In a Fern Valley at Makaranga

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Janet

It’s Day 6 of our South Africa Garden Tour and we drive from our Durban beachfront hotel about 30 miles to the Outer West region and the town of Kloof. We’re here to spend the morning and have lunch at Makaranga Lodge. Once the property of a wealthy and passionate plantsman, the late Leslie Riggall, who called it Fern Valley Botanical Garden, he developed it over 26 years, building a vast collection of camellias, magnolias, bromeliads and orchids, among other plants. He was especially knowledgeable about vireya rhododendrons, contributing to the Vireya Vine journal and growing them from seed. Many of the plants grow around a series of ornamental ponds fed by a stream running through the valley.

When Leslie and Gladys Riggall moved to Panama in 2002, their neighbours Danna and Chick Flack bought the 25-acre property and merged it with their own five acres. They renamed it Makaranga after the indigenous wild poplars (Macaranga capensis) growing by the stream in the valley and the Makaranga people of Inyanga, Zimbabwe, where Danna was born. While Chick Flack developed a 22-room five-star boutique hotel, conference centre and spa, Danna, took on the garden, which is now available for weddings and also simply for the enjoyment of guests. With the help of landscaper Phil Page and a gardening staff of 18, she designed a series of lush, flowing gardens around Leslie Riggall’s original plant collection, adding indigenous South African plants in evocative naturalistic settings, such as this small rocky koppie in front of the hotel.

As I start my tour, I pause, quite awe-struck to see such a large collection of cycads – one man’s passion donated to this garden. As a stock photographer, I can’t help but be a little excited, and stop to photograph the species, shown here in a mosaic array. Who was George Walters? I cannot find any background on him, but I hope someone sees his lovely collection online and thinks of him. (* Note in the comments below that George himself found his lovely collection here and commented!)

I walk down the hill and — peering over the bromeliads — see what has become quite a familiar sight in botanical gardens in North America: beautiful Zimbabwean sculpture, which seems so well suited to the leafy surroundings of this garden.

The collection is by renowned carver Joseph Ndandrika (1941-2002). This piece is titled Father & Son.

On the way to the valley gardens, I pass a giant rainbow gum (Eucalpytus degluptus), its multicolored trunk being caressed by another cycad, this one the Australian Macrozamia miquelii, known as “burrowang” down under.

I peer into the Japanese Garden built by Leslie Riggall. There are no blossoms on the trees, but we certainly saw Japanese cherries in full bloom in Johannesburg.

Here’s a familiar Japanese torii gate.

I get a little lost, but finally head down to Leslie Riggall’s original showplace: the lush Fern Valley filled with ponds, where giant South African tree ferns (Cyathea sp.) see their elegant fronds reflected in the water.

I veer off the road through the valley and take a path through manicured but jungle-like plantings……

….to arrive at the small waterfall that feeds the ponds.

Returning to the pond edge, I’m transfixed by this striking bird-of-paradise (Strelitzia nicolai), its purplish-black, crane-like flowers so similar yet so different from the orange-flowered birds (S. reginae) I’m used to seeing in conservatories in the northeast. Called the Natal wild banana, it is like a small tree and is one of the indigenous plants introduced to the valley to grow side by side with the camellias and tropical rhododendrons.

Speaking of rhododendrons, here is one of Leslie Riggall’s beloved Vireyas exhibiting its somewhat typical legginess. Native to southeast Asia, Vireyas provide an option for gardeners living in tropical and subtropical regions.

Seen close-up, the flowers are beautiful and its easier to see their resemblance to the rhodos I’m familiar with from gardens in the northern hemisphere.

This pond, surrounded by water-loving irises, is overseen by voluptuous statues imported from Italy.

But beauty doesn’t matter much to a white-breasted cormorant waiting for the visitors to leave so he can return to fishing. Look at the lush Gunnera manicata in the background.

Another view of this pond.

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The calla lilies (Zantedeschia aethiopica) are spectacular here, and of course they’re native to damp places throughout South Africa. As a bee photographer, I’m fascinated by the numerous African honey bees patiently gathering pollen from the yellow spadix of the callas.

The bromeliad collection is lovely and I see staghorn ferns (Platycerium sp.) in this spot too.

The matchstick bromeliad (Aechmea gamosepala) is always eye-catching, especially when it’s in perfect flower like this one.

There are a few heliconias, like this attractive cultivar called ‘Red Christmas’.

This beautiful Streptocarpus floribundus is on the South African endangered list.

Lots of epiphytic orchids grow down here, carefully trained on tree trunks. I think this tree might be the eponymous wild poplar (Macaranga capensis) that gives the garden its name!

A closer look at the orchid. How beautiful.

And some nice specimens of Epiphyllum cacti are growing epiphytically on trees here as well.

I’ve seen kangaroo paws (Anigozanthos) in California, and love their crazy flowers.

Peering down paths here and there, I think how wonderful it is to see the plants we know as “tropical houseplants” deployed in this setting. Here are thickets of Brazilian Ctenanthe setosa flanking the path into the other side of the Japanese garden.

A little rainshower begins (hilly Kloof is in KwaZulu-Natal’s mist belt, where precipitation is frequent) and I try to keep my camera and notebook dry, while gazing at this pond, its surface spangled with tropical waterlilies.

Here is a familiar sight: beautiful yellow Iris pseudacorus looking as aggressive here in South Africa as it looks in North America. It does have a large native range, including Europe, western Asia and northwest Africa, but not down here. The bees do love it, however.

The rain is increasing and it’s time for lunch up at the lodge in any case. I return passing some of the indigenous gardens, so different from the plantings we saw down in the valley. There are various succulent flowers and a sprinkling of wild garlic (Tulbaghia violacea).

Here’s a fabulous and quite small watsonia, possibly the endangered Watsonia canaliculata.

And large aloes (Aloe ferox, I think) growing in the familiar grassland setting in which it thrives in nature.

I pass the swimming pool with raindrops splashing on the water surface. No one’s swimming today, but it’s a nice spot for the hotel guests to escape the summer heat of KwaZulu-Natal. And now it’s time to sit down, dry off a little and have some lunch. We have to keep up our strength, after all, for another garden this afternoon.

Durban Botanic Gardens: Afternoon Delight

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Janet

It’s the afternoon of Day 5 of our South Africa garden tour, and we are ready to head into the Durban Botanic Gardens. Established in 1849 as a trial garden for agricultural crops, the DBG is the oldest surviving botanic garden on the African continent, and the oldest public institution in Durban. What a pretty entrance water garden.

I can’t help but be impressed by the ingenuity of this little bird, gathering nest material in the form of string algae from the pond. Yes, it did have to wait for another bird to weigh down the papyrus stem sufficiently to hit the water surface!

And I pause for a moment to snap a honey bee on one of South Africa’s many succulent plants that go by the name “ice plant”, the pretty orange Lampranthus aureus.

Since it’s lunchtime, we head to the Tea Garden cafe immediately and place our orders. For our amusement, a vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) hangs out on a nearby tree branch, then sneaks down to abscond with a diner’s scone bun, knocking the china plate off the table and shattering it. We snicker a little over the monkey’s robin’s egg-blue scrotum….. and, because we’re mature adults, we rename it the blue-balls monkey.

After glimpsing their suspended nests from the jacaranda trees en route from the Kruger area, it’s fun to see the yellow weaver birds flitting about in the trees near the cafe.

The garden covers 15 hectares (37 acres) and features trees and plants that thrive in Durban’s subtropical climate.

Although there are many native trees, like this beautiful flat-crown albizia (A. adianthifolia)……

….. there is also an impressive roster of trees from similar climates in other countries. Here is the kauri tree (Agathis australis) from Australia, a conifer from the same family (Araucariaceae) as the monkey-puzzle tree.

And then there is the cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis) from Central and South America with its beautiful orange flowers…..

….. and its armory of lethal weapons, aka cannonball fruit.

Our lovely guide Christine greets us, while apologizing that she’s a last-minute replacement for the garden’s director, who was unable to be here. (She needn’t have worried; her knowledge was deep.)

We begin our tour at the Living Beehive, surrounded by native plants, but still bare at this time of the season of the vines that will cover it later in summer. The interpretive sign proclaims biodiversity to be South Africa’s edge. “Grasslands, such as those typical of the rolling hills of KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, provide important benefits to people such as grazing for livestock, medicinal plants, preventing soil erosion, and supplying clean water to SA’s major urban centres and the millions of people in them. Grasslands also store about 35% of global land based carbon. By investing in our natural resources, we can create thousands of jobs. Over 500,000 work opportunities have been created in environmental rehabilitation programs since 1995 and it is estimated that biodiversity already supports economic activities worth R27.2 billion ($2.37Billion US) in South Africa. The Living Beehive brings together people, engineering and biodiversity to show the type of innovative design and thinking that will help make this happen. Look at the plants on the outside of the Living Beehive and you will see grasses, forbs and bulbs typical of the grasslands biome.”

Blue daisy bush (Felicia amelloides) is one of the grassland forbs in flower now (October, or South African springtime) in this garden.

It feels right this week to have some Nguni cows eye us as we walk past, even if they are wrought from iron.

We visit the permaculture food garden, established in 2008 to educate the local community in food-growing while addressing ecological literacy and biodiversity loss. I can’t help but notice the barbed wire at the top of the fence — a fact of life in Durban and other cities we visit in South Africa.

A papaya tree in this garden (Carica papaya) is heavy with fruit.

We walk on and Christine points out the South American lipstick tree (Bixa orellana), whose red fruits inside these spiny husks produce the pigment annatto, used to colour foods and drinks. It got its common name from its use by South American Indians to make a body paint or hair colourant.

I am particularly interested to see the lagoon hibiscus (H. tiliaceus), because a few years ago, I visited a mask workshop in Indonesia…

…… and saw the most beautiful masks carved from a greenish wood they called “grey hibiscus”. I had no idea there was a hibiscus with sufficient wood to create such a carving. And now I’ve seen it in the flesh!

The quaint little Currie Memorial Fountain has an interesting background. It was erected in 1889 as a thank-you to the former Durban Mayor H.W. Currie, who relieved an 1878 drought by drilling an artesian well at the foot of the Botanic Gardens. The well, which was called Currie’s Fountain, produced 50,000 gallons of water for Durban each day. In time, there was a sporting field at Currie’s Fountain that became a gathering place for anti-apartheid demonstrations.

Coming to the garden’s little lake, we see a pair of African spoonbills (Platalea alba) drinking gracefully at the water’s edge.

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And a grey heron (Ardea cinerea) fishes stealthily in the shallows..

Further along, a hadada ibis (Bostrychia hagedash) scurries away from us.

There are numerous figs in the garden, but this big, old Indian banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) is especially impressive.

Parts of the garden are devoted to economic botany. Here we find a cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum sp.)……

…… and coffee bushes (Coffea arabica) that recall the 19^th century agricultural heritage of the garden.

A pretty sunken garden contains a formal pool and rectangular flower beds.

In this garden, we see our first clumps of the African iris, beautiful Dietes grandiflora.

We pass through an interesting sculpture garden.

Then we come to a small collection of native trees. Christine tells us about the buffalo thorn (Ziziphus mucronata) looming above us, a tree that was here when the garden opened in 1849. In Shona/Zulu culture, she says, when someone dies far away from home, the next-of-kin paints their face white and travels to the place where the relative died, maintaining silence all the way. Then they use a bough of the buffalo thorn tree to “sweep up the spirit” of the deceased, before returning home.

Another native we’ve seen this week (it was the tree browsed by elephants at Kapama) is the marula (Sclerocarya birrea), whose fruit is used for a famous liqueur.

Next is the fern dell, which includes a number of lacy tree ferns.

There’s a sweet little herb garden, too.

Finally, we come to the garden’s pièce de resistance. the (at least) 150-year old cycad that was brought to the garden by long-time curator John Medley Wood (1882-1913), and bears his name: Encephalartos woodii. He found it at the edge of the Ngoye forest in Zululand – a male tree; no females were ever found. Today, every E. woodii in the world is a descendant of this specimen. Medley Wood, who was considered the greatest of South Africa’s plant collectors, published his Handbook of the Floral of Natal in 1907. In his last year at the garden, at age 86, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town.

It’s getting close to our departure time, so we walk across the garden, past the huge pod mahogany tree (Afzelia quanzensis) ……

…..that is striving to outlive its nickname, the “bouncing tree”.

This fever tree (Vachellia xanthophloea) has also seen its share of disrespectful visitors. Seems young people no longer believe (as visitors to Africa once did) that the tree, which clearly loves growing near water, is the cause of malaria, rather than the mosquitoes which also enjoy bodies of water.

We don’t have much time to explore the beautiful bromeliad collection……

….or the canna beds……

….but we spend several minutes enjoying the rich orchid collection in the Ernest Thorp Orchid House, named after another of the garden’s long-time curators (1950-1975).

And finally, we come to the end of a long day that began in the Kapama Game Reserve watching wild animals from a safari vehicle. It is time for a drink, and dinner! Tomorrow is another big garden day in Durban.

An Autumn Visit to Kew Gardens

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Janet

A long October weekend in London…… Barely enough time to be a proper tourist, but certainly enough time to pay my customary visit to the Royal Horticultural Society Garden at Kew Gardens, aka “Kew”. Not to see it all, of course – that would take a very concentrated effort, especially arriving as I did in late morning and having to depart for a 5:30 pub dinner on Clarence Square in central London. But I saw enough to delight the senses, especially in a week when I also visited Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town!

Autumn colour was everywhere, but especially impressive in the American smoke tree (Cotinus obovatus) overhanging Kew’s Temple of Bellona.

The big tulip poplars (Liriodendron tulipifera) leading to the Orangery Restaurant had turned a beautiful golden-bronze.

Kew’s sweetgum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua) were wearing their multi-hued fall party dresses, too.

The towering black walnut (Juglans nigra) looked luminous in the afternoon sunshine, its big limbs supported with cables in its old age.

Even the umbrella plant (Darmera peltata) foliage was turning colour – a nice bonus for a marginal aquatic that flowered months earlier.

Bumble bees and honey bees were all over the single dahlias in the flower beds along the great walk, and the castor beans (Ricinus communis) made pretty partners..

And beside the Orangery, the cosmos were still putting out lots of blossoms.

As luck would have it, my Facebook friend Margaret Easter had contacted me before I left for South Africa and proposed we meet at Kew on my short stop in London on the way home to Toronto. What a great idea! I’ve done the same thing with Facebook friends in California. “Let’s have lunch together at the Orangery”, I suggested. And so we did, then trooped out with our cameras to while away a few afternoon hours.

There was no time to do the Kew Palace, sadly, even though I knew there was a great little garden behind that pretty building. During the late 1700s, it was the summer home of King George III and Queen Charlotte and their 15 children. When he developed mental illness in his later life (remember the film ‘The Madness of King George’?), it also became his sanitarium, and included strait jackets and cold baths. His granddaughter Victoria became one of England’s most famous monarchs.

We walked through the lovely Secluded Garden, which includes this pretty gazebo made of pleached lime trees (Tilia x euchlora). Inside is a sculpture.

And it was a big treat for two plant geeks to see the rare and recently discovered Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) without the zoo-like fence that once surrounded it. According to Kew, it is: “The only remaining member of an ancient genus dating back to the time of the dinosaurs, over 65 million years ago. This fascinating tree was only discovered in 1994, causing great excitement in the botanical and horticultural worlds.” Kew’s tree had even grown old enough to form cones.

We strolled through the elegant little Alpine House and had a look at some of the treasures Kew keeps there.

In autumn, there are many lovely fall-blooming bulbs, like the pretty Tournefort’s crocus.

Connecting the Alpine House to the Princess of Wales Conservatory was a sprawling rock garden with a surprisingly large number of plants still in flower. Margaret even found the accession label for one of her own thyme discoveries (she is a writer, speaker and holder of National Plant Collections® of thymus, hyssopus and satureja.) I liked this creeping persicaria (P. capitata), which was feeding loads of honey bees.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory is a favourite stop for visitors, especially on a cool autumn or winter afternoon, as it contains tropical plants that must be kept warm and humid. It was built in the late 1980s to replace a number of smaller greenhouses. Though opened in 1987 by Diana, the Princess of Wales, it is dedicated to an earlier Princess of Wales, Princess Augusta, the founder of Kew Gardens. The water garden inside is beautiful.

Everyone loves water lilies, of course, especially the gorgeous ‘Kew’s Stowaway Blues’ with its lush purple blossoms.

This one is much showier than the tiny, rare Nymphaea thermarum, billed as the smallest water lily in the world and the subject of a brazen theft in January 2014. The crime, still unsolved, has been the subject of much media interest in the months since.
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There is a fabulous orchid collection in the conservatory, with some of the finest specimens arrayed fetchingly up the staircase to the upper level.

Upstairs, the bromeliads get misted regularly, creating the cloud forest conditions necessary for these rainforest beauties to thrive.

Outdoors again, we put on our coats and sauntered towards the enclosed Plant Family garden. On the way, I noticed that the spring-flowering sweetbay magnolia (M. virginiana) had put up a few shy autumn blooms.

Education is a prime focus of Kew and these interpretive signs mounted along the walk highlight the intersection of plant cells and useful botany, via some amazing microphotography.

The ornamental grass garden was in its lush October glory, the big miscanthus and panicum species swishing in the wind.

Outside the enclosed Plant Family garden, the sage border was at peak bloom, showcasing the fall value of these wonderful plants (many here are true shrubs).

For anyone wanting to grow salvia species and cultivars, this border is a must-see in late summer and autumn. Honey bees and bumble bees, of course, call it a “must-bee” border.

The hour was growing late, but there was time to wander inside the walled garden to see what was still in bloom.

There were penstemons, dahlias, sennas and the odd rose. Nerines are always an autumn treat, where the season is long enough.

And the students’ vegetable gardens looked quite superb!

But sadly, our afternoon was coming to a close. I looked longingly at the big Palm House, framed with the magnificent cedar of lebanon (Cedrus libanyi), but it needs at least an hour to do it justice, and wasn’t to be.

I have visited the Marianne North Gallery on every Kew trip, but that lovely haven would have to wait for another visit as well. Here’s a photo from 2008.

Just a few minutes for a stop in the plant sale area. Nothing to buy for me, of course, but I’d have loved to tuck a few goodies into my suitcase.

And is it just me, but is this not the prettiest wall ever, with its aquamarine downpipe and window frames and fall-burnished Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata)? It was my last stop: the Kew Loo! And on that note…….

The Torrance Barrens – My Sacred Place

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Janet

I would like to take you on a midsummer hike with me. We’re going to my sacred place — I hope that’s okay with you. Don’t worry: there are no pews or altars or holy water fonts. But there is holy water, lots of it. It seeps from underground springs and is cleansed by the roots of innumerable wetland plants, until it shimmers blue and crystal-clear under the sun. We’re at the Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve about 12 kilometers (8 miles) from my cottage on Lake Muskoka in central Ontario. If you’re a red-tailed hawk flying overhead (or me in the little old yellow Cessna I hitched a ride in a few autumns back), this is what the ‘parking lot’ looks like from the air. It’s a magical expanse of ancient Precambrian Shield that comprises the bedrock or basement layer of the North American craton.

Have a little read of the sign so I can skip the long explanation, okay?

Oh, and here’s the other sign. They tacked on a warning for the city folks, bottom left. As usual, I forgot the bear bells today, but I’ve never seen one in here. Just a very big pawprint in a mud puddle once…….

I walk in along my normal route, always beginning near the pyramidal rock overlooking Highland Pond. It’s on the flat granite south of the pond where, of a dark mid-August evening, you can see (or not see, rather, it’s so dark) hundreds of people lying back to watch the Perseid meteor showers. I’ve come out on a few of those evenings (usually the anniversary of the great power blackout of August 2003), when the big telescopes and amateur and pro astronomers are trying to out-Hubble each other.

As defined in its conservation plan, Torrance Barrens Conservation Reserve is “a large area of low relief, sparsely forested bedrock barrens interspersed with numerous lakes and wetlands.” Highland Pond, one of the largest bodies of water in the Barrens is a shallow, linear leftover of the glacial lakes that once overlay the granite here. Between it and the rock on which I am standing are floating fens – though most people refer to them as bogs, of various sedge and fern meadows growing up through peat. Fens are defined as “peat-forming wetlands that receive nutrients from sources other than precipitation: usually from upslope sources through drainage from surrounding mineral soils and from groundwater movement. Fens differ from bogs because they are less acidic and have higher nutrient levels. They are therefore able to support a much more diverse plant and animal community.” (EPA) Fens can be herbaceous or woody, and there is a mix in the Barrens.

The beavers have been active here recently, killing the tamaracks (Larix laricina) I used to photograph in all their golden glory in autumn.

Circling around the south end of the bog at the pond edge, I see in the distance what I’m sure is a hawk, but it’s only a beaver-felled tree stump, its “feathers” are fungi. It’s surrounded by typical fen and bog plants: leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) being the most common, with Virginia chain fern (Woodwardia virginica), upper left, growing in vast fern meadows.

And there’s an abundance of our native fragrant water lily (Nymphaea odorata) in the standing water.

You can be in the Torrance Barrens for a fast 20-minute turnaround or follow a number of elliptical trails through the 4,707 acres. Plan on three hours if you hike the Pine Ridge Loop (I accidentally took some out-of-town visitors on the long loop, and they really doubted me when I said I was sure we’d be back by evening.) I’ve brought a picnic lunch with me today, so we can get a taste of the place in an hour or so.

I try to make at least one trip to the Barrens each season, often coming with the family in autumn and winter as well. The photo below was December 28, 2011 – a bitterly cold afternoon with a fierce west wind and my long afternoon shadow stretching towards the family as they walked very quickly to keep warm.

We didn’t last long that day, but it was utterly spectacular after a fresh snowfall, and completely empty of people. Contrast that with the hordes of crazed shoppers searching out bargains in the shopping malls between Christmas and New Years.

Crossing the rocks now in August, I smell the familiar fragrance of sweet fern (Comptonia perigrina), which is a low shrub, not a fern. I give the leaves a rub to release the aromatic oils.

The path circles the pond under white pines and red oaks, typical of our part of Muskoka. All around the pond is the fen mat with its different sedges and special plants. I’ve photographed various orchids and iris (I. versicolor) on these mats.

It’s beautiful in autumn too. This was November 17, 2012.

This is the point where I like to check the boggy edges of the fen for pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea). I’m not disappointed, as just a few strides out is a lovely specimen waiting for its insect lunch.

Bogs and fen mats are incredibly complex ecosystems with dozens of different species vying for space. As such, they are extremely sensitive to being downtrodden by people, but I need to move in just a little to photograph the pitcher plant So I take my flip-flops off and step as lightly as possible. It’s an impossibly delicious sensation, the cool water of the sphagnum sponge soaking the sole of my foot. As soon as I have my shot, I back out onto the granite. But I won’t forget the feeling.

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Out on the hot rock, wild blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis) grows in a bit of shade. Naturally, I pluck the ripest berry. It’s quite delicious, for a seedy little thing that I ignore when it grows by the weedy hundreds in filtered sunlight on my own sandy hillside.

Dragonflies and damselflies are plentiful near the wetland. This is the common blue damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) resting on a fern.

Nearby is the big paper birch (Betula papyrifera) that I greet each time I visit. I photographed it just after rosy dawn one autumn more than ten years ago and the canvas print (right) graces one of the walls of my cottage. I would say this birch is living on borrowed time, given the beaver population in the Barrens.

Whoops. This is the old path…… Water finds its own way in nature, always, and we’ve had lots of rain this year. The reality is that wetlands are ever-shifting in terms of the ratio of water and terra firma. Best to find another way, however…..

After searching around a bit, I find the familiar white-painted trail markers on bedrock. I know this part of the Barrens like the back of my hand, but there’s nothing scarier than running out of trail markers deep inside 4,707 acres.

Sometimes, where’s there’s just a bit of water to negotiate, the path features a rustic little plank bridge.

A few minutes later and I’ve arrived at my favourite place, a curving wood bridge over a small pond, nestled under the granite ridge that forms the high backbone of the Barrens.

This bridge always figures in our seasonal walks here (except winter, when the deep snow prevents us getting in this far). But autumn is lovely, too.

It’s a good spot to sit down and have a little solitary picnic and listen to the bullfrogs…..

…gaze at the water lilies and get a closeup view of some of the more unusual wetland plants, like the arching swamp loosestrife (Decodon verticillatus), shown here with the fluffy flowers of cotton grass (Eriophorum virginicum).

I’m thrilled to see a viceroy butterfly (Limenitis archippus) ovipositing on a willow shrub nearby.

And what’s this? Another native carnivorous plant: the spatulate-leaved sundew (Drosera intermedia) busy digesting another tasty fly meal.

But my time is running out, so it’s just a short climb up the granite ridge to get the high view before I go. Throughout the Torrance Barrens, your feet tread on granite estimated to be 1.4 billion years old (from Nick Culshaw, Dalhousie University geology prof.and specialist in the Grenville Province geological region.) Along the way is a lot of wonderfully kinetic hair grass (Deschampsia flexuosa).

Here’s a little video I made in the Barrens to describe the sound and effect of this lovely native grass, which grows on the rocky hillside behind my own cottage – and in every nook and cranny in the area.

Time to go. I head out to the parking lot and drive a bit down Southwood Road. The road features a different type of flora than the plants inside the Barrens. It’s where you find the tall pink fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium), buzzing with bees.

And the exotic weeds, pretty as they are, like the yellow evening primrose and the red clover mixed in with natives like goldenrod, fleabane and yarrow. And the trucks, of course. And civilization.

Echinacea Fantasia

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Janet

I stopped by the Toronto Botanical Garden on my way out of town yesterday, because I knew if I left it until I returned to the city in 10 days I’d miss the echinacea show. The TBG has incorporated into its various gardens the “regular” (pinkish) purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea), like these ‘Rubinstern’ flowers in the entry border…..

……and many of the beautiful colour variations that have permeated the market over the past few decades, including white, yellow, orange and red hybrids. The varieties below are featured in the President’s Choice Show Garden. Many are the fruit of the echinacea breeding program at Portland’s Terra Nova Nurseries.

And, of course, they were all ravishingly beautiful, for their moment to shine is mid-July. ‘Amazing Dream’ from Terra Nova is a dramatic, glowing, crimson-pink.

Orange ‘Tangerine Dream’ and double gold ‘Secret Glow’, both from Terra Nova, make fine bedmates.

Reproductively, echinacea is self-infertile, meaning it must be cross-pollinated to make seed. It does that in an interesting way. Each inflorescence (capitulum) is composed of ligulate or ray florets (the colourful petals) on the outside and an inner cone made up of roughly 276 tiny, whorled, bisexual disk flowers, each subtended by a tough bract that lends the plant its Latin name, echina, meaning hedgehog. Each whorl of disk florets, starting from the outside and working towards the centre during the bloom period, goes first through a staminate stage, in which the stamens elongate and release pollen on the first day, then a pistillate stage on the second day, in which the ovary becomes receptive – but only after the flower’s own pollen supply has been disseminated. This sexual strategy of separating the male and female phases on one inflorescence to facilitate cross-pollination is called protandry, Nectar production is not left to chance, but is carefully controlled by the plant to ensure pollinators visit at the appropriate time to effect cross-pollination. This tiny sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) got the message, and was carefully probing each tiny disk floret for sweet nectar.

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And not just the little sweat bee, but the bumble bees, too, like this Bombus impatiens on ‘Amazing Dream’..

And this one on ‘Meteor Red’ (which made me happy, because though it’s a semi-double, some of those nectar-rich flowers are accessible to insects).

The butterflies got the nectar memo as well, like this American painted lady. We were all there for the sweet echinacea fantasia festival!

Janet Davis Explores Colour

In the garden & the world

Category Archives: Public Gardens

In a Fern Valley at Makaranga

Durban Botanic Gardens: Afternoon Delight

An Autumn Visit to Kew Gardens

The Torrance Barrens – My Sacred Place

Echinacea Fantasia

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