Tag Archives: lycoris

Flock Finger Lakes Visits

Given the choice I will always turn down the stage and hide on the sidelines, but not everyone thinks that way, and where  I naturally hate speaking in front of people, they do not.  It amazes me to see this and to see people on stage, out front, capturing people’s attention and engaging an audience with ease and doing things like creating YouTube channels and traveling all over the world exploring places and talking to people.  I met two of these people a few weeks ago, Summer Rayne who you’ll meet and Sander behind the camera, and they put together a video which I think is pretty cool.  I’m sharing it here in spite of the fact I really prefer to feature plants instead of myself but I guess it’s one of those moments when I have to pull up the pants and be a big boy.  Not bad for someone who not so long ago thought having a hand as part of a picture on this blog was too revealing… now there’s a whole ‘me’ on this blog, talking as well, complete with ratty t-shirt, who-knows-what hair and an old man scowl but whatever… I’ve already overthought this too much.   >here’s a link<

So there you go.  I hope you enjoyed the video as much as I did, they did an amazing job directing and keeping me on track, and Summer Rayne’s interest and enthusiasm really keeps the video fun.  Biscuit helps as well, he’s got quite the stage presence and I hope he remembers us when Hollywood comes calling.  In all I’m surprised at how well it turned out, the garden looks much better and more interesting than I see it on the daily, and at one point I turned to my daughter (we had a viewing party) and told her I wished I could visit that place.  It was magical.  Surprise and magic, that’s my attempt to turn things back around to plants, because late August is the start of Surprise aka magic lilies season…. also known as hurricane lilies or naked ladies but perhaps those are two things we shall not bring in to today’s post.

lycoris squamigera

Pink magic lilies (Lycoris squamigera) are probably the most common magic lily to show up in the north.  They seem to do best when abandoned and neglected so here they are amongst the trash and stored debris of the compost pile.

Things can get a little tedious mid August, as the heat and rain/not-rain drag on, but magic lilies can break that up nicely.  Out of nowhere stalks shoot up and burst into bloom all in a matter of days, and it really can be a surprise to see them out and blooming… unless they’re not.  The not-part is where the disclaimer comes in.  These plants can be jerks.  They can sulk, fade away, take a year off, they’re not like Biscuit, all excited and anxious to please, they’re more like cats and don’t really care about what you want.  Sun? Not that sun, I want shade until it’s too much shade.  Feed me but not that food, but I know I’m hungry… Here are more flowers than you can imagine, no wait… I’m not feeling it this year…

lycoris sanguinea

Lycoris sanguinea, the orange surprise lily is apparently feeling it this year.  It’s in a terrible spot but I don’t dare move it since there may be another four year gap in blooms as it works through whatever insult it feels.

The magic lilies don’t last all that long, but there are (hopefully) a few more later varieties yet to bloom.  If you can drag yourself out through the humidity and bugs at least they give something new and exciting to see each morning before the heat drives you back inside.  Magic lilies aren’t really true lilies, but there is a true lily I’d like to add in here as another reason to brave the outdoors.  The Formosan lily (Lilium formosanum) blooms now as well, and this flower is Biscuit-approved.  Not for eating of course since I think they might be toxic, but for something cool to admire in mid August this lily is… dare I say, easy?  There is a dwarf form, but the ones growing here are the tall form and usually manage five feet but this year with all the rain seven plus feet is not unheard of.  Fragrant, perfectly formed, like a giant easter lily (which some people don’t like, so if that’s the case skip this one) the Formosan lily can grow to blooming size in its first year from seed.  I of course could never care for a plant that well, but even here they’re in flower the second year and they do seed around the garden if their seed can ripen before the first real freeze.

Lilium formosanum

Pure white, fragrant flowers is what Lilium formosanum offers.  Just watch out for those disgusting red lily beetles since they’re about the only thing which can bring this giant down.

I think you’ve heard enough from me today so I’ll just add one more thing.  A trumpet flower, but not a lily, Brugmansia suaveolens is hitting its summer stride.  This angel trumpet is a tropical shrub so I have my favorite local nursery to thank for a decent-sized plant, but I hope to overwinter it and have an even better show next year.  They’re another easy to grow thing but just ask for endless water and fertilizer in order to look happy, and usually I slack in this regard but since I paid for this plant I’m really making an effort.  It’s possible someone has already given me a cutting for a pink version, and perhaps I can round up a white and yellow cutting before next year and perhaps this means I’m obsessing about angel trumpets again but who’s really keeping track.  It’s basically a zucchini, if you can grow that you can grow these, just without the fear of missing a harvest and ending up with a caveman club in your veggie bed.  I guess I should mention that although I’m replacing zucchini plants with brugmansia in the potager, don’t nibble it during the garden tour since it’s quite poisonous.

Brugmansia suaveolens

Brugmansia suaveolens with canna ‘Bengal Tiger’ planted too closely.  As long as it feels like the tropics here we might as well enjoy the look as well, and the fragrance too since the brugmansia is very fragrant once night falls.

So that’s a somewhat rushed summary of the garden.  There’s more going on here and I’d like to go on about it but I’ll guess that this rambling on and a pretty long video are plenty so perhaps next post.  Obviously that could be a while, this appears to be the ‘keep up with nothing’ summer and not the ‘finally post regularly, visit all my blogging friends, keep the weeds back, finish the projects’ summer which I always imagine but it’s still pretty good, even with someone needing senior pictures this afternoon rather than help with her scooter and I don’t know how that came around so fast either.

Hope you enjoy the video and the upcoming week.

A Week of Flowers-Day 6

The week of flowers continues and I think I’ve stumbled across one of those revelations which probably everyone else already knew, but when it’s about yourself you’re always the last to know.  My revelation is that I’m a little bulb obsessed.  Any bulb or corm or tuber seems just a bit more special than your average bunch of roots or twigs…. or quite possibly it’s just whatever I’m thinking about that week… and this week it’s bulbs.  Whatever.  Better to not think too long on things like this since the last time it happened I decided I needed to bring more ‘other’ bulbs into my life, as in adding more Lycoris to the garden.  It’s been a painfully slow process waiting for them to get settled in, watching them sulk, wondering if I can blame anyone other than myself for torturing these poor little things, and then one flower comes up and I’m on the computer for hours looking for more info to distract myself with.

lycoris x squamigera

Lycoris x squamigera, the hardy magic lilies which thrive in most gardens but not so much here until recently…

Most of the magic lilies aka spider lilies aka hurricane lilies aka nakid ladies are not quite hardy enough for this garden, but several are, and they’re usually the type of flower which sets its roots down, blooms with abandon, and then outlives the gardener and homestead… unless they’re here of course.  Here they’ve limped along for years until just recently when they decided to humor me with a few exquisite blooms.

lycoris x houdyshelii

Opening pale yellow, and then fading to a strawberry blush, Lycoris x houdyshelii is a borderline hardy cross which finally sent a single bloom up this summer.  I hope I don’t have to wait another three years for the next bloom.

Maybe someday I can report back on the secrets to success with these, but today I think it’s better to just enjoy the flowers and reflect back on the cozy hot and humid summer days of their season.

lycoris x incarnata

The peppermint surprise lily (Lycoris x incarnata) is supposed one of the easiest and best growers, and last summer mine acted as such… it just took four years for it to figure that out!

lycoris radiata

In the South, I’ve been told red spider lilies(Lycoris radiata) grow like weeds.  Here in the North their winter foliage can cause problems, but last winter’s mild stretches seemed to make at least one bulb happy.  Sadly my other two bulbs decided to rot from all the melting snow runoff, so a 33% success rate is terrible yet it’s also good enough a success rate to fire up my delusions for another few years.

lycoris x caldwellii

I have high hopes for Lycoris x caldwellii which has been growing in the garden somewhat vigorously for years but only flowered for the first time this summer. I think my plantings need more sun.

So that’s a lot of complaining for day 6, and I apologize, but hopefully the pictures have brought on a few thoughts of your own late-summer flowers, pool-time, and cricket-filled evenings and that’s always a good thing.  Another good thing is a visit to Cathy’s Week of Flowers on Words and Herbs and all the additional flowers you’ll see there.

Have a great week!

Planned Surprises

Saturday I suddenly found myself on the road to Ithaca NY.  It’s about a two hour drive from here and of course I have better things to do locally but wanted to see a few friends, and you know… there was a plant sale.  Just a small thing done among members of the Adirondack chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society, but they have some pretty cool plants and for just two or three dollars a piece all the plants (donated out of member gardens) find a new home that morning.  Of course I was more than happy to help out, and a couple alliums, ferns and a violet are now here in Pa with me and even better, all the extra daffodils I dug this summer are GONE… or at least most of them.  Stupid me thinks I should replant some of the smallest ones to give them a chance to grow out so they won’t be too small to give away?  Don’t ask.  My accounting brilliance is matched only by my business sense.

cornell botanic garden

Cornell Botanic Gardens.  It was nice to stop into a garden which I’m guessing has a couple feet of topsoil, annual mulches of compost, and just the right amount of watering to grow sickeningly well.  Here’s Hydrangea cumulonimbus mocking the approaching storm clouds. 

The plant sale was followed by a luncheon and I just want to say that in between garden talk there was an invite to a garden which I really wanted to see, but I actually opted out of going.  Weird, right?  I think it was a combo of poor sleep, impending bad weather, and an overall end-of-summer-I’m-sick-of-drought-my-garden-is-a-disaster malaise.  In hindsight I wish I’d gone, but at that moment I just wasn’t up to being social any longer so passed.  That was an actual unplanned surprise, since on the way up I had a conscious thought of the possibility of being invited somewhere, and how excellent that would be.  I hope I’m not actually getting old(er)!

carex muskingumensis little midge

I found this sedge to be far cooler than you would imagine a sedge could be.  Carex muskingumensis ‘Little Midge’ I believe, even though the label said ‘Little Midget’ which would also be fitting. Quite the geometry on this little guy.

Apparently I was still young enough to add one side trip to the trip by pulling into the parking lot of the Cornell Botanical Gardens.  I did want to see how their tropical plantings were coming along, but then surprised myself by liking the shade plantings even more.

Mukdenia rossii Crimson Fans

Mukdenia rossii ‘Crimson Fans’.  Seeing this was a first for me, and I always thought the red color was an autumnal, perfect storm, enhanced for catalogs, color effect, but here it is in late August doing its bright crimson thing as if it’s no big deal.  Very nice!

And then it was back home.  I pulled in at a suitably responsible and mature arrival time of 6pm, just in time to enjoy the evening light on the Lycoris.  If you want to talk about surprises the fact any of these are blooming would be the premier surprise since they did not look all that happy this spring, and baked-clay dry summers are not supposed to encourage good bloom with these temperamental divas.

lycoris x squamigera

The most common surprise lily, or Nekkid lady (Lycoris x squamigera), is blooming more than it’s ever bloomed before.  I heard they like derelict, neglected properties so perhaps the random construction debris and bits of trash I’ve thrown here are the secret to a good show.  

There’s actually a second magic lily surprising me this year.  I thought I was successfully killing off most of my plantings, but suddenly there’s an almost clump of Lycoris x incarnata flower stalks poking up between the squash leaves.  If only I knew what went right with this spot I’d repeat it with the other bulbs growing just inches away but worlds apart in flowering-power… as in they’re not flowering at all…  Perhaps they’ll also surprise me but I doubt it.  Someone might have already poked around and found several have lost their roots to some kind of rot, and even though they’re sometimes called magic lilies, I think a miracle is closer to what we need.

lycoris x incarnata

Lycoris x incarnata, aka the peppermint spider lily, is a hybrid of two other Lycoris species.  There are other forms, but this striped version is one of the more common garden forms.  I think it’s quite awesome this year.

These two Lycoris and a few others are the cold-hardy members of a bigger family of bulbs which do well in the warmer Southern states and aren’t all that uncommon down there.  Sadly they’re not hardy enough for this garden, but of course since I’m doing so well with the other ones, I also thought I’d try a few of the more tender types such as L. radiata, the red hurricane lily.  With a bar already set so low by their cousins, it’s not hard to imagine that just the fact they’re still alive counts as a fabulous success.

terrace garden

Other not-cold-hardy things filling space on the sand terrace.  With a timed drip irrigation system this at least is one part of the garden not miserable for rain.

I’ll take whatever fabulous successes I can get.  Today it rained, and although the 0.06″ is not the 0.50″ forecast, it should green up the crabgrass a bit and at least give me a day off from watering… assuming I still even water.  This weekend I almost moved from ‘trying to get a few things through’ to ‘maybe save a few perennials and shrubs so they come back next year’.  That’s basically giving up for the year, and with school ramping up again, and construction crawling along, and with money evaporating faster than the rain, it’s never sounded better… until you consider the alternatives.  Being stuck in front of the tv from now until snowdrop season or taking up a trowel and helping tile, or sitting through an entire football game?  I think even a bad day of looking at weeds and wilted plants has its bright spots and I think I can do it for a few more days.  Lycoris season is always full of surprises, and even if the surprise is in how disappointing they can be, the colchicums will be here soon and I can always count on them.

Have a great week, and may your garden get all the rain it needs 😉