Epilobium

Epilobium canum (California fuchsia) is a popular native plant for the garden, in large part because it is a reliable summer/fall bloomer. It produces numerous tubular red flowers that attract hummingbirds. Right now the ones in my garden are transitioning from flowering to fruiting. Below are some shots from my garden today.

The photo below shows the fruit before they have opened up. The fruit develop from an inferior ovary which is visible at the base of the flowers on the left.

This photo show a fruit that has just opened up to release the seeds which are easily carried away by the wind. NOTE: I forgot to mention previously that small birds, especially goldfinches, really love to eat Epilobium seeds, making for a great bird show in fall.

There are 40 taxa of Epilobium that are native to California, and they are found all over the state. In San Diego County Epilobium canum is the most common. There are four subspecies. The ones in my garden are E. canum ssp. canum, the most common form, found from the coast to the low mountains. In the higher mountains ssp. latifolium is found. Below is a shot of latifolium from the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County. The word latifolium means broad-leaved, but personally I can't see the difference between the leaves of ssp. latifolium and ssp. canum.

Epilobium canum propagates by seed and by rhizome. Wherever you plant it, it will expand to fill the available space. Seedlings will come up wherever the seeds may land. When it finishes blooming in late fall, it's a good idea to either cut it back to the ground or pull out the old stems. Roots and rhizomes will stay in the soil to sprout again next spring.

Another Dudleya

I'm nuts about Dudleyas. One of my favorites is D. candida which is from the Islas Coronados just south of the border. These islands are not large, so it is fascinating to me that a separate species of Dudleya has evolved there. That seems to be the way Dudleyas are.

What I like about candida is that it is more compact than pulverulenta, and way more compact than brittonii. As it grows it develops new rosettes rather than having the original rosette get larger. Over time you get a cluster of rosettes in a tight clump that is very attractive and easy to fit into any garden.

A couple of years ago an apparent seedling came up. It now looks like this:

The parent plant is above and the "seedling" is below. I call this an apparent seedling because I don't know for sure that it arose from seed. It is possible that this rosette is an offshoot that came from the roots of the parent and not from a seed. Either way, I am happy to have it. It is growing well and seems to really like this crevice between the rocks.

The photo above leads me to the topic of rocks. I am also nuts about rocks in the garden. I just love the way they look, but they also have benefits for native plants. Succulents in particular seem to need rocks. Below are some of my favorite rocks.

I like to stack rocks to make a low "wall." It adds texture to the garden and gives lizards some places to hide. The cacti in the foreground are Cochemeia halei from Baja.

Above is my favorite large rock, decorated with lichens and moss. This area is mostly annuals which are not apparent in September.

More lichens.

Another low "wall" at the base of a coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia).

Seedlings

One of the signs of a thriving garden is getting volunteer seedlings of your established plants. When your plants are healthy and happy enough to reproduce successfully, you are doing something right. You may not always want these seedlings, or you may not want them where they decide to come up, but the simple fact that they are coming up is a good sign.

I recently found these seedling Dudleyas.

They are in an odd place, up against the north side of the house in a thick layer of decomposed granite. This is an area where I don't really have anything planted. The nearest plant that could be the parent of these seedlings is a Dudleya brittonii that is in a pot. It's about 10 ft. away from where the seedlings appeared. In the photo below you can see the old inflorescences on the parent plant.

My assumption is that the Dudleya seedlings are from the brittonii. I'm glad that the parent plant seems to be happy in its pot, and I'm even more excited that the seeds have found a hospitable spot and are doing well so far.

D. brittonii is from northern Baja. It does not occur naturally in California at all, but it is quite common just a few miles south of the border. If you drive south from Tijuana toward Ensenada you will begin to see them all over the rocky cliffs that line the road. This is still the California Floristic Province so there is a lot in common with San Diego County, but there are also these fascinating differences.

Fungi in the Garden

Recently some interesting stuff has been coming up in my garden. Here's one:

It is Pisolithus arhizus or Dyeball. I don't know where that name came from. I believe my parents used to call them Snuffballs because when they break open the dusty material on the inside resembles snuff, a powdered form of tobacco.

The appearance of mushrooms and other objects like this indicates the presence of fungi in the soil, which is normal and good. These above-ground features are the fruiting bodies of the fungus. Some gardeners freak out when they see mushrooms because they think it is a sign of disease. Don't freak out! Fungi in the garden should be tolerated and even celebrated. Here's why.

Most native plant gardeners are also "organic" gardeners. That is, they avoid the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides because they understand that healthy plants depend on a healthy ecosystem, starting with the soil. Wild, unaltered soil contains fungi which have a network of extremely fine thread-like strands that attach themselves to plant roots. The fungi are better than green plants at taking up water from the soil. They can do so even when the soil appears to be dry. On the other hand, fungi lack chlorophyll so they can't manufacture their own carbohydrates. Over millions of years of evolution, fungi and green plants have develop a partnership in which the fungi share water with green plants, while the green plants share food with the fungi.

It's a truly marvelous relationship that is usually destroyed by most modern gardening and farming practices. Excessive digging or tilling of the soil, use of chemical treatments, and other common practices kill soil fungi. The result is plants that require extra water and feeding to stay alive.

It can take years or even decades for a really strong soil-plant association to develop. My garden which is over 20 years old is getting there, and that's why I'm seeing these wonderful examples of healthy fungi in the soil.

Return to Blogging

After a break of over two years, I am going to resume blogging about my garden.  I should note that this post was written in 2018 but not posted until now. During the time that I wasn't blogging, lots of things happened in the garden - most of them not good. A number of my plants died or suffered due to the drought. I had the erroneous idea that native plants would be able to withstand drought conditions. I failed to recognize that even tough native plants can die from a lack of water. Two of the plants that died were large shrubs - a Fremontodendron 'Pacific Sunset' and a Garrya elliptica. My Lyonothamnus floribundus survived but the uppermost branches are dead and leafless. A number of smaller plants also died.

On the other hand, the majority of my plants survived and are doing well. We had better rain in 2017 which helped a lot. One could argue that both the Fremontodentron and the Garrya were out of place in my garden, coming from areas quite different from Encinitas. The plants that are truly native to north coastal San Diego County have continued to perform well. They are now waking up after their long summer nap.

I'm going to start with the most dramatic example, a Mammillaria dioica that I got from Recon nursery a few years ago. It seems very happy in this location. I don't give it any summer water. We had a good rain a couple of weeks ago, and this is the result.

Return to Blogging Part 2

It has been just about a year since I have contributed anything new to the blog.  In the last post I said I was going to resume blogging, but then a year passed again. Today I was showing my garden to someone and she suggested that I start a blog about my garden. I was too ashamed to tell her that I already had one that I had allowed to lapse. So, starting today I am going to reactive this blog. I can't say how often I will be posting, but I'll try to do it whenever there is something interesting to report.

Today I'm going to talk about dragonflies. I have written before about the big red dragonflies that have been breeding in my backyard pond for over 20 years. Recently a pair of large green dragonflies have been around. The male (I'm assuming) is bright green. The female is gray-green. I couldn't get a photo of him because he was zipping around too fast, but I got a photo of her depositing eggs on some pond plants.

You can't see her tail because it is curled under in order to place the eggs on the underside of the floating leaves. She did this in several places around the pond. I posted this photo on iNaturalist and someone told me that it is a common green darner (Anax junius).These dragonflies are a great new addition to the pond.