Plants I should be growing

What a great topic for a thread!  I'll have to think of what to add... it would be great if all of the readers out there would do so too, and add to this list.  I'm always interested in more variety for the garden!

Bronze-bells is quite common in the montane zone here... it can be quite nondescript or quite attractive!  It seems to be more strongly coloured when in more sunlight (my guess, anyway).  I'll try to collect some seed for you, Mark... no promises as to how attractive the result may be!  :-)

Thanks Lori,

I'm sure we all have experience with the exciting realization of plants that simply tickles one's fancy, and when I saw this, I did a dope-slap to my head, and thought, why didn't I know about this native plant.  Calphotos and other sources show this plant is quite variable, but I'd love to try it sometime, I'm a sucker for the obscure liliaceae :-)

It's like with Melanthium virginicum, my best new plant for 2013, I would never have even considered this plant unless someone gave it to me; oh the joy of gardening:
https://www.nargs.org/forum/melanthium-bunchflower

I'm so glad you have started this topic Mark .Like you i 'wanted' this plant after seeing a pic somewhere of a plant with lovely red flowers and then reading about it in the NARGS publication 'Bulbs Of North America ' .

I managed to obtain seed back in 2006 which germinated easily enough and i understood the best chance of success was to grow it in a shaded position which I've done,(although i think last year Lori you mentioned finding it in the wild in open positions).

Anyway I've just been out in this spring like day ,(currently 15C),and had a peek in the pot.Here's a pic showing how small my plants are .Thumb is for scale.

Perplexed Dave.

Small but promising Dave.  Please keep us posted how this plant does for you.  I find it fascinating that I'm getting response from forumists in western Canada (in the plant's range) and New Zealand.  As Lori suggested, please feel free to post about new plant discoveries :-)

I'm currently putting sheep manure pellets around those Trilliums in the garden that have their noses well above ground level Mark so as i have the seedlings of the Stenanthium still together in their pot i might transplant a few and feed those up with the animal manure .(probably end up sacrificing them ).....Smile).

Cheers Dave.

I have (still, I hope!) one plant of this, which I believe is a survivor from my teenage years rock garden- I presume I collected it from the wild somewhere at that time, but don't specifically remember! In any case, when I moved back home and started cleaning up the rock garden, this was one of several survivors I found, and it did flower for several years, before I completely redug and rebuilt that rock garden- it had to get stuck in a pot temporarily, where I hope it still is, haven't checked lately. I think this spring it sent up a flower stalk which never developed, though it also didn't wither for a long time, no idea why... Need to see how it is and get it planted back out... I didn't see seed  on it the years it flowered, so it must be self-sterile...

Related to Mark's comments, I have thought that if some of our tiny native bulbs (Tofieldia glutinosa and Maianthemum trifolium come to mind besides Stenanthium) were greenhouse or house plants, they would be treasured tiny gems in pots, where they could be admired up close (and perhaps they are, somewhere outside their native range) whereas seen in the wild and planted in ground they are easily overlooked unless in good numbers. I am a big fan of tiny plants though :) Troughs might serve these well..

Crumbs, Mark, if I posted about every plant I  see and covet, I'd need more hours  in the day!

As to the Stenanthium occidentale - well, what's not to love about anything in the lily family as far as I'm concerned?

Especially when the flowers are trying so hard to be frits!

It's a cracker - and lucky you, t00lie, for having babies coming along.

M

[quote=Mark McD]

Sometimes I come across a plant in my internet meandering, and i think, what the heck, why am I not growing this fine plant.  And, too often we look to plants from China and other far-flung locales with mystical reverence, when in fact fine plants abound closer to home.

[/quote]

You know Mark, for me many North American plants are as exotic as any Chinese!

My list of plants I should be growing enlarge every week! And I get more pots with seedlings than I can manage properly :-(

Right now Ribes lobbii is renewed on my wishlist due to Claire's picture.

[quote=Hoy]

You know Mark, for me many North American plants are as exotic as any Chinese!

My list of plants I should be growing enlarge every week! And I get more pots with seedlings than I can manage properly :-(

Right now Ribes lobbii is renewed on my wishlist due to Claire's picture.

[/quote]

Sadly, many North American plants are harder to get here than plants from far-flung places like China!

For me, I'm long over the stage (this took decades) where I felt compelled to grow every plant that tickled my fancy.  I love seeing fabulous cacti and their beautiful flowers, but they never really look that great in New England (and besides, it would break my "no spines" garden policy, so no roses here either), almost a good thing the lily beetles are so bad, otherwise I would be lusting after gorgeous Lilium.  I agree Trond, Claire's Ribes lobbii put that one back on my list, and if I find it, I will dig out the inodorous yellow Ribes odoratum and replace it with lobbii.  There are enough plants that do well here, without challenge and headache, that I'm quite content pursuing their endless variations and pleasures (such as Epimedium and woodland Iris).

I've just been visiting Panayoti Kelaidis' very entertaining 'Prairiebreak' site, and predictably, my wish list is growing!

http://prairiebreak.blogspot.ca/

Campanula macrantha

Dianthus gianteus

Cicerbita alpina

Salvia daghestanica, S. nubicola

Napaea dioica

Artemisia filifolia

Monardella macrantha 'Marion Simpson'

Scutellaria pectinata

Teucrium crossonii 

... I could go on and on!! 

I go there as well Lori, (PK's musing's).

Mark,

I'm with Maggi - I want to grow too many plants! Like Kristl Walek (Gardens North) says - "so many species, so little time"!

More and more I realise that the plants that suit our conditions are the "Mediterranean" ones - plants that enjoy a cold,wet winter and a hot dry summer. Fortunately most of my favourite plants, especially bulbs fall into that category. The rest I have to try harder to keep going - usually in a shade house (if they aren't able to cope with the summer heat) or on a protected verandah (if they can't take the winter wet).

I'm particularly keen to try more plants from Turkey, like the acantholimons (I have one!), and some of the western Americans like Eriogonums. Thank heavens for Seedexes and people like Kristl who sell seeds from lots of different places. We have restrictions on what seeds/plants can be brought into Australia (which is important because we are relatively disease-free) and it's getting harder to get new plants added to the list of "allowed" imports. <sigh>

cheers

fermi

[quote=Toole]

I'm so glad you have started this topic Mark .Like you i 'wanted' this plant after seeing a pic somewhere of a plant with lovely red flowers and then reading about it in the NARGS publication 'Bulbs Of North America ' .

I managed to obtain seed back in 2006 which germinated easily enough and i understood the best chance of success was to grow it in a shaded position which I've done,(although i think last year Lori you mentioned finding it in the wild in open positions).[/quote]

Well, not so much in "open positions" exactly, but my observation has been that when it occurs in sunnier glades in the forest (i.e. clearings, or where the trail is broad and some sun can shine in), the flowers tend to be more highly coloured. 

Hmmm, I kind of feel like I should mention how small the flowers are on Stenanthium occidentale - only about a centimeter long -   lest anyone feel betrayed later on, after going through all the trouble of finding seed, germinating it, growing these, waiting for a bloom, etc.!! 

Here's another... Pediomelum subacaule.  It was brought to my attention via a sales e-mail from Sunshine Farms and Gardens (Barry Glick) in West Virginia in which its many virtues are extolled - looks wonderful!

http://www.cas.vanderbilt.edu/bioimages/biohires/p/hpesu5-wp022302-22e5465.jpg

Visiting a garden center today to buy big pots for roses, I was delighted to find pots of "red birds in a tree", Scrophularia macrantha, claimed to be hardy to zone 4!  Of course, I bought a couple to see how they'll do.

http://www.botanicgardens.org/blog/neither-scruffy-nor-scrophulous-scrophularia-macrantha

(Hmm, the Denver Botanic Gardens article reminds me that I grew Scrophularia chrysantha a couple of years ago, and never saw hide nor hair of it the following spring.)

http://www.wnmu.edu/academic/nspages/gilaflora/scrophularia_macrantha.html

http://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=SCMA7

http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?where-lifeform=any&rel-taxon=contains&where-taxon=scrophularia+macrantha&rel-namesoup=matchphrase&where-namesoup=&rel-location=matchphrase&where-location=&rel-county=eq&where-county=any&rel-state=eq&where-state=any&rel-country=eq&where-country=any&where-collectn=any&rel-photographer=contains&where-photographer=&rel-kwid=equals&where-kwid=&max_rows=24

I did grow a nice but lanky red-orange flowered Scrophularia sambucifolia some years ago. Now it is gone - strangled by strong growing Geraniums. Scrophularia macrantha seems to be much better!

I have never tried S chrysantha although I did see it at 4000m altitude in Turkey. At that time I had never heard of any but the common weedy S nodosa (which I have in my garden) but I remember thinking that it was a gardenworthy plant!

Scrophularia chrysantha Mt Suphan, Turkey.

[quote=Lori S.]

Toole wrote:

I'm so glad you have started this topic Mark .Like you i 'wanted' this plant after seeing a pic somewhere of a plant with lovely red flowers and then reading about it in the NARGS publication 'Bulbs Of North America ' .

I managed to obtain seed back in 2006 which germinated easily enough and i understood the best chance of success was to grow it in a shaded position which I've done,(although i think last year Lori you mentioned finding it in the wild in open positions).

Well, not so much in "open positions" exactly, but my observation has been that when it occurs in sunnier glades in the forest (i.e. clearings, or where the trail is broad and some sun can shine in), the flowers tend to be more highly coloured. 

Hmmm, I kind of feel like I should mention how small the flowers are on Stenanthium occidentale - only about a centimeter long -   lest anyone feel betrayed later on, after going through all the trouble of finding seed, germinating it, growing these, waiting for a bloom, etc.!! 

[/quote]

Well my mutterings earlier on in this Topic must have been heard ........as here's a shot or two of Stenanthium occidentale currently in bloom.As Lori mentioned the flowers are small,(a.k.a. tiny !).An individual bloom fully open with petals re-curved easily fits within the span of my little finger nail.............

Stenanthium occidentale is completely new to me, even though I lived in British Columbia within its range for over twenty years! I wonder what the fragrance is like?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fsnorthernregion/8051436342/in/photostream/

Another brand new plant to me: Hebe benthamii,  is high on my list, though it is extremely doubtful I'll ever be able to find one to add to the garden, or ever be successful with it. It is native to some of New Zealand's subantarctic islands, the Auckland Islands, and Campbell Island, and isn't in the nursery trade at all as far as I can tell. There are very few photos of it on the web. I found the best ones on flickriver.com, but have been unable to link the photos to this post.

These ones Gordon?

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/58356728@N07/5378534517/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katherinehay/6331694126/

Exactly! The first link was the one I was trying to add to my post. What an amazing plant! Given its origin, I'd think it would be quite hardy in colder climates. The only Hebes in our garden at the moment are H odora (bought as H. buxifolia), and H. pinguifolia var. pagei. It would be great to source a few more cold hardy Hebes for the garden, in particular ones with more prominent flowers, or one of the "Whipcord" Hebes.

[quote=Tingley]

Stenanthium occidentale is completely new to me, even though I lived in British Columbia within its range for over twenty years! I wonder what the fragrance is like?

[/quote]

I can't detect any fragrance Gordon.

I read that it was fragrant on the Pacific Northwest Flowers website:

www.pnwflowers.com/flower/stenanthium-occidentale

Perhaps fragrance is limited to select individual plants?

I imagine you'd have to lay on the ground to detect any fragrance that might be there....

The fragrance is certainly not strong enough to be noticable wafting about (to me anyway)... perhaps it might be if there was a whole grove of the plant but I've never seen it as more than a few individual plants in one spot (though it's pretty common).   I guess I'll have to remember to sniff one next year.