Category Archives: Natural Areas

On Plant Drought Tolerance and Gardening in the Arid Oregon High Desert

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The Dry Canyon in Redmond, Oregon, which for 200-300,000 years contained an earlier version of the Deschutes River. The rivers course was changed by an eruption from the Newberry Volcano, a massive shield volcano with over 400 vents 40+ miles to the south. A later eruption partially filled the canyon with lava. In this section the canyon was filled raising its floor so that it’s around 70′ deep, its two rims separated by about 700′.

Drought tolerance is an interesting topic. I’ve written on it before, but now have some additional thoughts to add, in part because we have recently moved to much more arid Central Oregon. A drought tolerant plant in Portland is a very different thing than one here where annual precipitation can vary from around 13″, very rare, down to as little as 5″, commonly 8″. While Oregon in general is considered to be a mediterranean type climate with dry summers and wetter winters, Redmond’s climate is strongly influenced by drier continental patterns. This last January, ’23, we received only 1/4″ of precipitation while Portland had 7.32″ about 120 miles to our northwest, on the ‘wet’ side of the Cascades. Drought tolerant then means different things in different regions and can vary widely within a region along with soil conditions, slope and aspect (which direction a site is oriented). Generally speaking, drought tolerance refers to the ability of a particular plant to endure periods in which available soil moisture is below that needed to support the plant’s metabolism. A tolerant plant can ‘bridge’ these naturally occurring ‘dry’ periods. An intolerant plant will suffer cellular, even structural damage and may be unable to flower and produce seed. Health is compromised should the drought last too long, resulting in internal physical damage and leaving it more subject to infection or infestation. A drought tolerant plant will have the capacity to respond in a healthy manner when soil moisture levels return to those that support active growth. Within these limits the stress it accrues does not compromise its health…beyond it though….Damage is accumulative. String a series of drought periods together and a plant’s capacity to recover is compromised. Because patterns of precipitation, of water storage and movement, vary widely across the earth, regions and sites have different plant communities associated with them. The condition of drought stress then varies with the location and the species. A drought tolerant plant on one site may crisp on another drier one. Of course this can work in the opposite sense as well, that a site may be too wet, but that’s another story. In the case of the PNW and many other regions, it is also the timing of the precipitation, when it occurs during a plant’s cycle of growth and dormancy. Continue reading →

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Fen, Bog and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis , a Review

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For another review: link

Novelist Annie Proulx, begins her book with her childhood, giving us an idea of who she is, her attachments to the living world. She takes us with her on a walk she took with her mother as a young girl, through the neighborhood wilds, to an ignored patch of swampland. Her mother loved such places. She places her story in the larger story of the times of her birth and coming of age, of the 1930’s and the cruelties we perpetrated on each other and our limited view of the natural world, a world set as a table before us, for our consumption. She writes of her attachments to these abused and devalued wet landscapes, their necessity for a healthy natural world and what their loss means. Earlier, I reviewed Edward Struzik’s book “Swamplands”. Struzik has spent years working with researchers and conservationists in the field, and writing of his experiences. Proulx’s approach is much more personal as she works to place bogs, fens and swamps into a human, historical and cultural context. Continue reading →

What Do We Do When the Whole World Feels Like its Falling to Pieces?

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In this blog I focus on plants.  Any gardener, botanist or horticulturist knows that plants, all living organisms, live in an incredibly complex, interwoven network of systems, each affecting the others, the health of anyone, in large part determined by the health of the ‘whole’.  Life does not and cannot exist in a vacuum.  We humans are also very much living organisms and subject to the same kind of limits as any species.  What we build and produce, including those more abstract things like our social and economic systems upon which we are very much dependent, are subject to the same natural laws and limits, whether we recognize them or not.  Very much a part of this is how we value other life collectively.  Just because many may say other people and species are of less value, does not make this fact.  The laws and ways of ‘man’ must remain within, and consistent with, the laws of nature.  We are not at liberty to treat other life as expendable.  We owe a debt and responsibility to all life.  Life permits and supports us so it is incumbent upon us to do the same for it.  Such is the natural law of reciprocity. Continue reading →

Agave montana: Monte’s Flowering Attempt…and What’s Behind It

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Taken in ’15.
Taken in ’15 this shows the typical pattern of leaves as they emerge from the center of the rosette.
Agave montana with a friend’s Mini- taken last year, Sept. ’18
Taken Sept. 29 this closeup shows the different pattern as the primary peduncle begins to shoot up with its pink/red coloring and the congested pattern of thinner, narrower, bracts crowding around it. This change can be seen in any Agave as flowering beginns, showing before the peduncle arises.
We came home at the end of Sept. from a week at the beach and found our Agave montana beginning to ‘shoot’.

It’s October in Portland and my Agave montana is in the process of flowering…I know, we’re heading toward winter, with its rain and average low down into the mid-30’s with potentially sudden damaging temperature swings from mid-November into March dropping below freezing to the low twenties, with extremes some years, generally limited to the upper teens, though historically, some areas have dropped into the single digits, those Arctic blasts from the interior….Winter temps here can be extremely unsupportive of Agave’s from ‘low desert’ and tropical regions.  Combined with these cool/cold temperatures are our seasonal reduction in daylight hours and its intensity (day length and angle of incidence varies much more widely here at 45º north) and the rain, ranging from 2.5″ to 6″+ each month here Nov.- Mar., resulting in a ‘trifecta’ of negative factors which can compromise an Agave, even when in its long rosette producing stage.  Any Agave here requires thoughtful siting with special consideration for drainage, exposure and aspect.  For an Agave, conditions common to the maritime Pacific Northwest are generally marginal, yet I am far from alone in my attempts to grow them here.  Previously, in April of 2016 I had an Agave x ‘Sharkskin’ flower, a process that spanned the summer months, taking 7 until mid-October to produce ripe seed.  I was initially a little pessimistic this time about A. montana’s prospects.  Why, I wonder, if plants are driven to reproduce themselves would this one be starting the process now? Continue reading →

Agave colorata and its Blooming Attempt in ’18

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Agave colorata before flowering initiation, growing nearly horizontal, with a broadly cupped lower leaf holding water. From the Irish’s book, “Agaves, Yuccas and Related Plants”, “The leaves are 5-7″ wide and 10″-23” long [mine were all at the small end of this range] They are ovate ending in a sharp tip….The leaves are a glaucous blue-gray and quite rough to the touch. The margin is fanciful with strong undulations and large prominent teats of various sizes and shapes. A very strong bud imprint marks the leaves, which usually are crossbanded, often with a pink cast [not mine], and end in a brown spine 1-2 in. long.

This is one of the first Agaves I ever grew. Pictures on line of its rosette first caught my
interest, their leaf color, substance and sculptural qualities, the margins of its broad, thick leaves, with their rhythmic rounded ripples, each tipped with a prominent ‘teat’ and spine. This is not a large plant, typically growing 23″- 47″ in diameter and my plan was always to keep it in a pot as it is from coastal areas of the Mexican state of Sonora, found sporadically in a narrow ‘band’ south into Sinaloa.  Agave colorata is very rare and uncommon in nature and growing on steep slopes of the volcanic mountains in the coastal region in Sinaloan thornscrub. It often emerges from apparently solid rock cliffs sometimes clinging high above the water below.

Growing in Sonora and at Home

It is poorly adapted to our wet winter conditions though it is reputedly hardy into USDA zn 8, or as low as 10ºF.  Its natural northern limit is thought not due to cold, but by excessive aridity in the northern parts of Sonora.  I didn’t test it, leaving it outside under the porch roof, bringing it in when forecasts called for below 20ºF, as any plant is more susceptible to cold with its root zone subject to freezing. With perfect drainage and overhead protection, you might be able to get away with this in the ground, but the combination of significant wet with our cold is likely too much…still if someone wanted to try….At best I suspect this one would still suffer from fungal leaf diseases, disfiguring the foliage.

This is usually solitary, but it can be found occasionally in small clumps/colonies up to nearly 10′ across, pushing up against each other on their slowly growing and short ‘trunks’ to 4′ high.  My plant produced just a few pups over the first third of its life.

Fig4-5-color

I wanted to include a climate map of Mexico. This one utilizes the classic Koppen system designating the various climates based on temperature and precipitation and their seasonal patterns. Here it has been modified by Mexican climatologists to better reflect Mexico’s complicated geography…even so, because of the abrupt changes in elevation, and land forms, different climatic conditions can occur in close proximity to one another. Mountains can create wetter and drier areas that on a map of this scale are lost.

Sonora has three distinct geographic areas all running along a ‘line’ from the northwest toward the southeast, the Gulf of California and its associated coastal landscape paralleling the Sierra Madre Occidental, sandwiching plains and rolling hills in the middle.  The coast and plains/rolling hills are arid to semi-arid, desert and grasslands, while only the higher elevation of the easterly mountains receive enough rain to support more diverse and woody plant communities, scrub and Pine-Oak forests.

This map comes from the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. The link takes you to one of their pages which discusses the natural history of the desert, thornscrub and tropical deciduous forest of Sonora.

This region also varies north to south, the climate drying as you go north into the Sonoran Desert.  Moving south on down into Sinaloa, and further, is the some what wetter ‘dry deciduous forest’ biome with an array of woody leugumes, including several Acacia.  Agave colorata resides in the transition zone in between, in the portion of  ‘thornscrub’ near the Sonoran/Sinaloan border.  North and south the Thornscrub itself changes in composition.  The Sinaloan Thornscrub serves as a transition zone between the desert and the slightly wetter, taller growing, Tropical Deciduous Forest that continues the south.  All along this band running north on into Arizona’s Sonoran Desert are various columnar cactus a food source for Mexico’s migrating nectarivorous bat species.  It is a unique flora community, containing species from bordering floral regions and other species unique or endemic to this transition zone itself.  The area continues to be under threat, primarily by cattle ranching that moved into the region in the ’70’s and ’90’s bringing with it clearing and the introduction of non-native and invasive Bufflegrass, Pennisetum ciliare, also known under its syn. Cenchrus ciliaris, for pasture.  Bufflegrass is also a serious problem north into Arizona.  In Sonora many of the cleared woody species have since begun moving back in, while the smaller, more sensitive species have not.  Climate change promises to further squeeze it. (The World Wildlife Fund maintains a website with good descriptions of many eco-regions I sometimes find it very helpful when trying to understand the conditions of a plant I’m less familiar with.)

When growing plants like this, one should keep in mind the concept of heat zones.  The American Horticultural Society has created a map of the US delineating its ‘heat zones’.  It is based on the average number of days an area experiences temperatures over 86ºF.  At that temperature most plants begin to shut down their metabolic processes…they slow their growth.  Check out the AHS map (AHS US Heat Zones pdf.) and keep in mind that we are warming up!  The AHS map has us, Portland, OR, in zone 4, meaning we experience 14-30 days with highs over 86ºF each year.  Last summer, ’18, we actually had a record 31 days over 90ºF!  Now consider that the coastal/plains region of Sonora likely experiences between 180-210 such days!  Agave colorata may not need this, but it is certainly adapted to such a level of heat stress.  Something to think about, especially when you consider that we receive the bulk of our rain over the winter when our daily highs and lows average for Nov. 40º-53º, Dec. 35º-46º, Jan. 36º-47º, Feb. 36º-51º and Mar. 40º-57º…keeping in mind that we could freeze on most any of those dates.  The Sonoran Desert receives its minimal rainfall in a summer/monsoonal pattern….This is why bringing such ‘low desert’ plants to the Pacific Northwest can add another degree or two of difficulty to your success!

Aug. 26, 2018 I could have taken a similar picture anytime over the last several years. The stem is completely prostrate. You can see dried leaf bases lost over the years. A different angle would have shown additional rooting along part of its length.
Aug. 10, 2018 This shows the center of gravity problem! Growing in the ground, such as the plants at Boyce-Thompson the crowns were supported by the ground and had a less pronounced ‘lean’. The desiccating leaves, especially the lower ones, is already well advanced here, to me indicating a lack of reserves having lost so many leaves over the years from which to draw, especially given that there is not any prominent ‘heart’ tissue.
Aug 23, 2018 looking a bit spindly as it leans back toward the pots center. The peduncle has much more widely spaced bracts.
Aug 26, 2018 the shriveling, desiccating leaves.
Aug 28, 2018 Here, along the upper half of the peduncle the bracts are separating as the secondary peduncles and buds emerge and develop.
Aug 30, 2018 The secondary peduncle nearly fully extended out with tertiary branching spreading the clusters of flower buds held in a crowded groups in umbels.
Sept 3, 2018 Where the secondary peduncles, branches, form the main peduncle, stem ‘zags’ slightly away giving it an alternating, spiraling form. Here you can see the base-up process of development as branching lengthens and buds mature.
Oct 27, 2018 The entire process has been slowing down, the flowers in the lowest ‘branch’ opening on Oct. 12. Here you can see my neighbor’s bees busy working the flowers, some of the long canoe shaped anthers split open and dehiscing their pollen. The overall structure of the inflorescence and the anthers provide the main visual ‘show’ when these bloom the corolla, or petal structure and perianth is secondary.

 

Growing this in a pot made perfect sense to me, but every decision carries consequences, not all of which I anticipated. Most Agave don’t form a ‘trunk’ growing its leaves, in a tight spiral, crowded along a very abbreviated stem, which adds little to its length to separate each consecutive leaf., but Agave colorata adds a little ‘extra’ slightly separating its leaves, resulting in a weak and kind of puny stem. If you’ve ever shuffled pots containing Agave more than a few years old, you understand that their crown, their substantial top growth, is relatively heavy, A. colorata is no exception, in fact their leaves each seem more substantial than leaves on many other similarly sized Agave. This results in a plant that as it grows begins to lean over, eventually, laying flat across the ground. As a Monocot the stems of Agave don’t caliper up over the years as does wood. These have no cambial meristem which would add secondary growth, and diameter, to the stem and as I said, with its relatively massive and heavy crown, it leans.  This is the same characteristic that gives their small colonies their height.

 

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A Course Correction: The Wild and the Human, On Repairing the Relationship Between Politics, Economics and the Environment

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“We are the odd ones, with bright eyes, that see the wonder of a bountiful world.  We don’t look through rose colored glasses…we’ve only removed the veil that breaks and blinds….Now, to cut the strings that tie us to the lie. ”  Lance Wright, Jan. 2019

Echinops ritro in front of a Miscanthus gracillimus several years ago at Holladay Park. A series of perennial beds were created with help from a notable local designer. For a variety of reasons related to budget, staffing and vandalism, the beds declined.  Beauty, that necessary elixir, truly abounds, but we must be cognizant of the forms in which we accept it and be committed to what it requires to flourish.

Gardeners are my people…well, actually, so are botanists, horticulturists, entomologists, ecologists, the weekend outdoor adventurers who in regular moments of awe, pause to take in the daily wonder of the world…anyone, really, who works with or has become enamored with the living natural world (and I’m going to include geologists too, at least those not taking their livelihood from resource extraction).  I have a theory, that as our modern world becomes increasingly urbanized, and transformed by our use to that which supports urban living, more of us are becoming consciously aware of what we are losing, of the natural world that has been sacrificed, developed, along the way…and in ways, large and small, many, but still far too few of us, are choosing to make our lives reflect this understanding. We question the ‘stuff’ we have crowded our lives with, that ‘stuff’ we’ve spent our lives to procure while following the dream we’ve all been sold on.  Many of us garden on whatever we have available to us whether it’s a quarter acre, a Juliet balcony or a kitchen counter space.  We plant gardens for food or to support pollinators, to have something green and growing in our homes, we grow small succulents for their simple beauty, flowers for the vase or plants that provide cover and fruit for songbirds, there are many reasons…and we do this for the pleasure that it gives us, for the satisfaction that we are doing something to heal an increasingly ‘broken’ world.  Yet the world continues to spiral down into more ugly chaos, in spite of our increasing awareness…it is not enough.  I find myself drawn even more into the wonder and beauty of a single plant, the ‘miracle’ of life and the amazing complexity, the inter-relatedness of living communities…because, in spite of how our society views this planet and the countless organisms it routinely dismisses as secondary, and unnecessary or of little commercial value…life is in fact the center of meaning and value. Continue reading →

The Carrizo Plain National Monument: Super-bloom 2019, our vacation early in the cycle

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The soils here, on the bottom of the Plain, are quite alkaline and nutritively poor. These bare areas occur almost randomly and aren’t the result of foot traffic. While technically termed a grassland, across much of the Monument grasses appear to be a minor player, occurring much more frequently lower on the framing hills. It makes one wonder what do the cattle eat? I imagine much of this was never farmed either. Dry land farming was always a chancy endeavor in the West. Places like the Millican Valley, east of Bend, OR and points south, were the sites of many a failed dream and such farms, after much promotion and the aid of several moist, milder than normal years. I don’t know the history of dry-land farming on the Plain, but it must have been difficult.  Semi-arid grasslands in general are fragile landscapes. Plowing them can lead to a rapid loss of organic matter and with it the ability to retain soil moisture reducing one’s chances for success even more. The native people left here after having been resident here for centuries. Is it drier today???

Why go visit the Carrizo Plain National Monument?…it is the last, significant, mostly intact, natural grass land in the state of California and puts on a floral performance that can be a showstopper when weather patterns produce sufficient rain over winter and early spring.  This area was largely overlooked as the much larger Sacramento, San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys, also natural grasslands, attracted the interest of agriculture and settlers.  The intensity and scale of agriculture in those valleys is mind-boggling, almost numbing.  Today the big three support only small remnants of their former native biotic communities…much like the Willamette Valley here in Oregon…but Carrizo is different, largely because of its geology and elevation, two factors which strongly effected both the soils and weather, making it less attractive to agriculture and isolating it from markets. Continue reading →

Death and Life in the Garden: Learning in the Garden Classroom

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I never used to think of the East Coast when I thought of North American geology slowly, placidly, sinking in to the Atlantic as the entire continent moves easterly heaved up along the western edge of the Pacific Plate with our spectacular scenery, but the whole of New York was ground down between the ice sheets of successive Ice Ages leaving massive granite bedrock and ‘erratics’ along the way as they retreated north with the warming. Everywhere you go, like here in the Native Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, there is evidence of this with its thin rocky soils and rock scarred and channeled from the moving ice that once buried this place, much as it did our own Puget Sound area and points north, leaving coastal British Columbia a network of gouged out sounds and fjords, with mountains rising abruptly many thousands of feet from the sea. I wonder how the little island of my own father’s birth, a 12 mile long strip of soft sandstone, survived to today.
Here the board walk follows the recently reworked ponds in the NYBG’s native plant garden Lobelia cardinalis sparking the scene in September…so different than anything you would find in the maritime Northwest, our rain patterns and base rock responsible for bearing very different soils, even where the ice sheets scraped it down…the patterns and diversity are amazing.
A view on Manhattan, just west of the NYBG, this one at the Met’s Cloisters, the museum’s home of much of its religious art and artifacts, sits high along the banks of the picturesque Hudson River. Buildings in Jersey City and the George Washington Bridge are in the Background. When Rockefellar built this he also purchased the forested bank on the other side to preserve the natural view which also serves to block the sprawl of urban development to its west. The Hudson River Valley is another creation of advancing ice, running north/south with the advancing ice sheet.

As gardeners our hands are ‘bloodied’ with the chlorophyll of plants…while it may not stain us as ‘murderers’, we are never the less complicit in their deaths…as much as we are necessary for their lives.  Without us, as a group, these garden plants would never would have been propagated and, if not for our ‘selfish’ acts in the garden, choosing, designing and displaying them, many would be passing into obscurity, most of us knowing nothing of them or of their loss, their passages into decline and extinction, even more quiet, unnoticed, as too many already do today.  While we may acquire and attempt to grow them with the ‘best’ of intention, eventually, they will all die, ill fit or not, suddenly or after many years in our gardens, as a result of our ignorance, impatience, simple curiosity, our desire for something ‘different’, or even in spite of our best informed efforts.  Death comes to all things and our gardens are no exception.  Our gardens art artificial after all, creations of our making and they do not comprise a viable population that will out live us, reproducing in place, making the adjustments that they must over time to survive.  To do this would take an unprecedented amount of effort and coordination on our part and that of our neighbors.  The setting of our gardens are unique to us and their purposes are much narrowed and more intentional than are the places their progenitors come from, the ‘gardens’ of their origination.  For many of these plants our relationship with them might best be thought of as student to teacher as nature sacrifices itself in an attempt to teach us of what is being lost, ever since we stepped out of the loop that once put us in daily direct contact with nature and came to embrace this modern world and its expectations of consumption, ‘ease’ and never ceasing growth…so it is not ‘murder’, it is life, an attempt to return and reclaim.  There is purpose to be found in our gardens, well beyond surface amusement and distraction in what is too often becoming an ever uglier world, or for some of us our need to impress in a game of one-upmanship.  Nature demands more of us, that we accept our role as student and become careful observers, willing acolytes…maybe even crusaders….Too much? no, I don’t think so. Continue reading →

Our Gardens as Teachers

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The low angle evening sun really lights the red up in this one!
Impatiens omiense fronting a composition including: Vancouver hexandra, Podophyllum pleianthum, Aspidistra elatior, Dryopteris erythrosora, Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ and Prosartes hookeri (previously Disporum hokkerig). This is the south bed on the 5th St. side of Portland’s City Hall.
Hibiscus x ‘Snow in Summer’, is one of the Fleming Brothers hybrids. The flowers are 8″ in diameter with deeply lobed bronzed leaves.
I learned this plant as Acidanthera murielae 30 years ago, though now its known as Gladiolus callianthus ‘Murielae’ has an elegant symmetrical 3-parted flower other than the missing ‘red’ blotch on the ‘upper’ tepal.
Agave gentryi ‘Jaws’ and Delosperma cooperii both ‘succulents’ that are well adapted to heat and though they do best with an occasional summer soaking.
Hippeastrum x johnsonii, commonly sold at florist shops as Amaryllis, looking much like a Lily, but in family Amaryllidaceae, characterized by its flowers held in umbels. Seen around it are other Monocots, Bilbergia nutans ‘Variegata’, Hakonechloa macro ‘Aureola’ and Astelia chathmatica ‘Silver Spear’.
Beschorneria septentrionalis, a Mexican native and Agave relative in the Asparagaceae. This is not very often successfully pollinated here in our wet early spring. Maybe a couple of fruits ever form where there were dozens of flowers.
A long shot, from beneath the ‘Pagoda’ towards the house and front gate.
My front, ‘hot garden’ facing Gladstone St. Thank you Josh McCullough.
Photo thanks to Josh McCullough
Iris ensata ‘Cascade Crest’ w/ Arundo donax ‘Variegat’ and friends
Manfreda undulate ‘Chocolate Chips’, another Agave family member showing similar flower structure with the extra long filaments and 6 tepals. This plant flowers annually.
Winter structure. This photo, taken in February ’16, shows evergreen substance of the Trachycarpus wagnerianus, Cordyline and the wispy Rhodocoma capensis solidly above the deciduous Molinia, at least until it is cut down.
Looking north in Spring across the pushing Molinia toward the Butia x Jubea in the center with Penstemon left and Acorus on the right.

Of all the things our gardens do for us, arguably the most important is their role as our teachers, even in winter when a temperate garden ‘rests’, its surface crust or top few feet, frozen, maybe sheltered beneath the cover of snow, or, as ours so often are, simply too cold for active plant growth, the soil wet, the rain too heavy to percolate fast enough down through its layers, without the active aid of either the direct heating of the sun or its effect on plants, through evapotranspiration, pumping water back into the air as the plants grow.  Gardens teach patience.  They encourage us to become more careful observers…to think and plan, to anticipate and prepare, to understand that there is more going on here than we can readily see…and they teach us about faith and trust in the natural world, that there is always more going on than we can see. Continue reading →

Growing and Understanding Globe Mallows in the Urbanized Maritime NW: Sphaeralcea spp. and Cultivars

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Every plant evolved in and lives in context.  They are dependent upon it for continuing support, not just for their survival, but for their well being as they grow, mature and attempt to reproduce.  It is not just competition out there.  Though we may order them from a catalog, grow them from carefully collected seed, receive them as gifts from a friend or purchase them from the shelves or rows at a garden center, they are individual plants, removed from their context…their futures’ will be short if we don’t make some attempt to recreate it.

Sphaeralcea ‘Childerly’, from the Dancing Oaks catalog, though it’s not currently listed.

Sphaeralcea are often called Globe Mallows and are another member of the large Mallow Family, the Malvaceae, some 244 genera with 4,225 known species.  I’ve written recently of Anisodontea another genus of the family.  Most of the 40-60 species of Sphaeralcea are North American natives of dry areas, growing from the Great Plains west and south into Mexico, with a few occurring in South America while a few others reaching into southern Canada.  They include annuals, perennials and shrubby species, I’m looking here at perennials, all of which have very long bloom times, often spanning the entire summer into fall.

Sphaeralcea (ambigua) ‘Childerley’

Sphaeralcea ambigua, one of the largest growing species of the genus, at up to 3′-5′, often found considerably smaller, is native to the US Southwest, SW Utah, Nevada to Arizona and southern California down to Sonora and northern Baja, Mexico.  They are found east of California’s Sierra Nevada and the several other smaller ranges of southern California, which shield them from moisture coming from the Pacific.  It is the most xeriphytic of the genus, meaning, the most tolerant of drought.  The USDA breaks the species into four separate subspecies, S.a. ssp. ambigua, the most commonly occurring form across the four states with the typical orangey flowers, S.a. ssp. monticola, the one occurring at higher elevations, beyond the Sonoran Desert and covering its Nevada range, S.a. ssp. rosacea which is limited to the San Diego area east to Maricopa county in Arizona, of the warmer Sonoran Desert, with a flower that is rosy-pink and S.a. ssp. rugosa which is limited to the Mojave Desert area with the more expected orange-red flowers.  Both S.a. ssp. ambigua and S.a. ssp. monticola grow on north of the Mogollon Rim, an east-west running escarpment,  the abrupt rise in elevation marking the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau.  The other two subspecies grow below this and largely south and west of it. Continue reading →