Jewels of the rainbow

Iris ruthenica

Iris potaninii

People will insist on asking you (when they find out you make a living from plants) what your favorite flower is. Asking someone like me to pick a single favorite flower would be like asking Harpagon which coin he liked most: plant misers love all things green...but there is something about tiny iris that sets them apart.

I was astonished to find Iris ruthenica growing by the untold million last year everywhere in the Altai and Tien Shan mountains of Kazakhstan, from the fringes of the steppe in the foothills to above treeline on tundra. It makes mats a yard or more across that were studded with hundreds of those prismatic blue jewel like flowers. I have seen Iris ruthenica on the Yulongshan of Yunnan and know it makes it all the way to Ruthenia in Europe: and yet this is not a common plant in gardens. I have grown many forms. I have grown some of them in large quantities. One of the sad things of being an old gardener is you realize you have fumbled many good plants: those forms are largely no longer with me. I now make a point of propagating and planting lots of plants of this around so that I never lose it again. I am particularly pleased to have found quite a bit of seed of Iris ruthenica in the Siberian larch forests above Markakol lake in the Altai a month or so ago, so we will have plants one day from a known locality.

Iris potaninii (if it's not actually I. tigridia) is a bona fide alpine from Tibet and neighboring regions I have grown off and on for years. It seems to be settling down in my garden in this marvellous yellow form.

But the REAL miniature iris are all the dwarf Iriodictyon and Junos sections that one must plant this time of year. I have placed orders with three specialty nurseries to get even more of these prismatic gems. I am not going to tell you which ones or where I ordered them until they are delivered to my door (and preferably planted in the ground). I don't want YOU snatching my jewels! Half a year has elapsed since these last bloomed in the garden, which means their bloom season is now fast approaching! Winter is so much more tolerable knowing that it will chased away with a flurry of irises on its heels!

The steppes of Central Asia

I wish I had saved that old Far Side cartoon showing the chubby guy on an endless plane in front of a sort of naked stoop with a couple steps, the cartoon labeled "the Steps of Central Asia"--this being more or less what most people think of hearing that phrase. I did mean plane in that first sentence btw.

After two really stunning trips last June and July and this August-September (thank you once again Plant Select!) my associations with Central Asia (entirely Kazkhstan and a the westernmost corner of Mongolia) are rich indeed. I deeply regret that I put off coming here so late in my life. I guess Africa and the American West (and Mexico, the Andes, Spain, Turkey etc. etc.) are a sort of compensation...but for those living in Colorado, the steppes of Central Asia are our true correlative. The landscape is so similar and the plants so perfectly suited to us that I marvel that so much of what I saw was novel and new to me (and I suspect to horticulture generally)

A case in point is the plant pictured above: Dipsacus azureus. I realize teasel might well terrify the soul of the timid, but something tells me this one is no fullonum. It appears to be perennial, and was scattered on just certain meadows in a way that suggested a reasonable perennial rather than horrendous weed to me. Only time (and a lot of cautious testing) will tell for sure: but I know no garden perennial quite like this: six or seven feet tall, with such a clear azure head of bloom, almost always sporting butterflies.

We saw this several places widely separated on the Tian Shan from Djabagly to near Merket--a stretch of hundreds of kilometers: it is not rare in nature. But why should such a showy, dramatic plant seem not to exist in the horticultural literature? There is one measly picture of it on Google images...

I think it's because the steppes of Central Asia are (except for a few bulbs and woodies) largely unknown to gardens in the "West". Considering that horticulture first arose in the steppe country somewhere around the highlands of Iraq-Iran-Turkey, the irony is rich.

How exciting it is to be one of the first American horticulturists to take a systematic look at this glorious region where so much of humanity traces its origins and the art of gardening (which is to say civilization) traces its start!

Pilgrimage to Jelitto seeds

For anyone suffering seedaholism (a little known disease you can probably diagnose) a visit to Jelitto's is very much like a devout Moslem's Hadj to Mecca, or an Elvis Presley fan at Graceland: this place is it. Mind you I spent several years in Fort Collins working on the GRIN project (Germplasm Resources Information Network) which computerized the National Seed Storage Laboratory (which I frequently toured during those years--it was a stone's throw from my office). They've renamed the Lab the National Institute for Seed something...and it remains one of the largest seed repositories on earth. Jelitto is not quite that ambitious, but the size is comparable and Jelitto's was even more interesting for me because it has several commodious rooms for seed cleaning as well as room after room for seed testing, storage, an immense walk in cooler, and a dozen other spaces that spoke to the scope and thoroughness of the greatest seed house on earth.

Of course, there are much larger seed companies that do just vegetable seed or annuals (and I honor these short lived and delightful crops)...but hey, man, perennials, alpines and grasses are my thing, and nobody can hold a candle to Jelitto's in that department.

This is Georg Uebelhart, principal owner and guru of Jelitto. I have been fortunate to know Georg for many years, and must take this opportunity to thank him for one of the most gracious visits I have ever had anywhere: he treated me and Mike Bone royally. Showing us all around Jelitto's, wining and dining us nearby, showing us his home garden and meeting his wonderful family: we spent three simply luminous days with him and I savored every moment. After an intense and sometimes edgy three weeks in Kazakhstan (where creature comforts are not always first priority, if you know what I mean), the charm and famous efficiency (and just plain luxury) that are all hallmarks of Germany were a jarring and utterly welcome contrast. Both Mike and I agreed we couldn't wait to get back to Schwarmstedt. Georg! I salute you and your coworkers! Long may you flourish!

Altai dreaming

What this picture doesn't show is one of the few disappointments of an otherwise stellar trip (so to speak...pun not intended as you will see): it was taken in the foothills of the Altai, near the farm Maymir where I stayed in June, 2009 and just this past August for several luminous days. From Maymir one day last June we wandered up the valley (glimpsed between the tiny, yellow aconites in the picture) maybe a mile or so: lots of roses and giant aconites in blue and purple, not to mention Dictamnus angustifolius and Paeonia anomala in glorious bloom alongside a hundred or so other gorgeous things (Lilium martagon)...but I digress....

Within a few paces of these Aconites the hill was bristling last June with hundreds of Stelleropsis altaica, an unspeakably lovely daphnoid far from its other known occurences further northward. Late August is probably at least a month late to find a single berry on the little daphnoid, but this picture (and lots of other things too) was compensation of a sort. Perhaps some day I might return in July? Probably not. But visiting this magical valley twice in a lifetime is pretty damn good: something I wouldn't have dreamed of a decade or two ago. Thank you Plant Select!

What exactly is this tiny yellow Aconite? I am not sure. I can assure you, however, that it is amazingly common everywhere in the Altai and that I did get a pretty good pinch of its seed...considering it grows on a very dry, hot slope it bodes well for Colorado rock gardens.

I have left little pieces of my heart here and there on the steppe of Kazakhstan, on the feathery vale of Maymir, on the Larch-clad slopes above Markakol lake (with its endemic salmon I never had the chance to try)...on the fabulous ridge on Berkhat pass where we could see so clearly Mt. Belukha (highest peak in Siberia and the Altai) with its resident cloud some forty miles away. The picture below of Aquilegia glandulosa is a memento from that pass (and that was all just in the first few days of my momentous visit to Central Asia): turn up the Borodin, please! And waft along with me on a trip of a lifetime...

P.S. Why did not post a single blog post in Kazakhstan? Get real, buddy: Maymir and Berkhat pass have many things, but internet access is not one of them. And when you are hiking and seeing things like this, who has time to post? Can't believe that luminous month slipped by so quickly...

Apropos of Gentians...

I really do have much better pictures--probably slides--of fringed gentians. I know I took some on a trip a few years ago with Kelly Grummons and Sean Hogan somewhere in the Arkansas Valley. These are probably taken in South Park where I have managed to go just about every year for four or more decades to enjoy the spectacle in mid August. Not this year. Somehow I've gotten so bogged down with other commitments (weekend parties, and this past weekend it's been catch up in the garden) that I have not been to the hills in a month. Of course, I am about to go to Kazakhstan and spend almost a month in the Altai and Tian Shan (words that once seemed so distant and alluring, and now are familiar and almost homey to me now Since I have been there once, and spent countless hours filing images and researching plants I saw there).

So for the sake of distant hills I've neglected my back yard--the Rockies--this year. I am not proud of it. So what if I've spent over a half century exploring corners of my native mountain range. The Southern Rockies are less than half the height of Mt. Everest. They are not nearly as glaciated and rugged as the Alps or the Northern Rockies. They do not have Douglasia montana, Aquilegia jonesii and Kelseya uniflora (three gems I covet from the Middle Rockies). They are not as species diverse as the Mediterranean mountains, nor do they have forests like the Sierra Nevada.

But they are mine. From the first townsendias of March, the mountain ball cacti and Pasqueflowers of April, the foothills penstemon and American plum blossom in May, the refulgent Colorado columbines and Mariposa lilies in June, the paintbrush and mertensia of the summits in July and the gentians of August, and finally the blaze of autumn aspen, asters and chrysothamnus of fall...these are the floral canvas that my life has played against.

Gentians summon all sorts of emotions: in Europe they are associated more with the brilliant spring gentians in their dazzling cobalts.

But in the Rockies gentians are late summer and a blue blaze of of summer's last blast before the season slides into the frosty season. They bring a tinge of regret as well as pleasure at their blue velvet carress.

Change and the garden

As I was sorting my pictures from this year into manageably sized files, I couldn't help but notice how radically certain areas of the garden change. I am including four pictures taken of essentially the same garden at four different times: I've misplaced (or lost) my camera so I can't show you the current manifestation, which is frankly pretty crispy. It's been a long hot, dry summer in Denver!

The ridges are two slightly ridged berms with a path between that comprise much of the Western half of my garden. The soil is pretty much pure sand 80 feet deep. We composted copious amounts of leaves for five or six years (which added almost a foot of compost) which was tilled in when the berms were contoured. The East Ridge is supposed to contain only plants of the eastern hemisphere, and West Ridge only plants of the western hemisphere, but plants keep jumping back and forth. Very annoying!

I delight in these gardens throughout the gardening year: they are really full of treasures (especially bulbs) and I derive great joy knowing there's never been anything like them. Certain plants like Tulipa humilis, Collomia grandiflora, Glaucium acutidentatum self sow wildly. It is my principal repository of Eriogonum, Opuntia, Penstemon, Fritillaria and Juno and Aril iris. I view it as a prototype of what we may one day have to do in median strips, industrial sites and many large home gardens when water is no longer so cheap.

'Tisn't so bad, really!

Prospecting in catalogs

I remember running across Tradescantia tharpii in a flora once decades ago, and wondering if I would have to trudge out to the Ozarks personally to collect the little bugger since I'd never seen it offered in a catalog. Years went by, and I saw it at the Dyck Arboretum outside Hesston and a year or two later found it in a Bluebird Nursery catalog.

I eventually got several plants from Harlan, and here are the two that I've grown for years in my home garden. I need more. They have put up with a great deal of abuse (I've sprayed the grass growing with them with weedkiller for instance) and carried on: unlike other dayflowers, these will not spread all over your garden and become a menace. They are demure and comely, covered with silken hair when they emerge, and blooming for weeks on end in early summer. Who could ask for anything more? (Far more deserving of the GCA Freeman medal than the recently awarded Spigelia marilandica, which is a fussy woodlander for humid, mild microclimates).

I shouldn't be telling you about this, since I have decided come hell or high water I'm going to order a whole flat of them next spring (they are incredibly inexpensive) and plant them everywhere in my garden. Bluebird has been selling these for years, but I have yet to see them in a garden center, or in another garden (aside from Dyck and a few not too happy tufts I planted at DBG) for that matter. Bet you don't have it!

It is truly strange to me that this, one of America's most glorious native wildflowers, can languish (as it were) while the unwashed masses positively gush over all manner of technological devices, media nonsense, SPORTS (for Heaven's sake) and the usual glut of consumer crap that clutters the airwaves and mucks up our otherwise meaningful lives. I betcha Brangelina has significantly more Google hits than tharpii. Helllooooow? Perhaps that's why we are so cheerfully going to hell in a handbasket?