Night-blooming plants in my garden

I’ve not had the time to blog enough here as I like, and have not had the creative streak that enabled me to begin this blog in the first place so I may take a little leave after this post to recollect my thoughts.

Anyhow, the night-blooming plants in my container garden include Brugmansia sp., Brunfelsia gigantea, Cestrum nocturnum, Epiphyllum oxpetalum ‘Mark Twain’, and Hylocereus undatus. While it is nearly impossible to get them to all bloom together, the Brunfelsia and Cestrum fragrances often commingle, and while I’m still waiting for my Brugmansia to open that one shall surely add a sinister note to the overwhelming musky perfume of my night blooming garden! When my night-blooming cacti bloom, Epiphyllum oxpetalum is the one with the more powerful fragrance, and it disperses this fragrance much more freely than did Hylocereus undatus. Night blooming flowers truly are a magical thing!

Brunfelsia

Brunfelsia americana. toptropicals.com.

If one corner of the world holds more night-blooming shrubs than any other, it is certainly the Caribbean and Central American realm. It is from this region that many of the cultivated night-blooming shrubs come from, including Brunfelsias, also known as raintree. The Brunfelsias are native to the Western Caribbean and Central America down to the Amazon. The genus is known for its white or purplish, long-tubed flowers (pollinated by moths) that are quite eerily fragrant by night.

Like many night-flowering plants, Brunfelsias feature a nice clove-like scent, but adds several layers to it in doing so. Truth be told, the fragrances are different per species but have an overall fragrance that seems to combine a light musk perfume essence with clove. I have since come to realize the night scent I remember on a family vacation years ago to St. Croix was a mixture of Brunfelsia americana and Cestrum nocturnum, and no doubt a mixture of night fragrances with these two inundates many Caribbean and Central American forests.

Most well known to the horticultural world is B. nitida from Central America, which truth-be-told is one of the hardest to grow in containers. It has a typically clove scent and grows best in the outdoor climate that can endure it, as opposed to a greenhouse. Very similar, and easier to grow indoors is B. americana, which is more floriferous, but one of the least attractive ones of the family.

Brunfelsia gigantea. toptropicals.com

B. gigantea is probably the most aesthetically-pleasing member of the family with the largest flowers (about 5 inches long) and porcelain-white flowers that maintain their scent through the morning and in early evening. Even when not in flower, the leaves are a solid addition, being a dark forest green with hardly any problems from insects. This variety tends to grow faster than the others as well. The scent is more musky than the others and lighter on the clove, but it is most certainly a well-pleasing fragrance on a humid evening.

B. jamaicensis from Jamaica is another commonly grown one, with a form very similar to B. americana but with more ruffled flowers. Jamaican raintree is easier to grow than B. americana, but less floriferous. The fragrance is said to be fruitier than the others, probably due to its natural range being up in the mountains, so as to also attract bats.

There are countless other fragrant species, but the one most known of the family B. grandiflora (yesterday-today-tomorrow) is not fragrant. Many endemic species are better known to their native environment, all with a familiar hauntingly fragrance of night.

Night-Fragrant Flowers, An Introduction

Epiphyllum oxypetalum. MAK, Wing Kuen. Wikimedia Commons.

‘The true vesper flowers, those that withhold their sweetness from the day and give it freely to the night are rather a curious company. Few have any daytime attractions…But with twilight comes an extraordinary change.’ The Fragrant Path, Louise Beebe Wilder.

In the plant world there is a certain sweetness that comes with vespertine air- a scent all too unfamiliar to the world of the light, but familiar to that of the night. A sweetness beyond expectation that rarefies the cool dark air, calling forth night creatures to drink in the dark, an ambrosia by moonlight. A scent that only moths and bats will find edifying in the deep darkness, a flower from which a musty scent pours forth. Indeed, the midnight air is the rarest of scents, as it is the one least sampled to the human nose.

To tell the truth, many flowers are night scented, from daphne to lily, jasmine to tuberose. However, many of the former are fragrant by day as well, and even open during it. True vespertine flowers are only identifiable at twilight, and redolent by dark fall. Of the most common are flowering tobacco, followed by Angel’s trumpet and night-jasmine- all others are either too uncommon, or scented as well on darker days. But to the night, these flowers call forth, haunting as a silent witness to the floral wonders of the world. Only a certain few astound and amaze, but all stand as a guardian, a watch in the night.

Lilies pt. 3- Night-Fragrant Lilies

Lilium nepalense. http://davesgarden.com.

Lilium regale. 2007. Epibase. Wikimedia Commons.

Last in my detail of fragrant lilies are those that are only or moreso fragrant at night. The lilies in question are most fragrant or solely fragrant at night. In a sense, most lilies are more fragrant at night, but L. regale and L. nepalense are more impressive than the rest in the olfactory department, and provide a good segway into my next series of posts about night fragrant plants.

I cannot attest to having sampled L. nepalense, because it does not easily grow in Kentucky, but it is a solely night fragrant plant, and heavily so. This lily is native to the Himalayas and prefers cool and moist climates (something this area is not!) These lilies are also very different from all detailed so far in that they are stoloniferous as opposed to bulbous, and have a very unique color scheme, being green on the outside of the petal and reddish-chocolate colored on the inside. These lilies grow well in coastal California and the Pacific Northwest above zone 8, otherwise are cool-greenhouse plants.

Next is L. regale, the regal lily from China. This is a more typical lily of the family, although growing up to seven feet, with beautiful six inch flowers in white (outside petals purplish) with yellow throats. While these lilies are day fragrant, they increase at night, giving their wonderfully sweet, musky scent to the night garden (they are in the same clan as Easter lilies if that gives an indication of the fragrance.) L. regale is also one of the easiest lilies to grow in the garden, and the University of Kentucky arboretum has a few in its inner garden areas. Because these lilies are rather large, they do require staking, but are bound to be any fragrant gardener’s best friend otherwise!

Many more lily posts could be made than the three I have, but again, this is a genus that I frankly am not prepared to handle as there are so many single cultivars and hybrids that are wonderfully fragrant. Luckily, lilies are going nowhere, and many more wonderful hybrids await to be made in the gardening world! Starting next are night-fragrant flowers in my sad attempt to keep up with Tovah Martin’s The Essence of Paradise selection for July. Gardeners beware, the intense fragrance that awaits the night air.

Mimosa (Albizia)

Albizia julibrissin. 2003. Michele Denbar. http://grannymountain.blogspot.com.

Summer is a season of rich scents, but none hits me so powerfully as mimosas do on a humid evening. Just as lindens are waning, mimosa takes full stage, casting its similar rich scent out through entire neighborhoods for pollinators. Mimosa is a catch all for many small trees and large shrubs in the Fabaceae family with similar flowers and tree structures, but these are actually quite different from the other mimosas out there. The fragrance I believe is almost as effective as the Acacias of the tropical world, but without the thorns.

This mimosa is also called the Persian silk tree for its silky flowers, but in the U.S. its best known as mimosa (although not related to Mimoseae. The tree does happen to be native to Persia in its river valleys, but also appears all the way over to East Asia. Its the hardiest tree of its tribe, hardy to zone 6a, and flourishing in every space the climate allows it to grow. As it is a tropical plant introduction, it decidedly adds a tropical feel to temperate landscapes, resembling the Acacias of Africa, although smaller. It will grow to be forty feet tall in zones 7-9, but in zones 5b-6b, it barely makes it over twenty feet, with a larger spread to thirty feet. As it is borderline hardy, it is almost always the last plant to leaf out in my area (mid May), along with crepe myrtle. Its bipinnate leaves are stunning in their length, and like many other plants in the genus, close at night, folding down in appearance.

The flowers begin to appear about this time of year in June and can last up until late August, scenting the summer nights with an incredible fragrance. The flowers are what make these trees unique, as they are watermelon pink, very much like a puffball, and appear in clusters that are identifiable from far away. The ‘flowers’ are actually composed of many small flowers in a big puffball-like cluster. The individual flowers are small, with  small calyxes and corollas, but very large stamens up to two inches long. The flower nectar attracts bees and hummingbirds during the course of the summer, and at the end of the season produce seedpods characteristic of the Legume family.

The fragrance is almost indescribable in these, as its a center point between three fragrances. It seems to be the middle note between gardenia, sweet pea, and watermelon (or perhaps pomegranate…certainly fruity). Its a fragrance that begs for more, and I cannot resist it! Even a few flowers are enough to do the trick, but a whole tree bedecked in blooms is a true ambrosia. The scent is strong day or night, but seems to prevail in humid evenings.

There are many cultivars available of the species, but the standard are the pink blossomed kind, which are unfortunately invasive in the Southeast. I’ve seen many growing wildly in the foothills beneath the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, and one would think it was the only flowering tree to grow in Knoxville if driving on the interstates in the city during its flowering period. Variants of this main species can have creamy yellow and white blooms, but this is generally uncommon. There is a redder variety called ‘Rosea,’ as well as a purple leaf variety called ‘Summer Chocolate.’ ‘Rosea’ is hardy to zone 5, and tends to end up as a twenty foot tree, while ‘Summer Chocolate’ is only hardy to zone 7, but is less floriferous.

I normally make a spiel about not growing invasive plants as standards, but this is one of the few exceptions I think we can allow for the sake of its scent. Do dispose of those seed pods though please!

Its hard to believe June is nearly over. There are so many plants I should have gotten to by now it makes my head spin, but I guess winter can always allow some catch up time, as unplanned for the bloom season as that is.

Hemerocallis

Hemerocallis fulva. http://www.northgeorgiadaylilysociety.com.

As of this past Saturday, it is officially summer, and the Northern Hemisphere is beginning its long bake under the sun. Every square inch of the garden notices as flowers burst into bloom all over, and everything is a wonderful verdant shade, for the meantime anyways. Perhaps no flower best sums up summers arrival than the opening of daylilies. The ones in my garden are particularly fond of blooming right on or just after the solstice on the 21st, as are my container Jasmines. Daylilies are a reliable and most welcome companion in the garden, as these perennials are able to fit in just about anywhere, and are hardy as can be!

The genus Hemerocallis has many representatives over the Northern Hemisphere, but the main garden cultivars are in the species H. fulva from Asia. Daylily or Tawny Daylily comes in many wonderful crosses and colors, all with the same scent in greater or lesser quantities. The most well-known cultivars are in the yellow-orange-red tribes, but cultivars exist in every color except blue (last I checked anyways). The most widely available cultivars are ‘Apricot Sparkles’ (light orange), the Decatur series (yellow-orange mixes, some with red centers), and Stella d’Oro (classic yellow-gold). Most garden nurseries will carry a few different colored cultivars, and a mixture of colors I find is more aesthetically appealing than a large patch of Stella d’Oro anyday! Double and triple-flowered cultivars are available aplenty, but I prefer the singles.

The fragrance is not like other lilies in the larger family, but do share a warmth to them like other lilies. They lack the musk of the Stargazers and trumpet lilies, and imbibe a crispness to their scent instead. Its a scent that does not spread, but awaits for the nose to behold and love. I daresay I prefer it to many other lilies out there, because it is not overbearing in its sweetness like the Stargazers and Easter lilies can be. To me, it is the floral scent of summer, a verdant sweetness that is worth loving.

In addition to many colors, the varieties come in many sizes, ranging from minis (less than one foot tall) to cultivars holding their flowers up to five feet tall. I’ve often noticed the daylilies that escaped into the wild have been the taller ones, with smaller flowers and skinnier petals. The plants are bulbous, but spread from their tuberous roots like rhizomes. The leaves are clumping in a fan shape, and are long and green, but otherwise unimpressive. The flowers appear on a long stalk but open day-to-day with fresh flowers always becoming the spent ones. Daylilies get their name from the fact the lily flowers open only for a day at a time. Sometimes they develop seed heads, but these are easily removed. The flowers tend to last through July and into August, but are done by September in most cases.

These perennials will effectively last forever in a landscape, again one reason why I love these flowers! They are drought hardy, cold hardy, and low maintenance,  a bit hard to get rid of in the landscape, which is the one downside to them. Lastly, the petals are edible, and can be used fresh in salads.

 

Fragrant Hydrangeas

Hydrangea quercifolia. Anne Norman. Wikimedia Commons.

Summer is right around the corner, and in my neck of the woods, summer is incomplete without Hydrangeas everywhere! Hydrangeas are native to the warm temperate and subtropical forests of East Asia and the United States, and there are many wild varieties. Garden hydrangeas are normally grown for colorful, big, bushy blooms, particularly seen in H. macrophylla. Who doesn’t love the big bushy blue to pink and all colors in between blooms? Your nose. That’s right! Those Hydrangeas you  normally love are not the fragrant ones in most cases.

The more colorful Hydrangeas are the Asian varieties, but in a horticultural world twist- the fragrant ones are the American varieties! Normally its the other way around (viburnum and osmanthus come to mind here) but the mold must always break somewhere. The American genus leading the way on fragrance is oakleaf hydrangea, H. quercifolia.The similar H. radiata and H. cinerea are also similarly fragrant.

Oakleaf hydrangeas are native to the Southeast, and grow in the Piedmont and coastal plains. Oakleaf hydrangeas are not modest plants, one specimen at the University of Kentucky arboretum was eight feet high with a ten foot spread, and that still isn’t the largest out there! They grow to be nearly thirty feet in the wild, and have a large open crown. In the wild, they often form large thickets, as the plant spreads via underground stems (stolons) and have identifiably cinnamon-brown, peeling bark. The large five-lobed leaves look similar to oaks (hence the oak leaf) but much larger- up to eight inches in length, and turn a brilliant red in fall. In summer (May-September), these Hydrangeas bloom with an odd spiked display- flowers are small ‘spiky balls’ in between petaled bracts that appear as the ‘flowers.’ The whole spike is nearly a foot long, and ages from white to pink to brown, where they will hang on all winter as the lower leaves drop off.

The scent is very interesting in these plants. Its brought out best by heat and humidity, and almost reminds me of a type of glue that was commonly used when I was a child (It was a bluish glue with glitter I assume to make it kid friendly?) Anyways, its a smell that is sour but extremely sweet, bordering on overkill, and cloys quickly en masse. Its not indolent like others, but cloying like privets are. I love them, but its not a scent I want in my garden come evening if that makes sense.

These plants are great in a forest garden or under planting for trees, and there are many cultivars (including dwarfs) available. I would avoid hot sun as these plants cannot handle drought and must be well watered and kept from wilting. Lastly, they are hardy in zones 6-9, and marginally hardy in zone 5.

Hydrangea radiata. Hectonichus. 29 June 2012. Wikimedia Commons.

H. radiata and H. cinerea are also native to the Southeast, but H. radiata is limited to the Southern Appalachians and H. cinerea spreads to the Ozarks. H. radiata is called the silverleaf hydrangea for its leaves being silvery on the undersides, and H. cinerea is called the grey hydrangea likewise for its grey pubescent leaf underside. The two both grow to be ten feet tall and have flowers in corymbs, blooming in June to July. Both plants can be cultivated in gardens, but silverleaf hydrangea is the more difficult of the two, as it requires cooler temperatures and more moisture than grey hydrangea, although it is showier.

Cool-season annuals pt. 2

Papaver alpinum subsp. rhaeticum. Étienne Ruedin. 30 July 2006. Wikimedia Commons.

As part of the second installment on cool-season annuals, this post will feature more popular and scented cool-season annuals.

Poppies are a beloved cool season annual in many warmer locations in the temperate regions, as well as in cooler climates where they are annuals and perennials. Not many are fragrant that can be cultivated in gardens but P. alpinum and its subspecies are. These Austrian alps natives are perfect for cool rock gardens, and produce small yellow or white blooms from July to August. They have a hay-like scent. Related P. fugax is reported to smell like plums in bloom. The opium poppy, P. somniferum, is reported to be rankish in scent, but produces the seeds used for edible cooking in addition to its opiate properties.

Reseda odorata. http://www.robsplants.com

Mignonette is another plant much like violets and primroses that have just fallen out of fashion since the Victorian era. This come much to shame, since like the others, they are quite wonderfully and uniquely fragrant, said to capture the scent of crisp raspberries. The Reseda tribe is a weedy bunch, not able to be any bit impressive to the gardening eye, which is unquestionably why they have fallen out of fashion in this nose-less age. The genus is native to the Mediterranean realm but reached its azimuth in the French countryside, where it became a common garden and window box plant at the turn of the century.  

The plant is unimpressive, looking like a weedy Mustard plant, with a leafy basal rosette and grayish unattractive flowers in tall spikes. R. alba and R. lutea are a bit more impressive to the eye, with whitish to yellowish flowers in tall spikes, with nice fragrance also. A yellow dye can be made from R. luteola. The species has a tendency to be weedy in areas they are introduced to, thriving particularly well in Canada as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Lathyrus odoratus ‘Gwendoline’. http://loghouseplants.com.

Perhaps no cool-season annual is as sweet or beloved universally as the sweet pea. I hardly know of any well-to-do garden in a cooler clime without a selection of sweet peas! These Sicilian natives have undergone much manipulation to meet the demand for the many modern day varieties with frills and multiple shades of colors, but the scent has not suffered as much as roses and musk flower through the various crosses. Wilder swears by the old fashioned grandifloras as being the sweetest, but I prefer high-scented or old-fashioned varieties.

The annual grows like lightning, up to six feet or more given proper climbing room and support. The sweet pea looks much like the edible peas (this one is not edible- the seeds are toxic) with light green two-paired leaves and a third leaf modified as a tendril, and flowers supported by a small spike on the axial plant tips. Flowers come in all shades except yellow and green, and some will sport multiple shades on different flower parts. The flowers are shaped like the typical pea flowers, but many varieties have frilled petals. They grow well is full sun, and moist but well-drained soil with adequate fertilizer.

Sweet peas also tend to have a magnificent scent, strongest in the early morning. The scent is like sweet violet covered in pink lemonade- sweet and tangy! Its enough to make friends with any nose, particularly the youthful one. It makes a nice cut-flower for a small vase but only lasts a day or so, tending to droop and drop in just a matter of hours. Grown in number they do fill a garden space beautifully with the scent as well.

Unlike the others, this cool-season annual will keep growing through the hot summers of the warmer climates, but will not flower from June to mid-September. It also can reseed in certain gardens if the seed pods are allowed to remain and drop. You may get some interesting color crosses of your own by allowing it! I highly recommend growing sweet peas at least once, if there is enough room in the garden for it, as they are easy to grow and rewarding all the same.

Cool Season Annuals pt. 1

Antirrhinum majus. Hedwig Storch. Wikimedia Commons.

Summer is the for the Northern Hemisphere, as there as so many different climate zones to have a wave of blooms, its easy to get lost. However, not all of the Northern Hemisphere is ‘hot’ during the summer. This leads to wonderful cool summer weather climates- particularly in maritime regions of the Pacific Northwest and Northern Europe. In these regions, summer days are between the 60-80 degree range, and nights in the upper 40’s to lower 60’s. Basically, its the kind of weather we crave if we live in hot places come July. In these climates, warmer weather plants tend to not bloom well or even grow at all, but certain plants we consider as cool-season annuals will bloom all summer long with no difficulty. These cool-season annuals will bloom in warmer regions either early or late in the growing season but tend to bake and even die out during the summer heat.

One of the most beloved cool-season annuals of the world are snapdragons. While the family is native to a large part of the Northern hemisphere, the main cultivated variety (Antirrhinum majus) is a European introduction. These unimpressive plants by themselves look weedy (and are weedy in many areas) until they put up two foot long spikes of multicolored interesting blooms during the mid-to-late summer. The individual flowers look like dragon mouths that move when squeezed by fingers. The shape is due to their pollinators being bees, providing the insects a platform to land on while collecting the nectar.

The plants grow fast in most garden environments and will re-seed themselves in a proper environment. The flowers are often used as fillers in bouquets, but are terrible to ship in most cases, lending to their usage locally. The scent of the flowers does not carry, but it is candy sweet, perfect for little fingers and noses to come and sample. I remember one particular plant always being present in the garden of my youth, and my nose being constantly peppered with snapdragon pollen. The flowers do contain poisonous compounds, however, so some caution is necessary.

Lobularia maritima. Hectonichus. Wikimedia Commons.

From the same stretch of  Mediterranean European coastline comes Sweet Alyssum, one of the first spring annuals to bloom, and one of the most reliable. Its a small flowering plant, used as a ground cover as much as an annual, and is fairly hardy as well, reseeding commonly and naturalizing in temperate regions. They grow almost too well- taking up any conceivable area in the garden and cascading over rock walls in the rock gardens, filling every crack in between rocks and sidewalks! The  leaves are mostly inconspicuous, as they are hid behind a spike of flowers almost constantly. The individual blooms are quite tiny, but the spike is fairly impressive in its numbers. They come in white to pink and lavender colors.

The scent is also very nice when sampled *lightly*. I say lightly, because enough time with them will leave you convinced they are rank as can be! From a first whiff on the breeze, they can come across as like hay with a sweet almond touch. In a hot garden bench, the indoles present in these mustard relatives become all too aware of themselves.

Lastly, certain annual lupines also make good garden candidates, particularly for the Pacific Northwest. The majority of species of Lupines cultivated are perennials, like L. polyphyllus, which can certainly be grown as a cool-season annual on the east coast; but one fragrant one, L. nanus is good for Californian gardens and drier annual gardens. It is better known as a wildflower for the chaparral communities of coastal California. Lupines have a honey-like scent with an undercurrent of pepper in their throats.

Lupinus nanus. Tom Baird. 14 March 2005. Wikimedia Commons.

Tomorrow I’ll continue the cool season annuals with Sweet peas, poppies, and the French darling, Mignonette, before moving on to warm-season annuals. The seasonal march continues!

Stephanotis

Stephanotis floribunda ‘Variegata’. http://www.logees.com

Its June, and like clockwork, Stephanotis is going crazy in greenhouses and on patios everywhere. If it weren’t for Jasmine, Stephanotis would have to be my favorite tropical vining plant for its appearance and scent! Called the Madagascar Jasmine, and Bridal Veil flower, this Madagascar native has an affinity for impressing with its dark green leaves and picture-perfect white, waxy summer flowers. Its arguably the most famous member of the Milkweed family, and has a fragrance that is only fitting for such a beautiful plant.

This is a tall vine, attaining twenty feet or more, with perfect green leaves six inches long. The white flowers are held in large clusters, and have an interesting trumpet form with five attaches petals. Inside the waxy tubes are long white hairs, meant to trap pollinating insects, ensuring pollination. The flowers are so perfect, they are often used in wedding bouquets, matching a wonderful bride in white! To top it all off, they have a wonderful scent that is not just reminiscent of cherry cobbler, it would fool the best of noses with its redolence! Its a syrupy sweetness that is liberal when the vine is absolutely bedecked with flowers, sending its fruity sweetness across the patio for all noses to behold with joy. Even when not liberal with the scent, the flowers are just begging to be sniffed! They also can produce large green seedpods with many dandelion-like seeds inside.

Stephanotis makes for a great houseplant as well, but there are terms and conditions with being the owner of one. First, they must have sun inside to bloom in spring- give it a good bright window and let it summer outside! Actually, when grown in the right environment with much light, they can bloom year round; but this is hard to accomplish outside the tropics. Second, don’t over water, they do not like wet feet. Also don’t underwater in summer, these plants don’t recover well from stress, they can stand winter dryness as long as its cool, but above 40 Fahrenheit. Third, it absolutely needs a trellis, and will need to be cut back periodically- prune in July or after the main flowering period is over.

Stephanotis is one of my favorite, and is likely to be yours if you take good care of it! I’ve not kept one over the winter just because I prefer keeping them as annuals, and I don’t have the space, but they are lovely in any case.