Aristolochia

I was giving my students a mid-term ID exam last Saturday, when we encountered this unusual vine, growing in the Livington Ripley gardens. 

The plant is Aristolochea gigantea, or Dutchman's pipe, a vine native to Brazil.  The flowers, as you can see, are amazing.  Large - almost 8" diameter, the flower consists of a red, velvety flat disc white venation.

A large bladder shaped chamber is attached to the disc with a small tube.  While the structure itself looks a lot like a carnivorous pitcher plant, like Nepenthes. 

But when we dissected the flower, the presence of any digesting fluids was nonexistent.  Instead, the tubular structure was covered with long, fine hairs.  I speculated the hairs were key in moving insects into the tube and to the flower at the base, and further guessed that the pollinator was some kind of scavenging insect, like a fly -- since the flower itself looked like rotting flesh.

Indeed, this plant is considered a carrion flower and is often pollinated by flies.  The hairs play a pivotal role -- they keep the flies trapped at the base of the capsule for several days.  The fly lives on nectar in the capsule until the pollen is released by the anthers, at which point the hairs drop down and the fly climbs out of the chamber.

Aristolochia is derivative from the ancient Greek words Aristo- which means 'best' and -lochia which means 'delivery'.  For a long time this plant was believed to be helpful in childbirth.  It's since been determined that this plant is actually quite dangerous to the kidneys.

Plantain Weed

Yesterday I was in New York and it was a glorious morning for a run in Central Park.  The air was crisp and cool, a nice change from the record breaking heat we've all been enduring lately. While climbing Heartbreak Hill, I noticed these three ladies, collecting plants in the weedy turf. 

 

It turns out they were collecting all the above ground parts of Plantago major, or plantain weed.  The Asian ladies spoke very little English, but the youngest woman (they looked like they could have been three generations of the same family) was able to tell me they use this for tea.  A longer look online shows that the plant's leaves, when boiled with water, strained and cooled, can be helpful in aiding coughs, colds, dysentery, and possibly high blood pressure.  The leaves can be mashed into a poultice that reduces itching and swelling of skin irritations.  In fact, one of the less common monikers for this plant is 'Soldier's Herb' since it's been used for this manner on battlefields.

No doubt, you've seen this plant in less manicured lawns and fields.  The plant is native to Europe and Central Asia, but of course now it's found all over North America and other temperate areas. 

Joe Pye Weed

This is one of my favorite North American wildflowers -- Eutrochium purpureum (formerly Eupatorium), commonly known as Joe Pye Weed.  Eutrochium is a tall (6-7') summer flowering perennial, typically with pink flowers as seen below.  Part of the reason that this plant is now Eutrochium and not Eupatorium is because the former has whorled leaves (indeed, trocho is Greek for wheel-like, thus whorled) and the latter has opposite leaves. Both genera remain in the Asteraceae family.

Below, a white flowering variety, less common than the purplish pink flowers.  One way to distinguish E. purpureum from E. maculatum (these plants are often confused) is the presence of pink spots along the entire stem of E. maculatum, as opposed to the clear green or purple stems on E. purpureum.

Joe Pye weed is a pretty terrific common name, too.  It's named for a Native American who was known by colonists as Joe Pye.  As legend goes, he used the roots of this plant to aid a colonist who was ill with typhus.  The plant induced sweating which broke his fever. The plant was also used by Native Americans as an ailment to "breakbone fever" (which is now known as dengue fever), thus another common name of boneset (though boneset is usually considered the common name for Eutrochium perfoliatum, a close relative). 

You need a fair amount of real estate to use this plant, as large as it gets.  But if you have the space, it's a great addition as it provides habitat to bees, butterflies and birds.

Heptacodium miconioides

Last Saturday, I took my students on another Ladew field trip.  While there, we noticed the flowers buds on a very large specimen of Heptacodium miconioides or seven son flower.  Unfortunately I rarely teach and take photos at the same time, so today I'm posting a photo of a specimen at Kurt Bluemel's nursery. 

Heptacodium is a rarity and horticultural buffs love this plant.  It seldom grows higher than 15' so seeing specimens like this one and the one at Ladew is a special treat.  A member of the honeysuckle (or Caprifoliaceae) family, the plant has two ranks of long, strappy leaves and the panicles of white flowers occur from the center of the stem.  The leaves are particularly unusual, as the midrib vein has two additional prominent veins that run parallel and to each side of it. The bark is putty colored and very stringy or fibrous.  Habit, if left unpruned, is quite wild, though it can be shaped quite well.  Dirr:
Upright, irregular, loose, almost artistic; grows to its own beat." (Emphasis mine.)

The infloresences consist of seven solitary flowers, thus the name Heptacodium.  Hepta of course means seven and -codium is referring to heads.  It's thus a pretty direct translation for seven son flower.  Miconioides means it looks like a plant in the genus Miconia, which are largely tropical plants.

Peach Watch '11 Concludes

A few weeks ago, I posted about the peaches I'd been watching since March.  At the time, they still needed a few more weeks to ripen.  Yesterday, I drove by the farm (in southern New Jersey) and they looks ripe for picking!

In fact, the farmer's market down the street had tons of them, and they were perfection!

The Bride's Bouquet

As I mentioned on Monday we wanted to make my sister's bouquet out of blue hydrangeas and white roses.  This is how the hydrangeas arrived.  Though we liked the leaves on the bouquet (we did a test run a week earlier), they wilted quite quickly.  So the first task was removing leaves and clipping the stems.  Next we separated the best flowers from the wilted or damaged one.

After that, you arrange the bouquet loosely, until you like how it looks.  Then you secure with rubber bands.

Add the floral glue (not my best look here).

Place ribbon over the glue.

We did a solid blue ribbon, then topped with a gauzy blue ribbon.  Secure them with corsage pins.

The pins are on the "back" of the bouquet, so the bride know what the best face of the bouquet is for the procession and pics.

 The finished product:

 

The bride's and bridesmaids' bouquets.

Me and my sis on the big day!

Bouquets

So, things have been busy this summer for me.  Work has been moving at a rapid clip and on top of this, my sister got married last Saturday!  It was a wonderful event and I love her and her new husband dearly.  And obviously, we worked together on the flowers. 

We used orchids for the centerpieces at the tables and I'll post photos of those later this week.  For now, I'll show you how to make a bouquet, in case you don't already know.  I blogged about a year and a half ago about my experiences working at a florist.  When I was there, I also learned how to make fairly simple bouquets for weddings.

My sister loves hydrangeas, so we did blue hydrangeas with white roses for her.  We did photos before the ceremony on a July afternoon so I actually made her two bouquets, one for the photos and a fresh one for the ceremony. The bridesmaids were all wearing different colors of the same dress, so we kept our bouquets simple -- white roses.

I got the flowers at a wholesaler called Potomac Floral Wholesale.  Since my business is related, I was able to get a wholesale account, though they are strict about who can and can't work with them.  It was a blast walking through their warehouse, seeing the endless amounts of flowers.

 

The roses were longstemmed white roses called 'Eskimo' - the color was gorgeous, with just a touch of green.  Roses are delivered packed as you see them above - 25 to a bunch.  Typically they are grown in Columbia.  In fact, rose shipments are regularly searched as they've been used to mule cocaine into the country by drug traffickers in the past.

You need a few different tools to really take best care of the flowers.  Clippers to cut the stems (the orange ones above are Felcos, which are the best).  You don't want to use scissors unless they're terribly sharp because you don't want the stems to be crushed at all, instead they should be sliced cleanly so water transfer isn't interrupted.  You can use scissors to clip the leaves off.

 

 Finally, you use a knife to slice off the thorns.  Luckily this cultivar had very few thorns, so this didn't take long.  Once you've recut the bottoms of the stems, removed the leaves and cut the thorns off, you remove the outer, bruised petals and finally, put the roses right back into the water.

 

We planned on doing 15 roses per bouquet, so next you begin to organize the roses, trying to make them into an attractive bunch.  When you like how they look, you put rubber bands around the stems, holding them together. 

 When that's done, we wrapped the bunch in floral glue, which you can pick up at a craft store.  It's double sided with adhesive.  Once the glue is wrapped around the bouquet, you wrap ribbon around the base and use corsage pins to anchor the ribbon. 

 

Photos of the bride's bouquet and more tomorrow or Wednesday!

Stewartia pseudocamellia

Way, way back in May 2008, I wrote a post about Pinus bungeana or lacebark pine, and said "sooner or later I will post some Stewartia pseudocamellia photos, too.


And yet, I never did.  Shameful.  Shameful because Stewartia pseudocamellia is without a doubt, one of the most elegant, beautiful small trees. 

 

Most of these are shots of the specimen at the Conservatory Gardens in Central Park -- I've actually yet to see one in DC, but I have no doubt they exist.  It's a very small growing, compact, multistemmed tree.   So far, you may be thinking, nice, but whatev...

 

 

The foliage has deeply recessed veins and a minute serration along the edge - I like the textural quality it gives the plant. Part of the reason I haven't blogged about Stewartia was because I never had good pics of the plant in bloom until this summer.  I still don't have good fall color photos, but take my word for it - the rich red color is lovely, too. 

It's evident why the species name is pseudocamellia when one considers the blossoms.  Large, white, camellia-like flowers occur for several weeks in early summer.  Like camellias, they have very showy yellow stamens.  The plant can be a bit messy when the flowers fall to the ground, but to me it's worth a little cleanup.

And then of course, we have the bark.  People love the bark on crape myrtles, but they just don't compare to Stewartia's silvery, satin-like sheen.  The bark exfoliates, showing shades of peach, gray and sand, and has a wonderful, shiny surface.  Absolutely beautiful.  I tell my students that this is the Grace Kelly of trees -- it's a ridiculous statement, but I can't help myself.

Finally, none of this is to say the plant is too delicate -- I also see this growing 10' away from the Hudson River, in Battery Park, and it fares very well there.  Part of the reason it's not very popular is because it's expensive (i.e., slow growing), but as you can guess, I think it's worth it.

Bottlebrush Buckeye

Bottlebrush buckeye, or Aesculus parviflora is one of my favorite summer-flowering shrubs.  The one below is blooming at the Conservatory Gardens in Central Park.  If the genus name is familiar, that's because I've also blogged about Aesculus hippocastanum, or horsechestnut.  Like that species, this plant has opposite, palmately compound leaves, though A. parviflora is typically large, sprawling shrub, and A. hippocastanum is a tree.

Of course, the flowers are quite different too.  As the common name implies, the spikey infloresences look like bottlebrushes.  The species name, parviflora, means "small flowers" - as the individual flowers on this infloresence are quite small.

 

Now, I said that the plant is typically a sprawling shrub (it's also one of the very best plants to use in dense shade), but on a recent visit to Manor View Farms in Maryland the owner John showed me some unusual specimens he had that had been limbed up into treeforms.  It's killing me that I don't have a chance to use them on any current jobs - they make a lovely silhouette. 

Progress at Long Bridge Park

In early May, I wrote a post about Arlington's Long Bridge Park, which is currently under construction.  Then a reader sent me a photo of his view of the park from his office window.  Today, he sends an update:

On another note, apologies for the scant posts lately.  This week things will be back on track!