Golden Autumn

Posted on October 15, 2016 by Tina

This week marks the annual celebration of Texas Native Plant week, October 16-22.

Two Texas natives, Lindheimer’s senna peeking through an American century plant, demonstrate the soft and the prickly of plants from the Lone Star State.

Texas is well-known for its spectacular spring wildflower show and especially its star wildflower and state flower, the Bluebonnet, Lupinus texensis. But September, October, and November display an equally stunning array of beautiful grasses, annuals and perennial bloomers, as well as colorful seed and berry-producing plants during the beautiful autumn display. Important for pollinators, migrating birds, and other wildlife, Texas native plants are easy to grow, conserve water, and define place: native plants make the Texas natural landscape, or your cultivated garden, special.

Yellow is an autumn thing here in Texas. Native Yellow bells, Tacoma stans shout golden goodness with masses of trumpet blooms–and the pollinators are appreciative.

The Texas craglily, Echeandia texensis, sports sweet flowers along 2 to 3 feet bloom stalks and blooms well into November.

Zexmenia, Wedelia texensis, is a native flowering groundcover which graces any garden with loads of nectar-filled daisies from May through October.

Zexmenia paired with another native groundcover in a container, Wooly stemodia (Stemodia lanata).

Zexmenia planted with Twistleaf yucca (Yucca rupicola).

Sometimes called Puppy-dog ears because of its soft foliage, the Lindheimer’s senna, Senna lindheimeriana, rock cheery flowers which are native bee magnets.

Plateau goldeneye, Viguiera dentata, brighten Texas gardens and wild spaces with a blast of fall sunshine.

Beloved by pollinators,

…once the blooms are spent, native finches and warblers gobble the seeds throughout winter.

Lauding just a few of the native bloomers from my garden, I’m also enjoying Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day with Carol at May Dreams Garden. Join in, share your garden pretties (native or not!), then click over to her lovely blog to see and learn about blooms from many places.

Foliage Day, October 2015

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Tina

Joining with Christina for a fanfare of foliage on Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day in October, I’m also celebrating Texas Native Plant Week and will do so with pretty leaves from native Texas plants.

I grow Frostweed, Verbesina virginica, for its late summer and fall white bloom clusters which feed oh-so-many pollinators, but the leaves are big and bodacious and tropical looking. An under-story and under-used perennial, the leaves are large in order to catch some rays for photosynthesis.

The leaves are rough, much like sunflower leaves and easily broken off from the stems, so I’m careful when working around these plants.

At the opposite end of leaf size range, the foliage of the Fall Aster, Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, are small and numerous. Surrounded by autumn blooms,

…the foliage hangs tough against the relentless Texas summer sun, but remain green and growing in preparation for the sweet fall blooms.

A Mexican Feathergrass, Nasella tenuissima, rests in a pop of red pot,

…accompanied by a single, thin strand of Silver Ponyfoot, Dichondra argentea. The Ponyfoot would be more than one strand if the darned squirrels would cease their digging in my pots!

Next door, an American Century Plant, Agave americana, produces spiky pups that I’ll need to find a home for.

Any takers?

Another mature containerized Agave sits poised and handsome for the camera.

I don’t generally plant agave in the ground. They grow HUGE and are difficult to remove at the end of their life. Also, they’re dangerous (those spikes! OUCH!) and I don’t like being attacked by my garden plants– I’m not a member of the Spiky Plant-lovers Club. The downside of growing them in pots rather than the ground is that I’ll never host that majestic bloom spike in my garden.

Lastly, soft, gray Woolly Stemodia, Stemodia lanata, cascades over the sides of a scarlet ceramic pot.

Yes, the squirrels are digging this one up too. Grrrr.

Pop over to My Own Garden of the Hesperides to see beautiful foliage from all over the world–and thanks to Christina for hosting. And where ever you live, learn about and plant natives in your garden–for beauty and for wildlife.

Blue Mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum): A Seasonal Look

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Tina

The first mistflower plant I ever grew was the Blue Mistflower, Conoclinium coelestinum.

Like Gregg’s Mistflower which I profiled in the most recent A Seasonal Look, this stunning native ground cover is a good autumn perennial to showcase for Texas Native Plant Week. I always think of this mistflower as the blue-headed step-child, especially in comparison to the more commonly grown Gregg’s Mistflower. Blue Mistflower is not as well-known or popular–not one of the cool kid plants, or at least that’s true here in the Austin area. I’m amazed at how few gardeners know about this lovely Texas ground cover.

Just as tough and hardy as its more admired cousin, it’s also a real looker. Pollinator gardening notwithstanding, the Blue Mistflower is my personal favorite. The deep purple-blue flowers,

…in all their puffy pulchritude,

…make me swoon!

I don’t think photos capture the depth of its color. You’ll just have to plant this beauty and see for yourself.

Interestingly, Blue Mistflower has a much wider range of distribution than the Gregg’s Mistflower. I follow several Northern garden bloggers who’ve planted this pretty, though I think it’s probably an annual or tender perennial in some of those places that experience true winter. Its native range is Texas to Florida, but also northward into Illinois and New Jersey (plenty of winter there!) and is grown in other parts of the U.S. as well.

I purchased a four-inch pot of Blue Mistflower for about $1.50 (I don’t remember exactly how much I spent, but it was very little) some 20 years ago. Over time, it filled in a back corner of my garden and put on a reliably gorgeous late summer/fall flower show every year. Eventually, that spot became…something. I never quite figured out the problem, but one spring, only about 10 sprigs returned. So I popped them out of that spot and into a another which receives a tiny bit full sun, but primarily dappled light, throughout the year.

The Blue Mistflower patch has thrived. With an almost identical growth and seasonal pattern as the Gregg’s, the zenith of its blooming occurs during September, October and into November. It is at its peak now.

As the autumn days shorten and cool, the blooms fade from deep blue-purple,

…to soft beige.

After the first hard freeze, the seed heads are wheat-colored and fragile. Like the Gregg’s, I’ve never experienced the Blue Mistflower seeding out, but if you’re so inclined, it’s at this point of the year that the seeds can be sowed.

I tend to leave the winter dormant plant alone until I can’t stand it anymore, then cut it back to not-much-of-anything, except for a light covering of Shumard Oak leaves.

You’ll notice the soaker hose which runs through the middle part of the Blue Mistflower plant. That one hose is generally enough for summer watering, although by hot August and especially if there’s been no precipitation, I sometimes hand water the Blue Mistflower because one hose doesn’t deliver enough moisture to cover all the roots of the entire group. I don’t want the Blue Mistflower to sulk, bloom less, and then cause me to miss out on its gorgeous blooms. I’m not the least bit selfish as a gardener, am I?

With the warmth of spring, the plant returns rapidly. If you look closely at the bottom of the photo, you can see the newly emerged spring growth in March.

Once spring has sprung, the form of the ground cover is firmly established.

While not much of a re-seeder in my garden, Blue Mistflower spreads by the roots. I keep it in bounds by weeding up the edges and passing along sprigs to other gardeners. As with the Gregg’s, I plant smaller evergreens like Iris and Purple Coneflower at the perimeter edges and I also have some container plants placed to visually enforce a stopping point and to give some winter interest. If this Blue Mistflower were planted in full sun, I would have more options for evergreen and structural plants, but this gardener plays the plant cards she’s dealt.

In summer, the foliage is thick and lush.

More than the Gregg’s, which has a comparably controlled growth habit, the Blue Mistflower is a straggler, stems growing wonky and wild over the course of its growing season and that’s especially noticeable once its purple, puffy, floral hats appear.

If you’re a neat-freak gardener you might not like this plant, but I find it casually charming.

Adding to its rangy behavior, Blue Mistflower also puts out stems taller than any of the Gregg’s–upwards of two feet or so.

The leaves of the Blue are triangular-shaped and a darker green shade contrasting with the palmate form and light green foliage of the Gregg’s,

Over the course of summer the foliage continues to grow and the perennial maintains itself as an unexciting, but generally handsome green ground cover, tolerant of heat and summer dry, and sporting the occasional bloom here or there.

In August and in tandem with the Gregg’s Mistflower–the fun begins with fuzzy-wuzzy blooming!!

While Tina the Gardener finds the flowers more alluring than those of the Gregg’s Mistflower, the same cannot be said about most pollinators. The Blue is a good pollinator plant, but not an excellent one, like the Gregg’s.

Monarchs like it just fine.

Honeybees tend to agree.

This Southern Oak Hairstreak, Satyrium favonius favonius, isn’t complaining about Blue Mistflower, either.

But I’ve never witnessed quite the variety of pollinator activity on the Blue Mistflower as on the Gregg’s. If you only have room for one, I’d suggest the Gregg’s, because the pollinators need all the help we can give them and the Gregg’s Mistflower is a Boss Pollinator Plant.

There is a fast flying and hardly landing tiny moth or skipper that I see each fall, flitting around the base of the plant, but it’s been a tough one to capture. I finally snagged a decent photo of one who perched (briefly!) for the camera.

I’ve also seen this one on the Gregg’s too, but it seems to prefer the Blue. I’m glad the Blue Mistflower has a committed pollinating pal.

Even though it’s not quite the power-house pollinator plant that some others are, Blue Mistflower still warms my heart and will always be welcome in my Texas garden!

As a whole and as an addition to a native plants/wildlife garden, Blue Mistflower is a terrific choice for anyone gardening in its range, who seeks a water-wise, attractive, hardy native ground cover that thrives–in both bloom and foliage–in sun or part-shade.

In Spring.