A new month, a new This and that post. Yep, it’s September, folks! Where has the year gone?
CACTUS OBSERVATIONS
Not a lot of cactus flowers at this time of year, but there are still some:
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| Dudleya pulverulenta (I’m happy that I’ve managed to keep it looking so good) next Echinopsis ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Sometimes a side view of a cactus flower is as pretty as the top-down view. |
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| Echinopsis ‘Sex on the Beach’ |
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| Ferocactus herrerae. I love everything about this barrel cactus... |
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| ...but I’m worried gravity might win out in the end even though there is a large rock propping it up |
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| Closeup of Opuntia cochenillifera ‘Sunburst’ |
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| Here’s the entire plant. I started with one pad a friend had given me. |
FLUSHING COONTIE
My coontie is flushing. I’ve been wanting to say this for a long time.
Unless you’re from Florida you probably have no clue what that means. The coontie (Zamia integrifolia) is a small cycad native to Florida, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. Like virtually all cycads, it’s a very slow grower. It produces a new set of leaves once a year — that’s called flushing. Before the new leaves emerge, the old leaves flop down to make room.
A flushing coontie is nothing super special to Florida gardeners, but to me it is.
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| Zamia integrifolia |
MORE RATTY SHENANIGANS
My rat problem (chronicled
here and
here) is continuing. For quite a while, they left my succulents alone (the tomatoes were more tempting), but just this week they started to nibble on several young agaves. I’m not sure what I can do. I’ve set out traps, but the odds of catching (m)any of them is slim.
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| Agave oteroi ‘Filigree’ |
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| Agave ‘Pixie’ |
MORE MANGAVE BULBILS
As I mentioned
in this post from July, my
Mangave ‘Foxy Lady’ has produced hundreds of bulbils. I’ve harvested the largest ones, but there are still at least 100 left on the flower stalk. My plan is to leave them attached until they’re a bit bigger — the larger they are when you separate them, the quicker they root. I’ll have an update soon.
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| I love how the afternoon sun lights up the pink leaf margins |
CURIOUS NURSERY SIGHTINGS (OR: WTF?!?)
I haven’t been to nurseries much lately (it’s been too hot to do any serious plant buying, let alone planting), but I’ve noticed a few curious things on the rare visits I did make:
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| This cactus is a textbook case of etiolation — the stem growing thinner and thinner as it stretches towards the light. It’s been kept in the dark for much too long. Cacti need light, folks! |
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| I spotted this sad thing at a garden center in town. It’s a spiral aloe (Aloe polyphylla), and even though it’s pretty much dead, they still want $19.99 for it. We can grow many aloe species, but Aloe polyphylla is not one of them. I get it, it’s stunningly beautiful (check out this specimen I photographed at the San Francisco Botanical Garden in June), but any attempt to grow it in our hot-summer climate is destined to fail. I know from experience. Local nurseries should never tempt unsuspecting customers with Aloe polyphylla. |
BLUE RANGER FINALLY FLOWERING
Leucophyllums (commonly known as Texas ranger, Texas sage, or barometer bush) are shrubs native to the southwestern US and Mexico, and they’re equally well suited for our climate. Local nurseries are beginning to realize that — the UC Davis Arboretum Teaching Nursery, for example, will have five or six different varieties in their
upcoming fall plant sales.
I currently have three leucophyllums, and the
Leucophyllum zygophyllum (aka blue ranger) below is finally large enough to bloom well. I love this particular species because of its fuzzy silver leaves (most leucophyllum species have grayish-green leaves).
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| Leucophyllum zygophyllum outside the front yard fence |
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| Leucophyllum zygophyllum (don’t worry about the Aloe excelsa on the right; it’s in the process of re-rooting after Kyle and I chopped off a couple of feet of crooked stem) |
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| Leucophyllum zygophyllum flowers. Have I mentioned how much I love the silver leaves? |
If you’re curious why leucophyllums are called barometer bush: It’s because in their native environment, they can “forecast” rain. Rising moisture levels in the air and low atmospheric pressure act as natural triggers for the plant to flower. They can bloom multiple times from summer through fall, whenever a significant change in the weather occurs. My
Leucophyllum zygophyllum burst into flower because I watered it heavily last week.
SOUTH AFRICAN BULBS ARE WAKING UP
Shorter daylight hours and cooling temperatures have caused some of my South African bulbs to wake up. How that works exactly I can’t tell you, but it works.
Below is one of them,
Boophone disticha. It spends the summer under a bench in the greenhouse, bone dry, and yet it always returns at this time of year. A sign that fall is coming!
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| Boophone disticha waking up |
EVENING LIGHT
Early evening in the front yard continues to be magical. I love how the plants just glow.
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| Even the white trunk of the palo blanco tree (Mariousousa heterophylla) glows when the low sun hits it just right |
WONDERFULLY WEIRD WEATHER
And then there’s the weather. Does anybody talk/think/worry about the weather as much as gardeners do?
This summer has been wonderfully mild for us. We had a few spells with daytime highs in the low 100s, but they were short. The rest of the time, it’s been in the 90s and, lately, in the 80s. This past week, we’ve had quite a few overcast days, with highs not even reaching 80. No complaints from me!
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| Overcast days are very unusual in the summer |
The other day, we even had a perfect rainbow even though there was no real rain, just a few sprinkles:
And then there was this:
It looked like the zombie apocalypse was finally upon us, but it turned out the cause of the dirty orange sky was a wildfire in Big Sur on the Central Coast, 200 miles away (!).
STELLA VS. SQUIRREL
The squirrels are busy collecting acorns. And they’re ready to defend their haul. This squirrel made a big show of signaling to Stella to
stay away. Stella did, but only because I kept her on a short leash. Otherwise she would have chased the squirrel up the tree.
I've already started to collect more random observations for the next This and that.
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