Lilies in Meadows

Posted on October 11, 2016 by Janet

I spent an hour on Thanksgiving weekend planting a dozen Orienpet lily bulbs in my meadow gardens at the cottage on Lake Muskoka. A deservedly popular group resulting from complex hybridizing of Oriental and Trumpet lilies, they came from the Lily Nook in Neepawa, Manitoba, which has been in the lily-breeding business for more than 30 years. The Lily Nook also sells popular lilies outside their own registry, offering 150 varieties through their catalogue. I’ve always been impressed with their service and the quality of their bulbs.

When I say I planted the bulbs in “meadow gardens”, I mean either one of two small fields on either side of the cottage, below, but also in….

..garden beds that I originally intended to keep somewhat tame, which have now been invaded by their wild meadow brethren. This is ‘Conca d’Or’ – my favourite Orienpet, with blue Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and ‘Gold Plate’ yarrow (Achillea filipenulina)….

Planting lilies is easy, and much like planting spring bulbs such as tulips or daffodils. The difference is that lilies can be planted in either fall or spring, unlike spring-flowering bulbs which must be planted in autumn. Fall planting works well when autumns are long and relatively mild, allowing the bulbs to root nicely before freeze-up. In my case, there is no beautiful, rich soil to work; it is truly a mess of wild grass and wildflower or perennial roots and granite bed rock. I shifted my spade around to find 10-12 inches of clear soil, then dug out any roots I could and sifted the soil a little with my hands. I had a very small amount of seed-starting mix that I added to the hole (I would recommend a better soil, if you have it, to give a good start), then plunked the fat, scaled lily bulb on top. Lilies prefer rich, free-draining but reasonably moist soil.

I gathered a pail of pine needles, and after backfilling the hole with the bulb, I mulched the soil with the needles and watered everything well. Experts recommend mulching Orienpets in cold regions, but apart from the pine needles, I’ve relied on our generally guaranteed deep snow cover to get them through winter. The pine needle mulch at least guarantees a short time for the bulb to emerge in spring without encroachment by other plants.

And when I say encroachment, in meadow gardening it’s a given that life is cheek-to-jowl and plants must be able to survive in those conditions. Here’s the Asiatic lily ‘Pearl Justien’ with wild sweet pea (Lathyrus latifolius).

This year, I bought 3 bulbs each of pink ‘Tabledance’ (who makes these names up?) and ‘Esta Bonita’, three of ‘Northern Delight’ (soft melon orange) and three more of my fave: pale-yellow ‘Conca d’Or’. The Lily Nook always adds a free bonus bulb, usually an Asiatic. While they are lovely in my city garden, they don’t seem to take as well to the meadows at the lake. The one below faded away after a few years of rough living.

Orienpets have inherited the spicy fragrance of their pink and white Oriental parents and the swoony scent of the orange and yellow Trumpets. So I’m careful to site my lilies where their exquisite perfume can be enjoyed up close. That means near a sitting area, as with ‘Conca d’Or’, below…

…. or along a grassy path where walkers can enjoy inhaling. That’s peachy ‘Visa-Versa’ at the front, and the orange Asiatic ‘Pearl Justien’ in the rear.

…. or beside the stairs to the dock….

They are not immune to disease (especially after a rainy spring, when the stems and leaves can develop a blight) and certain little critters love them, especially red lily beetle (I don’t have many of these) and grasshoppers, like the ones below noshing on ‘Robina’ (I have thousands of these!)

This one reminded me of Dr. Strangelove riding the bomb.

Deer will take the odd chomp off the top – and that, of course means the end of the flower. But when they are happy(ish), they are my guilty pleasure – since everything else in my meadows is grown for wildlife and pollinator attraction. The liies are just for me, a little hit of luscious intermingled with the do-gooders. Let them keep company with the red ‘Lucifer’ crocosmia as it brings in the hummingbirds to sup….

…. and with the orange butterfly milkweed, as it attracts bumble bees and monarch butterflies.

Let them hang out with the bee-friendly veronica (V. spicata ‘Darwin’s Blue’)….

…. and the pink wild beebalm (Monarda fistulosa) with its hordes of bumble bees.

Here’s a tiny video of ‘Conca d’Or’, (above) playing partner to beebalm.

Yes, my meadows are big enough for a few pinup gals, like ‘Visa-Versa’, below.

And the garden beds look all the lovelier for a ravishing beauty among the humble blackeyed susans.

Designing with Little Blue Spring Blossoms

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Janet

It’s April! And the snow is gone!! Following through with my New Year’s resolution to blog about one colour per month, that means it’s my blue month.

I’d like to show you five of my favourite “little blue spring blossoms”, with some good ideas for using them in combination with other spring plants

(1) Where I live in Toronto, early spring is resplendent with the wondrous sight of “blue lawns” carpeted with tiny Siberian squill (Scilla siberica). This is not a bulb to plant if you’re the kind of gardener who likes things neat and tidy. By nature, it’s a spreader and it will spread far and wide: into neighbouring flower beds – even into your neighbour’s flower beds! But it is harmless, and unlike weedy grasses, after flowering it obligingly disappears below ground until next spring. Since we tend to see them in the thousands, it’s always a revelation to get down on the ground and look up into one beautiful little blossom.

Look at that bright blue pollen! Incidentally, honey bees, bumble bees and other native bees use that abundant pollen, as well as the nectar and pollen of two of my other blue blossoms, lungwort and grape hyacinths, below, to provision their hives and nests in early spring.

Speaking of carpets, what about this great vignette at Toronto’s Spadina House, below? Isn’t it a brilliant way to dress up the legs of boring old forsythia?

I love mixing other early spring bulbs with Siberian squill. This is a classic combination with the bulb I’ll be talking about next, Scilla forbesii or glory-of-the-snow (lower right corner, below). Many gardeners still know this blue bulb with the starry white centre as Chionodoxa, but the taxonomists have done the genetic sequencing and lumped it with the scillas. It tends to be a less aggressive colonizer than S. siberica, but does multiply nicely, and looks enchanting mixed with the squill under a forsythia.

Another good partner for Siberian squill is a very much underused spring corm, Greek windflower, Anemone blanda. Though it comes in blues and mauve-pinks, this is ‘White Shades’, below.

Because they emerge so early, some of our native, northeastern spring ephemeral wildflowers can also be paired with Siberian squill. This is bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) with its starry flowers just opening.

(2) My second little blue spring blossom is glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, syn. Chionodoxa forbesii). Here we see it emerging through ornamental grasses.

The pairing below is one of my favourites, of glory-of-the-snow with the gorgeous spring fumewort, Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’. I’ve blogged about these beautifully-coloured corydalis before, and can’t say enough about them

(3) One of the earliest spring perennials, appearing with the hellebores, is lungwort (Pulmonaria). There are a number of species and hybrids, the most common being Pulmonaria saccharata, which tends to have pink buds emerging as blueish flowers atop the spotted leaves that gave the genus its common name. (In the medieval Doctrine of Signatures, the spotted leaves were likened to the spots on the lung that were caused by pleurisy and other “pulmonary” ailments, so it was used as a kind of magical medicinal plant). Here it is at Toronto’s Casa Loma castle gardens with spring’s earliest “daisy”, perennial leopardbane daisy (Doronicum caucasicum).

But to get true blue flowers in lungwort, you need to find plants from the P. angustifolia and P. longifolia groups with unspotted green leaves, such as ‘Blue Ensign’, below.

At Casa Loma, I love seeing these blue lungworts used in the shady woodland garden with native Ontario wildflowers like merrybells (Uvularia grandiflora), below.

(4) Thinking about Casa Loma brings me to my next blue flower for spring, Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica). This is the famous slope below the castle in early May, shimmering with the blue of this native perennial.

And in Casa Loma’s shady woodland, Virginia bluebells are grown with bright yellow woodland poppies (Stylophorum diphyllum), below, to beautiful effect.

.Here’s a closer look at that classic combination.

And there couldn’t be a nicer companion for ubiquitous ostrich ferns (Matteucia struthiopteris) than Virginia bluebells.

Two more excellent woodland pairings: Virginia bluebell with yellow barrenwort (Epimedium x versicolor ‘Sulphureum’)…..

…and with red barrenwort (Epimedium x rubrum).

(5) My fifth blue spring blossom is grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum). With its spikes of grape-scented, indigo-blue bells, this is a bulb that everyone can grow.

It pairs beautifully with the earliest hardy spurge, Euphorbia polychroma.

And, of course, it looks fabulous with mid-season tulips, especially planted in a sinuous blue stream as here, at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

It’s particularly effective with darling pink Tulipa saxatilis.

Want more spring blue-and-pink? You can’t beat grape hyacinths with pink false rockcress (Arabis caucasica var. rosea), one of the earliest perennials to emerge.

And in my own garden, I’ve loved the classic, all-blue combination of grape hyacinths and biennial forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica).

Let me finish with a little tribute to blue: a tiny bouquet of perfumed grape hyacinths with confederate violets (Viola sororia f. priceana) and forget-me-nots.

And those forget-me-nots? They have demanded their very own blog. Coming soon!

Anarchy and Colour in the Garden

Posted on December 9, 2015 by Janet

I’ve never been very good at following trends, especially as they relate to fashion – whether couture, interior design or gardening. These seem like things we can figure out for ourselves, without needing a seal of approval from some corporate “trendsetter” (even if they happen to be a legitimate authority on colour chemistry and matchy-matchy). So I’m not a big fan of the Pantone Colour of the Year. “How did that even get to be a thing?”, you might ask (okay, I might ask). It started in 1999, at the dawn of the new millennium, when Pantone forecasters predicted the Colour of the Year for 2000 as Cerulean Blue 15-4020. Pantone Color Institute’s Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman waxed poetic in that first brave forecast: “Surrounding yourself with Cerulean blue could bring on a certain peace because it reminds you of time spent outdoors, on a beach, near the water – associations with restful, peaceful, relaxing times. In addition, it makes the unknown a little less frightening because the sky, which is a presence in our lives every day, is a constant and is always there.”

As the years passed, we saw Fuchsia Rose (2001), True Red (2002) and Sand Dollar (2006, a serious beige downer labelled as “neutral” and presciently, as it turned out, worried about the economy!)

I liked the colour for 2009: Mimosa 14-0848, which was also designed to offer sunny comfort from the vagaries of the economy (and, of course, is a pretty swell brunch cocktail, which may be the same thing). But Eiseman was more philisophical: “The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance. Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation.”

Can you remember a time when every women’s wear store wasn’t filled with colour-coded fashion? Apart from black, there’s often one predominant hue that looks suspiciously Pantone-approved. I happened to be clothes-shopping in 2013, thus my Pantone Emerald Green lightweight hiking jacket came with me to the Arctic that summer. (And you can tell I’m drawn to complementary contrasts, with my fashion-forward scarlet fleece!)

Pantone’s colour for 2014 was Radiant Orchid, but 2015 went seriously downhill with liver-hued Marsala (even though archaeologists and soil scientists adored it) and makeup giant Sephora rolled out a new Marsala line. Partnership, of course, plays a huge role in this shtick and product promotion is the name of the game – Pantone still makes colour guides and expensive swatch libraries for designers.

Colour trending as it relates to the garden, however, is a little trickier. If I were picking a garden colour of the year, I’d likely be boring and say… green! What’s not to love about chlorophyll? But let’s think about Pantone’s colours for 2016: Rose Quartz and Serenity (the first year for two colours!).

Gardeners I know have joked that this year’s Pantone pairing sounds like a flashback to the 1980s, when tasteful perennial borders featured a soothing mix of light blue or lavender, pale pink or mauve, and a sprinkling of silver. But, in fact, pink(ish) and blue(ish) have always married well, even if they lost ground over the years to all-white gardens or hot-colored confections. There’s nothing wrong with a little romance! But I do like a little more guts in my plant combinations sometimes – intense cobalt-blue instead of “Serenity”, hot-pink instead of “Rose Quartz”. So, in the spirit of colour harmony, here are 16 beautiful choices for combining pink and blue, arranged from early spring to autumn.

Two of the earliest flowering spring bulbs are glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa) and Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.

Another early duo from Toronto’s Spadina House: pink false rockcress (Arabis caucasica ‘Rosea’) with grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum).

A lovely spring perennial pairing for part shade: pink barrenwort (Epimedium x rubrum) with Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

My own front garden was once a pink-and-blue confection in spring, when a variety of pink tulips flowered in a carpet of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) under hardy ‘Olga Mezitt’ and ‘Aglo’ small-flowered rhododendrons. In time, the rhodos sulked as summer-flowering prairie perennials emerged like giants around them, cutting off the sun and air circulation they needed. I kept the prairie….

Forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica), of course, can be paired effectively with all sorts of pink spring blossoms. Here’s a simple one for the herb garden, using bright pink ‘Forescate’ chives (Allium schoenoprasum).

Beautiful combinations of pink and blue can also be achieved with a can of paint! I passed this lovely building (a pottery studio) on my drive near Victoria, B.C. one spring day, and had to stop for a moment to enjoy the lovely juxtaposition of Clematis montana ‘Tetrarose’ against the periwinkle-blue wall. Wish someone had been there to compliment.

Late spring at Van Dusen Gardens in Vancouver features a laburnum arch and this delightful underplanting of pink bistort (Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’) with forget-me-nots and English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) with ‘Purple Sensation’ alliums (A. hollandicum) thrown in as exclamation points.

Perhaps the most classic early summer pairing of pink and blue is a pink rose like lovely ‘Bonica’ with a clear-blue delphinium, as in this pretty combination at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) and delphiniums look sensational together, too – as evidenced by this vignette from Toronto’s Spadina House gardens.

You can conjure up loads of pink-and-blue combos with summer annuals, but this one caught my eye: rose mallow (Lavateria trimestris ‘Silver Cup’) with gentian sage (Salvia patens ‘Blue Angel’).

A lovely duo for mid-summer from the Montreal Botanical Garden, purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ‘All That Jazz’) with globe thistle (Echinops bannaticus ‘Blue Pearl’).

More eye candy from the Montreal Botanical Garden, just using a simple blue door – but how effective, when the plant in front is luscious pink ‘Sweet Caroline’ swamp mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos)!

Perhaps the perennial closest to Pantone’s “Serenity” is wonderful Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia). Because of its long bloom period in mid-to-late summer, it can be married to myriad pink beauties. Here are just three, beginning with this scene from the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden, in which Russian sage’s companions are the stately astilbe A. tacquetii ‘Ostrich Plume’ with rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium).

A softer pairing perfectly echoing the pastel hues of Pantone’s 2016 twin stars is this late combination of Russian sage and the pink sedum Hylotelephium spectabile ‘Crystal Pink’.

And then there are the pink Japanese anemones for the final scene in Russian sage’s season, like Anemone x hybrida ‘Richard Ahrens’.

One last combination from my pink and blue arsenal features ‘Autumn Fire’ sedum (Hylotelphium spectabile) with the shrub blue mist bush or blue spirea (Caryopteris x clandonensis ‘Summer Sorbet’).

Star-of-Persia: An Onion Wrapped in a Mystery

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Janet

A few weeks ago, I began to write a blog on Allium cristophii, whose common name is star-of-Persia or Persian onion. As it’s now early autumn and bulb-buying time is on our gardening calendars, I wanted to share some images I’ve made over the years that show this ornamental onion as an unusual, but beautiful, component in a series of late-spring/early-summer plant vignettes, including the one below showing it cavorting with Astrantia major ‘Roma’ at the Toronto Botanical Garden. But in order to provide as much taxonomic background as possible, I began to dig a little into the history of the plant – an excavation that became either a dark pit or a productive mine, depending on how one views botanical trivia as an obsession.

As a somewhat ‘mature’ gardener, I remember when bulbs were often found for sale as Allium albopilosum C.H. Wright, referring to the white hairs on the leaves. That taxon was assigned to a herbarium specimen in 1903 by Kew herbarium assistant Charles Henry Wright, and describes the lovely illustration below, which was made in 1904 by John Nugent Fitch for Joseph Hooker’s Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (Volume 130, ser. 3 nr. 60 tabl. 7982). However, the name was rejected in 1995 as a synonym by Kew taxonomist Rafael Govaërts, in favour of Allium cristophii subsp. cristophii Trautv. (for Ernst Rudolf von Trautvetter 1809-1889, Russian botanist and former director of the Botanical Garden in St. Petersburg).

Fair enough. All who are familiar with the plant know it as Allium cristophii these days, though it is almost always misspelled in the trade as “christophii”. Perhaps it’s that irritating lack of accuracy that made me look more deeply into the history of the plant. Who was “Cristoph”? How was he related to Trautvetter? And therein, as Winston Churchill once said of Russia, “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Interestingly, Russia figures in the plant’s nomenclature, for its earliest basonym, Allium bodeanum Regel , honours the Russian diplomat Baron Clément Augustus Gregory Peter Louis de Bode, first secretary to the Russian legation in Persia (now Iran). In 1845, he published a 2-volume memoir titled Travels in Lúristán and Arabistán. It’s available online via Google books, so naturally, I spent the better part of a few days skimming his rich account of his 67 day winter journey (December 23, 1840-February 28, 1841) from Tehran through Persia and back to Tehran – a journey of 353 farsangs (that’s the distance at which you can tell if a camel is white or black) or 1253 miles. I was looking for mention of the allium, of course, and though I knew the dates could not possibly agree with its flowering time, I was nevertheless intrigued to read his observation in this little passage, on pages 376-378 of Volume I, about another bulbous plant from the region, which is likely either a Puschkinia or Chionodoxa (now Scilla), given the “blue and white flower” and its early emergence alongside narcissus (likely N. tazetta). More importantly, it establishes his close relationship with Friedrich von Fischer, director of the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden – and presumably the consignee of bulbs of star-of-Persia gathered by de Bode at some other time.

Pg. 376, Volume I – (January 31, 1840). “At a quarter past nine, the village of Bú-l-feriz became discernible in the direction north by NNE. At half past nine, we crossed the river of Bú-l-feriz. At a quarter past ten am, we turned to NNW by NW, and passed by the remains of some stone walls. At three-quarters past ten, we crossed two rivulets, the second was a stream of some size, but both were overgrown with high reeds (kamish). At eleven am, our party ascended a hill, and went along a high table land with traces of cultivated ground and former habitations. It had been inhabited by the Bú-l-ferizi, who not able to resist the encroachments of the Bahmeï, had deserted the spot and removed near Behbehán.

The meadows are covered with narcissus and another bulbous plant with a root as large as a strong muscular fist, and called by the natives piyáz (onion), ‘unsul, or piyázi Gúristan, because it sometimes grows among tombs. This plant is known to the Persian apothecaries, and used, if I recollect right, as an astringent. The late Hakim Bashi of the Shah ‘Mirza-Baba, (a man esteemed and honoured by all who knew him), requested me before I set out on my journey, to procure him, if possible, some bulbs of this plant. which I did, and at the same time, sent a few to Mr. Fisher* (sic), the Director of the Botanical Gardens at St. Petersburg. I have since had the pleasure of seeing one of these plants thriving under the assiduous care of that gentleman. I am told that it bears a blue and white flower.” (* Friedrich Ernst Ludwig von Fischer (1782-1854) was a German-born Russian botanist and the director of the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden from 1823-1850.)

So that I don’t bore you completely with taxonomy, let’s have a brief pictorial interlude from our lovely allium – here with June peonies at Toronto’s Spadina House Museum & Gardens.

Leaving aside Baron de Bode and Allium bodeanum, whose collection details either went unrecorded or are buried in the 19^th century papers at the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden, let’s move on to the name Allium cristophii. Its first record (written as “Cristophi”) was published by botanist Ernst Rudolf Von Trautvetter in the Russian botanical journal Trudy Imperatorskago S.-Peterburgskago botanicheskago sada.Acta Horti etropolitani – Volume 9, 1884, page 268. Interestingly, though the plant is listed with description of the parts preserved in the herbarium, Trautvetter’s record of its supposed discovery is not exactly a glowing paean to the mysterious Dr. Cristoph. For it reads in Latin, “Allium Cristophi Trautv. (Molium Rgl.All. p 12) – Dubium est utrum in Turcomania australi anne in Karabach species haec a Cristoph reperta sit.” There are a few ways to translate this cryptic comment, but let’s go with this: “It’s doubtful that (or whether) this species was discovered by Cristoph in south Turkomania (or) in Karabach.” So, where does that leave us? Is Trautvetter doubting that Cristoph found it in either of those places, or that Cristoph found it at all? Again, a mystery inside an enigma – since it sheds no light on “Cristoph”. And yes, it would be nice to know who the man is, given how lovely his namesake looks with Geranium psilostemon, seen here in the third week of June at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden.

Certainly, the most knowledgeable contemporary taxonomist working with the genus Allium is Reinhard M. Fritsch of the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research at Gatersleben, Germany. It was he who proposed conserving A. cristophii Trautv. against A. bodeanum Regel (in Taxon 48, August 1999, Item 1419, page 577), though his bid to change the name to “christophii” based on common usage, was rejected. The following capture of the page shows the taxonomic history. The part that interested me is: “The first herbarium specimen with hairy leaves was collected by Cristoph in 1883 or somewhat earlier, in Transcaspia near Akhalteke (then also named Karabakh). The corresponding sheet bears three rather complete leaves (10-12 mm broad and up to 45 cm long) and a scape (38 cm long) with an inflorescence in full bloom. Trautvetter (l.c.) described it as “A. cristophi”.” But who was Cristoph?

In 2013, Fritsch co-authored a comprehensive treatise on alliums with the exciting title A Taxonomic Review of Allium subg. Melanocrommyum in Iran. Allium cristophii, say the authors, “is an extremely polymorphous taxon especially concerning shape and density of indumentums of leaf laminae, length and diameter of scapes, dimension and density of inflorescences, as well as shape and color of tepals.” This statement accurately reflects what I’ve found so fascinating about Allium cristophii, having observed it in numerous gardens. Sometimes the starry flowers are silvery-lilac, other times they’re much more violet; sometimes they rest on squat, short stems, like this one, barely reaching the top of hosta leaves, at Toronto’s Casa Loma…..

….or hosting a clambering Clematis integrifolia, standing no more than 30-45 cm (12-18 inches) tall…

…while in other situations, the bulbs can grow decidedly taller, to 60-90 cm (60-90 inches), as with Geranium pratense here at Spadina House. This seems to be one of the vagaries of the species, and what you get with one bulb purchase isn’t necessarily what you’ll get with another.

Nonetheless, such a strikingly large inflorescence can look completely awkward on its own, and star-of-Persia definitely needs company to show off its merits. It’s even fun popping up through a shrub, as with this Spiraea japonica ‘Little Princess’ at Van Dusen Gardens.

Other beautiful companions include catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’), shown here at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Meadow sage (Salvia nemorosa ‘Amethyst’) is a perfect June partner, also at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Grasses make great pairings with alliums, and A. cristophii is no exception. Here it is at Van Dusen Gardens with Bowles’ golden grass (Milium effusum ‘Aureum’), illustrating the fact that purples and chartreuse/limes always make good partners.

And how great is this combination, star-of-Persia held in the embrace of variegated Chinese maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Variegatus’) at the Toronto Botanical Garden?

As with all the ornamental onions, of course, Allium cristophii offers abundant nectar for bees, especially honey bees.

But it still bothered me. Who was “Cristoph”? In describing the etymology of the specific epithet, Fritsch and Abbasi write: “Dr. Cristoph was a physician and plant collector travelling in the Caucasus, North Iran, Transcaspia…” Perhaps, but his name did not emerge amongst the plant collectors at the time. And misinformation, as always, abounds on the internet. An online company called Seedaholic says: “The first herbarium specimen with hairy leaves was collected by Eugenius Johann Christoph Esper (1742-1810), a German entomologist in 1883.” Despite the obvious difficulty of collecting herbarium samples in remote regions more than 70 years after you’ve died, it seemed more likely that Trautvetter was referring to a plant collector associated with Russia or St. Petersburg. (And it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only obsessive who’s gone on record looking for the mysterious Dr. Cristoph. You should be able to click to translate from Dutch to English. She & I came to the same conclusion, independently. ) So I kept digging; perhaps Cristoph wasn’t a plant collector, but was indeed an entomologist. Then this obituary popped up, from a Google books scan of the Entomologists Monthly magazine, Vols. 30-31. Could Hugo Theodor Christoph (1831-1894) be the mysterious “Cristoph”? The dates fit for 1885, and he was collecting in Transcaspia for Russia. Along with butterflies, might he have gathered a starry onion? And was his name misspelled by Trautvetter, back in St. Petersburg?

If for no other reason than giving him his historic due, I’d love to discover the identity of this mysterious “doctor” whose name is attached to one of the most interesting of the ornamental onions, a bulb whose starry spheres add just the right touch to romantic June garden vignettes like the one below, at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

So, Dr. Cristoph — or Dr. Christoph — whoever you were, here’s to you!

One Lily, Three Lenses

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Janet

The little quackgrass meadows at my cottage on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto, are admittedly a tough, alien environment for prima donna lilies. Nonetheless, several years ago I thought it would be fun (in a perverse way), to see how these highly-bred bulbs might fare when planted in my sandy, acidic soil alongside prairie wildflowers and grasses that have evolved to thrive in such conditions. A chance buy of an unnamed one (possibly ‘Northern Delight’?), below, at a local garden centre whetted my appetite for more.

So in 2010, I ordered an assortment of Orienpet (Oriental x Trumpet) hybrid lilies from one of our great Canadian suppliers, Manitoba’s The Lily Nook. They arrived that fall and I dug them in the same day as I planted the narcissus. In 2011, I had a fine show of exotic lilies, and their perfume scented the path between the meadows and delighted people walking by. However, over the years, they’ve struggled with problems too numerous to mention, but viral diseases and chomping insects are top of the list. Not to mention the vegetarian deer and groundhogs that like nothing better than an emerging lily.

So when the lilies come into bloom in July, all fresh and happy in their peacock way, it’s a bit of a celebration. This year, I thought I’d mark it by photographing my favourite, the beautiful pink ‘Robina’. An Arie Peterse introduction in 2004, it was considered a seminal event in lily hybridizing, combining the beautiful, solid colours and fragrance of Orientals with the vigour and stature of Trumpets. But for fun, rather than just do a few portraits, I decided to photograph my lily with all three of my lenses, to show the way each interprets the subject and the setting. Because I often carry all three in one bag, I use two camera backs that are reasonably good quality but certainly not professional models: a Canon Rebel t2i and a Canon 60D, both of which have 18 megapixel sensors. More important for me on 6-hour shooting days is manageable weight, plus flexibility of use, as I switch frequently from wide-angle to telephoto to closeup But I am not a techie; my camera use is intuitive, rather than technical. And I do not shoot raw, but rely on the good engineers at Canon to give me a starting point in image quality, and then I edit as I wish in Photoshop. Here are the lenses.

1. Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4.5 DC Zoom Macro Lens. This is my go-to all-purpose lens. It manages wide-angle to very good macro shots.

2. Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS Telephoto Zoom Lens. This is my sweetheart lens, one I bought used to replace a much lower-quality 75-300 telephoto zoom lens. Once you become accustomed to standing at least 3.9 feet (1.2 meters) away from your subject, you can do spectacular closeups of a quality that allows for cropping while retaining exceptional detail, e.g. bees and butterflies. It’s also a wonderful lens for capturing plant combinations. And though it’s my heaviest piece of equipment, it’s still considered a compact telephoto.

3. Canon Macro Lens EF 100 mm. I’ve been doing macro photography since the mid 1990s, and this is my workhorse closeup lens. It’s not digital, but adapts reasonably well to my digital cameras. But I’ve left it at home frequently since acquiring the 70-200. However, for this little exercise, I’m bringing it out. And I’m using its sidekick, the EF25 extension tube, which gives me 1.4x magnification “on film”, as we used to say back in the day.

(And I photographed them all with my little spy/travel camera, Canon’s SX50, with the 50x optical zoom.)

So….. where is the lily growing? Using my wide-angle lens #1 to show the landscape, it’s just a little up this granite hillside in very shallow, sandy, acidic soil, along with a dog’s breakfast of beebalm, heliopsis, lupines, rudbeckia, switch grass and quackgrass. This is a transient meadow I seeded to the west of our 12-year old house, as we wait for the pine-red oak forest to regenerate on the thin soil over bedrock. Red maples are now seeding into this meadow and there’s a little Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum) at rear, left. I will be sad when my meadows are gone to bush, but that should mesh quite nicely with my advanced old age!

Let’s walk a little further down the path and zoom that wide-angle lens up the hillside to see the young white pine (P. strobus) behind the lily and pick up its neighbours, orange butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and a little stand of wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa). And then there’s the quackgrass (Elymus repens) in front, a terrible invasive and enemy of prairie restorationists, which is in every plant portrait I make here at the lake. All in all, not a very compelling image. Documentary, my dear Watson.

Zoom the wide angle a little closer, but it’s still an essentially boring photo. And I don’t like the pine in the background – it’s distracting.

Still standing on the path below, I change to the telephoto 70-200. Ah, that’s better, A small vignette now blurring the background and picking up another neighbour, grass-leafed goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia) getting set to flower, at right. The soft backaground is one of the advantages of the telephoto’s shallow depth of field.

Now move the lily off centre and incorporate the neighbouring beebalm and I can almost pick out the bumble bee on the flowers in the rear. But here the shallow depth of field works against me, as the bee is slightly behind the lily and therefore not in focus. And what’s that on the edge of the lily? Hmm….must move closer.

Time to head up the path and change to my macro lens, so I can explore the reproductive parts of this beautiful flower and those little green legs on the edge. Like all monocots, the lily has flower parts in 3s or multiples of 3 So we have six velvety brown anthers held atop slender green filaments and six silky pink tepals (in other plants these would be called three petals and three sepals, but in lilies they are so similar as to form and function that they earn the name tepal.) And we see the sticky stigma at the tip of the style ready to accept the pollen. The raised papillae on the petals are visible too, but the macro lens also functions in a narrow depth of field so they’re unfocused. Also out of focus is the little green guest in this lily.

Time to screw on the extension tube and have a much closer look. Here is the stigma again, but now you can clearly see its three fused carpels beneath the epidermal tissue. It is from the stigma that pollen tubes will form when an insect brushes the flower with compatible pollen, which then travels to the ovary below where seed is formed.

And with my extension tube, I can now clearly see the little green grasshopper that will enjoy nibbling on my lily tepals in the week or so ahead as it grows into adulthood.

Fortunately, the chewed bits won’t be visible in the distance, which is just fine as I’ll enjoy my beautiful, perfumed ‘Robina’ lily from my bedroom window here at the lake.

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

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One Lily, Three Lenses

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