Oct 8, 2019
Last night, I met with my Social Media team and we were
having so much fun coming up with designs and quotes and all kinds
of things for merchandise for the show.
We're putting together t-shirts, tote bags, and stickers. With any
luck, we'll have Daily Gardener gear and merchandise ready to go
live for you on November 1st. So keep that in mind.
If you're a fan of the show, you can add The Daily
Gardenermerchandise to your wishlist for the holidays.
Stay tuned for updates on that.
Brevities
#OTD Today is the birthday of the German botanist,
Johann Baptist Ziz, who was born on this day in 1779.
The genus Zizia, which has three species, was named for
him. Zizia plants are one of my favorites; they bloom for a
long time and they are a great source of pollen and
nectar.
Zizia is in the carrot family with stems 1-3 feet tall. The
flowers are a compound umbel with many small flower heads. The root
of Zizia was used by Native Americans used to treat pain. In the
wild, Zizia is found in meadows, the edge of woods, and thickets.
In the garden, it's a nice plant for part shade and it makes for a
lovely ground cover plant.
Zizia aurea is known by the common name Golden Alexanders. Aurea
from the Latin word for "golden-yellow". Golden Alexanders are easy
to grow and a host plant for the black swallowtail butterfly. They
also attract loads of other pollinating insects like the golden
Alexanders mining bee—which was named for its special relationship
with the Zizia. The early leaves of Zizia aurea have beaded magenta
edges which adds to their charm in the garden.
In private plant sales over the past decade, Zizia aurea sells like
hotcakes. They make a beautiful cut flower.
Golden Alexander pairs beautifully with exuberant purple blooms
like the False Blue Indigo or Salvia 'May Night'.
#OTD Today is the birthday of the English
naturalist, William Swainson, who was born on this day in
1789.
Swainson subscribed to the quinarian system; a taxonomic theory
that grouped animals and plants into groups of five or multiples of
fives. He stubbornly adhered to the system even after Darwin's
origin was gaining traction.
In 1840, Swainson immigrated to New Zealand with his second wife
and all but one of his children. He faced numerous setbacks while
there, including the fact that many of his belongings, including
his books and proofs which were aboard a separate ship, were lost
at sea. Once in New Zealand, he struggled financially, survived a
fire, and an earthquake.
Before he died, Swainson sent a letter to his son Willie. He
wrote:
"I am much pleased with your increasing fondness for
gardening and shall always be happy to send you anything I can
spare from this place. A garden as Bacon says ‘is the purest of
human pleasures,’ and truly do I find it so, as in youth, so in
age, and no other outdoor recreation is so delightful to
me.”
#OTD Today is the birthday of the Florida
botanist Hardy Bryan Croom who was born on this day in
1797.
Croom was trained as a lawyer, but since his inheritance from his
father was substantial, he never practiced. As Croom matured, he
began pursuing specialties like geology, mineralogy, and botany.
When it came to botany, there was no botanist Croom admired more
than John Torrey with whom he corresponded.
In 1834, Croom became an early landowner in Tallahassee. At
the time, Florida was still a territory. Hardy Croom loved the
Tallahassee region and he set about building a home there for his
family.
In fact, Croom bought not one, but two plantations with his
fortune. As he traveled between them, he would study the exciting
natural flora and fauna.
One day, as he traveled between the two plantations, Croom was
waiting for a ferry along the east bank of the Apalachicola
River when he discovered a new tree species and a new little
plant growing in the shade canopy. Croom named the tree
Torreya taxifolia in honor of his mentor, John
Torrey.
One of the oldest tree species on earth, the Florida Torreya is
also known by various common names, including gopher-wood,
yew-leafed Torreya, Torreya wood, savin, stinking savin, and
stinking cedar (for the strong odor of the sap and from the leaves
and seed when crushed). The local legend is that the Torreya was
the Biblical "gopher wood" used by Noah to build the ark.
To this day the rare tree grows naturally only in this part of the
world; along the roughly 30 mile stretch of the Apalachicola river
between Chattahoochee and Bristol. There is another species of the
same genus growing in California and it is known as the California
nutmeg.
In a newspaper account from 1947, the Torreya taxifolia that Croom
had planted by the Florida capital building, over a century
earlier, was still standing. Disease and aggressive harvesting
nearly annihilated the tree species during the 20th century. Since
the wood of the Torreya does not rot, it was used especially for
fenceposts and shingles, as well as Christmas trees. Only 200
survive today.
At the same time Croom discovered the Torreya taxifolia, he
discovered another little new plant species. This one would bear
his name: the Croomia panciflora. Asa Gray, who was Torrey's
assistant at the time, recalled Croom's modesty, saying:
"I was a pupil and assistant of ....Torrey when Mr. Croom
brought... him specimens...I well remember Mr. Croom's remark....
that if his name was deemed worthy of botanical honors, it was
gratifying to him, and [that] it should be born by the unpretending
herb which delighted to shelter itself under the noble Torreya
[tree]."
So, in botany, as in life, Croom grew happily in the shadow of
Torrey.
In 1837, one day after Croom's 40th birthday, Croom, his wife, and
their three children - two girls age 15 and 7, and a son age 10 -
all died when the steamboat Home was caught in a
hurricane off of Cape Hatteras. Croom's body was never recovered.
Tomorrow will be the 182nd anniversary of the disaster which
claimed the lives of 90 souls of the 130 aboard the steamboat which
had only two life vests. After the HomeSteamboat
tragedy, Congress required seagoing ships to carry a life preserver
for each passenger.
The loss of the entire Croom family created a legal dispute between
the remaining family members. The matter remained unsettled for
nearly two decades and it hinged on attempting to discern which
family member died last; based on eye witness testimony, incredibly
the court finally agreed Croom's 10-year-old son was the last to
die in the waves of the ocean and the bulk of Croom's estate was
passed to his mother-in-law and not to his brother Bryan.
Floridians naturally supported the Croom side of the dispute and
newspaper reports often said the decision could just as well have
been made with an Ouija board.
#OTD On this day in 1877, Elizabeth
Agassiz, the wife of the naturalist and famous Harvard Professor,
Louis Agassiz, met with Longfellow to get his opinion on the first
couple of chapters of the Life of Agassiz; her biography of her
husband.
In Louise Hall Tharp's book about the family, a memory was share
that described Elizabeth in the garden:
“[She was wearing] a fresh white morning gown, basket and
shears in hand, going leisurely, with her rather stately air,
from border to border and then coming back into the porch and
arranging flowers in different vases. Lemon verbena and heliotrope
she always had in abundance, so that the rooms were fragrant
with them. ...She had a glass tank on the porch in which she kept
pond lilies.”
Around the same time, her neighbor, Arthur Gilman, stopped over to
visit. He couldn't find a suitable high school for his daughter,
Grace. It was the beginning of Radcliffe College and Elizabeth
would be Radcliffe's first president.
Unearthed Words
"October's poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to
winter."
- Nova Bair
"Summer is .... better, but the best is autumn.
It is mature, reasonable and serious,
it glows moderately and not frivolously ...
Valentin Iremonger, Finnish writer
Today's book recommendation: Growing Herbs from Seed,
Cutting & Root by Thomas DeBaggio
This book came out in 1995. DeBaggio raised herbs for a devoted
clientele at his nursery in Loudon County Virginia. He's known
especially for his superb varieties of Lavender and
Rosemary.
This book is one of my favorites; offering an abundance of
step-by-step photographs to ensure success for even brown-thumbed
gardeners.
And, I love what Jim Wilson wrote in the forward of this book:
"Learning about herbs is both simple and complicated. The aroma of
one sometimes mimics that of another and several herbs may share a
common name."
Today's Garden Chore
If you have your hens and chicks in pots, today's as good a day as
any to bury them. I love to put hens and chicks in herb pots; the
pots that have all the little openings on the sides.
But if you leave them out over the winter, they will not survive
above ground. However, if you put them in a trench and cover them
with leaves and mulch, you can dig them up in the spring and
discover even more chicks developed overwintering in the
trench.
Something Sweet
Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart
On this day in 2009, the botanist Kelly Norris wrote a post
about the color of Fall and his favorite plants in a post called
Candy Shop. Here's what he wrote:
"Today I’d like to share with you some of my favorite “candies”
from around the Iowa State University campus...
Dream no longer of purple smoketree, the purple blight on the
landscape. Instead think a little bigger, heftier, and
prettier. American smoketree boasts conspicuous, smoky flower
clusters in mid-summer, puffing out like billowy clouds of
not-so-pink cotton candy.
My next find [is] a colony of dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla
gardenii). These happy companions to daphnes and
rhododendrons look sumptuous this time of year with... greens,
yellows, oranges, and reds. Perfect for borders or that small
bed where you’d like a shrub but don’t have [much] room.
[A] most elegant specimen [is] Chionanthus
virginicus, our native fringetree... Dangling, silvery-white
blossoms adorn all limbs of the plant in late spring... The best
part of the show comes along in fall when lime green foliage ages
to baked gold, providing a glowing backdrop for chocolate chip-like
drupes that dangle where flowers once did.
Heptacodium miconioides (seven sons flower) [was]
dripped in bright pink this morning, thanks to the colorful sepals
left behind from the white flowers that finished several weeks
ago. [They are]... sweet to look at!
My last plant of note is a red twig dogwood (Cornus
sericea). I know…what could be so fascinating
about the most overplanted dogwood in American history? Just
take a look at this amazing specimen’s fall color... Even the most
ordinary plants can earn their keep when you take a moment to look
past what makes them ordinary...
Thanks for listening to the daily gardener,
and remember:
"For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."