cloudy to clear and back again: almost calm: 29ºF

Valentine’s Day isn’t far away so I expect to see reds, whites, and pinks featured in the botanical garden’s indoor flower displays. Usually begonias and cyclamen fill the bill. This year though there was a newcomer. Planted under three sizable planters of oleander trees in the reception hall were dozens of strawberry-pink, double-flowered kalanchoes.

The kalanchoes were labelled ‘Calandiva Pink.’ I checked the web and found that I had stumbled upon a new superstar. The Calandivas were developed in 2002 by a Swedish breeder and are now being propogated, distributed, and marketed by Fides, a Dutch firm that specializes in growing and promoting high-end flowers with unusual shapes and colors.

Fides has even developed a website just to promote Calandiva Kalanchoes. On its homepage, the plants are hyped as rock-stars or supermodels: “Calandiva® appeals to many around the world. With this diva’s broad array of applications, she transcends many cultures and habits. From Tokyo to Milan, stylists, designers and florists have her starring on their catwalks.” When the Calandiva line was launched a few years ago, Fides developed promotional packets to flood the florists, garden centers, and big-box stores in eight European countries. They even had a sweepstakes offering a luxury weekend in the Netherlands as part of the blitz. I don’t know how common Calandiva Kalanchoes are in the U.S., but tomorrow I plan to go to Lowe’s and then to a large greenhouse nursery to see if I can find them there.

Dry stocks of grasses have fallen into the water at the edge of a stream that feeds the lake in the Japanese Garden. The eddies in the current coupled with the cold temperatures formed these ice flowers on the ends of the brown stems.

I read a newspaper article last week about the new plants that are being shown this year at nursery trade shows. These shows aren’t open to the public, but the plants and flowers featured there are likely to appear in retail stores very soon. The article mentioned the growing popularity of camellias such as Pink Icicle and Winter Snowman that can withstand sub-zero temperatures. That I knew. Hardy camellias are becoming common here in this Zone 6 botanical garden.

But it also mentioned the paper bush (Edgeworthia papyrifera) – a plant that I would never have thought of as being able to survive the cold. For years I’ve made it a point to take in the sweet smell of the paper bush flowers that open at this time in the glasshouse that shelters the Mediterranean climate plants. But I never thought it could survive outside. Apparently neither dio the keepers of this botanical garden. I checked their database of plantings and found that the only specimen of this awkward-looking shrub in the botanical garden is the one growing here under glass. Flora, the all-knowing encyclopedia of plants, says that paper bush shrubs are “moderately frost hardy, but are likely to be severely damaged if struck by a late frost after the young foliage has started to develop.” I wonder if this botanical garden will set-out an outdoor plant or two this summer. Image the exotic scent of paper bush flowers on a cold winter’s day.





clouds: breezy: 34ºF

There are plenty of palms of all kinds at this botanical garden. But they’re growing under controlled conditions in glass houses. Since I walk mostly outdoors, I don’t look for nor expect to see palms in this Zone 6 garden. A couple weeks ago though I saw three of them growing side by side in the small children’s garden.

“It is a myth that palms are exclusively tropical or subtropical species,” so says David Franco, author of Palms Won’t Grow Here and Other Myths. He says that perhaps a hundred of the 1500 known species of palms can handle temperatures of 20ºF. Some, he says, can even get through winters of 0ºF or lower. Most of the palms that Franco writes about aren’t the tree varieties that I think of when I image palms. The hardy varieties he describes are mostly “clump palms” -- palms that grow like shrubs and have no trunks to speak of.

Franco’s book says that one of palms I saw, the Needle Palm (Rhapidophyllum hystrix) “wins the prize as the world’s most cold-hardy palm, at least in climates with warm to hot summers.” That’s us in the Midwest. He says that once established, a Needle Palm could get through winter temperatures of -10º or even maybe -20ºF. The shrub I saw was about three-feet tall and looked green and healthy even without being mulched. It has so few leaves that’s it hard to see the palm’s characteristic splayed fingers-shaped leaves. If this Needle Palm matures, it will expand into a large circular clump and will be about eight-feet tall. Here’s a picture of a mature specimen growing in the National Arboretum in Washington, D. C.

Along with Needle Palm there’s a Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal minor) and a Chinese Windmill Palm (Trachycarpus fortunei) here. Both are still quite small. The Dwarf Palmetto is another clumping variety, but the Windmill Palm is a true palm tree with a slender trunk and an umbrella of leaves on top. The Windmill in this botanical garden already has the beginnings of a trunk. Here's a picture of what a mature Windmill Palm would look like.

Why this fascination with things rightfully tropical? Two reasons, David Franco thinks. First, it’s “something elemental in the human psyche.” There’s a longing for green, for lushness, for warmth in each of us. We want to get back to Eden where nature is more generous. Second, the challenge and pride that comes with it of being able to do the unexpected. A palm grower in Philadelphia who has a web site about growing palms in unexpected places puts it this way, “I want to have a palm growing in my garden, not because it will make the winters feel any warmer, but because it provides a link to that warmer world. I'd like to look at those shots of palms on TV and think, "Sure, I've got one of those!"

A friend gave me a calendar of natural events that was published by the state conservation department. Every day there’s a seasonal tidbit about some plant or animal. Today the calendar tells me to “Look for signs of wildlife feeding on saplings: deer, a ragged cut; rabbits a neat 45º slice.” Looking ahead to next week, it says “Ozark witch hazel begins blooming after a few days of warm weather.” So I took a look at the Ozark witch hazels planted in this botanical garden to see how they were getting on. Many of the Ozarks planted in the native plants section of the garden were already in bloom. While the one in the picture I took had burnt-orange blooms, I’ve read that others have yellow or even more reddish flowers than the one I saw. Ozark witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) blooms may not be as large as some, but they are plentiful and I know they will last for months.

In another part of the garden, another species of witch hazel was in bloom. This one, the Chinese Witch Hazel (Hamamelis mollis) has pure yellow flowers with petals that are twice as wide and long as the Ozark. The close-ups here are not nearly as arresting as seeing (and smelling) a cluster of these tall shrubs all in bloom.