Night-Fragrant Annuals pt 1. Petunia and Stocks

Petunia ‘Dreams White’. http://www.parkswholesaleplants.com

While many of the fragrant annuals grown are most know for their fragrance during the day, a few are particularly know for their night fragrance. Petunias have the luck of being fragrant both at night and day, but the fragrances are completely different between the two. The purple petunias of day have a nice warm fragrance, almost like daylilies, but with a sinister kick that resides in all solanaceous plants; But at night, this fragrance is akin more to clove. This fragrance is so pervasive that entire garden centers and lawns at evening are reminiscent of fine clove wherever they are grown in abundance! The white petunias are freest with the clove fragrance, all others less free and with a bit more floral in them.Petunias are easily the most well-known and widely grown fragrant annual of the night, and its clove-scent pierces its  surroundings, even on dark, cloudy days, and in a way that would make pure night-fragrant plants jealous.

Petunias are widespread and easily grown as an annual, and the wave series surely adorns every hanging basket in the Eastern United States! Petunias require little, except well-drained soil, full sun, and plenty of fertilizer. They also require deadheading for a true all-summer display. Who would have ever thought, a dowdy tobacco relative from South America would be brought from obscurity to be such a popular garden plant? Well, too many relatives of them have been to be honest…but that’s beside the point.

Other widely grown petunias besides the wave series have been supertunias, multifloras and grandifloras, but each hybrid has its own perk. Related Calibrachoa, although similar in look, have little to no fragrance in them.

Matthiola longipetala. 6, December, 2006. Al-Bargit. Wikimedia Commons.

Another commonly grown night-blooming (or at least night-fragrant) annual is stocks. Stocks are best known as fillers in cut-flower arrangements, where both day and night-fragrant species are used. Stocks are Mustard family relatives, native to the Northern Hemisphere, and grown outdoors in cool gardens in the Northern European and Northern American reaches. Otherwise, they are grown as short annuals in early spring or early to late fall in warmer climates.

M. incana and M. longipetala are the species best represented in the garden and as cut flowers. M. incana hybrids are known for having double flowers, but the true to type species and the one that survives and reproduces is the single. These are better cut flowers, and are fragrant during the day as well. The single species is mostly white-flowered. M. longipetala is a better garden plant, but is true to type in being evening and night-fragrant only. The flowers of these are purplish, and appear wilted in strong sunlight. M. longipetala also tends to bloom for a longer period than the ’10-weeks stock’ M. incana. Both feature a nice, clove-like, sweet fragrance at evening, strongly reminiscent of pinks and carnations.

 

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.