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Lantana, Wild and Tame

November 15, 2022, 8:24 pm November 15, 2022 0

From The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (Vol. 4) by Liberty Hyde Bailey:

“The lantanas are free flowering in winter and summer, but an odor of foliage and flowers that is disagreeable to many persons prevents them from popular use as cut-flowers. They are very useful in window-gardens and the dwarf kinds make good subjects for hanging-baskets. From the window they may be transferred to the open in summer, where they grow profusely.

“The lantana is not particular as to soil, provided the exposure is sunny, and also that the soil is well supplied with moisture at least until a fair growth has been made. When well established the plants do not seem to mind drought, and continue bright and attractive in the hottest weather. They should not be transplanted out in the open before danger of frost is over. If the old plants are wanted for propagation, cut them back and transfer to pots. In September, and when they start into new growth the soft wood will furnish cuttings that root easily….

“Gardeners train them into fine standards, as prim and shapely as need be.”

From “Some Remarks on the Nature of Contrast” in Lantana Lane by Eleanor Dark:

“Lantana is generally termed a Weed. We go further, hereabouts, and call it a Pest, to say nothing of less printable names. But in fact it is not altogether useless, and it is not so much wicked as crazy. It preserves, through all its misdemeanours, a kind of feckless innocence which, while often inducing extreme exasperation, still disarms hostility. We have become used to it — as those who work in lunatic asylums become used to mental aberration.

“Other weeds, such as Noogoora burr, Cobblers’ Pegs, Crowsfoot, Groundsel and Stinking Roger, are systematic and purposeful enemies — Napoleons and Hitlers of the vegetable world, shameless aggressors bent upon territorial conquest; but the lantana, poor fool, is not really greedy for lebensraum. Like an amiable, gangling half-wit who, without the slightest intention of incommoding anyone, gets under everyone’s feet, it simply keeps alive, and grows.”

Hello!

As I’ve featured it here many times before, early this fall I only took a few photos of some of the lantana growing on my property. Click this lantana tag if you’d like to take a look at the previous years’ galleries.

Since the flowers are small — typically about an inch in diameter — lantana is always an excellent subject for macro photography, even moreso perhaps because its stiff stems keep the flowers from swaying too much when it’s windy. It’s not flat — the tiny petals curve backward on a rounded structure about the size of a large marble — so it gives The Photographer a chance to practice achieving balance between depth of field and focus with a macro lens. You can see the difference among the set of images below: those with the sharpest focus on the flowers were taken at f-stops f/16 or f/19; those with a softer overall appearance (especially in the backgrounds) were taken at f/9 or f/11.

I like this variation — it’s officially called Mary Ann Lantana — because it packs so many colors in such small spaces. I mean, really, how many flowers can you think of that exhibit all these distinctly different tones?

Each spring, lantana varieties occupy a lot of space in southeastern garden centers, packed onto long tables in the tiniest plastic pots the stores carry, each pot sporting a single plug with just two or three foot-long stems. That’s how all of mine started, but they spread rapidly, filling up open ground spaces or stuffing a pot with new roots, sometimes shooting a long root through the pot’s drainage hole and deep into the ground. One had a big surprise for The Gardner when — in a frenzy of relocating pots — he grabbed a potted lantana, the lantana held its ground, and The Gardener fell on his ass.

But I’ve dug them up and pulled them out and replanted them many times, and they never seem to mind. Some wild varieties are considered invasive even here in Georgia; those perennial and annual variations available from garden centers are not. The annual varieties — despite being annuals — often return for a few years, and may continue to grow back without blooming but still produce beautiful thick batches of spear-tip-shaped, saturated-green leaves.

The second quotation at the top of this post, from the book Lantana Lane by Australian author Eleanor Dark, is in a book chapter whose full title is…

Some Remarks upon the Nature of Contrast with Special Reference to the Habits and Characteristics of Ananas comosus and Lantana camara and an Examination of their Economic and Psychological Effect upon Homo Sapiens

… which is a humorous mouthful. The contrast examined by the author compares pineapple plants (Ananas comosus) with lantana shrubs, both of which present challenges for Australia’s farmers and ecologists because of their unchecked growth, yet only one of the two — the lantana — meets the definition of “noxious” weed.

Because a weed is just a plant with a bad reputation, pineapple plants are let off the hook since they can at least bolster Australia’s economy (lots of pineapple for pizza, folks!) whereas lantana plants just tangle everybody up until they’re cut down or smothered with deadly chemicals (and are even then only in remission). Having wrestled to untangle and prune some that grew beyond their garden borders a couple of times, I can relate.

The book is mostly fiction, containing a series of short stories or vignettes about various characters and their struggles to live with lantana. In that sense it follows a typical literary theme of “man versus nature” or “civilization versus wilderness” — with the antagonist taking the form of a shrub whose exuberant growth will not be stopped. It’s unusual for a plant to feature this prominently in a work of fiction, so that — along with Ms. Dark’s lyrical writing style — makes for a delicious read. Lantana becomes an ominous presence in many scenes, not entirely unlike its appearance in the 2001 murder-mystery Lantana (also set in Australia) where the shrub waved menacingly throughout the movie and (spoiler alert!) was used to hide a corpse. Stand aside, Audrey Jr. — The Little Shop of Horrors is amateur hour compared to exploding invasions of lantana.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Scarlet Red Canna Lilies

November 11, 2022, 2:03 pm September 30, 2023 4

From “Canna” in Bulbs and Tuberous-Rooted Plants: Their History, Description, Methods of Propagation and Complete Directions for their Successful Culture in the Garden, Dwelling and Greenhouse (1893) by C. L. Allen:

“Although the Canna is not a bulb, it is always associated with bulbs. It would seem out of place anywhere else, and a list of bulbs would appear incomplete without it, as would any collection of ornamental plants. But few plants are better known than the Cannas, and few less appreciated. Because of [their] free-growing habit, thriving under almost any circumstances, they are generally grown without care and in a manner that does not, in any degree, develop their beauty or usefulness….

“Although a swamp plant, it will thrive most luxuriantly in dry soil, if made rich. For large groups on the lawn, for planting against fences or unsightly places it has no equal in the list of ornamental plants. One of its great attractions is that it will grow anywhere, and always ornament its surroundings….

“Whether in clumps or in rows, the plants will completely cover the ground, forming an impenetrable screen when planted at that distance apart.”

From Understanding Color in Photography by Bryan Peterson and Susana Heide Schellenberg:

“Years ago, Kodak was fond of telling photographers to ‘put a little bit of red in your compositions and the world will notice.’ This is because red is the most advancing color. It immediately comes forward to grab the viewer’s attention, no matter where it is in the composition. In fact, all warm colors — not only red, but also orange and yellow — advance. Cooler colors, such as blue and green, recede, falling into the background. By combining advancing and receding colors, you can make your subject pop and add depth to your image.”

Hello!

The official name of the plant in these photos is: Cannova Bronze Scarlet Canna Lily. The hardiness quote above — from a book published in 1893 — is certainly appropriate, and I’ve grown a couple of different canna varieties in large pots in my courtyard. They’ve done quite well that way, and, possibly, will get a new location in the ground next spring where they can spread superiously without any potted constraints. They don’t seem to care too much whether they have a lot of sun or a little, and I’ve even grown them in my pond — where they’ll come back for several years (though the pond gets only limited filtered sunlight), as long as we don’t have a hard freeze (and maybe even if we do).

Canna flowers have always seemed odd to me — not unattractive but with a somewhat alien looking structure. Only about half of the flower petals ever fully open, and, unlike, say, irises, I don’t find interesting things to photograph from different camera angles. They all look alike to me, regardless of how I approach them, so I don’t photograph them that often. The leaves captivate me more; and as you can see in the second trio of photos below, they open with a distinct uncurling effect, growing rapidly in the first few days while showing off stripes of red, orange, yellow, and green. The leaves seem to glow — especially in morning light — and I suspect they may have evolved that extra luminosity to attract pollinators.

I took the first three photographs early in the day, and the last four in late afternoon — then studied how their red color (which is pretty intense) varied between the first and last. The color red can be a challenge to photograph and process “correctly” (search for Why is red hard to photograph? if the subject interests you), but I noticed right off the bat that the morning photos seemed cooler in color than those taken in the afternoon; and, indeed, Lightroom shows much more yellow (or orange as a blend of yellow and red) in the histogram and color panels for the last four. I don’t think this necessarily means that morning light produced cooler colors than afternoon light (one of the many color photography questions for which you can find the exact opposite answer from different websites (see Is morning or afternoon light warmer?)) — but more likely occurred for other reasons. You see, my canna lilies are in front of a patio table with a large umbrella over it, and in the morning there’s more shade on the cannas than in the afternoon — because the sun rises over the back of the umbrella but sets toward the front, allowing more sunlight to ray on the plants as the day progresses. So, short version, in the afternoon there’s more white/yellow light on the plants, which desaturates the red and highlights the orange, since orange is often within the color ranges of anything our eyes dub as “red.”

That’s all pretty nerdy, I suppose, but it can be fun to try and sort out why colors appear the way they do — especially when dealing with natural subjects where color emerges at the molecular level, but our eyes tend to ignore distinctions and focus on dominant shades. If I asked you “what color are these flowers?” — you wouldn’t say that they’re red with a bit of orange and some flashes of yellow and maybe even some blue… you would simply say: “They’re red!”

I recently learned color production in plants is called biological pigment, and their pigments are segregated into different categories based on the colors those plants produce (see What Makes Flowers So Colorful for an excellent overview). Red, as it turns out, produces highly reflective wavelengths, which in part accounts for how excessively saturated it often appears to our eyes and our cameras.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

White Amaryllis, in Black-and-White

October 29, 2022, 3:44 pm October 30, 2022 2

From On Light and Shadow by Michael Freeman:

“If the subject is unusual, and photographed in a way that isn’t completely obvious, there’s an advantage to flat, axial lighting in that it takes away the modelling clues that we would normally expect, and helps the image to be a little ambiguous. This isn’t so unexpected, because whatever basic image quality you remove from shooting, what remains steps up to be more prominent.

“In the same way, if you remove colour from imagery and shoot in black and white, the qualities of shape, form and line take over more.”

Hello!

For this post, I converted the color images from the previous post (see White Amaryllis) to black and white. While it may seem a little odd to render photos of white flowers this way, it’s interesting, I think, to see how flowers we consider white are actually a blend of white, yellow, and green — especially along those sections of the flower blossoms closest to the leaves and stems.

With that in mind, I included two extra galleries at the end of this post: one showing the color and black-and-white versions side-by-side, and a slideshow (using the “fade” effect that’s available with the WordPress slideshow block) that helps highlight the transition from color to monochrome.

Thanks for taking a look!

White Amaryllis

October 27, 2022, 8:39 pm October 27, 2022 2

From “Inside Amaryllis” in Amaryllis by Starr Ockenga:

“Flowering plants are divided into two classes: monocotyledons and dicotyledons. The amaryllis is classified among the monocotyledons, which typically have seeds with a single cotyledon, or seedleaf. Its foliage is narrow with parallel veins. The flower components come in multiples of three. The sepals, collectively called the calyx, are outermost; the petals, together called the corolla, form the inner circle and are sometimes narrower in form….

“Amaryllis’ sepals and petals, which are together referred to as tepals, come in an enormous range of colors from the most pastel pink to vivid orange, from clear white to velvety red. Many, particularly when kissed by the sun, have an iridescent glow. The ridge in the center of each petal is the keel, shaped like that of a boat. Flowers are horizontal to drooping, trumpet-shaped, or borne in lily-like umbels. Some flowers are open-faced, while others are more closed and irregular, like orchids.”

Hello!

There are lots of new barely-pronounceable words in the quotation at the top of this post! Click the Wikipedia links if you would like to learn more about the botanical terms for the parts of these flowers.

The flowers in this post are likely a variant of crinum, but I liked the sound of the word “amaryllis” better as the title of the post; and since crinum is a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, I’m being approximately accurate. There were very few white flowers left when I took these photos; their petals seem more thin and fragile than all the red, pink, and magenta amaryllis I photographed, and most had been too damaged by rounds of August and September thunderstorms to make suitable pictures. But I did manage to cobble together enough for one post, and will have a second post with black-and-white conversions.

I think I’m a mite envious of all the autumn color photos starting to appear on other people’s sites, as it only this week turned cold enough here in the urban Atlanta jungle for the leaves to start changing their outfits. There’s a little bit of red and yellow popping up, but not enough to get my camera’s attention so far. So I’ll round out the next week or two with some late-blooming southern flowers: the always-reliable lantana and canna lily (not a lily!), and the tiny trumpet-flowers of dipladenia, a shrubby relative of the fast-growing mandevilla. These plants — the first two are perennial versions and the other two are annuals — all last until well after our first cold nights, and often keep blooming into November even if we have a couple of freezies.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Red and Pink Amaryllis, in Black-and-White (3 of 3)

October 24, 2022, 8:14 pm October 24, 2022 0

From “Amaryllis Through the Centuries” in Amaryllis by Starr Ockenga:

“Amaryllis: elegant, sensual, and mysterious….

“According to the classical poets Theocritus, Ovid, and Virgil, Amaryllis was a virginal nymph, timid and shy but with a spine of steel. She fell deliriously in love with Alteo, an icy-hearted shepherd reputed to be as handsome as Apollo and as strong as Hercules, and determined that she would be true only to him, no matter what the consequences. Indifferent to her charms, Alteo claimed his only desire was that a new flower be brought to him, a flower that had never before existed in the world….

“Amaryllis consulted the Oracle at Delphi and was instructed to pierce her heart with a golden arrow at Alteo’s door. This she did, dressed in maiden’s white, for thirty consecutive nights, dripping blood all the while. The shepherd finally opened his door to discover a flower with crimson petals, which had sprung from the blood of Amaryllis’s heart.”