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Dazzling Autumn Zinnias (2 of 3)

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From “Zinnia” in The Floral Kingdom, Its History, Sentiment and Poetry (1876), edited by Cordelia Harris Turner:

“Zinnia was named in honor of John Godfrey Zinn, a German botanist who flourished in 1757, when the science was in its infancy. In the cultivated plant of today can hardly be recognized the primitive flower found in the fields and roadsides of the Southern States, which, even in its simplest form, has been considered handsome. Formerly the blossom was only scarlet, and single; but care in propagation has doubled it to the center, and it has sported into hues many, rich and varied….

“The flower perishes slowly without closing its petals, losing its bright tints and assuming more sobriety as its days are numbered. On this account it is sometimes called Youth and Old Age.”

From “The Essence of a Garden” in Ambiguous Dancers of Fame: Collected Poems, 1945-1985 by James Schevill: 

Between form and force of color to find
the illuminating place of order
where fruit trees soar no longer bare
and brandish oranges, figs, mangos
above Birds of Paradise sailing in place,
orange flower-ships of natural grace,
gladiolas pointing bluntly through green blades
above red zinnias buttoning up their patch
until luscious fruits and flowers are too much
and the fertile garden shrivels, picked, dead,
dazed in silent time of sun and stone,
waiting dumbly for the sacred time of rain
when nature and man kindle care
into color-bursts again, and rejoicing air
crystallizes with bright, dying revelations
to teach our eyes wonder, art of glory.

Hello!

This is the second of three posts with photographs of Zinnias from Oakland Cemetery that I took in August and in October; the first post is Dazzling Autumn Zinnias (1 of 3). Here we have another collection of single-flowered Zinnias (those that have but one row of flower petals beneath their pear-shaped seed structure and tiny composite flowers), in variations of red and magenta colors ranging from pure red to blends of red and magenta.

Let’s explore these color variations, since they have more significance than just looking good in photographs. As we’re very fond here of traveling back and forth between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries — we’ll start with this chart showing the separation of light from the sun into the colors we can see, from page 95 of the 1856 book Chemical Atlas; or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects by Edward Livingston Youmans.

For his chapter entitled “Chemistry of Solar Light — Solar Dynamics,” Youmans conducted numerous experiments to analyze the color and heat-producing qualities of sunlight. Here’s an excerpt from that chapter where the author introduces several concepts that we’re going to connect — believe it or not — to the color variations in these Zinnia flowers while we speculate on what those colors tell us about how pollinators like bees might interact with the Zinnias. Youmans writes:

“The radiations which flow from the sun to the earth are capable of giving origin to several different kinds of effect. One of its effects is produced upon the animal eye, and is called light. In what manner light, or the luminous force acts upon the eye to generate vision, or cause the animal to see, we do not understand. We know many of the laws of light, but how the visual organ is finally affected in producing the sensation of vision, is not comprehended….

“If a ray of light be admitted through a small aperture into a dark room, and be suffered to fall upon a triangular prism of glass, it will not pass through it, and go forward in a straight direction across the room; but it will be turned out of its pathway (refracted), and be thrown upon the opposite wall, not in the form in which it entered the room, as simple white light, but decomposed into an oblong image of the most brilliant colors, which is called the solar spectrum….

“The colors produced under these circumstances are supposed to be the components or constituents of white light…. When the image or spectrum is thus formed, the colors are not seen with a clear and sharp outline; they blend and melt into each other, so that it is difficult to fix the line at which one ceases and another begins….”

If you look at more modern renditions of the color distribution Youmans provides here, you’ll see that one of his key insights — that the colors “blend and melt into each other” — is equally apparent in graphics like this one, where you cannot detect clear boundaries between individual colors. This is true even when the graphics, like Youmans’ image, identify the colors red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet explicitly. These distinctions are only approximate, are always better expressed as color ranges — like the gradual transition from red to orange — and show why the number of colors we actually can see is often considered to be in the hundreds, thousands, or millions, depending on the context. That same graphic also leads us to those qualities of light that aren’t apparent to humans: infrared (beyond red and capable of producing heat that some pollinators can detect) and ultraviolet (beyond blue and violet), both of which are perceivable by or visible to pollinators whose senses can react to color properties we find inaccessible.

The blended range of colors presented by any of these individual Zinnia flowers is very evident in photos like this one…

… where the foreground flower shows a mix of red and magenta on its petals, and Lightroom doesn’t detect any colors other than red or magenta on those petals. Our vision doesn’t identify distinct boundaries between the two colors, but we’re certainly aware that both are present even though they’re inseparable. If, however, we take the same image and convert it to black and white, then increase magenta saturation while reducing red saturation, we learn from that variation how much magenta is actually present in the flower petals and that it — rendered as white in this image — is more dominant than red.

Now, let’s pretend we’re bees. As bees, we don’t see the color red; we’re drawn to colors close to or in the ultraviolet range — those from blue-violet and beyond in Youmans’ illustration — including colors that humans don’t see. So while humans see the flower in its color version, bees will see it more like our black and white version because magenta — a color chemically constituted with equal parts red and blue — contains enough blue to push the color toward the blue-to-ultraviolet range.

While this doesn’t mean the bee sees this Zinnia as a color-inverted black-and-white photograph, it does imply that the presence of magenta and its blue components creates color or contrasting patterns that are visible to that bee. Here’s an explanation of how that might work, from the book What the Bees See by Craig P. Burrows:

“If you think about all the colours of the rainbow and beyond on both ends of the light spectrum, humans see from the reds up to the blues. Bees don’t see the reds, but they do see past the blues into the ultraviolet spectrum. The contrasting colour patterns that matter to bees are different [from] the contrasting colour patterns that matter to humans. Using [ultraviolet] fluorescence photography… helps us to see some of the patterns on flowers that are visible to bees but invisible to us. Ultimately the benefit of seeing UV to an insect like a bee is to enable perception of contrast — of the flower from the leaves, and in the flower itself. Those striking patterns help the insect to identify pollen and nectar.”

By converting this image to black and white while selectively adjusting red and magenta saturation levels, we can simulate the effect of the ultraviolet photography Burrows describes — not to reproduce its capabilities exactly but simply to show how the presence of magenta might reveal hidden patterns in how these colors are distributed across the petals. In our black and white version, the bright white areas show where magenta — with its blue-violet component that bees can perceive — is most concentrated, particularly along the petal edges and tips. The darker areas represent zones where pure red dominates, color wavelengths that would appear dim or dark to bee vision. This technique isn’t showing exactly what a bee sees, but it does reveal contrast patterns that our human eyes naturally blend together into a uniform arrangement of magenta and red. To us, these blended colors are aesthetically pleasing; to bees, the resulting patterns likely create “visual guides” that direct bees from the petal edges inward toward the nectar-rich center.

The concentration of bee-visible patterns at the petal edges suggests these flowers have evolved sophisticated optical characteristics that remain appealing to pollinators whose vision differs dramatically from our own. These highly visible color patterns, along with the Zinnia’s relatively long blooming period and the way it produces easily accessible flower structures atop three- or four-foot tall stems, explain why groups of these zinnias attract so many different kinds of pollinators for several weeks toward the end of every summer and well into the fall.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Dazzling Autumn Zinnias (1 of 3)

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From A History of Zinnias: Flower for the Ages by Eric Grissell:

“Zinnias fall into a class of plants that are generally self-infertile. This simply means that a single zinnia flower will not pollinate itself and requires pollen to be carried from another flower to induce fertilization and seed production. But with purebred parents, random crossing cannot be allowed or there will be a complex recombination of genes and loss of identify for each strain, a mongrel if you will. In commercial production, different purebred strains or series must be kept separate from each other if each is to remain stable and produce seed. This means that plants must either be hand-pollinated in isolation, an expensive option, or that each strain must somehow be isolated from other strains and be openly pollinated by natural elements such as bees….

“This method of seed production is achieved by growing each selection in fields distant enough from other such strains to prevent bees or butterflies from carrying pollen from one field to another. If color is not important but retaining the characteristics of the strain is, then colors can be mixed in a single field, which may be separated from a different strain by as much as five hundred feet of bare soil or interplanted with other flower species to prevent cross-strain interbreeding. If color is important, then within each strain each color must be planted in separate patches isolated from one another. This all requires acres of land or different locations to keep strains and colors pure and to ensure that pollinators do not travel between patches….

“Although zinnia flowers are a dazzling sight in themselves, one of their major advantages is a penchant for attracting other equally beautiful life forms to the garden…. With the exception of seed-feeding birds, most visitors do no cosmetic harm to zinnia leaves or flowers, as they merely feed on the nectar and pollen sources….

“Bees, whether solitary or social, visit only to collect nectar or pollen for their young…. In spite of the fact that there are hundreds of kinds of zinnias in all shape, sizes, and colors… there is no one answer as to which zinnia is the best for attracting butterflies, bees, or birds. The number of species and the diversity of wildlife attracted depends on where the gardener lives, which regulates what is available to visit a garden….”

From “Transition” in Collected Poems (1930-1973) by May Sarton:

The zinnias, ocher, orange, chrome and amber,
Fade in their cornucopia of gold,
As all the summer turns toward September
And light in torrents flows through the room.

A wasp, determined, zigzags high then low,
Hunting the bowl of rich unripened fruit,
Those purple plums clouded in powder blue,
Those pears, green-yellow with a rose highlight.

The zinnias stand so stiff they might be metal.
The wasp has come to rest on a green pear,
And as fierce light attacks the fruit and petal,
We sigh and feel the thunder in the air.

We are suspended between fruit and flower;
The dying, the unripe possess our day.
By what release of will, what saving power
To taste the fruit, to throw the flowers away?

Hello!

This is the first of three posts with photographs of Zinnias from Oakland Cemetery that I took in August and in October — a timeframe that demonstrates the long blooming cycle for these members of the Aster family, whose wide variety of different colors is well-known among floral connoisseurs and well-described in the poem I excerpted at the top of this post.

As far as I know, Oakland has but one collection of zinnias, which start to appear in late summer in a location I previously photographed during the spring (see Land of Azaleas and Roses)…

… and proceed to gradually replace the roses, irises, and greens you see in this photo with their tall, densely-leafed stems. By September and October, Zinnias will have filled out the section at the top of the wall and popped through the sandy hillside next to it, leading to displays like this (taken from atop the wall at the same location), where you can still see some of the rosebush branches they’ve crowded out:

Whenever I’ve photographed these Zinnias, the entire scene is very busy with pollinators, typically small moths, butterflies, and a variety of bees. Just watching their movements, without even taking pictures, becomes a nature study in itself — an experience similar to visiting a butterfly sanctuary and one that is unrivaled elsewhere in the gardens. A couple of years ago, I focused one of my posts on the striking orange and black fritillaries traveling from flower to flower (see Zinnias and Fritillaries from 2023); and this year, I was able to capture several other pollinators. The first group of photos below shows a honeybee, a small orange-brown butterfly that is most likely a Fiery Skipper common to the southeast, and a Black Swallowtail noted for its dark colors with iridescent blue shading.

The flowers in this first post show one of several distinctive Zinnia forms, a single-flowered zinnia — where “single flower” refers to the flat row of petals surrounding the pear-shaped seed structure at the center that’s topped with tiny composite flowers (often yellow or orange ones that look like flowers growing out of other flowers), which attract pollinators and lead them to both the nectar- and pollen-producing segments of the plants. In the second post, we’ll see more of this single-flowered form but in different shapes and colors; and in the last post, we’ll look at double-flowered zinnias featuring multiple petal rows that are typically shaped liked and about the same size as a golf ball, but a pretty one.

The circular flower petal row in the single-flowered Zinnia makes a convenient landing pad for our pollinators, providing one of the reasons Zinnias attract so many different kinds simultaneously. They help the flowers transmit pollen and seed the ground with future generations, something that leads to propagation of next year’s crop even if the original plants are annuals rather than perennials. The quotation I included at the top of this post covers these concepts in some detail, illustrating how the plants provide biological diversity through their attraction to multiple pollinators, which also explains why this crop of Zinnias expands every year even if the garden’s landscapers don’t plant new ones at the start of each season. Unlike their counterparts that are bred in separate fields to maintain genetic distinction and isolate specific colors and forms for distribution and sale, however, these Oakland Zinnias are more likely to cross-breed and share genetic characteristics — thereby blooming in a variety of different colors and blended forms that give them a more random appearance, like a vibrant patch of wildflowers growing on the side of a road.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

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!