Three Types of Celosia

If you have never started annual flowers from seed, let this be the year you begin. One of the most rewarding (easy to germinate, long blooming, humidity tolerant) is Celosia, the National Garden Bureau’s 2023 Annual of the Year. Commonly called Coxcomb, this colorful, low maintenance plant should be in every garden.

Celosia argentea (pronounced sell-OH-see-ah ar-jen-TEE-ah) blooms are grouped into three main classes. Plumosa or plume-type have flowers that look like fluffy paintbrushes. Spicata or spike-type have narrow blooms that look like spikes of wheat. Cristata or crested-type have convoluted flowers that make me think of brains or coral. All three grow in full sun or mostly sun and neutral soil, zones 2-11. They prefer moist, well-drained soil but will survive in less favorable soil if given fertilizer and water. Extended dryness will cause the leaves to wilt, detracting from the beautiful flowers that come in yellow, red, rose, pink, orange, and magenta. These are long-lasting in arrangements, and will hold their color well if dried.

Seeds are available for each of the three bloom types. Celosia seeds are small – one gram measure will contain about a thousand seeds. Start with pre-moistened seed starting mix. Tweezers are helpful in placing seeds in the center of starter cells. Cover seeds with a quarter-inch of vermiculite and maintain a temperature of 70-75 degrees. Keep the starter mix barely moist (not wet) to reduce damping off disease. Bottom water to avoid dislodging seeds. You should see signs of germination in 10 days.

Deadheading will cause the plants to produce more flower heads, but I always leave a few spent flowers to encourage self-seeding. Celosia argentea var. spicata may reseed a little too enthusiastically for some gardeners. Plants reach to 24-inches with a 12-inch spread in good soil. Taller plants may need to be staked. Skip the staking by purchasing some of the newer, dwarf cultivars, available as plants.

Celosia is a good choice for pollinator gardens and cutting gardens. It is not a space hog, and will work well in small beds. Plants look especially good when planted in masses. Dwarf types can also be grown in containers.

The accompanying photos are courtesy of the National Garden Bureau. #NGB #YearoftheCelosia

First Flame Mix

Wicked Evanthia

Intenz Dark Purple

Asian Garden Primary

Act Series Evanthia

Kurume Rose Takii

Muhly Grass for Autumn Color

Autumn colors are orange, red, yellow, rust…and pink? Across the southeast, Pink Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris, pronounced mew-len-BERG-ee-ah or mew-len-BER-jee-uh) is reaching its peak. We do not usually think of grass as a flowering plant, but there is no mistaking the decorative value of pink Muhly. Its feathery plumes float like clouds of pink cotton candy. A white-flowered form is available also but is harder to find than the pink variety. White varieties bloom a little later than pink forms.

 Mulhy is easy to grow in full sun, zones 6-9. Native to North America, it will grow in sandy, rocky, or clay soil. Avoid constantly wet soils. It is not troubled by insects or diseases, and is highly resistant to deer damage. Plants grow up to four feet tall and  three feet wide. Established plants are heat and drought tolerant. The narrow leaves sway gracefully in breezes. Flowering begins in autumn and is followed by attractive seed heads that persist through winter, providing food for birds. The purplish-pink form ages to a creamy tan color and the white form ages to an attractive gray.

 A standalone plant is attractive, but mass plantings of Muhly are gorgeous. Two pairings that are particularly attractive: Pink Muhly with purple-leaf Loropetalum,  or White Muhly paired with purple-flowered Mexican Salvia (Salvia leucanthemum).

 Plants may need to be divided every three years or so to avoid dieback in the centers. Give clumps a cleanup cut in late winter or early spring, before new growth starts, but do not cut so short that the crown is damaged. While some other grasses may become invasive, Muhly is well behaved and makes a perfect addition to the low maintenance garden.

Pink Muhly Grass used as an edging

Blooms look like cotton candy

Queen Anne's Lace

When a plant’s common name includes “weed” many people are hesitant to introduce them into a cultivated garden. But those same weeds can prove to be resilient, hardy, and attractive. Consider Butterfly Weed (Asclepias) or Iron Weed (Vernonia) as two examples. The downside of growing weeds is the possibility that they can be TOO resilient, even bordering on invasive. That is the case with today’s featured plant, Queen Anne’s Lace.

Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota, pronounced DAW-kus kar-OH-tah) has a fat, carrot-like tap root that helps it survive in hot, dry climates. It is quick to spring up in disturbed areas, and is listed as invasive in more than 20 states. Queen Anne’s Lace, also called Wild Carrot, Bee’s Nest or Devil’s Plague, is a biennial. It develops lacy basal foliage in its first year, then blooms second year. Mature plants range from 2-4 feet, with a narrow footprint. It is found in all the lower 48 states, in full sun to part shade.

Queen Anne’s Lace flowers are flat white umbrels up to four inches across with one little purple flower dot in the middle. If you place cut flowers’ stems in colored water (use a few drops of the same vegetable-based colors used in cake icing), the blooms rapidly take up the dye and will change from white to a pastel shade of the selected color. I thought every child had done this at least once, but it appears I was mistaken.

Spent flower heads curl up on the edges into a brown cup-like form that resembles a bird’s nest. They become brittle when dry. Winds break them off their stems, and they tumble about, spreading seeds far and wide. This promiscuous habit, along with their tolerance for any type soil and any pH, means that they spread everywhere unless consistently deadheaded. Cut stems stink but the smell wanes fast enough to enjoy them as cut flowers. I once had to resort to herbicide to rid a perennial bed of these, and have since decided to just enjoy them along roadsides. They are prolific in my area of the southeast. Bees and butterflies love the flowers, and swallowtail butterfly caterpillars eat the foliage.

Parts of the plants can be cooked and eaten in small quantities, but larger amounts are toxic. Contact with leaves and stems can cause dermatitis. Unless one in starving in the wilderness, I see to need to test out the toxicity threshold. If you feel the need to consume, be positive of your plant identification. Queen Anne’s Lace is easily confused with Wild Parsnip and Wild Hemlock. Consuming either of these can be deadly. Wild Hemlock is the plant that killed Socrates. Its stem has purple spots.

Note the single purple flower in the middle. Not every umbrell has this oddity.

A single plant, flowering in an undeveloped roadside.

A community of Queen Anne’s Lace shows how the plant can multiply into large communities.

Pretty Pittosporum Shrubs

We have had some trees removed to open up a mountain view. As a result, there is a new design opportunity in the Mary Snoddy garden. The steeply sloped area, approximately four acres, has scattered tall hardwoods, a few native Dogwoods, patches of Mountain Laurel, numerous Sourwood trees, and rocks for days. Big rocks. My vision for the future includes a meandering  path with decorative plantings on either side, all the way down to the creek. The path will need switchbacks due to the steep slope. Opportunities abound for plants in full sun, full shade, and everything between.

My tree and shrub choices need to be hardy in zone 7 with a tolerance for rocky, acidic soil.  They also need to be tolerant of heat and humidity while being deer resistant (a relative term, for sure). I started my plant selection Wish List by scanning photos of other gardens I have visited and admired. From this, I gleaned a small set of shrubs and trees to research. One of these is Pittosporum tobira ‘Variegata.’ I can still remember the wonderful fragrance of this evergreen shrub, a variegated cultivar clad in gray-green leaves with white margins. The clusters of flowers open white but turn yellow when pollinated. The homeowner had allowed the shrub to grown unpruned. It was four feet tall and about the same width.

I learned several things about Pittosporum. First, I have been pronouncing the name incorrectly for decades. It’s not pit-oh-SPORE-um. The correct pronunciation is pih-TOSS-pur-um. It is cold hardy in zones 8-10, although cultivar ‘Mojo’ is more compact and a bit more cold-tolerant. ‘Wheeler’s Dwarf’ is even more compact but less cold-tolerant than others. Mature height for most cultivars is 8-10 feet.

Pittosporum is tough, fast-growing, demands well-drained soil, and makes a good evergreen hedge. It is not particularly choosy about light (full sun to partial shade) or soil acidity. It is resistant to salt, making it a good choice for coastal gardens.

Unfortunately, deer are attracted to Pittosporum and frequently browse it year-round. This trait and its borderline hardiness in my area moved it from my ‘Wish’ list to the ‘Not For Me’ list.

Pittosporum has an interesting characteristic known as ‘sympodial growth.’ This means that the terminal bud will stop growing and lateral buds will keep on growing, giving stems a zig-zag look. This constant forking is also seen in some orchids and Beech (Fagus) trees. For Pittosporum, the terminal bud usually ceases growth because a flower has formed at the tip.

To prevent leaf spots and fungus problems, provide good air circulation, avoid overhead watering, and remove fallen leaves. Note that Daconil®, a common fungicide, is not labeled for use on Pittosporum and will damage or kill the plant. Counter aphid attacks with spray-on horticultural oil.

Pittosporums are easy to propagate from cuttings taken in late summer. Use a talc-based rooting compound to increase success rate.

Clemson University has an excellent fact sheet: https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/pittosporum/

Pittosporum in flower.

Photo by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4561211

Don't Disrespect Ditch Lilies

“Familiarity breeds contempt.” Or so said Geoffrey Chaucer in one of The Canterbury Tales. Perhaps that is why people hold the common orange day-lily, Hemerocallis fulva, in disdain. This “Ditch Lily” was a favorite of southern farmers’ wives in the 1950s and 60s, who prized their showy blooms and ease of growth. It is this effortless growth and rapid multiplication that causes concern. They “have the potential to become invasive,” per Invasives.org.

The common, orange Ditch Lily occurs in every eastern state. Like other members of the day-lily family, they thrive in full sun and prefer a slightly acidic, well-drained soil. They can be used instead of shrubs as a short hedge. They can also be used as a groundcover on slopes where mowing is impractical, and do a super job of preventing erosion. Ditch Lily flowers last only a single day, but they produce many, many buds so the bloom show goes on for weeks. Once all the buds on a stem have flowered, the naked stem can be removed to prevent seed formation and to make the plant look neater. This may encourage additional flowers.

Hybridizers have produced new colors, shapes, and forms of day-lilies. Colors have reached beyond the common orange to encompass all the warmer shades of the color wheel, from yellow to deep red or even purple, and everything between. Flowers are double, striped, freckled, curved. Some of these are highly valued (read: expensive). I particularly liked those with thick, ruffled petal edges until I heard a plantsman describe it as “chicken fat.” Now, I think of Tyson whenever I see those.

Whether your day-lilies are of the dug-it-from-the-roadside variety or one of the exorbitant specialty type, strands of the long grass-like foliage wilt and brown during the growing season. Growers advise us to remove the dead leaves as they occur, and cut off all the dead foliage once it is winter-killed. Rather than grooming my plants regularly to keep them neat, I follow a more radical (tough love) approach. Once half the foliage has browned, I gather it into a ponytail and decapitate it, leaving about four inches of leaf above soil level. Then I give the pruned plant a dose of liquid fertilizer. While plants will not repeat bloom, they do throw new foliage which is fresh-looking all the way to frost. I have not noticed a reduction in plant vigor as a result of this treatment.

Congested day-lily plants will have fewer flowers. To remedy, lift the entire clump, divide them and replant into amended soil. In fertile soil with plentiful water, you may need to divide every other year or every third year. When you lift a mature clump, you will find that it has formed a series of fleshy tubers, almost like a Dahlia. All divisions should have some of these little taters. After a vigorous division several years ago, I swept the damaged pieces off my garden bench into a bucket that contained discarded potting soil from a spent planter. Several weeks later, I discovered that each of the small bulbs had sprouted new leaves and roots. They are definitely survivors.

Day-lilies are drought-tolerant once established, and not prone to damage from insects or disease, although day-lily rust or leaf-streak may appear, as well as damage from thrips or slugs. Deer find the flowers and leaves quite tasty. I understand that day-lily flowers are edible, but have never sampled them. I prefer to enjoy them in the flower border – whether they are the high-dollar, super-hybridized variety, or the simple, old-fashioned orange Ditch Lily.

Ditch Lilies bloom along a country road

"Chicken Fat"

Perennial Bellflowers Ring a Long TIme

Oops – I did it again. Another impulse purchase of a plant that may not be a good choice for my area. One of the local grocery stores has strategically placed their flower section directly in my path, between the salad bar (packaged salads during the pandemic) and the fresh fruit. I’m already needy when I go in, and those small containers of cute potted plants seem to jump in my cart without my involvement. This week’s purchase was a pair of tiny (2.5-inch containers) Campanula. That was the only identifier on the label. No mention of the species. Sigh…

It could be Campanula carpatica, C. glomerata, C. persicifolia, C. takesimana, C. rotundifolia, C. medium, C. punctata, or C. rapunculoides. The one thing all these species share is ease of growth. A few prefer cool summers. Most (but not all) have bell-shaped flowers. (The common name is Bellflower or Canterbury Bells.) Most are in shades of blue or purple, but a few are pink, lilac or even white. My newest acquisitions are a deep purple, with upward facing blooms. Unless appearances are deceiving, it will be a dwarf, spreading form.

In the Snoddy garden, Campanula punctata ‘Pantaloons’ has been a star performer during the last ten years. A single plant, situated in poor soil with partial shade, spread rapidly via rhizomes and seeds to make a large, lovely community without any deadheading, staking, fertilizing or watering. Campanulas prefer neutral to alkaline soil, but mine has done fine in acidic soil. The punctata species is perennial in zones 5 through 9. It has a long, long bloom period. Deer shun all Campanulas.

‘Pantaloons’ was a gift plant from the gentleman who taught most of my Master Gardener classes in 2002. He labeled the plant “Purple Pantaloons” which reminded me, oddly, of the saloon girls in old television Western shows like Gunsmoke. Mr. Maple is deceased now, but his memory lives on in my garden.

Campanula punctata. Image by GLady from Pixabay.

“Bearded Bellflower” showing the fuzzy threads that gave rise to the common name.

Blackberry Lily identifies as an Iris

Poor Blackberry Lily experienced an identity crisis. For years it was Belamcanda chinensis. Then in 2005, pesky taxonomists examined the DNA sequence and determined that it is not a lily, not a blackberry, and not Belamcanda. Instead, this freckled redhead of the plant world has a new identity: Iris domestica.

Regardless of the binomial name, Blackberry Lily is one tough customer. Like most other members of the Iris family, it has swordlike, ten-inch-long leaves that rise like fans from a rhizome (bulb).  The rhizomes prefer well-drained soil and full sun, and are hardy in zones 5 through 10. Plants will rot in wet soils; they are drought tolerant once established. Blackberry Lilies flower in mid-summer and will continue through early autumn. Five-petal blooms are typically orange with a touch of yellow in the center and attractive red spots, which gives rise to another common name, Leopard Lily. Flowers are held above the leaves atop thin stems and are so profuse in number that the plants are best given support (think circular hoops like those used for peonies or dahlias) so they are not toppled by weight or summer thunderstorms.

Belamcanda – oops! I mean Iris domestica – rhizomes prefer a planting depth of five inches. Plants aren’t choosy about soil type or pH. They will be a bit shorter when grown in poor, dry soil. The rarer yellow form is shorter and requires more moisture and a richer soil than the typical orange flower.

Blooms result in clusters of shiny black seeds that look exactly like large blackberries. Left alone, plants will self-seed into large colonies. Plants look best when they are not allowed to become congested, so be generous and share divisions with your gardening buddies. Tattered or yellow leaves can be removed any time of the year. Both flowers and mature stems are used in flower arrangements.

Do not allow your cats, dogs, horses, or kids to ingest the flowers or blackberry-look-alike seeds; they are toxic. Flowers attract butterflies and are rarely bothered by other insects or diseases. This low-maintenance plant is easy to grow.

A Blackberry Lily bloom. Notice the numerous buds hiding behind this flower.

Blackberry Lily seed pod. "Blackberry Lily (DSC_0025), the blackberry." by Li-Ji is licensed under CC BY 2.0

New Ajugas, New Colors

It is freezing outside. The wind is moaning like a banshee with a hangover. And I am indoors, fireside, with a cat on my feet and a lap full of nursery catalogs. It’s always fun to see the year’s newest seed and plant introductions and to read all the descriptions. A catalog from a seed company in South Carolina. has a whopping 184 entries for tomatoes. How can growers find 184 different ways to describe a tomato? And yet, they do.

Among the new plants for 2021 is an entire series of Ajuga reptans. ‘Feathered Friends’ encompasses seven new cultivars with golden, bronze or almost-black leaves. My heart beat a little faster when I saw Ajuga ‘Noble Nightingale.’ Some interior decorators recommend a touch of black in each room. A touch of black or almost black can elevate a so-so container combination to wow. Black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens') has been my go-to plant for containers, but ‘Noble Nightingale’ is only four inches tall, with a spread up to 18 inches. I can envision it with Euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’ and something pink — Begonias or Caladiums. ‘Cordial Canary’ has golden yellow foliage, unlike any other Ajuga. ‘Parrot Paradise’ has leaves with shades of yellow, orange and red. From a distance, it reads as bronze.

Ajuga (common name is Bugleweed or Carpetweed) is easily grown in partial sun or shade. It will tolerate some drought. Blue flowers are a bonus. These undemanding groundcovers spread quickly, giving rise to some gardeners’ assessment of the plant as invasive. (It is a member of the mint family). It will grow and even thrive in many situations where other plants, including grass, won’t grow such as deep shade, dry soil, or under Black Walnut trees. It will tolerate minor foot traffic. Plants can be so vigorous that congested areas die. Prevent this by division. Ajuga is resistant to damage from deer and rabbits. Other than dieback from congestions, their only problem is root-rot when placed in wet soils.

The Mary Snoddy garden features ‘Burgundy Glow’ and ‘Black Scallop’ but these new cultivars are alluring. The above-mentioned ‘Feathered Friends’ is offered exclusively by Mast Young Plants. Here is a link to their site, so you can see photos of these beautiful new foliage colors: Ajugas

This photo of Ajuga ‘Black Scallop’ was taken February 3, proving that this groundcover for shade can look as good in mid-winter as it does during the warmer months. The almost-black foliage looks wonderful when paired with chartreuse, such as Lysimachia aurea, “Creeping Jenny” or rose shades, such as a bronze-leaf wax begonia with pink flowers..

Ajuga ‘Burgundy Glow’ lights up a dark area.

A planting of Ajuga ‘Chocolate Chip’ along a walkway at Hatcher Garden and Woodland Preserve. (Photographer is unknown, unfortunately.) The shiny, rounded leaves offer beautiful contrast to the delicate fern fronds and the rough granite stones.

A new planting of ‘Black Scallop’ Ajuga pops against the chartreuse foliage of Talinum (“Jewels of Opar” and the rounded leaves of several Hostas. It will eventually spread to cover all the pine needle mulch.