Autumn embers redux (April in December?)

 

Autumn embers still? And what's this "April in December?"--hold your horses, it'll all come out in the wash! The "April in December" is the easy part: April is the perfect month at the beginning of the growing season. March is a tad too early (and ragged around the edges, so to speak) but by April the bulbs are all out in force, the first lilacs and flowering trees are blooming and the alpines are going great guns: everything is crisp and full of promise and the hailstorms and summer droughts and insects have yet to take their toll. December represents a similar sort of perfection: We've finally managed most of the fall cleanup, and the beds are pretty trim, the last bulbs planted, and the last fall color is glowing and lots of bulbs are actually poking up their cute little noses (you should make some squeaky sounds here)...winter has yet to wreak its worst--and one can admire with optimism the many new succulents (and other plants of untested hardiness) you have put out before they are blasted to oblivion...hopefully not the Cotyledon orbiculata pictured above. This is the chubby, very silvery form that Agua Fria nursery says they obtained from me nearly 20 years ago which they have grown for years and propagated...finally coming home to roost, as it were, in the very best, steep crevicy spot I could find... 

 

This is a hunkering giant form that Dan Johnson planted in front of Marnie's Pavilion. It made it through last winter...and grew enormously this summer...I walk by here several times a day at work, and needless to see I shall be observing its progress through the next few months with intense curiosity! 

 

I've grown several Nananthus in the past--one (N. transvaalensis) bloomed through much of the winter one year. I believe this is N. vittatus--and it has been blooming from late November to this past week. Any plant witty enough to bloom this time of year has got to be a keeper--now let's just hope it keeps alive through this winter! Most Nananthus I have grown in the past bloom in April, funnily enough...(Here you should prop your right elbow on your left palm, and scratch your chin thoughtfully with your right index finger, saying "Veeeeeeeeeery interesting".)

 

 

I have grown quite a few Narcissus bulbocodium in my day, and they have always bloomed for me in, yes, April. Last autumn I obtained six bulbs of Narcissus cantabricus from Brent and Beckys and was disappointed when they did not bloom this last April. Lo! and Behold, a month or so ago I noticed buds near the base of the stem...precocious buds for next spring? A few weeks ago the first bud opened, and since then three of the plants have come into full bloom. I shall be intrigued to see how they make it through the next few nights in the lower teens!

Above is a closer look at N. cantabricus--which does bear a strong resemblance to its cousin below....

 

This is Narcissus albidus var. foliosus, planted this year from Mark Akimoff and Jane McGary's outstanding bulb list. It has not been through the winter, but I realized I have another clump from them that did make it through last winter unscathed, but without blooming yet...it opened its first flower in mid November and is still blooming on December 9...by the way, we've had almost summery weather in that interval (days often in the 70's: what better definition of a steppe climate: a place where spring flowers bloom in late autumn with summerlike days when it should be winter!)

 

 

Here is the late autumn/early winter view of my rock garden slope I featured in a blog several years ago. That year I took the picture of this same slope in October (this October the slope had not turned color)...it is instructive to compare the two pictures--they both are surprisingly similar. Hence my revisiting "Autumn embers".

Hardly April, I know--but there is a wonderful blend of Rembrandtian colors in the early winter (as opposed to the Giotto tints of April). The bright white clump in the front left is Sideritis cypria--a wonderful new plant that is untested for hardiness--what will it look like in April? And the Green rosettes at 4:00PM (birders will know what I mean) is Erigeron glaucus--a coastal California-Oregon endemic that burns pretty badly most winters, but comes back. And so it goes around my garden--lots of promise and many questions...and much the same excitement that April brings in a different way. And we're only four months away!

Untimely daffs...

Narcissus albidus v. foliosus

 

If it were not for the seemingly endless variability of Mediterranean bulbs (and those from Central Asia and other bulby places too I suppose) winter would be very long indeed. I only obtained these two morsels in the last few years, both blooming cheerfully the last week of November! We have had numerous hard frosts, and the temperature at night has not been much above freezing most of the last month--with one or two nights dipping into the teens. This has not been through a winter yet, but N. cantabricus below did go through last winter.

Narcissus cantabricus

I visited Savill Gardens in Windsor Great Park in April of 1981 on an enchanted late afternoon--there were hardly any visitors there, and the bright day was gradually turning golden with late afternoon light. Long will I remember the bright pink petals of Magnolia campbellii floating down ever so slowly, and the streamside planted thickly with Lysichiton (camtchaticum over there, americanum over here) amid drifts of Primula denticulata and other early spring goodies....But what really dazzled me was how each dell and hollow was planted to its own subspecies of Narcissus bulbocodium...a brassy pale yellow one growing by the million in this clearing, a brilliant yellow dominating a meadow a bit further on. Seemingly dozens of kinds of hoop petticoats thriving and spreading into innumerable quantities, all growing completely happy, and in peak bloom. I am curious if there are not a meadow or two there for the late autumn and winter blooming white ones? I shudder to imagine a copse filled with one of the petunioides types!

 

Meanwhile, I am more than content with my little tufts here and there of some of the variations on this remarkable group of Narcissus. One day I must return to Savill Gardens--surely one of the finest gardens in the world. And perhaps one day I shall visit the heights of the Guadarrama, the Picos and the various Sierra where the bulbodocium section grows wild.