Every now and then, I find a plant I adore and decide it needs a little homegrown public relations campaign. This long, cool spring with its attendant air of strange melancholy courtesy of Covid-19 was the backdrop for the month-long flowering of a little daffodil I originally saw at the Toronto Botanical Garden in 2012. This is Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, paired with the lovely yellow-throated pink Triumph tulip ‘Tom Pouce’.
This is what happens when your box of bulbs takes a photo of you in your 1980s car coat with the broken zipper that has stained more fences with you – and planted more tulips and daffodils – than you care to recall.
Fast forward to April 29th this spring and the bulbs in my little pollinator island. This was a full month after the first species crocuses emerged on March 20th, followed by a blue sea of Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) in April. I wrote in praise of all the “little bulbs” in an earlier blog this spring. The following day, I made my first portrait of Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’.
The daffodil world has its own rules, traditions and famous breeder names, many of them in England and Ireland. But there are notable North American personalities who have produced the so-called American Hybrids. One of those was Oregon’s Grant Mitsch (1907-1989), who bred ‘Pipit’, ‘Accent’ and ‘Dicksissel’. But it was Brent C. Heath, below at his farm and business Brent & Becky’s Bulbs in Gloucester, VA, who crossed the European jonquil or rush daffodil (Narcissus jonquilla) with an old Irish long-cupped daffodil ‘Ballygarvey’ (pre-1947) to come up with the sweet ‘Golden Echo’ daffodil I’ve fallen in love with this spring. It’s the one filling the rows in the thousands below. Though he had grown it for more than a decade, it was registered in 2014 and won the Wister Award the following year. Brent is the third generation of mail-order bulb farmers at the farm his grandfather started in 1900; now his son has become the fourth generation. Becky is president of Heath Enterprises, Ltd. I’ve known them both since I joined Gardencomm (Formerly the Garden Writers Association) more than two decades ago.
On May 2nd of this cool, long spring, the little Greek windflowers (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) were fully-open pools of lavender and the Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ had come into flower. Both complimented ‘Golden Echo’ beautifully.
When I decided to remove the old dwarf conifers that had grown too big for this island and replace them with a suite of perennials that would attract pollinators (here’s my video of a full year in the garden, made before planting ‘Shogun’ and ‘Golden Echo’)…..
…..adding lots of spring bulbs was just a seasonal bonus. (However, I did see honey bees gathering pollen from the crocuses early on and I’ve written about native cellophane bees on my Scilla siberica.) But mostly it’s just to add preliminary colour to a garden I consider my gift to the neighbourhood.
In fact, that day I introduced myself to two women taking their daily walks at an appropriate, self-isolating distance from each other. As one snapped a few photos, they told me they loved seeing my garden change over the weeks since late March.
Here we see that fabulous apricot-gold ‘Shogun’ tulip with ‘Golden Echo’ and the purple-blue highlights of windflower and grape hyacinth.
Meanwhile in the main garden on the other side of the path, the big Fosteriana Tulipa ‘Orange Emperor’ was adding to the orange theme, just as the pink hyacinths were fading.
I made a lot of little nosegay bouquets this spring, including these ones on May 6th. ‘Golden Echo’ is in the one on the right, along with the pure white Narcissus ‘Stainless’ and the peach-trumpeted ‘Pink Accent’. In the arrangement on the left are snakeshead fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagaris), Rhododendron ‘P.J.M.”, Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) and the wonderful white Triandrus daffodil Narcissus ‘Thalia’.
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Meanwhile, in the main garden on May 6th, ‘Thalia’ was the star, along with the first flowers of the big Darwin Hybrid tulip ‘Pink Impression’. And, of course, ‘Golden Echo’.
On May 7th, I zeroed in on this pretty pairing: ‘Golden Echo’ with the fascinating flowers of the broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) from the mountains of Turkey. The dark-blue flowers on the bottom are fertile; whereas the azure-blue flowers on the top are sterile.
May 13th saw me including ‘Golden Echo’ in a tiny bouquet along with the clove-scented Tazetta Narcissus ‘Geranium’, the lovely, orange-flowered lily tulip ‘Ballerina’ and the first blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica). In the background are a few sprigs of forsythia. ‘Geranium’ is a personal favourite daffodil, one I included in a blog titled White Delight: Four Perfumed Daffodils to Tempt You.
By May 17th, you can see the green leaves of lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) – or, as I call it ‘guerilla-of-the-valley’ – at the bottom right of this photo. Indeed, it is hugely invasive in my garden, but I tolerate it creeping around everything since it doesn’t seem to affect the emergence of the summer perennials. And, of course, I did make good use of it the years I used it to decorate the hats I wore to our botanical garden’s spring party.
It’s funny; I thought I wanted white daffodils exclusively in my garden, like ‘Accent’ in the foreground, but the soft yellow of ‘Golden Echo’ isn’t as obtrusive as the ballpark-yellow of some of the early daffodils like ‘King Alfred’ and ‘Carlton’. It fits into my multicoloured scheme very nicely, with forget-me-nots creating little clouds of pale-blue.
By May 22nd , my Fothergilla gardenii shrubs began to open their white, bottlebrush flowers.
Though the ‘Shogun’ tulips in the pollinator island were long gone by then and the flowerheads removed (I always leave the foliage to ripen and turn yellow in order to feed next year’s bulb), little ‘Golden Echo’ was still flowering bravely amidst the emerging leaves of echinacea, rudbeckia, salvia and sedum.
On May 23rd, I photographed it with the first flowers of Camassia leichtleinii ‘Caerulea’, a bulb that is as short-lived in flower as ‘Golden Echo’ is long-lived.
In fact, if the cool Covid spring of 2020 had not given way to sweltering temperatures this week, I believe sweet ‘Golden Echo’ might have flowered for another week or so, since the bulbs put up new flower stems that bloom sequentially, rather than all at once. Nevertheless, I was delighted on May 23rd to make my final bouquet featuring Brent Heath’s lovely little hybrid daffodil, along with lily-of-the-valley, common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum), camassia and sweet-scented Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii). By my count, that was almost four full weeks in bloom.
That night, it graced our outdoor table and the sixth take-out Covid meal we ordered from local restaurants to support them – and to give me a break from cooking. Hopefully, the restaurants will be back in business completely soon. I know that ‘Golden Echo’ will be back next spring, and the springs after that.
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To order Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ in Canada, visit FlowerBulbsRUs. If you order before August 31, there’s a discount built into the price and free shipping for orders above $75.
After five long months of wintry weather in Toronto, there is nothing more uplifting than the first flowers of the small spring bulbs. Over many years, small bulbs and corms in my front garden have multiplied, their clumps becoming gradually bigger, or seeds have scattered about until there are pools of colour. My camera finger is always itchy after being out of service since the last of the fall colour dies down, so I head outdoors as often as I can. In this spring of self-isolation, that might be several times a day and I’m often greeted by neighbours stopping to see what’s in bloom. The cold March and April temperatures have made the flowering parade move as slowly as sap up a maple trunk, but every year starts the same – with the snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). Because they can easily be moved in flower, I have been dividing this old snowdrop clump and digging sections into my front garden.
I’ve also made a habit through the years of cutting these tiny flowers and giving them the high-fashion studio treatment, like the snowdrops below in an antique shot glass.
Next to emerge is usually a tie between species crocuses and little Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. I adore her. She was bred in 1955 in England by E. Bertram Anderson Her mother is pale yellow Iris winogradowii hailing from the Caucasus mountains. That gives her extreme cold hardiness and her tendency to shrug off snow.
Her father is pale purplish blue I. histrioides from Turkey, lending her the pretty pale blue hue. Her existence is the result of only 2 seeds produced in open pollination breeding work by Anderson, a founding member of the RHS Joint Rock Garden Plant Committee and president of the Alpine Garden Society from 1948-53. She flowered in 1960 and was named for the wife of Anderson’s friend Eliot Hodgkin
This year, my crocuses were wonderful, both the species “tommies” (Crocus tommasinanus) and the bigger, slightly later-flowering Dutch hybrids.
On the one warm day we experienced so far this April, I found honey bees foraging for pollen on the crocuses. I’ve always wondered who in my neighbourhood has beehives, since the property size requirements for beekeeping are fairly stringent in Toronto. Having done a little research, I think they likely originated in the hives on the roof of Sporting Life department store about a half-mile from my garden.
I often combine these early bloomers in a tiny bouquet. Even though they last only a few days, the joy they bring is in inverse proportion to their size.
Crocuses, of course, have their own chalice-like charm – even if they decline to stay open long once removed from sunshine.
My front garden in early spring is anything but neat, given that I mulch it with leaves in autumn and leave many cut perennial stems to biodegrade where they fall. I do lighten the leaf mulch in late winter a little, raking some off so the small bulbs don’t get lost in the duff. This is a side-by-side view of my front garden this spring on March 23rd and April 13th. Once the crocuses fade, the Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) starts to turn my entire garden azure-blue. Most springs, the native cellophane bee and bumble bees make great use of the scilla carpet, but this year’s temperatures have kept most bees in their nests.
My garden’s “blue period” also includes the amazing, rich-pink Corydalis solida ‘George Baker’.
I always love the combination below, ‘George Baker’ with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii, formerly Chionodoxa). A few weeks ago, I divided some of my corydalis clumps while in flower and spotted them throughout the garden. That deep cherry-pink is too good not to spread around!
And, of course, I’ve given George his own studio cameos in the past as well……
The glory-of-the-snow has been ready for its closeup….
…. as has the cultivar ‘Violet Beauty’.
Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) are ultra-hardy little bulbs featuring pale-blue flowers with a darker blue stripe.
Here’s a closer look of that sweet striped face.
Between the Siberian squill, the glory-of-the-snow and the striped squill, the colour theme of these chilly weeks of early spring is most definitely blue. And with most everyone in Toronto now into their second month of self-isolation, the neighbours have been telling me how much they’re enjoying watching my front garden change every week.
This was a little bouquet I made on April 6th, happy that there were still a few orange crocuses to give it some zing. Images and formatting: Why do my emails look broken?Broken email campaigns are an increasing concern tadalafil 100mg among email marketers, especially since several companies and web-based email providers now block graphics as a measure to combat spam. NAION can also affect people who * Have heart disease of nay kind are dehydration, due to extended vomiting and diarrhea, severe blood loss and some inflamed organs of the cialis without prescription body. Kamagra is an excellent formula that enables one with the long lasting performance of the males after getting indulged into foreplay & thus, the medical professionals of Food & Drug Association (FDA) & this has been opted by a number of people. viagra online secretworldchronicle.com There may be tadalafil tablets in india some times when you and the partner leading to sexual dissatisfaction.
White Siberian squill (Scilla siberica ‘Alba’) come out a little later than the blue ones.
Photographing them in a tiny bouquet lets me appreciate details of their flowers that often go unnoticed when they flower en masse.
Among my favourite of the small spring flowers are Greek windflowers or wood anemones (Anemone blanda). These are tubers, rather than bulbs, and they need to be soaked for 24 hours prior to being planted in autumn. Their daisy-like flowers always cheer me up – though they only open wide when the sun is shining. This cultivar is ‘Blue Shades’.
Putting just one windflower in the tiniest vase reveals the beautiful contrast of the bright yellow stamens with the silky petals and fern-like leaves.
‘Pink Charmer’ is lovely, but tends to be mauve….
….. and finally there’s ‘White Splendor’.
My broad-leaved grape hyacinths (Muscari latifolium) have just emerged and are still tight. The light flowers at the top are sterile, while the deep-purple ones at the base are fertile.
Here they are, below, in a little salt shaker vase. Common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) emerge just a little bit later.
Along my sideyard path under a big black walnut tree is a colony of Corydalis solida that comes into bloom a little later than the pink ‘George Baker’ in my front garden. This species is very vigorous and will make its way around the garden and even pop up in the lawn. In fact some gardeners consider it a weed – but I adore it. And after it finishes flowering, its leaves turn yellow quickly in the thicket of Solomon’s seal just emerging, then it disappears until next year. You might also see it hybridizing with some of the colourful cultivars, if you can find them to order.
Like all these little spring treasures, it is such fun to snip a handful to bring indoors so they can be appreciated for their beauty up close.
Soon the forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) will be in flower. I have loads of these biennials throughout the garden and their season is very long. By the time my crabapple tree is in bloom along with later tulips and daffodils, they will be pale blue clouds underneath.
But for now, I enjoy adding the very first forget-me-not blossoms to the little bulb bouquets that now include common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum)……
….. and the native Confederate violets (Viola sororia var. priceana).
All this early beauty of the little bulbs, this re-affirmation that spring brings colourful renewal – especially this year, when we need it so desperately – is one of the most beloved aspects of my own garden. I simply would not be without my snowdrops, crocuses, corydalis, puschkinia, scilla or grape hyacinths. And then, as if by magic, all these wondrous little chorines of the first act will quietly wither and disappear under the later weeks of tulips, daffodils, camassias and the emerging foliage of summer perennials, lying dormant below the soil surface so they can perform the same miracle early next spring. Needless to say, the foliage of all spring bulbs must be allowed to turn yellow and ripen in order for continued photosynthesis to nurture the bulbs as long as possible.
Meanwhile, my garden moves on through myriad subsequent scenes, not in the least hindered by all these tiny bulbs that helped me bid farewell to winter. Here is my front garden over the space of twelve months. This year I’m filled with anticipation – and nothing but time to enjoy it.
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I buy almost all of my spring bulbs from my friend Caroline deVries’ online retail store flowerbulbsrus. They are available at reduced prices until August 31st and are excellent quality. A good selection of the small bulbs is also available at www.botanus.com in British Columbia; they ship throughout Canada. (I purchased my own cultivars of Corydalis solida in Canada from gardenimport, which sadly is no longer in business). In the U.S., small spring bulbs can be purchased from my friends Brent and Becky Heath at https://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/. They have discounts for ordering before July 1st.
I spent a few lovely weeks this autumn touring Greece with a group of rock gardening enthusiasts from the North American Rock Garden Society. I will admit up front that I’m not really a rock gardener. I do love trees but up until this trip, I didn’t particularly identify with plants that huddle near the earth’s surface nestled up against limestone shelves or serpentine outcrops or hanging on for dear life in an alpine scree. It might be a physical thing on my part (knees, back): when others kneel or crouch or prostrate themselves completely (like my North Carolina friend and true rock gardener Cyndy Cromwell, below, with whom I bonded on a 2018 garden tour of New Zealand)….
…I just…. stand there… looking down.
But rock garden plants aside, I am a photographer of all types of plants with my own stock image library, including lots of bulb photos. So searching for the “fall-blooming bulbs of Greece” to add to my inventory sounded like good fun.
And best of all, the tour was to be led by someone who had been a Facebook friend for six years, a young Athens native whom we plant geeks had nicknamed the ‘King of Lamiaceae’ for his special affection for the mint family, the salvias, teucriums, catmints, thymes, etc. that grow in the Mediterranean and similar climates the world over. But apart from the mints his knowledge of the entire plant world was prodigious, he had a good sense of humour, and having done his Masters degrees in California and England he was fluent in English. Though his real name is Eleftherios Dariotis, Lefteris for short, I know him by his Facebook handle, Liberto Dario. Either way, “freedom” is the theme.
If you’re not “on Facebook”, you might not know that there are thousands of interest groups that cater to your special passion, whether it’s mushrooms or madrigals or the Monkees. Needless to say, my groups revolve around the plant world. Sometime in 2013 I decided to inject a little fun into the “Plant Idents” group for which I am an administrator by using my photo library to create plant puzzles, mixing up plant photos, placing them in a numbered montage, having people guess their identities via the Latin genus name, then unscrambling the correct genus initials to solve an anagram. So instead of “Words with Friends”, we played “Plant Words with Friends”. I called them Botanagrams. A little complicated, admittedly, but they were heady fun that required everyone to make rapid-fire guesses and exchange geeky, comic asides. And woe to those with slow internet service! A few years ago I wrote a blog celebrating the puzzles, so I could remember what fun they were. Of all the nerdy ‘puzzle people’ I met and continue to call friends – Amir, Jo, Rebecca, Amy, David, Amrita, Kathy, Alys, Rosemary, Margaret, Deb and so many more – Liberto Dario usually got the really hard ones. (P.S. the anagram solution to the one below was “the vital sexy bits” for plant reproductive parts.)
Sometimes I changed up the puzzle. The one below didn’t have an anagram to solve, but was all-Lamiaceae with honey bees aboard.
So… on a night late this October, we all met at an outdoor cafe in Athens for the introductory tour dinner — and the virtual Facebook friendship became actual. Thanks to Cyndy for the photo of jet-lagged me (I hadn’t slept in more than 30 hours) and our tour guide, Liberto. As it happens, I’ve turned quite a few Facebook friendships into actual friendships: a lovely dinner in Sebastapol CA; a personalized garden tour in Santa Barbara; a fun 7-person nursery meet-up in Portland OR; and a delightful 5-person garden picnic in Seattle WA.
THE TRIP JOURNAL
Bright and early the next morning (and for 11 mornings after), it was on the road to search for the autumn-blooming flora of Greece. We stopped along the busy highway northwest of Athens beside a woodland of scrubby kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), under which we found our first Cyclamen graecum, below, with oak behind it. This little drought-tolerant oak gets its common name from a Sanskrit word krim-dja, which is also the root of the words crimson and carmine. Why? Because it is the source of an ancient red dye; indeed it is a word for red in the Persian language. However it’s not the oak itself that yields the dye, but an insect that feeds on the oak, specifically the kermes insect or κόκκος. In her book “Color – A Natural History of the Palette’, Victoria Finlay writes: “Dioscorides described how kermes was harvested with the fingernails – scraped carefully from the scarlet oak it lives on. But curiously he described it as ‘coccus’, meaning ‘berry’, and did not explain that it was an insect at all.” The kermes trade routes would weave their way through the ancient world: Spain paid its taxes to Rome in sacks of kermes from the oak they called “chaparro” and the Turks used it in carpet-dying.
In little meadows in forests of Greek fir (Abies cephalonica) at the base of Mount Parnassus, we found Colchicum parnassicum.
Later, in a coppice (charcoal) forest of Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) near Mount Kallidromo, we thrilled at masses of Cyclamen hederifolium emerging from fallen leaves. I loved this ecological partnership.
The next day, our hotel near Kalambaka was our base as we visited the otherworldly monasteries at the UNESCO site Meteora. It’s not easy to describe these sedimentary rock formations topped with buildings erected in the 15th-17th centuries, so I’ll just show you.
It’s easy to see why so many tourists make the trip to this part of Greece.
Later that day we travelled to a rock face in the foothills of the Koziakas mountain area of the central Pindos range near a busy, one-lane bridge over the Portaikos River. Did I mention that rock gardeners like to live dangerously?
But there were tiny roadside treasures…. common in Greece, but new to us.
Returning towards Kalambaka, we stopped at the base of Mount Olympus which was shrouded in clouds. The home of the gods in mythology – and a national park – it actually spans 52 peaks including the highest, Mytikas (2917 metres-9570 feet) and Stefani or “Zeus’s Throne” (2909 metres-9544 feet). As others searched the area for bulbs, I kicked around pieces of marble, which were plentiful, as I thought about all the marble monuments and temples we would see in Greece. And I inhaled the sweet, minty fragrance of calamint (Clinopodium nepeta), which we found at many locations, usually being foraged by a big bumble bee.
The first day of November arrived and we were in Smokovo looking “for bulb treasures on the serpentine rocks”. Nobody said anything about looking for bulb treasures in the pouring rain.
The little crocus below was our goal…. Crocus cancellatus subsp. mazziaricus, but it cancelled its showing amidst the serpentine rocks for obvious reasons. And despite having received the memo about waterproof shoes from our host, I failed to act on it. Fortunately, our lunch venue had a roaring fireplace which helped dry a lot of socks and shoes.
Returning to Athens, we stopped to pay tribute at Thermopylae where Leonidas and the Spartans fought the Persians under Xerces in 480 BC. “ The Persian army, alleged by the ancient sources to have numbered over one million, but today considered to have been much smaller (various figures are given by scholars, ranging between about 100,000 and 150,000) arrived at the pass in late August or early September. The vastly outnumbered Greeks held off the Persians for seven days (including three of battle) before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of history’s most famous last stands. During two full days of battle, the small force led by Leonidas blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. After the second day, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a small path used by shepherds. It led the Persians behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, aware that his force was being outflanked, dismissed the bulk of the Greek army and remained to guard their retreat with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians, fighting to the death.” (Wiki)
Saturday was all about Athens, specifically the suburb of Paiania. We began with a tour of Liberto’s two gardens, the first (unirrigated) at the lovely, peach-pink stucco summer home owned by his Chicago Uncle Sam Sianis, aka the ‘goat garden’. By the time summer rolls around, they can park their car on top of Liberto’s clever spring-bulbs-and-annuals meadow, left, which by then has finished flowering.
And why is it called the goat garden? Well, in what might be the most powerful goat-related story in major league sports, it was a Sianis family billy goat that evidently put a curse on Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs for 71 years, from October 6, 1945 (game 4 of the World Series that year) to November 2, 2016, when the curse was finally broken and the Cubs won the title. Turns out if you don’t ‘let the goat in’ all kinds of bad baseball karma is going to come raining down on you. It would take me the rest of my blog to tell you the story of the billy goat curse, so rather than explain it as Liberto is doing to folks on the trip, below….
Anybody who has run out of space in which to grow plants knows how wonderful it would be to be able to adopt an empty garden. Since his relatives are only in residence for their vacation each summer, Liberto has been free to create gardens around the house to grow his favourite plants for his mail order seed business. But I’m pretty sure the family feels lucky to be surrounded by such beauty each summer.
I especially loved these silver beauties, moon carrot, Seseli gummiferum, top and partridge feather, Tanacetum densum, below.
We were all able to sniff an aromatic leaf of sideritis, used to make traditional Greek mountain tea.
Spring would be truly lovely in this garden, but I was able to find a few flowers in bloom in November, below. Top row, from left: Eriocephalus africanus, Crocus speciosus, Salvia africana-lutea, Teucrium fruticans ‘Ouarzazate’, Bottom row, from left: Iris unguicularis, Scabiosa (Lomelosia) crenata subsp. dalaportea, Cyclamen hederifolium, Epilobium canum.
Then we headed a short distance away to Liberto’s family home and the large garden he’s made behind it: the salvia garden. Here we wandered amongst lush grasses, shrubs, small trees, citrus and many perennials from around the world, all adapted to the Mediterranean climate….
…. but especially the stars of his garden: so many different kinds of sages (Salvia species). I counted 87 taxa on his salvia seed list.
There are other plants, of course. Here are a few that caught my eye, including blue-flowered Pycnostachus urticifolia, bright red Erythrina x bidwillii, golden Tecoma stans, and some delicious-looking grapefruit.
Succulents and xeric bromeliads were displayed on a table….
…. and a small pond hosted aquatic plants.
Guests listened to Liberto explaining about his mail order business of seeds and bulbs. Those stairs lead to the production side of the garden. Let’s go up.
A series of glass cold frames holds tender bulbs from around the world. Everywhere are little pots filled with grit-rich soil and all manner of exquisite flora. It is a living library of the plant collector’s passion. To read more about what inspires him in the plant world, read this 2016 interview on Plinth. If the sun hadn’t been shining so brightly at a difficult time of day (photographers say this all the time) and if the garden hadn’t been full of wandering people, and if we didn’t have a full schedule of visits later, I would have enjoyed chronicling Liberto’s garden more closely, as I did his good friend Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden in Denver earlier in the year. But such is life.
The genus Oxalis is a special favourite; he grows more than 150 species.
Plants, plants, plants….. maybe for seeds? Plant sales? He was too busy to ask.
From this well-organized room, seeds of his favourite plants will find their way throughout the world.
Our next stop in Paiania was the Vorres Museum where Liberto has been working to transform the gardens to a more sustainable model. He joined his friend Nektarios Vorres, grandson of the founder of the museum and president of the foundation that now runs it. I wrote a blog about this lovely place with its Canadian connection.
Then it was a walk up Mount Hymettus with its view of Attica through wild olive branches heavy with fruit.
And the hillside bore seedhead reminders of the wild Greek mountain thyme (Thymbra capitata) that brings bees to nectar in order to yield the famous Hymettus honey. Fortunately, I did come home with a gift of some sweet thyme honey.
Sunday brought us to various environments in Attica: a rocky scramble overlooking the blue Aegean; a stroll along the seashore where asters were growing; then a walk through a parched, trash-strewn meadow where we found tiny bulbs growing in the dry grasses. From left, Crocus cartwrightianus (progenitor of the saffron crocus); Spiranthes spiralis, Greece’s only autumn-flowering orchid; tiny autumn squill, Prospero autumnale; and diminutive Colchicum cupanii.
Then we drove south to Cape Sounion. Before visiting the nearby temple, we enjoyed a lunch of fresh fish – calamari, sardines and bream – overlooking the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean. OCD Patients May Seek Help From Dermatologists. purchase viagra online Regular exercises levitra cialis have proved to be the shortcut to come out of the disease. It is advisable that discount viagra pharmacy should be taken at-least 30 minutes before the sexual intercourse to take place. Are you an extremely busy person and spend almost 24 hours at your office? If such is the case generic tadalafil india then you should implement the application of this medicament but only after consulting the physician.
Then it was a walk up to the beautiful Temple of Poseidon (440 BC), where I was photographed capturing a tiny specimen of yellow Sternbergia lutea in the foundation rocks.
By the time we drove back downtown, the hour was late but we were fortunate to pay a short visit to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, starting with the spectacular building….
…… then a walk down to ground level through the sprawling, night-lit gardens. Definitely a spot that merits a return.
On November 4th we drove from Athens to the Peloponnese with our first stop overlooking the Corinth Canal. It was completed in 1893 and joins the Gulf of Corinth to the north with the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea to the south, thus turning the Peloponnese Peninsula into an island. I am an armchair geology geek and to see this slab of cut limestone was a treat. It is 6.3 kilometres (4 miles) long and 70 metres (21.3 feet) wide at its base with a depth of 8 metres. The 63-metre deep (206 feet) deep limestone and earthen walls are actually the canal’s weak point, since they are affected by water from tides and boat wash and the occasional earthquake, leading to frequent landslides and long closures (4 years in the 1920s) to clean out rock and earth. Without the canal, the 11,000 ships (the largest width is 58 feet) that make the trip through it annually would need to travel an additional 300 nautical miles to reach their destination.
A long day of travel with rain and darkness at its end held a bright spot, and one of my favourite places on the tour. For who wouldn’t love a hillside overlooking olive fields dotted with wild heather (Erica manipuliflora), its botanical name commemorating its home on the Mani Peninsula. And there were bees and beehives, too; a few days later, a little lost in Athens while walking home by myself from the Acropolis, I bought a jar of heather honey to help me remember this place.
The next morning, from the beach in front of our pretty little stone hotel in Gytheion on the eastern shore of the Mani Peninsula, I looked out over the Lakonian Gulf, somewhat reluctantly climbing into the van to head to the western side of the peninsula. Our hotels were so pretty, and the days all started early.
During a brief stop to scour a steep cliff on the road out of Gytheion, Liberto met a group of French botanists and exchanged the latest in plant spotting. Only in Greece.
Less than an hour later, we were pulled over on a farm road between olive groves, where the harvest was taking place…..
…. and we happily photographed, from left, Allium callimischon ssp.callimischon, Colchicum psaridis and Crocus boryi.
But I especially cherish the memory here of the goat bells or kypria, a little musical interlude I followed down the road until the shepherd’s dogs let me know I’d come far enough. Listen….
High on a ridge overlooking the gulf, we found a little field of the beautiful, purple Crocus goulimyi. But I was also fascinated by the valonia oaks (Quercus ithaburensis ssp. macrolepis) that line the road, and with their big, frilly acorns, which are used traditionally in tanning. From then on, I would remember the crocuses as “the ones that grew with the oaks”. Crocus goulimyi is named for Constantine Goulimis (1886-1963), a lawyer and amateur botanist who wrote Wild Flowers of Greece.
Then we drove to our lovely hotel in Areopoli in the Deep Mani Peninsula, Ktima Karageorgou, set under a massive peak of the Sagias Mountains, part of the Taygetos range.
While the others investigated the mountain I played hooky and took a very chilly swim. Before dinner, we enjoyed a slide presentation of Greek bulbs and flora by Liberto.
The next morning, November 6th, we drove south on the peninsula and within the hour came to an enchanting meadow filled with Crocus niveus in a mix of white and pale purple forms. And there was lovely Cyclamen graecum here, too, near the silvery leaves of Astragalus lusitanicus.
Driving further south, we visited a ‘ghost village’ called Vathia, a collection of stone towers from the 18th and 19th centuries, each built by a Maniot family to act not merely as a home but as a defensive fortress against their neighbours. During the early 19th century when the population numbered roughly 300, poverty forced many of the inhabitants to abandon their rural life and move to the cities.
Today, a few of the towers seem to be inhabited – I saw a satellite dish and curtains on one. But most are still in ruin and likely not economic to renovate in this location. An evocative stop.
We were nearing the bottom of the peninsula when we made another stop along the road to botanize. The slopes of the mountains are etched with hundreds of stone-walled terraces. That was the way of agriculture here, a very hard life, now mostly abandoned. In the field we saw lots of painted lady butterflies nectaring on yellow fleabane (Dittrichia viscosa) and Liberto gave me a handful of fragrant Greek sage (Salvia fruticosa), another herb used to make traditional tea
We reached our destination at the bottom of the Deep Mani: Cape Tainaro (Tainaron, Matapan), the southernmost point of mainland Greece and a beautiful place to spend the next few hours. Here were the strange remains of the Sanctuary and Death Oracle of Poseidon Tainarios, top below, presumably at one time a place to present offerings to forestall death by misadventure on the ocean.
I found a few tiny fall bulbs (Prospero autumnale and Colchicum parlatoris) and fennel in the grasses here, along with abundant verbascum seedheads and Crithmum maritimum by the sea.
While others took the long hike to the lighthouse at the point, I decided to stay behind and dip my toes into the ocean at exactly the point where the Aegean Sea meets the Ionian Sea. If you want to see what I saw there, wading in the sea near the fishboats at Cape Tainaro, you might want to watch my musical video of the beautiful rivers and seashores I saw in Greece. It’s not long, and there’s a nice little splash from time to time.
This was also the afternoon when I lost my cellphone. After fruitless searches of the van and my room, I felt a little despondent as I’d used it for so much photography. But a late night email from my husband in Canada to Liberto revealed that a tech-savvy woman in the village had found it sitting on the stone wall we had last visited to look for crocuses and found my contact information. We would visit her business the next morning on our way out of town to pick it up. When I tried to give her more than a gift of honey, she refused. “Hospitality!” she exclaimed. Indeed, hospitality.
That night in Areopoli the group had a post-dinner Greek dance lesson. It was a great success. There might have been some ouzo involved….. I might have bought the bottle…. I might have been pouring shots for the group….
On November 7th, we made our way from the dry Lakonian part of the Mani Peninsula to the Messinian Mani. Our bulb wish list for this area included Crocus boryi with its white stigmas, and we were not disappointed.
We also found the very first poppy anemone (Anemone coronaria) of the season. Not the fields of red and purple poppies we’d seen in Liberto’s early spring photos, but still……
Fifteen minutes later we were walking atop limestone on the beach at St. Nicholas. On it grew yellow-flowered rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum), which Liberto said is preserved in Greece as a pickle called “kritamo”.
A walk to a little vacant lot brought us some good specimens of the tiny autumn daffodil Narcissus obsoletus (syn. N. serotinus), left. And we saw the beginning growth of the spectacular bulb Drimia numidica (Urginia maritima) whose seedhead I’d photographed with a snail aboard in Areopoli.
Our hotel was in Kardamyli, with balconies open to the sound of waves crashing on the beach below. The Kalamitsi Hotel might have been the place where most of us would have chosen to stay for a week of sheer relaxation and reading (no botanizing). My little video gives you a flavour of this part of the Peloponnese with its rugged mountains.
Our final day of botanizing took us over the Taygetos Mountain range. I’m not sure I’ve rhapsodized enough about the mountain scenery in Greece. But this view of the northern gorges en route to Kalamata gives you a sense of the majesty of these peaks.
And, of course, there was flora. Our goal here was the autumn-flowering snowdrop (Galanthus reginae-olgae), and we were not disappointed – finding it clinging to small shelves of vegetation on damp cliff faces alongside the road, below. There were also tall plane trees (Platanus orientalis) growing up from the valley floor and goats climbing the rocky mountainsides. And the most cool purple striations in parts of the rock.
Soon we were sitting at lunch in Kalamata saying our final thank-yous to Liberto. He would be taking a group of Californians to Chile a few days later followed by botanizing in the Argentine Andes and a visit to Rio de Janiero. So the botanical part of our time in Greece was coming to an end.
But we had one more beautiful stop as the sun set near Athens – a rocky hillside spangled with golden Sternbergia lutea.
Most of us chose to add four days to the trip in order to visit some of Greece’s most famous antiquity sites with Archaeology Professor Stavros Oikonomidis of Arcadia University. And, of course, there was always something notable from the world of flora… like the iconic bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) at the Greek agora in Athens…..
…. and the storied olive tree near the Eractheion atop the Acropolis.
These beautiful cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens) were growing at the monastery at Kaisariani on Mount Hymettus.
The view from Mycenae over the 3500-year-old ruins down onto the olive groves (and the fragrance as the olives were being harvested) was unforgettable. Ephedra distachya was bearing its red fruit, and I adored the tiny, perfect rock garden I found there with Cyclamen graecum emerging from a crevice in the outcrop.
And finally, Delphi. This is the place every visitor to Greece should see: a living. breathing link to a past culture devoted to the gods of mythology – Apollo and Athena – and home to the sanctuary of the Oracle of Delphi and the high priestess Pythia (a series of priestesses through the centuries). You can read more about Delphi online, but as we walked up the sacred way past the temples and monuments and limestone walls inscribed with the names of the rich and powerful who visited more than two millennia ago, I caught a little glimpse of purple. These days, you can call on an oracle quite quickly (provided you pay your roaming fees) without any need for a pythia getting involved. The answer came back before I’d walked back down the path: “!! Campanula topaliana subsp. delphica. They flower in spring. ” Somehow, on my very last day touring Greece, to find an endemic blooming out of season and so specific to this place of mythology…
…. especially since I have an entire dining room of botanical prints solely of campanulas from Flora Danica to Sowerby’s to Mrs. Loudon, etc…… it just seemed the perfect finale.
Thus ended our tour of Greece and its autumn flora and antiquities. We had checked off a good percentage of the plant list we were given at the start of the trip. But we saw and experienced so much more. Efharisto, Liberto. (That would make a great puzzle word…) Many thanks for showing us your beautiful country.
*******
And finally, a little epilogue. Man does not live by flora alone, of course. There is also music – a word that, after all, originates with the Greek word “mousikē” for “art of the muses”. Before I left for Greece, Liberto invited me to come out with him and his friends Maria and Natalia in Athens to see a favourite band from Crete. It was such a fun evening and the band was still playing when I headed back to the hotel at 3 am, mindful of my 6 am alarm(!) I was very moved by the music of Giorgis and Nikos Stratakis — Γιώργος & Νίκος Στρατάκης — and their band (music which seemed to share some Celtic rhythms with my own ancestry, especially the tsampouna or bagpipes). But I simply cannot imagine any North American band playing their own version of several verses of a 17th century romantic poem (Erotokritos from Cretefrom 1 to 6:28 min) and everyone in the audience knowing the chorus and singing it with great passion. That is most definitely the Greek spirit… or, perhaps, that elusive Greek quality ‘filotimo‘. Here is a little taste, courtesy of my video, of An Autumn Night in Athens.
Happiest of holidays to all my friends out there. Kαλές διακοπές! I’ll be back in the new year with more gardens.
I popped by the Toronto Botanical Garden this morning for a quick look at what’s in bloom. It’s been such a long, cold winter and reluctant spring, an hour in the garden was just the therapy I needed. So what did I see? Well, in all the years I’ve been photographing at the TBG, I’ve never spied the cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) in the hedge cages in flower. With the ‘marcescent’ foliage (persisting through winter) of the beeches (Fagus sylvatica), it made a unique and lovely entrance to the George and Kathy Dembroski Centre for Horticulture, the main building.
There were loads of hellebores doing their thing. Helleborus ‘Red Lady’ is a long-time performer and has multiplied beautifully beside the stone wall of the building. I loved the sober backdrop it made for flamboyant Narcissus ‘Tiritomba’.
I found a nice assortment of hellebores under the ‘Merrill’ magnolia just opening. This is Helleborus x ericsmithii HGC Merlin (‘Coseh 810’). Isn’t it lovely?
Helleborusx ballardiae HGC Cinnamon Snow (‘Coseh 700’) was spicing things up.
And Helleborus x ballardiae HGC Ice Breaker Prelude (‘Coseh 830’) was meltingly gorgeous.
In a protected corner of the Westview Terrace, Magnolia x loebneri ‘Leonard Messel’ was in full flower.
I could photograph magnolias all day.
Containers of spring bulbs brought a welcome note of colour.
Nearby was a little reticulated iris still in flower. Though it was labelled differently, I think its the McMurtrie cultivar Iris reticulata ‘Velvet Smile’. For this reason, the FDA claims that these free tadalafil sample survey websites can’t legally replace a real physician. INSTRUCTIONS Use as directed by your doctor. o Take this http://robertrobb.com/state-tax-cut-discussion-should-be-postponed/ on line viagra medicine by mouth with or without food. Pomegranates aid prostate cancer patients Several studies have shown that extracts of pomegranate wholesale viagra juice can inhibit prostate cancer cells in vitro. cialis tabs 20mg robertrobb.com PD occurs when in the brain nerve cells produces a chemical which is known as dopamine stop working properly.
On the bank where donkey tail spurge (Euphorbia myrsinites) scrambles, the variegated Tulipa praestans ‘Unicum’ was in flower.
Hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalis) just need a little warmth to emit their perfume……
….. and even graced the path to the TBG’s big compost piles, along with daffodils.
Speaking of daffodils, I thought this one in the Entrance Courtyard was pretty spectacular. Meet Narcissus ‘British Gamble’.
The small bulbs were mostly finished, but glory-of-the-snow Scillia luciliae ‘Pink Giant’ (formerly Chionodoxa) was fading but still beautiful.
As I walked along the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border toward my car, I saw a favourite tulip, T. kaufmanniana ‘Ice Stick’ looking slender and lovely beside emerging perennials that will soon fill the garden with blossoms that will charm visitors until autumn. And I thought how wonderful each and every spring seems, to the winter-weary gardener.
PS – I will very soon get back to New Zealand… and the Argentina part of our wine tour. Promise! (Unless spring keeps beguiling me……..)
You hear a lot about flower nectar, when people talk about growing “flowers for bees”, but you don’t hear nearly as much about pollen. And given that pollen, and by extension pollination, is the principal quid pro quo in the evolutionary pact that sees bees trade sex services for food, much more should be written about pollen. It is of vital importance to the bee larvae, for which it is the protein that develops their growth. In one of my classic old books on beekeeping, Plants and Beekeping by F.N. Howles (1945), he writes: “It has been calculated that about ten average bee loads of pollen are necessary to produce one worker bee and that on an average one pound of pollen rears 4,540 bees, which works out at about 44 lb. of pollen for an average colony’s breeding requirements in a season.” Without sufficient pollen, the colony would die off.
Because I spent several years photographing honey bees (Apis mellifera) for a book idea I once had, I got to see a lot of pollen up close and personal, like the golden pollen being patiently collected from Gaillardia ‘Mesa Yellow’, below.
I saw bee faces completely dusted with sticky pollen; I watched them perform aerial dance maneuvers as they packed pollen into their corbiculae, before settling back onto flowers; and I observed them flying back to the hive, legs laden with saddlebags of pollen in all colours of the rainbow, like the white datura pollen below.
It’s pollen colour in all its wonderful variety that I want to celebrate here, from the first blossoms of spring to the last of autumn.
Let’s start with hardy perennials and bulbs. Crocuses have very large pollen grains. I’ve watched honey bees curling their entire bodies into silken crocus chalices, like C. x lutea ‘Golden Yellow’, below.
Little striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) rewards visitors with beige pollen.
Grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) can often be seen with bees working the flowers as they open from the bottom of the spike up. Pollen is whitish-cream in colour.
Orchards are filled with bees in spring, among them honey bees, thus ensuring that there will be tasty fruit come late summer. This is the hardy ‘Reliance’ peach (Prunus persica) with light-brown pollen.
The Dutch call alpine rockcress (Arabis alpina) “honigschub’ or honey bush and it’s easy to see why. Very early in spring, before most perennials have thought about emerging, arabis is feeding the bees nectar and a sticky light-brown pollen.
Although forget-me-nots are prodigious nectar sources – especially considering the vast quantities of the tiny flowers in spring gardens – their pollen grains are among the smallest measured and from my observations, not very prominent in corbiculae (pollen baskets). But for a bee to insert its tongue into the narrow corolla of a forget-me-not, the net result will be that some pollen will dust off on the proboscis and the head, which the bee will gather for the hive. And because of that narrow opening, pollen is often mixed in with the nectar that forget-me-nots yield, and is measurable in the honey.
Though the shrubby European honeysuckles like Lonicera tatarica, below, can be invasive, they are good early sources of pollen.
The bright-orange pollen of California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is always a great lure for honey bees.
When the yellowwood tree (Cladrastis kentukea) has a good year for bloom – sometimes just one year in three – the flowers with their tawny-gold pollen are avidly sought out by honey bees and native bumble bees and solitary bees.
Beekeepers always know when Oriental poppies (Papaver orientale) are in flower, because homecoming bees are dusted with black pollen.
Peony stamens are a rich source of pollen, with one count estimating a single peony might have 3.5 million pollen grains. This is Paeonia ‘Sunday Chimes’, below.
The knotweeds (Centaurea sp.) are excellent plants for bee forage, and beautiful in the late spring-early summer garden. Globe centaurea (Centaurea macrocephala) offers pollen in golden-yellow…..
….. while Centaurea dealbata ‘John Coutts’ produces creamy-beige pollen.
Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) is irresistible to bees when the prominent stamens are yielding their creamy-white pollen, below.
Native American copper iris (I. fulva) is popular with hummingbirds, but on the High Line one day, I watched honey bees patiently working the flowers and securing ample loads of near white pollen.
Knautia macedonica is my very favourite pollen producer, yielding a rich magenta-pink pollen that makes honey bee faces look adorable and their packed corbiculae seem like airborne jewelry.
Roses, especially single and semi-double forms with prominent stamens, are often good sources of pollen, which they yield mostly in the morning, apparently. The David Austin shrub below produced amber-brown pollen.
The generic or scientific name is the term given to the men over a time of three minutes and all these soft cialis greyandgrey.com are possible by consuming the concerned drug then should inform the doctor before availing the drug dosage. With powerful tadalafil soft tablets ability to self-repair and self-rectify, inherent immune system can protect our body from being affected by disease. Trigenics is an avant-garde treatment system for nerves and muscles, that provides immediate relief from pain and muscle spasms. buy viagra in stores Back To The Point! like this order generic levitra Ok, so to get back to work. Not to be confused with true roses, Mediterranean rock roses (Cistus species) are also popular with honey bees. The bright-pink hybrid below produced a rich golden-orange pollen.
Certain clematis species are good sources of pollen. One that flowers in early summer is Clematis koreana – and the bee working it had packed a jewel-like pollen pearl in her pollen basket.
Filipendulas are good forage plants and native qneen-of-the-prairie or meadowsweet (Filipendula rubra) provides pollen in early summer for native bees and honey bees. This is the showy cultivar ‘Venusta’ with creamy-white pollen.
Bumble bees and honey bees are always buzzing around globe thistles (Echinops sp.), which yield a whitish pollen from the masses of tiny flowers.
To see a planting of helenium or sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) in full sun in late summer is to see a happy bee festival. And the abundant pollen is rich orange. One source mentions the bitter nature of helenium honey, but at the point where helenium is in flower, beekeepers are often letting the bees collect nectar for winter honey stores.
Japanese anemones (Anemone x hybrida) yield neglible nectar but the yellow stamens are rich sources of white pollen.
With its masses of tiny, white flowers, sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) is very popular with bees. I watched the honey bee below doing an intricate aerial dance to pack in white pollen from a massive vine.
By the end of summer into early autumn, the various goldenrods and asters (Michaelmas daisies) offer nectar that is often vital for bees to survive winter, though most beekeepers must provide additional winter food for their bees. (Goldenrod makes a strong honey that is not generally sold commercially.) But bees also collect pollen from these late perennials, like the very late-blooming showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa), below, with its golden-yellow pollen. This will help sustain the hive until spring.
Of the asters, I loved this image of a bee hanging from lance-leaved aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum), its corbicula packed with yellow pollen…..
….. and the beautiful New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) and its many cultivars, like the one below, are well worth growing in every garden – something lovely for you and the bees as the season ends.
Annuals and tender perennials and bulbs can also be good sources of colourful pollen. This is Ageratum houstonianum with lots of pure white pollen.
Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) and their many cultivars are a treat for all types of bees, especially the native sunflower bees adapted to this North American flower. But honey bees enjoy nectaring on the tiny ‘true’ flowers and gathering the yellowish pollen, too.
Single portulacas (P. grandiflora) have bright orange pollen, as you can from the bee crawling out of the silky blossom below.
I’ve seen lots of tender S. African bulbines (B. frutescens) growing in summer gardens recently, much to the delight of honey bees gathering pale yellow pollen from the feathery stamens.
Weeds like Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) are never appreciated by gardeners, and many are highly invasive and on noxious plant lists. But you will often see bees of all kinds foraging for nectar and pollen on thistles…..
….. and dusting themselves completely with the white pollen of the pretty blue summer flowers of chicory (Cichorium intybus)…..
…. and flying about with the telltale yellow ‘pollen head’ that is a sure sign that the bee has been in a toadflax flower (Linaria vulgaris).
Finally, I’d like to include a few vegetables that bees like – not for the stems or the roots, but for the flowers that have resulted from the plants “bolting”. This is what happens to a radish (Raphanus sativus) when it’s going to seed – yellow pollen much appreciated by this little honey bee.
Brassicas like broccoli, cabbage, kale and Brussels sprouts also form flowers as part of their biennial life cycle – and the bees love the yellow pollen that forms.
Last but not least, a perennial vegetable we all know and love for its tender spring shoots – but have you watched bees gathering bright orange pollen from the tiny, yellow male flowers? It is a feat of acrobatics worthy of any high-flying trapeze act!
