Viewing comments posted by Cyclaminist

A long and lanky coneflower. It has thinner petals (technically, petaloid rays) than Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) , a more commonly grown species, but is more drought-tolerant. I grow it on a hill that dries out fast, and now that it's established, it shouldn't need watering. E. purpurea would wilt and die if it were planted in the same place. Similar to Narrow-leaf Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) .

I don't grow it, but I drink a lot of Chinese tea, and this is the plant it comes from.

A native plant for shade that feeds bees with nectar and pollen. The earliest leaves are variegated with white patches, but the leaves that develop later are completely green.

Many people don't like it because it's pretty tough and it self-seeds, but I just deadhead it to keep it from making seed.

I've grown these for years. They multiply quickly, and they easily survive the winter. Even the bulblets can handle sitting on the ground and being exposed to freezing temperatures and sun.

I typically use the older plants in the spring as green onions. They are good sautéed and then added to an omelette. Later in the season, the leaves and flower stems get too tough to eat. I leave a few plants in each clump, and they split each year, and even grow if they are surrounded by quackgrass.

Lovely large yellow flowers with toothed petals (technically petaloid rays). More compact and showier (in my opinion) than Prairie Tickseed (Coreopsis palmata) , but needs dry soil, preferably sandy.

I planted this two years ago, and it rotted over the winter — the soil was too wet, I guess. Fortunately, I had scattered the seed around the garden, and several plants came up. After one year, they are getting ready to bloom.

In the wild, European cyclamens often grow in beech woods (or so I hear). Beeches often keep some dried leaves on their branches over the winter and drop them in spring (a pattern called marcescence). European cyclamens are well adapted to this pattern: they grow new leaves in summer, after the beech leaves fall, and thus the new cyclamen leaves will be able to grow on top of the fallen beech leaves, rather than being covered by them. The cyclamens might have a harder time growing under other deciduous trees that lose their leaves in the fall, since the fallen leaves would cover the cyclamen leaves and prevent them from photosynthesizing in the spring, and thereby retard their growth and blooming.

Anyway, that's my theory. Related to this, the ideal time to mulch (or transplant) European cyclamens is in late spring or early summer, immediately before they grow new leaves and bloom. That way, the new leaves that grow in summer will be able to grow on top of the mulch (or the leaves inevitably messed up from transplanting can be replaced by a new and orderly set of leaves).

A spring ephemeral with small white flowers and lovely compound leaves, native to the east-central United States and the southern tip of Ontario. Easy to confuse with Rue Anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) and Wood anemone (Anemone quinquefolia) . Unlike them, it spreads gradually each year by underground rhizomes to form a closely spaced clump.

Basal leaves emerge in the fall, last through the winter, then go dormant along with the flower stems in summer.

Like many plants in the buttercup family, it only produces pollen. Medium to small bees visit it to gather the pollen for their nests (the flowers are too small to provide enough pollen for bumblebees and the stems too delicate to support them), and hoverflies eat the pollen.

A weed, but it's edible. The tips of the flower stems taste like broccoli, though they are tiny.

A rare plant in most states. I've only seen it in irrigated garden areas (Gardens of Rice Creek, Fridley, Minnesota) where it was introduced many years ago and has become rather weedy, forming a thick groundcover. Surprising, but that's because with irrigation and soil full of organic matter, it keeps growing for much of the summer and sends out a lot of underground stolons that create new plants.

Stunningly beautiful color, almost magenta. (Or maybe that's just the ones I've seen.) A native plant that sends leaf and flower stems directly from a tiny, white, loose-scaled bulb.

In the wild, I think it grows and blooms in spring and early summer, then goes dormant when soil dries out a bit over the summer. But with summer irrigation, it grows through the summer, spreads a great deal, and becomes rather weedy. I've seen this at Gardens of Rice Creek in Fridley, Minnesota.

A blueberry generally a foot or two tall. The leaves are bright (yellowish) green with pink tinge in spring; dark green in summer; yellow, orange, or dark red in fall. Spreads by underground rhizomes to cover the ground. Has tiny white flowers in dense clusters in spring, which are pollinated by bumblebees and mining bees. The berries are small, but have far more flavor and aroma than the bigger blueberries from the store, which may come from Highbush Blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) and its cultivars. The good flavor is shared by many half-high blueberries, which are hybrids of highbush and lowbush blueberry.

I grew the cultivar Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium 'Burgundy') (very dark red fall color) in a pot with pine bark mulch for several years, and it did well, aside from many of the buds being sunburnt and killed in winter. Transplanted to a bed in partial shade with about 8 inches of pine bark, where it grows with half-high blueberries, Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) , and Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) .

A short creeping shrub with rounded, evergreen leaves. The leaves are gorgeous and shiny: yellow-green, sometimes with a pink tinge, when actively growing; dark green when mature; often purplish in the winter. The flowers are thickly clustered, light pink emerging from darker pink buds. Very winter-hardy, but may be hard to grow in areas with very hot summers or mild winters. Spreads by layering and underground rhizomes. Will not tolerate alkaline soil, prefers acidic, but may grow just fine in neutral soil with lots of organic matter and some sand, and regular fertilization.

Grows well with Lowbush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) , which is about the same height, and likes the same kind of soil.

The European subspecies is more commonly cultivated than the North American one, and is about twice as tall, up to 16 inches high. I have both of them growing close together in my yard. I'm far more fond of the North American subspecies; it's just so tiny and cute. I got it by chance from a friend. But there are many cultivars of the European subspecies, with large fruit and other desirable characteristics.

In the wild, lingonberries often grow in sphagnum moss, which constantly grows upwards and covers the stems, allowing them to grow roots and eventually send up new stems of their own. In order to encourage this natural layering, push down and bury longer stems, or stems that are already growing diagonally (indicating their desire to be layered), in an inch or two of soil. Also, dig up the whole clump every year and plant it an inch or two deeper, or simply add a few inches of mulch every year. Just don't harm the shallow root ball of dense, small roots. By layering, I have created pretty dense clumps.

The underground rhizomes also send up stems a few inches from the parent plant. But simply relying on rhizomes will not create dense clumps.

I've grown lingonberries for many years in loam or sandy loam with a little fine pine-bark mixed in, but finally created a deeper bed of mostly pine bark, which they will be happier in. My soil is slightly alkaline, but they didn't mind it too much. They appreciate a high-nitrogen fertilizer (since they grow many new stems every year), along with some iron sulfate and magnesium sulfate. I mixed the last two into the new bed. I'm also growing lowbush and half-high blueberries and Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) in the same bed.

Provides food for American painted lady butterflies (Vanessa virginiensis: http://bugguide.net/node/view/..., http://www.butterfliesandmoths...). They lay tiny white eggs on the leaves in spring. The caterpillars hatch and build tents or shelters by stretching silk between the leaves to try to protect themselves from predators. The pussytoes may have most of their leaves eaten, but they usually survive and send out hundreds of new leaves after the caterpillars are gone.

I must have too many wasps in my yard, since I don't see many caterpillars survive to create a chrysalis and transform into a butterfly. It might help if I limited the numbers of flowers that attract wasps, like Spotted Beebalm (Monarda punctata) and Virginia Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum). I've seen wasps poking their abdomens into the pussytoes leaves, presumably to lay eggs on the caterpillars.

I think this is the largest-leaved pussytoes species. It seems to prefer moister soils than garden.org/plants/view/79953/, and tolerates a little more shade. I grow it between taller plants in a (rather dry) rain garden.

A female cultivar that produces small green berries in early fall. When ripe, they are soft and aromatic, with a very fruity smell, almost as if they're overripe. When unripe, they're firm and crunchy, sour with a strangely corrosive feeling in the mouth.

I grow it next to Hardy Kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta 'Arctic Beauty'), which produces pollen.

A male cultivar: the flowers only produce pollen. I grow it as pollenizer (pollen supplier) for the female cultivar Hardy Kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta 'Red Beauty'), which produces fruit. It's said to have better leaf color (pink to white patches), but mine is in mostly shade and rarely develops any color.

Most of the plant is bitter and poisonous, but according to several sites, the young shoots are edible. I've eaten them fresh several times, and they tasted good, not bitter at all. But it's generally recommended that they be boiled before you eat them. I might have poisoned myself, though I didn't notice any ill effects. But anyway, eating the young shoots is one way to control the plant if you've got it sprouting in inconvenient places.

A short and slender milkweed. It spreads by slender white rhizomes like garden.org/plants/view/75378/, but I don't mind because it's so delicate and interesting, and my gardens aren't very organized. Unfortunately, because I don't use edging, it does creep into lawn areas.

It doesn't do that well with lots of taller plants (more than 3 feet) around. I suspect that's why it's more common in the Great Plains than in the Northeast.

Lovely wide light purple flowers that open in the heat of summer. Does very well in dry soil.

Not quite native to Minnesota, but I grow it in my native garden anyway. Emerges very late, when other plants are already up. I guess it waits for warm soil temperatures. It grows from some tiny upright stems (caudices?) several inches underground, with many fleshy fibrous roots radiating a little outwards and down deep into the soil.

It can be very prolific. Despite what some sources say, the seed is not simply dropped, but thrown from the parent plant by the pod. So babies will pop up as many as 10 feet away. They are pretty tough, and can grow in regularly mown lawns.

If you want to get rid of them, you've got to dig a few inches down and take out the part of the plant that the stems grow out of. Just pulling the stems usually does not do the job. The roots are numerous and they solidly anchor the growing points underground.

The most widespread Campanula species, distributed through much of the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere. It has lovely bell-shaped violet-blue flowers, slender leaves on the flower stems, and round basal leaves (often not present in mature plants), which is what the species name rotundifolia means.

It prefers places where it is not outcompeted by larger plants. In Minnesota, I've often seen it growing in cliffs. But that's just because most other habitats would have lots of more vigorous, taller plants. It grows beautifully in deep loamy soil, if taller plants do not shade it or invade its root area. It can handle pretty dry soil once it is established, but does best with consistent moisture.

Blooms beginning in June, and will keep blooming until October if it is deadheaded. Produces tiny seed that is released from holes in the top of the seed capsules, and easily blows in the wind.

I've only rarely seen seedlings in the garden. The soil is too dry and not stable enough for such tiny seeds. But I have successfully germinated seed in a pot with compost (leaf mold) in the bottom and a three-quarter inch layer of sand on the surface. Seedlings start out very tiny. After a few months, they are large enough to transplant into the garden.

Spectacular: wide-leaved and covered in whitish trichomes. Slow-growing, likes full sun, and only needs occasional watering. My small plant is producing roots from its base.