The Prettiest Plant I Never Saw Before

Recently, I've been hanging around the Cockrell Butterfly Center at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, waiting for their famous corpse flower to bloom.  No bloom yet, but I fell in love with a beautiful little tropical shrub that I'd never heard of before -- Ochna serrulata.  The plant was labeled "Mickey Mouse Plant," maybe because those flower sepals look like ears sticking up above the fruit.

There are many species of plants in this genus, and all are tropical evergreen or semi-evergreen shrubs, native to Africa and Asia.  It's said to be highly invasive in parts of Australia and I guess if it escaped into Florida or Hawaii, it might cause trouble.  It's probably too cold here to grow it outdoors without protection, but it sure was pretty.

This little shrub is generally about 6 feet tall, and has an open, rather wiry appearance.  The leaves are shiny green, and it blooms yellow in the spring.  Shortly after flowering, the petals drop and fruit forms, attached to the bright red sepals.  This plant is highly attractive to bees, birds and butterflies.  An understory shrub, it performs best in light shade.  We are just barely to the north of its preferred range, so we may be able to grow it here, with winter protection.

I was so happy to discover this plant!

Foliage Friday!

Join Pam at Digging for Foliage Followup, the sequel to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!  See the Comments section for links to gardens all over!  Thanks, Pam, for hosting!

One of my favorite foliage plants is Calathea, sometimes called Prayer Plant because it folds its leaves in the evening like praying hands.  These tropicals are popular houseplants because the leaves are so decorative.  Gardeners in Southern zones can try them outside in containers. Last fall, I read about gardeners in Georgia planting them in beds.  I remember being amazed -- and not willing to risk it.  They are tender and cannot take a frost or a freeze.  Calatheas prefer a warm, humid location (perfect for us!) and just the right amount of light.  Too little light and their leaves might not fold at night.  Too much light and the beautiful colors will fade.  Mine do best in the shade of the back porch.

There are all different kinds of calathea species -- these are just a few!

(They flower too! I think this is Calathea 'Medallion.')

(Calathea zebrina, I think...)

(Calathea lancifolia, I think...)

Bloom Day

Happy Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!  And thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting.  Visit her lovely garden -- and the links to gardens all over the world.

July flowers in Houston are something else entirely.  Florid.  Baroque.  Luscious. Extravagant.  Vivid.  It's a good thing there are a few white things blooming or we'd all go mad, just in time for the dog days of summer.

Without further ado, here's tropical July.

 (Coneflowers left or top, Mallow right or bottom)

(Two hot purslanes)

(Blue Butterfly Pea left, Turk's Cap right)

(Esperanza or Yellow Bells left, Crinum 'Ellen Bosanquet' right)

('Fireworks' Gomphrena left or top, Rudbeckia right or bottom)

(Evergreen Wisteria left or top, Dwarf Red Canna right or bottom)

And now, to cool things off a bit:

(Crinum powellii 'Album')

Wordless Wednesday

Butterfly Gingers

or Hedychium coronarium, a reliable standby in the Houston garden.  These lovely gingers seem to tolerate a wide range of exposures, from full shade to almost full sun. Last year's freezes killed them to the ground, but they grew back again from the roots, and much more quickly than the variegated gingers did.  They are vigorous, and clumps can spread rapidly, but they form a nice tropical thicket in the right location.  I have mine planted on the downhill side of a gentle slope.  The dense canes slow the rainwater runoff and they love the water.  I don't know if it's possible to overwater them!

(I wish I could capture the fragrance in a photo!)

Butterfly gingers have beautiful flowers too, which are strongly scented.  To me, they smell like gardenias.  The white flowers and powerful fragrance are signals for night pollinators -- in this case, the beautiful hawkmoth.  These large moths are as big as hummingbirds, and can sip nectar without perching on the ginger flowers.  They can be quite an eerie surprise when you're in the garden at night!

(Photo: Umbergo Salvagnin via Wikimedia Commons)

The July Harvest

 
The summer fruit harvest continues this month with figs, grapes and peaches.  It's been an exceptional year for peaches -- more on that later.  Let's start with the easiest fruit to grow in the Houston area: figs.

Figs grow on smallish, deciduous trees all over Texas.  Our summer heat and humidity don't seem to bother them, and because they're dormant in winter, they don't mind the occasional freeze either.  Plant closed-eye varieties like Celeste, LSU Gold, LSU Purple, Brown Turkey or Alma to prevent insect damage.  Plant in full or mostly full sun and prune if you like to control size.  Keep grass cleared from under the tree, all the way to the dripline.  Provide mulch and plenty of water in the summer and that's it!  No fertilizer needed, no special pruning.  Your only trouble will be keeping the birds away from the figs. Try bird netting, and get up early in the morning to harvest.  Best thing about figs?  Fig preserves. See my earlier fig post for my favorite recipe.

(Left: Black Spanish.  Right: Champanel.)

Traditional table grapes aren't easy to grow here, but it can be done if you select the right variety.  Choose grapes that are resistant to Pierce's Disease and be aware that the tougher the skin, the less insect damage you'll see.  Two great varieties of bunching grapes here are Black Spanish and Champanel, both beautiful purple-black seeded varieties.  For wine, jellies, juice or jams, you can't beat the muscadine grape.  Hybrid muscadines are descended from the wild mustang grapes that grow all over this region. They are very sweet, and have a tough, bitter skin which makes them unpleasant to eat out of hand.  But they are perfect for pressing -- very high in sugar.  Most muscadines require two different varieties to produce well, although some self-fruitful ones are available.  Pruning and training is important for grape production.  Here's some information from Texas A&M on the best techniques.

(Wild grapes in Brazos Bend State Park)

And finally, peaches!  Gardeners around here love peach trees for their beautiful flowers in the spring, but we sometimes don't get the harvest we want.  Peaches require a certain number of "chilling hours" in order to fruit and we certainly got ours this winter!  We still struggle with disease and insect problems, of course, but this year, we got the peaches we've been waiting for!  Peaches are self-fruitful, but will require careful management (pruning, disease and insect control).  Ask your nursery specialist for recommendations on specific varieties.

You Told Me So: A Public Declaration

The front of our house is red brick and the windows are very low, perhaps only a foot above the ground.  Because we have a walkway from the driveway to the front door and because we wanted to be able to look out those windows, we didn't want a large bed of foundation shrubs against the front of the house.  I have large rectangular areas of groundcovers between the walkway and the lawn: liriope on the sunnier side and indigofera mixed with variegated vinca major on the shadier side.  My brilliant idea?  Plant creeping fig ivy to climb up the brick walls, providing a cooling curtain of green and the look of shrubbery without any depth at all.

The Chief Engineer in our house advised against it.  "You'll constantly be trimming it back, to keep it off the roof and the windows," he said.  But how hard could that be?  I mean, I can climb a ladder.  I have my own special smaller-hand Felcos.  What's the problem?

Well.  It's a problem.  Don't get me wrong -- I love the look.  It really does cool down the hot red color of the brick.  It does look like landscaping without having rows of big bushes in front of the windows.  But it's a real project to keep it trimmed correctly.  If it gets away from me, it leaves sticky little footprints on the woodwork.  It's crawled around to both sides of the house, and threatens to actually come in the front door.  It's harder than it looks to use the ladder to trim the top.  The trimmings are pretty tough and don't decompose quickly in the compost pile.

There is a benefit, however, that I had never considered when I planted the ivy.  Whenever I'm working on it, I'm thinking about my marriage.  About when it's important to be right and when it's not.  About giving and taking advice in a graceful fashion.  About doing what matters and forgetting about what doesn't.  And that's got to be a good thing, I figure.