The Garden.org Plants Database

This is the man-made form of Orchid (Paphiopedilum x leeanum).

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A Xera plant introduction.

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A Xera plant introduction.

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A Xera plant introduction.

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Grow Jade tree (crassula ovata) in a bright location, and pot in standard houseplant soil. Keep the soil somewhat dry all year. Interestingly, more plants can be be easily obtained by propagating from leaf cuttings.

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I love this plant, as it is so easy to care for. It does well in full sun in my zone 8a covered porch, which does provide some shade from the late afternoon hot sun. It stays in its clay pot outdoors, unless freezing weather is predicted.

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This clematis is fairly easy to grow in my zone 8a SC garden and thrives in full sun. Its blooms do not fade in intense sunshine.

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This plant dies down to the ground after hard frost (in my SC zone 8a garden) and gleefully returns each spring. It's a hummingbird magnet. I was able to root a cutting this summer, which I will share with a gardening buddy.

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I have two of these. I live near Seattle, so the climate is very different from where they are from. They do fine and have proved to be drought tolerant. Even in a very long dry summer, I just water them a few times. Very late to emerge in the spring, they finally start blooming midsummer (unlike their home territory). They continue to bloom in flushes until mid fall. I collected seeds by putting an organza bag over the seed pods. Otherwise, they disappear.

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This Japanese or Chinese Pagodatree or Scholar-tree is actually native to China and Korea. It is a fast growing tree of 2 to 3 feet/year that is similar to the American Black Locust. The alternate leaves are 6 to 10 inches long with 7 to 17 opposite leaflets that only get a poor yellowish-green fall color. It bears creamy-white, mildly fragrant pea-like flowers in 6 to 12 inch long panicle clusters in July into August. The fruit is 3 to 8 inch long pods, constricted between the seed, that begin green to yellowish to finally brown. It suffers some from cankers, powdery mildew, and leaf hoppers. Its gray-brown bark is very plain. When it is a young tree it looks good for some years, but in time it gets more unkempt. It is a weak-wooded and messy tree by dropping lots of twigs and branches and pods, the latter often staining sidewalks green. There are a lot of this species planted in street wells and in parkways along the streets of Philadelphia, PA, and its suburbs; sometimes it is a lawn tree. I have not really seen it in my native Chicago, Illinois area, but there is one nursery listed as selling it in the Ornamental Growers Association of Northern Illinois nursery guide. I thought for years it had a Zone 6 hardiness.

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Autumn-olive is native to China, Korea, and Japan and I wish it would have been left there because it is such an invasive plant in much of the US in the Midwest, the South, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Northeast. It does have pretty foliage that is dark green above and silvery below. It does have pretty funnel-shaped, silvery white, with some yellow, flowers that are very fragrant in late May-early June. The red fruits are actually full of anti-oxidants. It starts off being a pretty shrub when young, but it becomes large, messy, and ugly in time, and it has sharp branch spurs that really hurt if one bumps into them. I am happy to kill off any out in the wild on land preserves when I work to get rid of Eurasian invasive plants in such places to help the native species. I don't know of any regular conventional nurseries selling this species, though a few cheap mail order nurseries do, especially the cultivar of 'Cardinal' that bears more fruit than the mother species.

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This small tree from southern Europe through western Asia and central Asia once was somewhat commonly planted in the Chicago, Illinois area in the 1960's into the 1980's for its pretty silver-gray foliage. However, most trees would live about 15 to 20 years and then die from canker disease and/or Verticillium Wilt. Nurseries in the area discontinued growing it, and this happened across much of the humid eastern side of the country. It is native to dry regions and it does not thrive in humid regions. It is not a good quality tree anyway. We professional horticulturists considered it as a cheap, planted weed tree. I don't know of this Silverberry Russian-olive escaping cultivation in the Midwestern or Eastern US, though her shrubby sister, the Autumn-olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) from East Asia does that a lot and is a very invasive plant. During my last visit to Chicagoland, I saw just a few of this species still around, and I have seen a very few in southeast Pennsylvania. I am surprised to see any. There may be a few cheap mail order nurseries selling it. I'm sure it does much better out in the drier Western US where it probably is an invasive Eurasian plant.

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The Japanese Tree Lilac is a handsome, clean, neat small tree either single-trunked or with a few trunks. It has a pretty purplish-brown shiny bark that is cherry-like until it gets old and develops gray-brown scaly bark. It bears large clusters of creamy white, fragrant flowers in late may or early June. The fragrance, though, is sort of privet-like and not as good as the Common Lilac. It develops a good yellow to orange fall color. It grows about 1.5 feet/year and lives probably around 100 years. It is sold at most large conventional nurseries in the Midwest and East USA. It is used more by landscape architects and designers than homeowners, but there still is a fair amount of use by homeowners when they are introduced to the tree in a nursery. A lot of people still don't know this species. I would say it is used more in the Midwest than in the Mid-Atlantic Region. There are several cultivars being used, with 'Ivory Silk' as the most common one.

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To me, this is a pretty weed that is common and native in eastern North America in damp ground, fields, waste places, forest edges, and in landscapes and gardens. It gets nasty when its fruit of an achene (a sunflower kind of dry fruit) with two barbs on one end matures and gets attached to fur, feathers, or clothing of animals or people passing by touching it. That is how its seeds are spread. It grows to be 1 to 4 feet high. There are green leafy bracts around the dull yellow flower head. This member of the Aster or Daisy or Sunflower Family (Asteraceae or Compositae) does have the disc florets in its composite flower head but no ray florets. (The ray florets are the large yellow petals on a sunflower while the disc florets are the tiny brown center flowers.) The stalked leaves are divided into 3 to 5 lance-shaped, toothed divisions. It is easy to pull out of the ground, hopefully when the fruit is not mature.

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Who names irises? There is nothing crimson about this. At all. It's purple. Shrug. This is an old iris, I got mine from my mom, who got it from her mom. Very fragrant, and prolific. I have to thin mine out regularly, and just put my extras out for free at the end of the driveway.

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I bought this plant from Almost Eden last Nov. 2017. It was about 12" tall. It has grown in almost a year to a wispy 4 ft. tall and wide plant. I have it in a 3-gallon pot on my patio, where it gets sun from noon to 5pm. All new leaves have shown some variegation. The red flowers draw hummingbirds. I was surprised to find what I thought were red flower buds but turned out to be 1/2" red seed pods starting about Sept.1. I've collected them and dried they split to reveal 4 small round seeds. I will sow some with hopes of getting some variegated plants.

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My 2 plants I started from seeds spring 2017 are now over a year old and producing lots of pink flowers the hummingbirds love. They are growing in pots on my patio, so I have made cuttings when they get too wide and many have rooted easily in water in a few weeks. They will go in the ground this fall where they can really take off next spring. Depending on the sun's position through the year, they have gotten near white when in only dappled sun. When moved back in 1/2-day sun, they returned to medium pink again. A lovely plant.

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My plant made 3 buds, which are good sized on a 14" plant but have barely opened for a month. They are definitely red with lots of petals but won't fully open. It may be because the plant was rooted from a cutting just this Feb. and its roots are immature being only 6 months old. Thanks to my garden trading pal, Nancy, for sharing cuttings of several double beauties she has in her yard.

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Our all-time favorite eggplant! I bought and planted seeds in last summer's garden. They made sturdy 4 1/2 ft. plants that produced fruit similar to Black Beauty but not as large. The dark, shiny fruit were 6 to 7 inches long and 3 1/2 " across. I grew 3 bushes that each made a dozen or so fruits, which kept us with plenty of eggplant to eat fresh and cook to freeze for winter dishes. I saved seeds and planted 3 bushes again this year and they are performing equally impressively here in south Louisiana.

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I grew these this summer from seeds I received in the Nov. 2017 Seed Swap. As described, the plants stayed about 2 to 3 ft. and are producing 5" x 3" fruit as in pictures. We just cut the first 2 ripe ones to cook and there are 2 or 3 more on each of the 3 plants in our garden. I will plant these again.

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