stiff Goldenrod (Solidago rigida) by cutting back too late in the season.  The later blooming Seaside Goldenrod (S. sempervirens) did just fine.

Two stalks of Canada Toadflax

As I was cutting back these fall bloomers I noticed several clumps of the native Canada Toadflax (Nuttalanthus canadensis, formerly Linaria canadensis) in bloom.  I have been seeing these along the highway since the beginning of June, but this is the first time I have been moving slow enough to get a good look.  They usually show up in large masses and can look like a pale blue cloud while driving by.

This winter annual or biennial wildflower grows in full sun and rocky soils where they have little competition from other plants.  The one in this photo was growing right on the edge of the asphalt, despite having much better soil nearby.

Close-up of Toadflax flower

Seedling's Progress - New Natives from Seed

One of my goals is to increase awareness of Native Annuals and their possibilities in the garden.  A major part of that is encouraging the plants to reseed themselves into the garden.  This is starting to get complicated, especially where I have combined a number of different plants.  It behooves me to learn what the seedlings of both the desired and undesired plants look like.  I getting to the point where I can tell which seedlings are familiar, even if I'm not sure which one it might be.  Here are some photos from this spring of some native seedlings, both 'wild' and ones that I have started in pots.

Lilium seedlings are just a single blade.

The seeds that I am most excited about are for Philadelphia Lily, Lilium philadelphicum.  I wanted to get some experience with a native lily and I chose this one because it's habitat is most like what I keep at home, dry upland woods.  Since I thought that germination would be tricky, I tried several methods: cold moist sand for 60 days, moist soilless mix for 2 weeks at room temperature then 60 days in the frig, room temperature seeding and winter-sowing.  The cold moist stratification gave me nearly 100% germination.  All the other methods were about 50%.  Now it is time to pot these guys up.  I think it will be several years before these will be mature enough to bloom, but I think (hope) it will be worth it.

Partridge Pea is a native annual found in the eastern half of the US.  It germinated well after a 10 day cold stratification.  This plant is able to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere though its association with rhizobial bacteria.  The seed I purchased form Prairie Moon Nursery came with a packet of inoculum to ensure that these bacteria would be present for the new plant.  The leaflets fold together at night and when it is being roughly handled.  I have already planted out a bunch of these along a roadside, where I am hoping they will be able to reseed themselves. 

Indoor sown plants are lankier than these outdoor plants.

Another one of the new plants I started this year was Vigin's Bower, Clematis virginiana.  While it is a pretty common woodland species, I have never noticed it before.  I want to test it out under the dreaded Norway Maple.  I got excellent germination from plants started indoors after 2 month moist stratification in sand.  I also started some outdoors in mid-January, using the Winter Sowing technique.  I think I got better germination using the refrigerator-stratified seeds, but the outdoor plants are more compact.

I also started more Woodland Sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, and Crowned Beggarticks, Bidens coronata, using the Winter Sowing method.  Germination was moderate, but the resulting plants are of good size and require no hardening off before transplanting.  This was probably a poor year to really evaluate the winter-sowing method.  Since it was quite warm and relatively dry, the covered containers did not get very much moisture in through the pour-spout, making them warmer and drier - not what you want for cold stratification of seeds.

Random Seedlings: 1. Sulfur Cosmos (blunt leaf tips); 2. Annual grass
(single blades); 3. Oxalis (3 leaflets); Tomato (hairy stems and smell)

When you are counting on plants reseeding themselves in the garden, weeding and maintenance become a big issue.  In this photo of random seedlings I can recognize some of these as desirable and other as definite 'weeds'.  Possible desirable seedlings here include  Agastache 'Navaho Sunset', Bidens coronata, Cosmos sulphureus, Monarda punctata, Salvia coccinia, and Rudbeckia hirta.  The largest seedling in the photo is most likely a Sulfur Cosmos, though it could also be a Bidens.  This is a keeper.  The easy to ID weeds are the grasses and Oxalis.  The grasses have only single leaves (monocots) and the Oxalis has a 3-lobed clover-like leaf.  All of the desired plants in this area are dicots, they have two cotyledon leaves.  This makes them easy to distinguish from the grasses.  Where it gets tricky is all of the tomato seeds that come in with the compost.  (I know, I don't cook my compost hot enough.) These seedlings have a tomato smell when bruised and the stem is covered with little hairs.  At this juncture my strategy is to remove only those weeds I'm sure about (grass, oxalis and tomatos) and watch to see how the others develop.

These seedlings are about an inch tall, but strongly aromatic.

One of my favorite Native Annuals that is catching hold around the house is False Pennyroyal, Hedeoma pulegioides.  It's a small plant that will grow on poor soil and in the gaps in the sidewalk.  It is most easily recognized by it powerful aromatic/minty scent.  Usually just lightly touching a leaf is enough to release the scent.

This is the second year these have managed come back on their own.

Red-whisker Clammyweed, Polanisia dodecandra, is naturally found in gravelly soil along creek beds.  I had a hard time getting it to grow under cultivation (I think it resented being transplanted), but now it is showing up in other potted plants which had been nearby the previous season.

These rosettes may be from fall-germinated seeds

American Bellflower, Campanulastrum americanum, has gotten pretty well established since I first started it in 2009.  The first year rosette will stay small all year and take off, growing to 4+ feet, in year two.  I have a few second year plants that are 2 foot tall already.

Fresh shoots from a plant that was started last year.

While I have the feeling that everything is coming early this year I nearly tossed out some pots that I thought were empty.  Just before I did, I found that the Flowering Spruge, Euphorbia corollata, was sprouting in good form.  Another late riser is Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa.  While one plant has been up for several weeks, a second, less established neighbor, is just now sprouting.

Now the watching continues.  Will there be more seedlings coming up?  Will I figure what's what before it's too late?

Lazy about Lawns

There was a great article in last Sunday's Boston Globe business section (5/13/12) titled 'Lawn Care for the Lazy' that really summed up my position on lawn care.  The original source is the May 2012 edition of Consumer Reports.  Since I can't give you a free link to the article, let me summarize.

1. Let your yard go brown during long, summer dry spells.  This is a natural event of your lawn coping with the weather conditions.  It will green up again when the weather turns cooler and wetter.  Forcing it to stay green will use a whole lot of water.  Also when watering, a weekly slow soaking is better than daily spritzes.  When the soil is moist several inches down, the roots will follow.  Deep roots can tap into a much larger reservoir of moisture.  Eventually lawn watering will be the exception rather than the rule.  I do not water the established parts of my lawn anymore and digging recently the roots of the grass were about 6-8" deep.

2. Fertilize less frequently.  I used to fertilize several times a year, then I realized that meant I had to cut it much more often.  Fertilizers with high amount of water soluble nitrogen will green up a lawn quickly, but not do so much for the rest of the plant.  Also that fast growing green lawn will want more water.  An overfed lawn will also encourage more lawn eating pests.  They are just going after the feast that has been provided for them.  Also consider that runoff from an overfed lawn contains a lot of excess nutrients that are a major source of water pollution.  So if you follow the x-step approach you may be overfeeding the lawn, which requires more labor and watering.  Also to combat the insects feeding on the excess, you apply pesticides.  Many of these lawn chemicals then run off and contribute to water pollution.

The Consumer Reports article recommends only 1 or 2 fertilizer application using slow-release (water insoluble) nitrogen for long slow feeding of the lawn.  In past posts I have talked about using mown-in leaves as the fall fertilizer and have personally gone to zero applications of lawn fertilizer each year.

3.  Mulch your grass clippings.  By using a mulching mower and putting the cut grass back where it came from you can cut down on fertilization as well.  The green grass clippings are a good source of nitrogen for the lawn. As they break down they feed the lawn.  Also, using a mulching mower saves on the time spent collecting the grass and transporting to somewhere else for disposal or composting.  I would again add, mulch in your leaves in the fall!

4.  Let the grass grow longer.  Taller grass shades the soil better, cutting down on evaporation and making it harder for weeds to get established.  The CR article says that you can cut grass by 50% or more without damaging the plant.  The common rule is that you should cut no more than a third of the blade at a time.

5.  Live with certain weeds and pests.  Some common weeds are innocuous or even beneficial to your lawn.  Clover was once a standard component of lawns.  It has the added benefit of fixing nitrogen into the soil.  But clover is not compatible with the broad-leaf herbicides used in many fertilizer formulations.  So now it is considered a weed.  Dandelions can improve soil aeration.  Crabgrass is a problem, however, and is best combated by a preemergent herbicide, or better, by overseeding bare spots to create a thicker turf.  Note that a preemergent herbicide works by inhibiting the development of seedlings.  So if you use one of these products, do not count on any grass seed to grow.

A patch of  Ecolawn(TM) fine fescues
to repair a hole in the lawn

6.  Give low-maintenance grasses a try. There are several low maintenance grasses available.  Most of these are blends of fine fescues.  These grasses have lower fertility and moisture needs than Blue and Rye grasses.  Also these fescues tend to be slower growing, so there is a longer period between mowings.  They do not take traffic as well as standard turf grasses, however tall fescue is a coarse-textured, low maintenance grass for high use areas.  

I tried out a sample of EcoLawn™ on a portion of my lawn where I had a plumbing line replaced last fall.  I planted it into a mixture of the churned up sub-soil with about an inch of compost mixed into the top.  It did take over a week to germinate and it grew to about 2-3 inches by the end of fall.  Now is is a dense deep green mass of fine textured blades.  As seen here it does stand out from the original mixed turf grasses.

It makes a more subtle contribution in places where it has been over seeded into bare spots.  Here between the street and sidewalk I've overseeded to see if I can suppress the annual attack of crabgrass.

Fine fescue was overseeded into the sparse turf of the 'Hell Strip.'

Following these six tips is an easy way to save time and money on lawn care and to reduce water usage and environmental pollution.