Wild Things:  Plants with Warning Labels III

The charms of the tiny and simple are easily overlooked.  Even more so when the top searches for their names are how to get rid of them.  Why do we seem to hate the plants that wildlife love?  All types of insects visit the flowers and all types of animals eat their seeds.  So, nature will propagate them whether we like it or not.

Meadow ranunculus (Ranunculus Acris) is the plain cousin of that instagram beauty queen ranunculus (Ranunculus spp.) with all the petals.  Meadow ranunculus' open flower looks like fairies lacquered the petals with tiny brushes. The basal rosette of foliage is deep green and ornamental.  Beauty in the eye of the beholder I suppose.

On a stroll, I saw a larger than usual narrow leafed plantain (Plantago Lanceolata) growing in a crack between a brick retaining wall and asphalt.  The foliage was so handsome and the flowers and seed heads floated above the foliage on slim stems; I envisioned it in a terracotta container.  Mysteriously, it escaped the weed whacker's ferocity.  Maybe, just maybe, a landscape service respected its tenacity and left it alone.  Doubtful.  

Wild Things:  Plants with Warning Labels II

Clovers:  useful in agriculture and stars of weed galleries.  I guess the problem is when they get uppity and escape from pastures and crop land to invade those precious suburban lawns.  Believing they'll stay in place like statues is wishful thinking.

Invasive databases don't deter honey bees' cloverlove.  I feel you honey bees.  The scent of a clover field intoxicates.

Fresh as a Daisy 

I'd heard the phrase but didn't really grasp the meaning.  I didn't grow up with daisies.  After I planted the unfussy beauty Shasta Daisy (Leucanthemum Superbum 'Alaska'), I understood.  Same for Double Feverfew (Tanacetum Parthenium).  Though it should be noted that the freshness is fleeting.  They're not sculptures but living things with a mission.  Once pollinators discover them, freshness rapidly declines.  Constant deadheading keeps the flowers coming for at least eight weeks.  Chuckle.  Sigh.  That's the price of freshness. 

Unvalued Flowers

Hostas (Hosta spp.) are plants that are so reliable thus taken for granted.   Yet the cultivar list deserves its own catalog.  As far back as the time when hosta was known as funkia (???), renowned English garden designer and writer Gertrude Jekyll (please look her up) acknowledged them as a gardening cliché.  I'm not sure much has changed.  I was happy to inherit them from the previous owner, and I've always loved the often dismissed flowers.  No, they're not peonies.   But native bees and  I appreciate the delicate hosta flowers.  Cardinals devour the seeds. 

Elusive Orange

I can never have enough orange flowers.  So all the orange flowers I tried to grow didn't care that I can never have enough orange flowers.  That means you calla lilies, tall marigolds, tassel flowers and poppies (California, Spanish and Iceland).  I  adored these unnamed Asiatic lilies the previous owner of the house planted.  I appreciate them even more now that I don't have them.  Such is life.

Maligned Plants: Honeysuckle (Lonicera Japonica)  

Plant authorities say don't plant it; several cultivars of honeysuckle are available that are easier to handle.  But we can't always know what a plant will do.  I took a cutting of this particular honeysuckle from a very large vine growing on another property and rooted it.  Because nostalgia and scent.  Its growth disappointed.   The scent didn't overwhelm anyone who stepped into the backyard.  Nostalgia is overrated.

Though a shady eastern exposure tamed honeysuckle vine, it still provided a few flowers for a simple arrangement with carnations (Dianthus Superbus 'Rainbow Loveliness').  Who the f*ck named this 'Rainbow Loveliness'?  Rainbow Loveliness is a great name for a fantasy football team.   

Disclaimer: I'm not telling you to plant Lonicera Japonica.