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Eriocapitella, or: The Plants Formerly Known as Anemone (2 of 2)

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From “Anemone or Windflower” in Lexicon of Romantic Gardens by W. T. Wehmeyer and Hermann Hackstein:

“The name Anemone comes from ‘nemos,’ the Greek word for wind, and indeed the delicate flowers do move at the slightest breath of wind. The rather fragile-looking flowers have always been symbolic of innocence, trust, transitoriness, and vulnerability. Yet appearances are deceptive, because windflowers are in fact rather undemanding plants that do not require much care.

“Windflowers prefer a sunny to semi-shaded site in the garden. They look especially attractive when planted in small groups. Depending on the species and variety, the flowers may be white, pink, red, blue, or violet, and appear in spring, summer, or fall. Planting different species will thus ensure an enchanting display throughout most of the year.

“Very attractive species include Anemone blanda, for example, which is also known as Greek thimbleweed, and which flowers between March and May. Anemone coronaria, the poppy anemone, garden anemone, or crown anemone, also flowers in spring. Anemone japonica, on the other hand, also known as Japanese anemone, or autumn anemone, ensures color in the fall.”

From “Anemones: Flowers of the Wind” in The Secrets of Wildflowers: A Delightful Feast of Little-Known Facts, Folklore, and History by Jack Sanders:

“Anemone is based on the Greek word for ‘wind,’ whose root word means ‘breathes’ or ‘lives,’ the same root from which words like animated and animal stem. Some authorities say the generic name means ‘wind’ because the flower was believed to bloom when the wind blows. Another theory is more specific, maintaining anemone is a combination of anemos, meaning ‘wind,’ and mone, ‘habitat,’ suggesting that the plant lives in windy places….

“Anemones have a long history of folk recognition, for better or worse. The ancient Greeks believed that Anemos, the wind, used the flowers to herald the coming of spring. Romans carefully picked the first anemone of the year, with a prayer to protect them from fevers.

“Crusaders are said to have returned from the Middle East with the beautiful poppy anemone (A. coronaria). The sudden appearance in Europe of this red-and-white flower sparked tales of its having sprung from the drops of Christ’s blood, and it became a popular flower in the gardens of medieval monasteries….

“Oddly enough, however, many European peasants avoided some anemones as if they carried the plague. When they came upon a field of the flowers, they would hold their breath and run by, fearing they would fall ill if they inhaled the vapors of the blossoms. Egyptians considered the flowers a symbol of sickness, and in China they were planted on graves and called the flowers of death.

“Nonetheless, old herbalists found the plant useful for headaches, gout, leprosy, eye inflammations, and ulcers. Typical of the buttercups, anemones are generally acrid plants, and many species are said to be somewhat poisonous. North American Indians of Quebec used an anemone tea for just about any ailment, while other native nations employed it in treating boils, lung congestion, and eye illnesses. Virgil J. Vogel, in American Indian Medicine, reported that Meskwakis burned seeds to make a smoke that was supposed to revive unconscious persons. Some Ojibwas used the plant to soothe and prepare their throats for singing.

“Modern authorities usually advise against such practices because the plant has some poisonous constituents. Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who developed the modern system of classifying and naming plants and animals, reported that underfed cows died from eating A. nemorosa.”

Hello!

This is the second of two posts with photographs of plants in the genus Eriocapitella, commonly called Windflowers, or, as we learned in the first post (see Eriocapitella, or: The Plants Formerly Known as Anemone (1 of 2)), less accurately called Fall-Blooming Anemones or Japanese Anemones, from Oakland Cemetery.

Like many of Oakland’s plants, Eriocapitella variants are used both as landscaping plants and as plants linked to memorial displays. The photos in my previous post show their use as landscaping plants providing visual interest and color contrast to open gardens or pathways; the photos in this post are associated with historical memory or family memorials. As such, photographing this post’s series meant that I could position the colors and shapes of the flowers among the surrounding stone structures to create compositional variations between the subject and background, especially since plants and flowers reflect light so much differently than the textured memorials nearby.

There are trees at Oakland Cemetery that date back to its founding decades (see Celebrating the Trees at Oakland), so may be 150 to 175 years old and represent a kind of historical continuity between the natural landscape and the human-built elements (some of which are just as old) because of their longevity. When I photograph plants like these Eriocapitella (or any of the others!), I often wonder about their longevity too: am I photographing the initial generation of a particular plant, or subsequent generations of the original plant, or a “branch” of the plant created by pollination or propagation? These are conjoined historical and botanical questions that occur to me because in addition to photographing the plants, I typically spend time researching their histories, and there are threads of merging timelines between any given plant’s botanical history and its use at Victorian gardens like those of Oakland.

Here, for example, is an overview of the plant’s early historical arc — which takes us from the 1600s to the 1800s — from Flowers and Their Histories by Alice M. Coats:

The flower so named [as Anemone japonica] is in fact a native of China, but was introduced to Japan at some early date as a cultivated plant. It was first described by a German, Dr. Andreas Cleyer, who lived in Nagasaki from 1682 to 1686 while in the employment of the Dutch East India Company. At that time, and for nearly two centuries afterwards, no European was allowed to penetrate further into China or Japan than the immediate vicinity of two or three ports, so it was natural for later botanists to believe that the flower was indigenous to Japan, more especially as it had escaped from cultivation and become naturalized there….

But the first living plant (as distinct from dried specimens) to reach Europe came from China; it was sent to the Horticultural Society in 1844 by Robert Fortune, who found it ‘in full flower among the graves of the natives, which are round the ramparts of Shanghae; it blooms in November when other flowers have gone by, and is a most appropriate ornament to the last resting-places of the dead.’

Coats goes on to explain subsequent botanical developments in detail, describing hybridization that resulted in many of the ancestral cultivars whose children are still used in gardens today, especially those created through the earlier twentieth century, to around 1910. Likely introduced to gardens in North America in the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, the plant engendered widespread use in the United States just as it did in England and Europe, because of its resilience and its late blooming period that provided pre-winter seasonal color. So we have overlapping timelines between the plant’s European introduction, the development of its first cultivars, its transition to North America, and its appearance in historic gardens — and the creation of Victorian-themed cemeteries like Oakland. These are not coincidental historical happenings, but instead represent the emerging and continuous connections between flowers, their histories, and their cultural significance. It’s noteworthy, too, that Robert Fortune’s explorations found the plants “in full flower among the graves of natives” and he described them as a “most appropriate ornament to the last resting-places of the dead” — given their frequent use in cemeteries and the memorial meaning attributed to them (explained in 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names) as symbols of hope, resurrection, and rebirth.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Eriocapitella, or: The Plants Formerly Known as Anemone (1 of 2)

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From “Anemone (Windflower)” in The English Flower Garden by William Robinson:

“Anemone (Windflower): A noble family of tuberous alpine meadow and herbaceous plants, of the Buttercup family, to which is due much of the beauty of spring and early summer of northern and temperate countries. In early spring, or what is winter to us in Northern Europe, when the valleys of Southern Europe and sunny sheltered spots all round the great rocky basin of the Mediterranean are beginning to glow with colour, we see the earliest Windflowers in all their loveliness….

“Those arid mountains that look so barren have on their sunny sides carpets of Anemones in countless variety…. Climbing the mountains in April, the Hepatica nestles in nooks all over the bushy parts of the hills. Farther east, while the common Anemones are aflame along the Riviera valleys and terraces, the blue Greek Anemone is open on the hills of Greece; a little later the blue Apennine Anemone blossoms. Meanwhile our Wood Anemone adorns the woods throughout the northern world, and here and there through the brown grass on the chalk hills comes the purple of the Pasque-flower….

“A. japonica (Japan Anemone) [is] a tall autumn-blooming kind, 2 feet to 4 feet high, with fine foliage and large rose-coloured flowers…. The various forms of the Japan Anemone are useful for borders, groups, fringes of shrubbery in rich soil, and here and there in half-shady places by wood walks.”

From “Anemone” in A History of Herbal Plants by Richard LeStrange:

“This mixed genus of rather charming, hardy, perennial flowering plants are native to several parts of the world, including North America, Japan and much of Europe and Asia. Their generic name Anemone is derived from the Greek word anemos meaning the wind. Hence Windflower, their common name, ‘so-called according to [John] Gerard for the floure doth never open it selfe but when the wind doth blow… whereupon it is named Herba venti: in English Wind-floure.’

“During the early part of the medieval period the bitter acrid juice of this particular herb was prescribed for leprosy, often under the names of Smell Fox or Wood Crowfoot, throughout much of Europe and Asia. The affected part was simply ‘bathed’ with a strong decoction of the leaves, which when mixed with ‘the grease of old hog‘ also made an excellent ointment good for cleanse malignant and corroding ulcers’. The juice was occasionally given to those suffering from paralysis of the body, but strong doses are known to have killed as well as cured….

“The use of the ‘Anemone in solution’ was still popular in the United States during the, late nineteenth century. It was applied direct as an external remedy to treat scalds, ulcers, syphilitic nodes, paralysis and even ‘opacity of the cornea’, a most uncertain procedure.”

Hello!

Whether you’ve seen them blooming in spring, early summer, or autumn, you’ve likely encountered plants like those in this post and the next one — which I found posing for me in early October in several different locations at Oakland Cemetery.

Those with white flower petals below had just started popping up behind Oakland’s new visitor center — which opened only six months ago — and are the first flowering plants I’ve seen growing there. I had previously written about how the visitor center’s garden was being designed to mimic or mirror the overall layout of the 48-acre property, complete with boundaries or markers shaped to match the cemetery’s sections — so it is no surprise that this new garden is being planted with matching plants. Ancestors to these plants made their way into European gardens and those of the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century, around the same time Victorian cemeteries like Oakland were being designed and created. Their historical-to-current use reflects the property’s longevity as a repository of plants that are native to China or Japan but became well-naturalized outside of Asia, then combined in the gardens’ landscaping with plants having native roots in the Southeast.

For several centuries, these plants were all grouped in the genus Anemone, with “Anemone,” “Japanese Anemone”, “Chinese Anemone,” and “Windflower” applied as their common names. “Windflower” is believed to have been derived from the observation, however improbable, that wind blowing from one direction induced the plants to flower — a characterization I wrote about in a previous post, discussing that the plants were called “Winde-floure” (or a variation of that) in the 16th and 17th centuries (see Anemone, the Winde-Floure (1 of 2)). Continued use of Windflower as a common name is likely based on a more botanically apt observation, though: that the plants’ tiny stamens — visible in the orange ring at the flower petal centers in my photos — produce equally tiny anthers that will tumble across the blooming flower and are easily scattered by the wind.

Plants originally in the Anemone genus — and still commonly called “Anemone” — demonstrate two distinct blooming periods: in late spring to early summer, or in the autumn. I have only photographed those that bloom in autumn (as late as November) at Oakland; and as I write this, I’m not sure if they have spring-bloomers or if I just miss them when surrounded by the fields of daffodils, tulips, and irises that tend to get my attention. I have a note somewhere in my head to check next year for spring Anemones, so it will be a surprise to all of us if I discover that there are some that I’d never noticed before.

These distinct blooming periods (spring/early summer versus fall), though, are relatively rare among flowers of the same genus — which leads to what has actually happened with the original Anemone genus in this plant’s story. Those that bloom in the spring under the Anemone genus or common name have now been separated taxonomically from those that bloom in the fall. The genus name Anemone is reserved for the spring-blooming plants; those that bloom in the fall have been placed in the genus Eriocapitella after a half-century scientific endeavor to determine that the spring- and fall-blooming varieties were genetically quite different. This means, therefore, that the Japanese Anemone whose scientific name was originally Anemone japonica is now named Eriocapitella japonica instead. And it also means that because these are recent developments — the distinction was only finalized within the last two decades — common usage still reflects the original genus name, and many botanical or botany-adjacent writings bundle them all together.

I’ll spend a little more time on other interesting characteristics of these plants and their histories in the next post; but for now, let’s pause for a moment on the word Eriocapitella. Like many of the Latin-based scientific names for plants (or animals, or a lot of other things), it’s odd to write or say in a way that “anemone” is not. I got used to it by breaking it up into “eerio-capa-tella” then noticed how the center ring of the flower looks a bit like one piece of cereal from a box of Cheerios…

… so now think of it as “cheerio-capa-tella” but without the “ch” and with a slightly brighter color. Having clarified that (!!), I can now point out that the white-petaled flowers below are most likely Eriocapitella japonica, and the pink ones (which apparently have a habit of occupying benches) are most likely a double-petaled hybrid called Eriocapitella × hybrida, a variant that is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Lantana montevidensis, Weeping or Trailing Lantana

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From “Lantana montevidensis (Weeping Lantana)” in Annual Gardening by June Hudson:

“The weeping lantana, from South America, is treated in much the same way as the shrub verbena. However, for the best standards, run the plants up a stout post and train the shoots to cover an upturned basket….

“From a distance the resulting growth when in bloom gives the effect of a rosy lavender waterfall and is very beautiful. Keep pruned to shape throughout the season. Feed heavily with liquid feed to encourage a high density of bloom….

“Very effective in raised beds cascading over a wall or in Victorian-theme gardens. [These] are excellent plants for cool greenhouses, conservatories, and sun rooms. A white form, “Alba’, is also available.”

From “Lantana montevidensis (Trailing Lantana)” in Identification, Selection, and Use of Southern Plants for Landscape Design by Neil G. Odenwald:

“Native of South America and widely planted in the South as a perennial and in the North as an annual. Especially well adapted for plantings in the center-city with stressful conditions. Performs best in full sunlight and a well-drained soil but tolerates a wide range of site conditions. Fast rate of growth. Propagated by cuttings in moist sand or vermiculite and seeds….

“Nearly vinelike drooping stems for a low-mounding, loosely informal mass with medium-fine textured foliage. If unpruned, forms a rambling ground cover. Excellent perennial planted at top of retaining walls and other raised plantings. Rosy-lilac flower heads, each one inch or more across. Verbenalike. Profuse flowering summer through autumn….”

From “Arrival at L.A.” in Poems of Cornwall and America by A. L. Rowse:

Oleander, palm, hibiscus, yucca,
Sepulveda Boulevard, the Security First National Bank,
To tell us we have arrived at Los Angeles.
Ahead the Verdugo hills, reminiscent of Tuscany,
Terra-cotta coloured and serrated ridge
Of old earthquake country.
Here begin eucalyptus, peppers, camphor trees,
The cuttings carpeted with purple lantana….

Now Inglewood Park cemetery, where lies
The dust of a small child of my blood and bone,
A child wise and sad beyond his years,
Who once looked long into my eyes,
Was frightened by what he saw,
Something beyond tears….

The airport-bus billows along Florence Avenue,
Past Realtors, Refrigerators, Records, Eat with Joe,
Every solicitation of eye and ear and taste.
Not a breath in the air.
Sweat pours down behind the ears.
The scarecrow palms gesticulate
Above the desolation of houses. We journey
In gathering dusk towards still sun-tipped peaks.

Hello!

Various forms of Verbena are common at Oakland Cemetery, but their presence there doesn’t typically attract my attention because most of those I encounter don’t produce notable flowers, or produce clusters of flowers scrunched atop each other that are difficult to isolate for a photogenic image. They’re often used as ground cover, or to add visual contrast to scenes where other plants and flowers dominate, and I imagine if I trolled through my own photos I’d find plenty of images where Verbena variants play a supporting role. When I went on my first autumn aster-hunt a couple of weeks ago, though, I noticed these verbena-looking plants tumbling over stone walls near the property entrance, and the prominent purple flowers caught my eye, as purple flowers often do.

As some landscaping work was going on near this spot and my views were partially blocked by one of the city of Atlanta’s Giant Garden Trucks, I took most of these photos from a distance with a zoom lens and, through the camera’s viewfinder, didn’t get a clear look at the flowers. But I took a series of photos anyway, waited for the truck to rumble away, then took a few more — all the while thinking that even though this was Verbena, I might end up with some interesting photos anyway.

Several days later, I started working on the photos, having randomly picked this one to start…

… and thought: “Gasp! This isn’t Verbena after all — it looks like Lantana!” As I’ve grown multiple Lantana variants on my own property — including flashy annuals as well as perennials like Mary Ann Lantana and Chapel Hill Yellow Lantana — I recognized the flower shape immediately. Equally compelling were the color and shapes of the leaves, the way the flowers were connected to the stems, and how buds that were just barely opening look like a collection of tiny pillows arranged in a circle. These wee pillows, especially, are quite unique among flowers and definitely a sign that you’ve encountered something other than generic Verbena. Even though it’s true that Lantana is a species in the same family as Verbena (Verbenaceae), these visual differences are among the reasons Lantana has its own distinct name and is typically not referred to as Verbena.

But the fact that this looked like Lantana presented me with a mystery for several reasons: It was blooming on October 6, late for Lantana in my experience, with many flowers still waiting for their turn; the flowers were purple, and I’d never seen purple-flowered Lantana; and there is no other Lantana at Oakland Cemetery, not a single stem. I always assumed Oakland avoided Lantana because it’s often considered invasive in many regions including the Southeast where, counterintuitively, you can often buy it at grocery stores. And, I reckoned, Oakland’s caretakers may have chosen to avoid the maintenance it needs: it spreads wildly during the hottest part of the summer, then over the fall and into winter its stems become hard pointy spears that get so tough you might need a saw to cut them back. It’s easy to lose control of it; the perennial variants really have to be contained within some hard boundaries (mine are bounded by rows of stone), and cut as close to the ground as possible in spaces where people, small animals, or even children might bounce around in the garden and could get impaled!

After uploading a few of my photos to PlantNet, I learned that this plant was Lantana montevidensis — originally named after one of its native regions, Montevideo in Uruguay, and tagged with the common names Weeping Lantana and Trailing Lantana. Though in this case it’s not a component of an Oakland memorial display, it’s quite suitable as a plant providing visual interest and depth, along with early fall color, since it tends to bloom long after summer flowers have left the landscape but before most of the colorful asters and mums have started blooming in volume.

Both “trailing” and “weeping” (in the sense of a Weeping Willow) describe its growth patterns accurately: the plant expands along the ground in multiple directions, and the weight of the flowers causes it to spill over walls. Even though some of the plants will imitate their Lantana relatives and push upright for a while (see the last photos below), you can tell that those are arcing downward and will eventually join the rest of the pack on the ground. As the plant dies off toward winter, it’s most likely going to become a desiccated vine, rather than developing the unmanageable woody spikes that upright Lantana varieties produce. I think I’ll need to check its condition on my next visit to the property, and perhaps keep an eye on it over several years to see how it progresses. It’s always exciting to discover a new-to-me plant on my photoshoots, something that gives me a chance to explore yet another line of fresh botanical research — and it will be interesting to see if Oakland has enough success with this Lantana montevidensis that they expand its presence to other sections of the property.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

White Zephyr Lilies, Zephyranthes candida

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From “Diverse Bulbs for the South” in A Garden of One’s Own: Writings of Elizabeth Lawrence, edited by Barbara Scott and Bobby J. Ward:

“Among the plants contributed to American gardens by the warm countries are representatives of the three great bulb families: the Amaryllidaceae, the Liliaceae, and the Iridaceae. Ranging in color from flaming orange and scarlet to clear pink and pure white, and in size from the magnificent crinum to the dainty Brodiaea uniflora [Ipheion uniflorum], they also offer a wide variety in form and foliage.

“The Amaryllis family is a major source of bulbs for mild climates. Their grace and charm is suggested by the poetic and mythological names of some of the genera: Lycoris and Nerine for sea sprites; Amaryllis for the nymph celebrated by Theocritus and Virgil; Hyacinthus for the unfortunate shepherd, beloved of Apollo; and Zephyranthes, flower of the west wind….

“The fairy lilies (Zephyranthes) are charming dwarf amaryllids. In April the low lying meadows from Virginia to Florida are white with our native atamasco lilies (Z. atamasca), but their possibilities for the garden have never been fully realized although they are easily transplanted and respond to cultivation. The atamasco lily is the lily type of zephyranthes. It has single white flowers and very narrow strap-like foliage….

“Z. candida, another white species — called the summer crocus although it blooms in the fall — is the crocus type. The small, cupped flowers tinged with pink on the outside when the nights get cooler appear in September and October, and the perennial leaves make a green edging for winter.”

From “The Rainflower” by Richard Edwards in Green Poems, collected by Jill Bennett:

Down in the forest where light never falls
There’s a place that no one else knows,
A deep marshy hollow beside a grey lake
And that’s where the rainflower grows.

The one silver rainflower that’s left in the world,
Alone in the mist and the damp,
Lifts up its bright head from a cluster of leaves
And shines through the gloom like a lamp.

Far from the footpaths and far from the roads,
In a silence where no birds call,
It blooms like a secret, a star in the dark,
The last silver rainflower of all.

So keep close behind me and follow me down,
I’ll take you where no one else goes,
And there in the hollow beside the grey lake,
We’ll stand where the rainflower grows.

Hello!

Here we have a collection of landscape border plants from Oakland Cemetery, Zephyranthes candida or white Zephyr Lilies. Zephyr Lilies are known by quite a few other common names, including Atamasco Lily, Rain Lily (or Rain Flower), Fairy Lily, Swamp Lily, Wild Easter Lily, and Stagger Grass. Several of the common names are specific to countries or regions, while “Zephyr Lily” reflects the plant’s scientific name; “Rain Lily” and “Rain Flower” represent its habit of blooming in large quantities a day or two after spring or fall showers; “Atamasco Lily” is a close relative similar in appearance but with longer and thinner flower petals; and “Stagger Grass” refers to their intoxicating effect on livestock (which you can read about in my posts from last year, Discovering Zephyr Lilies (1 of 2) and Discovering Zephyr Lilies (2 of 2)).

As is so often the case, Zephyrs aren’t actually lilies — they’re members of the Amaryllis family. Oakland uses them as border plants in several sections of the property, with some in bloom in the spring and early summer, and others blooming in the fall. I tend to notice them more as fall approaches, since there’s less competition from other eye-catching flowers and Zephyrs fill the gap between late-blooming Amaryllis and the October to November waves of asters and mums. Zephyranthes candida has especially bright pure-white flower petals that contrast nicely with their orange anthers, their wispy dark green leaves, and any nearby monuments — so they do tend to attract attention despite their small size.

Thanks for taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (4 of 4)

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From “The Flowery Land” in Gifts from the Gardens of China by Jane Kilpatrick:

“It was during the peace and prosperity of the Tang period (AD 618-907) that the Chinese people first really had the security and leisure to devote themselves to gardens and to the cultivation of an expanding range of ornamental plants. In addition to the peach and the apricot, several other flowering trees became popular, although this was probably as much due to their mythological attributes and practical uses, as to their flowers and handsome shapes….

“Shrubs seem to have been uncommon in gardens before the seventh century, although Weigela florida was sometimes used as a hedge plant, but references to the beauty and flowering season of magnolias, daphnes and hibiscus indicate that these very attractive plants were being brought into cultivation by this time. Herbaceous peonies (Paeonia lactiflora) were already favourite ornamentals, as were annuals such as the Chinese Pink and the Chinese Aster (Dianthus chinensis and Callistephus chinensis); but many plants grown as ornamentals today, such as the Tiger Lily (Lilium lancifolium), the Leopard or Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda chinensis) and daylilies, were still principally grown for their medicinal rather than their decorative qualities.”

From “The Story of the Fire Lily” in Someone Cares: The Collected Poems of Helen Steiner Rice by Helen Steiner Rice:

The crackling flames rise skyward
as the waving grass is burned,
But from the fire on the veld
a great truth can be learned…
For the green and living hillside
becomes a funeral pyre
As all the grass across the veld
is swallowed by the fire…
What yesterday was living,
today is dead and still,
But soon a breathless miracle
takes place upon the hill…
For, from the blackened ruins
there arises life anew
And scarlet lilies lift their heads
where once the veld grass grew
And so again the mystery
of life and death is wrought,
And man can find assurance
in this soul-inspiring thought,
That from a bed of ashes
the fire lilies grew….

Hello!

This is the fourth of four posts with photos of Iris domestica, and the second post with photos of Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’. The previous posts are Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4), Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4), and Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (3 of 4).

I took the photos in the galleries below at Oakland Cemetery on June 21 and July 17, so they show the plant’s transition from its primary blooming period to the second phase where it produces seed capsules. You can see this transition about halfway through the galleries, starting with the photographs of the capsules, which show how this cultivar maintains quite a few flowers even as it starts generating seeds. When I went back in October to photograph the blackberries Iris domestica typically produces that I showed in the first post, however, only the orange-spotted variety had blackberries; those of Hello Yellow had already been dispersed. Together these characteristics suggest that Hello Yellow may have a more condensed reproductive cycle — moving from flower to capsule, blackberry development, and seed dispersal over a shorter time frame — but that could also reflect different environmental conditions, or simply that Hello Yellow was new to Oakland this year and may still be establishing its own rhythms.

The two varieties’ overall growth pattern is also quite different. The first two photos below show a typical group of orange-spotted Iris domestica, which produces fewer plants in any given location that tend to be spread up to a foot apart. This more solitary arrangement may indicate that the plant has evolved to disperse over wider areas — something that’s closer to its wild or native origins — which I observe by finding these orange flowers scattered throughout Oakland. Hello Yellow, on the other hand — as shown in the second two photos — has been bred to produce plants that grow in compact masses: the number of flowers and leaves in any square foot of the garden leaves little space between them as each plant produces crowded clusters of flowers. While both plants will present opened and unopened flowers while they’re blooming, these photos illustrate how differently they’re arranged, from a handful of flowers on each orange Iris domestica stem to Hello Yellow having so many flowers per stem that it’s hard to count them individually.

Because of these distinct growth patterns, the orange Iris domestica appear throughout Oakland as transitional plants marking the boundaries of roadways and blending among other plants, where their bright orange flowers draw your eye toward them and their immediate surroundings. But as we can see from this photo, Hello Yellow, by contrast, produces densely packed leaves topped with bright yellow flowers that are visible from a long distance, making them integral components of a memorial scene:

These Hello Yellow cultivars are growing in one of the many raised sections of the cemetery, about three feet above the roadways that surround it (a very handy position for photographers), and constrained on all sides by a stone wall. When you face that particular plot, you first see the low, soft textures and colors of Lamb’s Ear, which allow shorter memorial markers to remain visible even as Hello Yellow consumes more territory but doesn’t displace the smaller plants. Hello Yellows grow abundantly behind the Lamb’s Ear bunches, where they come close to matching the height of taller gravestones, as well as those in the background, but don’t detract from them visually.

Arrangements like these are not accidental: it’s apparent from their visual characteristics that Oakland’s landscape designers chose these plants intentionally, to provide different visual layers to the scene as time passes and to blend these plants with the immovable parts of their surroundings — like the memorial stones and even the remains of an old tree trunk whose dark colors provide additional contrast for the scene. Given its origins in seventh-century China (as explained in the excerpt from Gifts from the Gardens of China above), Iris domestica (in all its forms) seems especially appropriate for historical garden settings like this, but we’ll have to wait until next year to see if Hello Yellow takes after its orange relative and ventures beyond its present borders.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (3 of 4)

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From “Belamcanda” in Perennial Gardening by Michael Ruggiero: 

“Both species in this genus (also called leopard flowers) are native to China and Japan. B. chinensis is becoming popular in this country as an ornamental, for its shiny blackberrylike fruits as much as for its orange-spotted flowers; once finished, the flowers twist up tightly….

“B. flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ is a wonderful smaller (10-inch) cultivar with the typical blackberrylike fruit….

“Both are fairly easy to grow and are unusual additions to summer and early fall flower borders. Group several plants together to get a telling display. Blackberry lily grows best in full sun positions, in well-drained, reasonably fertile soil…. Planting may be done in spring or fall, but newly planted stock should be protected with a winter mulch. Propagation is most satisfactory by seed sown in spring, either out of doors or indoors at about 70-80° F. Germination will take 2-4 weeks….

“Some gardeners prefer to divide the rhizomes in spring or early summer. Iris borer may attack the rhizomes with devastating effect; dig and destroy as soon as damage is seen; do not compost the foliage to prevent overwintering of borers. Leaf scorch causes an unsightly browning of the irislike leaves. Do not deadhead, or the attractive black glossy fruits will not form. Self-seeding is not a problem.”

From “Lodestone” in Of This World: New and Selected Poems 1966-2006 by Joseph Stroud:

I lie in a hammock in the slow hours
of a summer day, summer at last
in the high country, summer in the air,
in the light, in the poems I’m reading,
poems like deep jade pools of snowmelt
under a summer sun, poems like
whorls of agate. There’s a drift of pollen
through the forest, sifting through
the pines and cedars, a fine gold powder
drifting like the crushed ash of sunlight.
In the seep on the hillside the first
rein orchids appear, the night-blue larkspur,
leopard lilies….

Hello!

This is the third of four posts with photos of Iris domestica, where we’ll spend some time looking at one of its cultivars, whose appearance and growth patterns are quite different from the plants I shared in the first two posts, Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (1 of 4) and Iris domestica: From Summer to Fall (2 of 4).

Since the origins of this cultivar’s name — Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’ — are hard to pin down, we can just enjoy the fact that the plant was given this happy little moniker. The excerpt I included at the top of this post — from the book Perennial Gardening by Michael Ruggiero, published in 1994 — refers to Leopard Lilies by their earlier name Belamcanda, calling the yellow cultivar Belamcanda flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ and calling the more frequently planted orange cultivar Belamcanda chinensis. So we know that ‘Hello Yellow’ has been around for at least thirty years, before the two plants were subsequently determined to be variants of the same species and their names were changed to Iris domestica and Iris domestica ‘Hello Yellow’. The original Belamcanda names actually strike me as more precise than the newer ones — since Iris domestica could now be used to include both cultivars — but these things sometimes happen when plant names change over the years. Belamcanda flabellata ‘Hello Yellow’ even captures more of the yellow cultivar’s physical characteristics by not only including the color of the flowers, but also including its fan-shaped leaves — that’s what “flabellata” means — whose distinctive appearance you can observe in the first five photos in the galleries below.

In my first post in this series, I mentioned that Hello Yellow appeared to have been bred to eliminate the spots that had given rise to the plant’s “Leopard Lily” common name, a name that crossed the boundaries between plant life and animal life. Since then, I got to puzzling about that — as one does — which led me to wonder if there were cat-leopards that originally had spots but those spots had disappeared over generations and time. Researching that led me to this interesting article The Black Leopard Has Secret Spots, which describes how the ancestral remnants of spots on this cat’s sleek black coat can be revealed by photography, especially infrared photography.

If you look at the lead photo in that article, however, you can see that it doesn’t actually require infrared photography to reveal the hidden spots. Instead, the right lighting conditions — in that case, sunlight filtered through surrounding trees and shrubs — achieve a similar effect. With that in mind, I knew that I took some of my Hello Yellow photographs when the sun was behind clouds, which would have resulted in lighting a lot like that of the leopard photograph. Here, for example, is one of those photos…

… where you can find Hello Yellow’s spots if you look closely. Follow the petals of the frontmost flower from their edges to the center, and you’ll encounter what may look like bits of pollen, but these are actually spots whose color has been altered from Iris domestica’s original deep purple or black to a shade of yellow-orange that’s slightly darker than the rest of the petals. These color variations are only evident in filtered sunlight like this; you won’t see them in the photos that I took when the sun was out.

But there’s more! Here we compare Hello Yellow to the orange spotted cultivar and can see something else. Notice how spots are distributed among the flower petals on the orange blossoms, then take a look at those same sections of the petals on the yellow variant:

You will see, in this comparison, pale yellow circles and circular texture variations among Hello Yellow petals that are distributed in the same patterns as the dark spots on the orange flowers. These, too, are remnants of the plant’s original spotted appearance, where the plant’s colors have been altered through selective breeding to shift the overall petal color from orange to yellow, and simultaneously reduce the dark spots to shades of yellow. So, as it turns out, the common names Leopard Lily or Leopard flower still work for Hello Yellow after all!

Thanks for reading and taking a look!