This photo was a year ago and mostly what is different are the palm-like trees which are varieties of Cordyline australis are much bigger. If you carefully look just to the right of the tree center-left at the horizon; the hazy view in the distance are mountains near the border and into Mexico.
Just below that to the background of the tree trunk is a tier of dark bottomed-gobular fluff on a stalk that is the Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus); a very close relative and also edible as the Artichoke...rather than using the imature flower; the thick stalks of leaves (similar to celery) are wrapped up and blanched before harvest. They actually are much more productive and easier to use than artichokes...Yet California prohibits shipment of plants from out of state! Guess where I got mine? While hiking around in North county San Diego in a grassy meadow about 20 years ago! This plant is very familiar to southern Europeans and is relished by all! I like it most when it is cooked although it can also be used in salads. The leaves from some new growth of a Cardoon can be seen in the lower-left corner of the photo. When mature in summer they are quite large, silvery grey in color and the flowers are like a very large thistle...all bristly below with a purple-blue head.
The grasses with the fluffy seed heads are I believe the latest blooming grass that I know...Wooly Beard-grass (Andropogon glomeratus) continuing to bloom well into winter, maturing into the fluffy stuff that you see now. The specimen that I originally got the seed from to produce the plants that I have in my garden came from a 7' plant growing in a moist area below a pineland area of central Florida in 1989. The reddish tan very vertical clump of grass at center-right in the photo (without the fluff) is the closely related Andropogon virginicus which bloomed much earlier and is now completely dormant. (Seed for these were from the Sacramento river when visiting brother Chris and wife Patty many years ago. It also produces mature inflourencence that is fluffy but not as bunchy as Wooly Beard-grass. Few grasses that I know of have that strong vertical effect that remains through the whole season into dormancy and remains so attractive at all times!
Wooly Beard-grass has much to be said for it too! If given rich soil with plenty of moisture it becomes a tall erect fountain of green that seems to explode in in sparkling fluff in late fall and winter! By the way it does not blow all over the place like dandelions or cottonwood trees! It discreetly releases its fluffy seedheads a little at a time. It is also amazingly adaptable to drought conditions where it remains only a couple of feet tall and does not get as "fluffy"!
Pretty picture for sure. Is that a bird feeder I see top right?
ReplyDeleteMichael, looks beautiful! I would like to plant more of these exotic grasses, but I always worry that they will take over, like some kinds of bamboo. Is this just paranoia?
ReplyDeleteYes, that is a plastic tube feeder with perches that was supposed to keep the bigger birds happy. The sock feeders elsewhere were supposed to be for the smaller Gold-finches...What happened is that the English sparrows and I guess an over population of House finches caused the House finches to one by one invade the thistle socks driving away the Gold finches. At first there was only one House finch that figured how to tear holes in the thistle socks. Then in a matter of a few weeks whe sparrows dominated the plastic feeders and the house finches all but destroyed the thistle socks...only the most persistant Goldfinches hung on! My next effort is to plant the seed producing plants that Gold finches prefer...ie. Salsify which I have been growing from seed. They also like Verbena bonariensis, and thistle which I shall plant more of. Only then will I start feeding the house finches...and only sparingly lest the bully English sparrows return!
ReplyDeleteJoan,
ReplyDeleteYes, sorry that you are having such a bad experience with your bamboo fence! Yes, bamboo and grasses are rather similar in that they all grow from rhizomes. Rhizomes are nothing other than plant stems that grow under the soil surface. A plant that can spread above the surface such as a strawberry plant does so by something called a stolon. There are some grasses ie: bermuda grass that spreads both by rhizomes and stolons...now there is a grass worthy of being paranoid about!!! Some grasse and bamboo rhizomes branch only milimeters just at the ground surface or slightly below making them the "clumping" less scary type! These are the types that are "safe" to let loose in your garden. The only word of caution is if there is a grass that grows too readily from seed and is difficult to manage. Yes, there are a few but most of them add pleasant surprises rather than major intrusion! There are some note-worthy grasses that are annual, growing and flowering quickly from seed each season. These often make great dried flower arrangements.
There is always a place for the "spreader/running" types graminea or poacae family (names changes and now both grasses and bamboo are considered in the same family). I have seen many grass like bamboo and there are also bamboo like grasses!At any rate some of them send out varying lengths of rhizomes before they branch...some of them so long and vigourous as to plough under a sidewalk and appear on the opposite side! The place for these is in a solid planter or pot. There they can be quite pleasing. Smaller running bamboos and grasses are great planted in a confined area all my themselves or amongst other established woody plants.
The more impressive grasses you see in the pics are very tight clumping types...the Wooly beardgrass will seed here and there but are so easy to up-root...a quick kick with the toe of your shoe! What you cannot see lower down are Feather grass Stipa tennuissima; this reseeds very readily but is also easy to remove if in the wrong place or I find it boring where it is!
Michael....I now have the pond I originally wanted!!!!!!!! :)
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