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I grew Kuroda seed from a friend as a fall crop, 2024. I pulled several nice ones today. (Dec 1) Wow, they are so sweet, crisp, tender! My first great success with carrots and really showed me how good homegrown can be. Practically ignored them but for watering early and a little fertilizer. NOTE- they do need to be thinned for best size and that is hard to do later if you don't keep after them- the tops grow together.

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This beautiful blooming coral vine is considered invasive in Florida. They can be found on the roadside or the edges of parking lot areas.

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Below our hill runs a river, and beside it on the opposite bank runs a railroad, whose construction is said to have been begun about 12 miles away in 1828. The river powered mill towns along the tracks that constituted the economic basis of Maryland in the 1800s. Lysimachia clethroides is one of the flowers that after all these years still come up and bloom among the remains of one of these abandoned towns - at least between the 1970s - 1990s - when my late dh and I were hiking in the local park system. The annual return of old fashioned 'pass-along' flowers - like the Gooseneck Loosestrife in the wild - is almost like the river - maintaining a stream of time from the past through the present into the future. So, like other comments here, with reservation about this plant's potential invasiveness, I will chime in with love for this flower's capacity to survive and nurture pollinators and be beautiful in a world where beauty is so hard to come by.

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This Iris must be either a plicata or glaciata, as both its parents are plicatas. The description of an amethyst tint in the centre of the standards indicates that it is almost certainly what is known as a "ghost plicata", where the presence of sufficient anthocyanin inhibitor genes all but makes the plicata markings invisible.

Having just obtained this plant, I hope to flower it and confirm my theory with some test crosses.

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Yellow Foxtail is an annual, clumping, erect grass native to Europe. The easiest way to identify it is that its flower-seed heads are yellow, growing about 1.5 to 6 inches long. Its leaves are alternate and to about 12 inches long and about 3/8 inches wide. The sheaths on the stems are open, green, hairless, and without a fringe of hairs along the edge. The nodes on the stems are green to purplish and hairy. It is a very common weedy grass in much of eastern North America in gardens, farm fields, fields, waste places, and any kind of disturbed land. Its immature leaves can be eaten by herbivores as cattle, horses, rabbits, voles, and such. However, the bristly flower-seedheads can cause injury to the mouths of cattle and horses. The seeds are a good food source for many kinds of birds. It is also called Yellow Bristlegrass and has had other scientific names as S. lutescens, S. pumila, and S. glauca. The Setaria lutescens scientific name opens the most doors to find information about this species.

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This is a known luminata-plicata and easily shown from its parentage, a luminata x plicata.

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This is an unusual pale plicata which can occur when the anthocyanin inhibitor is present with the plicata pattern. Identified as a plicata in the AIS Bulletin info on Iris Wiki and by hybridiser Chuck Chapman in a post discussing yellow plicatas on hort.net.

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Like its parent 'Victoria Falls', 'Suky' definitely carries at least two plicata group alleles (as evidenced by some of its offspring being standard plicatas). Chuck Chapman has hypothesised that it is either 1 luminata allele + 3 glaciata or 2 luminata + 2 glaciata, along with several copies of the anthocyanin enhancement (Ae) gene and one of the anthocyanin inhibitor (I) gene.

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This is an interesting plant genetically, as it definitely carries at least two plicata group alleles (as evidenced by some of its offspring being standard plicatas). It may be that this is an example of the 2 luminata + 2 glaciata genotype, but I am not aware of any crosses to prove this.

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This may be a luminata-plicata, considering that the colour wash on the falls avoids the veins like typical luminatas, and there is good reason to suspect the presence of a luminata gene in its ancestry.

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It is unclear from the photos on the Iris Wiki whether this is a special case of a luminata-plicata with 2 lu alleles, or a luminata-plicata combined with the anthocyanin enhancement gene, or simply a plicata/luminata carrier (as some of its progeny are luminata-plicatas). Test crosses would be required to determine this, or the genetic makeup of 'Victoria Falls' would need to be determined.

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This is a luminata-plicata and is described as such in the original catalogue entry on the Iris wiki.

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This is a luminata-plicata, based on the photos at the Iris wiki and its offspring.

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This is a VERY beautiful clear rose pink self but it is a VERY bad ruster. I love it, but if this one dies from the heavy infestation I must not replace it. I do have it in a big pot that has been in light shade on its own and sitting in water as we've had heaps of rain, eg 6" in one 24 hr period, with temps of 25 deg C = 77deg

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Andinum is considered by many to be difficult to grow and short-lived. The plant I have is 17 years old from an offset.
It comes from forests in the foothills of the Andes that are seasonally dry, so it has some tolerance for drying out when well-established.
It does not seem to tolerate high heat and has suffered when the room was 98 deg. F. (37 C.). It did not seem to be bothered by temperatures in the middle 30's F. The room where it grows is very cool at night and rarely over 75 deg. F. (24 C.) in the daytime.
The growth shows a seasonal pattern with shield fronds growing first in spring, followed by fertile fronds in summer. Shield fronds usually brown in fall and persist. Fertile fronds may live for two or three years.
In nature the fern can form a united colony that rings the trunk of a tree. The tops obviously catch leaves and debris so I add a bit of compost on top every year. It is regularly fed with a diluted Tillandsia food.
It does tend to offset mostly laterally, but can make them in any direction. Offsets are a bit touchy and need to be rather large before they are removed.
Spore propagation was successful even with older spores.

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First seen in the perennial border at the Kemper Center within the Missouri Botanical Garden... and rarely seen since. Big Betony makes avaluable addition to a perennial bed or border, but is seldom used by American gardeners. I imagine availability has a lot to do with that.
This beautiful perennial made a very pleasing statement in the perennial border at the Kemper Center. Its heavily textured leaves form a pleasing mound 12-15 inches high. Strong flowering stems emerge from this mound in late spring. They produce 2-3 whorls of intense, pinkish-purple, two-lipped, tubular flowers.
This plant can be found on-line but you should search using the complete botanical name.

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Small to medium solitary green agave from central and southern Mexico. 80-100 leaves in a mature rosette. Continuous white margin and sharp brownish to grayish white teeth, often with conspicuous bud imprints. Densely packed inflorescence to 6-15 feet tall. This species includes plants treated by Gentry as Agave obscura.

From Morelos, Querétaro, Puebla, Veracruz. Member of a group (the Marginatae) whose other members include plants harvested for fiber (ixtle). Subspecies perotensis is darker green, with more leaves and a slightly larger rosette and inflorescence.

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This cultivar is both beautiful and has an impressive plant habit. A bud-builder and while it may not rebloom, it has good branching and keeps making gorgeous bright pink blooms. It is also one of those incredibly fertile plants that sets pods even when it is hot (assuming initial pods are set early in the life of the scape) and has easily viable pollen.

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I am pretty sure I still have this one although the blooms appear way bigger than 4". However they are very recurved so it's hard to tell. The huge eye is a very blue violet surrounded by a narrow dark purple violet margin.

It is wonderfully fragrant. Quite strong and a nicer scent than many hems. It doesn't appear to be a ruster even in our humidity, mild temperatures and often showery weather. Also it has lots of blooms. Mine is in a large pot inside a fence protected from chewing critters.

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Pewter And Gold's beauty exceeds any photos you will ever see of it, just gorgeous!

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