Field Trip! - JC Raulston Arboretum

The JC Raulston Arboretum is a serious contender for my favorite garden destination in the Triangle area of North Carolina. It's rather hard for me to pin down exactly why. Established in 1976, it's not the oldest. Occupying only 10 acres, it's far from the largest. But there's a ton of horticultural goodness crammed into that little space. Plants you've never heard of, plants you were sure could never be perennials in North America. No matter where you walk, there's a cool plant waiting to be discovered!

The essential information:

Name: JC Raulston Arboretum

Ownership: North Carolina State University - Maintained by the Department of Horticulture Science

Website: http://www.ncsu.edu/jcraulstonarboretum/index.php

Location: 4415 Beryl Road, Raleigh, NC 27606

Hours: 8AM - 8PM April through October; 8AM - 5PM November through March

Admission: FREE

When you first come to the Raulston Arboretum, the typical way to begin your tour is at the visitor's center. It's here you find maps, a small gift shop, and if you're lucky: the plant cart. This time we instead began our journey into the arboretum through it's considerable garden of succulents. Yucca, Aloe, Agave and other plants suitable for xeriscapes filled well-amended planting beds.

This is my poorly-stitched panoramic (sorry for the black squares!) aerial view of a portion of the garden.

What's most impressive about the garden is how natural it feels considering most of the plants are unnatural to the Carolinas.

This Agave was one of the larger plants present; each one of those leaves were about four to five feet long.

Agave 'Mr. Ripple'

Lest you should be temped to try incorporating similar plants in your own garden, be forewarned that these types of planting usually only look good when done large-scale. If you absolutely must have some Agaves or other plants in your landscape, you're better off with small groupings than a mass planting. 

The plant in the bottom right corner of that photo is Agave bracteosa 'Octopussy', and a rather old specimen at that. There was more to this plant than just a lump of foliage, however...

Can you see it? Look again...

That's right, this plant was particularly well suited as a hiding place for one of North Carlolina's native lizards, the Carolina Anole:

Anolis carolinensis

This fuzzy grass-like plant has a feathery prehistoric feel to it. Supposedly hardy to only 20-25°F, the grounds at the Raulston Arboretum are apparently warm enough to keep it around:

Rhodocoma capensis

A short distance down the path, I noticed a peculiar sight. What was it, a mushroom? 

After stopping to take a photo or two I noticed it: the odor. Not quite repulsive, but not pleasant either. There was a distinct aroma that can best be described as "wet feet and old sawdust". It really is as appealing as it sounds. Turns out these little guys are a species of miniature Arum, relatives to the Corpse Flower I missed seeing earlier this year.

Arum pictum

I want some! Sadly, it seems this plant is less than easy to track down. Forget about finding a live plant in a local garden center; you're better off with a merchant who deals in unusual bulbs.

Muhlenbergia 'Pink Flamingos' helps to add a nice Southwestern feel.

One of the things I haven't seen yet in any other arboretum is a rooftop garden. Constructed over a bank of meeting rooms, the garden illustrates the techniques that are prominent in modern urban construction. Just walking through it, you'd never realize you were on top of a building!

After seeing so many dwarf and colorful cultivars of Agave, I can see why people like them so much. Like so many other plants, I may have to try my hand at growing a few of these before too long. Time for a bigger yard!

Agave lophantha 'Splendida'

One of the cool things about the Raulston Arboretum is the prevalence of what I call "mini exhibits". There are informational displays set up all over the place. On the rooftop garden there were about a dozen planters set up to illustrate different of themes and plant ecotypes that can be used in planters. 

This planter is made from a material called hypertufa.

It's one of my short-term gardening goals to make some hypertufa planters. It's pretty simple, as outlined in this blog post: http://www.33shadesofgreen.com/2010/07/making-hypertufa-pots.html

Sedum 'Sweet Tea Mix'

One of the newest additions to the Raulston Arboretum is the rebuilt lath house, which houses all manner of rare, young shade plants. When the featured plants fill in a little more the area really will have a jungle-esque feel to it. 

As much of a self-professed plant geek I claim to be, I still hadn't heard of a lot of the plants in this garden. Take the one below, for example, I think it looks like a weed:

Acanthus sennii

So it still looks a little bit like a weed. A pretty, prickly weed, but still. This plant is native to Ethiopia and often grown in hedgerows. Small wonder!

Now would be a good time for a quick and dirty introduction to the term 'cultivar'. The simplest way that I can think to put it is this: Imagine you have a group of plants. Most plants reproduce via the process of flowering and seeding. Traits from two parent plants are passed down to the offspring. Occasionally, thanks to genetic variability, there will be an offspring plant that has significantly improved qualities when compared to the parent plants. Once this plant is identified and selected, it is propagated asexually, so as to preserve its desirable traits and eliminate genetic variability. This plant is then given a cultivar name and becomes known by its defining characteristics. 

Thus, we have a cultivar of Acanthus which is quite distinct from the species pictured above: 

Acanthus 'Morning Candle'

Gone is the sprawling, unkempt growth habit. It is replaced by tidy mounding foliage and attractive flower stalks. 

There was quite a bit more to see in the lath house than I was able to get photos of. 

But I just couldn't pass up an opportunity to photograph one of my favorite fall flowers: The Happy Little Trycyrtis, a.k.a. the Toad Lily. This is a variegated cultivar named 'Imperial Banner': 

While kind of interesting from a distance, the combination of foliage and flower is spectacular close up!

Who wouldn't like this? Really?

Thankfully, well-designed arboretums provide more than just pretty plants. They also offer ideas and inspiration for the rest of your garden as well.

So when you're at the NC State Fair sometime in the next two weeks, make some time to stop by the JC Raulston Arboretum. It's only about three minutes down the road!

Confessions of a Plant Geek's Wife - #2: As Far as You Know...

As far as you know, I'm just the plant geek's wife.  And that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh...  sorry.  My geek is showing.

Yes, blissful ignorance.  It's how I would characterize the role I play in this relationship.  I'm the sidekick.  The Robin to his Batman.  The Barney to his Andy.  The Donkey to his Shrek. The Ron to his Harry.  The Patrick to his Spongebob.  Pardon, my geek is showing again.  Also: Why is it that all the best sidekicks I could come up with were all male duos?

Anyway, I'm the background chick.  He's the guy with all the plant smarts, and I'm just tagging along, occasionally handing off a spade or set of pruners to our hero, and providing witless entertainment.  And that's pretty sad because I'm not all that entertaining.  The point, however, is that I am decidedly NOT a plant geek.  Not really.  Not like him.  That's all you really need to know.

But here's the rest of the story:

Being married to a bonafide plant geek, some of this plantial awareness (I made a new word!) tends to rub off on you, whether you realize it (or want it to) or not.  As much as I may try to deny it, words and phrases like "variegated," "root system," "dormant," "taking a cutting," "spittlebug," and so forth have become ingrained in my vocabulary.

Yes, you have seen this before.  Now you know what causes it.

Go here for the original photo and an informational blog post about the spittlebug.

So when someone says how they are confused about why their beautiful (tropical) plant thrived last summer but never came back... Or comments to a friend that they recently paid someone to prune their crepe myrtles (which now look like toothpick trees)...  I admit that I cringe a little, and then I turn to another conversation.  When someone comes to me and says that they really want Joe to come and look at their hostas because they aren't doing well and it doesn't make sense because they made sure to plant it where it would get plenty of sun, I just smile and say something like "I'm sure he could help you with that."

Only you can stop crepe murder.

Go here for the original photo and a blog post about

the Grumpy Gardener's annual crepe murder contest.

The reality is that I'm slowly being assimilated into the plantdom (I made another word!).  My confession is that I know more about plants than I let on.  But the point is that I don't let on.  And I've plenty of excellent reasons why not, but here are just a few random ones:

Vague = annoying.
I've heard his stories about how he worked in a retail garden center and people would come in with vague questions and expect him to know all the answers.  If you walk up to a garden center employee and say "I saw this vibrant red bush planted at the end of someone's driveway.  Do you know what it is?"  Well, odds are he may have an idea, but that's not much to go on.  How many times have you asked a "plant person" about that random flower you saw growing on the side of the road?  He probably asked you for more information, right?  Where was it growing?  Was it a dry area or a wet area?  What color was the flower?  Was it a lone flower, or in a cluster?  Were there several flowers on the same plant?  What kind of leaves did it have?  How tall was it?  Even an expert can only be as helpful as the questions posed to him.  I really hate when people ask vague questions, and with all the diplomacy I pride myself on, I don't think it would end well.  I leave those vague questions to him.

Now what?
I actually don't really enjoy talking about plants that much.  There are a few that spark my interest, and sure I have a hard time walking out of a garden center empty-handed, but as a topic of conversation?  Let's just say I prefer to tell Joe what I like and what I don't like, and let him figure out what works from that.  If people were aware that I actually knew a thing or two about plants, they might start thinking that they could save time by talking to me instead of Joe.  I'll spare you the awkwardness and inform you now:  no matter how much I learn, you'll still save time by talking to Joe.  I might know enough to tell you that you're doing it wrong, but I probably don't know enough to tell you exactly how to do it right.  And those conversations get awkward and boring, fast.

For king and country.
Suppose I start to let on that I'm actually learning something by osmosis of being married to a plant geek.  Imagine the chaos!  All the single ladies (maybe the men too) would start looking for plant geeks as their potential mates so that they could all learn more about plants.  It's like having a live-in teacher.  No agriculture, botany, or horticulture degree for me, thanks.  It's much more cost-effective to just know a plant person and slowly take in all the planty wisdom.  Colleges would lose money, making it even more expensive for those taking other majors.  Those other majors would have to charge consumers more for their services once they began working, in order to pay back the tremendous student loans.  NC State and other schools with large plant-related departments would probably be forced to close their doors completely.  Imagine the loss of jobs!  There would be so many "homeschooled" plant peeps that the industry would be overrun with horticulturists and there would be more plant peeps than plant jobs.  There would be a garden center on every corner, and eventually the overabundance of plants would result in a jungle-like environment of invasive species and vigorous reseeders.  Simply by giving people the impression that I'm learning something just by being married to a plant geek could lead to a societal and economical collapse!

Plants gone wild...er?

Go here for the original photo.

So yes, as far as you know, I'm just the sidekick and I don't really know anything about plants.  For society's sake and well-being, I'll continue to smile, listen, and politely direct your questions to Joe.  Only you who have read this blog will know and understand the importance of my feigned ignorance, and the gravity of my necessary silence.  That's just the way it has to be.

Joe Pye Weed - A Butterfly Magnet

Welcome to the first Drive-by Horticulture post to actually feature an instance of a horticulture drive-by! The plant in the spotlight today is a wildflower, native to Missouri and much of the lower two-thirds of the United States. Frequently you'll see Joe-Pye Weed growing along roadsides in moist areas.

The Drive-by:

Here's a photo of the plant as you might see it in the wild, on the side of the road:

Before you ask: no, I did not take this photo from my moving car. That would be dangerous. Would it have been as dangerous as parking your car down a side road and then walking along said road to snap photos of plants? I'm not sure! It's anyone's guess, really. 

It kind of stands out from the mass of other weeds, doesn't it? 

The Horticulture:

August can be a difficult month for people, especially so for gardeners. The explosion of the pastel-hued blooms of spring are all but a distant memory. Early summer flowering plants have had their time in the spotlight and are content to fade into the background with the onset of the dog days of summer. When August heat threatens to liquefy even inert cement blocks, the plant world, it seems, has taken a brief hibernation. There's no need for despair, as there are certain plants that feel the heat, shrug it off, and put on a good show. Joe Pye Weed is one of those plants:

Plant information:

Botanical Name: Eupatorium purpureum (botanical experts are currently reclassifying some of the plants in this genus, so the correct name may possibly be Eutrochium purprueum)
Common Name: Joe Pye Weed
Perennial Plant: Individual clumps will overwinter year after year
Cold Hardiness: Will grow in zones 3 - 9
Culture: Full sun, can take a little bit of shade but will start to lean if it's in too dark a spot. Likes to be kept moist and in soil with a decent amount of organic matter. Not a good choice for very dry or very shady locations.
Size: Dwarf cultivars are advertised as maxing out around 3-4 feet high, but mine is almost 6 feet tall. It's not a terribly wide plant; figure on it staying about half as wide as its height.
Flowers: Large, rounded inflorescences are attractive as buds in July, opening fully sometime in early-mid August. Flowers remain open and attract butterflies for about a month or so. Seed heads remain erect and serve as a source of food for birds into winter.
Wildlife Benefits: Butterflies!!! If you like butterflies, plant one or more clumps of Joe Pye Weed where you can see them easily. In my experience, these plants attract more butterflies over its bloom period than the famous Butterfly Bush (Buddleia)

History: Joe Pye Weed has properties that rendered it useful for herbal medicine in the 17-1800s, particularly the treatment of various fevers. The name is said to come from either 1) a Native-American healer named, appropriately, Joe Pye, or 2) the phonetic translation of jopi, a Native American word for tpyhus. If you're interested in the whole story, mosey on over to a blog post on PrairieWorks.com: Joe Pye - The Name Behind the Legend

Even though these plants don't bloom until late summer, that's not to say they're unattractive the rest of the year. My plants have historically been one of the latest perennials to emerge from the ground in spring, gradually turning into an attractive medium-dark green backdrop for other plants. Some cultivars have red or purplish stems:

While you may be tempted to call the large mass of pink on the top of each stem a single flower, it's actually an organized arrangement of many tiny flowers. This is called an inflorescence. Look at the photo below: You can pick out each one of the individual cylindrical flower buds. When buds open, the mass just looks like one giant flower. 

When I said butterflies like this plant, what I meant was that butterflies love this plant:

Take a look at the full-res picture; there are at least 8 butterflies here

Black Swallowtail

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

There's room for everyone!

If you're in the mood for a big plant - and I mean a big plant - and have plenty of room in your garden, there are other varieties of Joe Pye Weed that might be of interest. One in particular is called 'White Joe', aptly named for its white flowers. The nursery where I work has a clump of it that's about twelve feet tall and at least six feet wide. The butterflies love it just as much as a dwarf plant!

Don't let the scraggly look put you off; this is what Joe Pye Weed looks like when it's planted in dry areas. A little more moisture and this would be gorgeous. Still, a plant this big needs shorter companions in front of it.

For scale, compare the size of the butterfly relative to the flowers here and on the photos above. See? BIG!

Where to buy:

Plant Delights Nursery

Niche Gardens here, here, and here

Carnivorous Plants - My Introduction

My wife has a saying she likes to use: "When will you learn that all my ideas are good ones?" I usually hear that whenever I eventually take her advice on something I was hesitant to do. Most of the time it turns out I agree with her assessment of whatever the situation is. Point being, because of her I end up trying a fair number of new things I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. 

So when Mandy gave me a book for my birthday that introduced me to all sorts of bizarre plants that I didn't know about before, it's a foregone conclusion that I'd try to grow some of those plants sooner than later. She probably wasn't trying to plant any specific idea in my head, but it happened anyway. Way to go, dear!

The book is well worth a read - look for a review in an upcoming post. If you can't wait for then, order it off Amazon.com.

The first chapter of the book covers carnivorous plants. Turns out, there are quite a few plants that not only will grow in temperate regions of North America, there are a lot of carnivorous plants that natively grow here! Well, I didn't need any more incentive than that to hunt down some bug-eating plant life and try and grow my own. Here's how I got started: 

My First Mistake

When it comes to carnivorous plants most people will first think of Venus Flytrap, and I was no exception. Where have I ever seen some of these for sale before? Oh yeah, that big box store with lots of blue and a bad reputation for killing plants. You know the one I mean. That's the store that you have to be careful about buying generally low-maintenance outdoor plants from, let alone carnivorous plants that need some special attention. Common wisdom says not to buy plants from there.

I didn't listen to common wisdom:

That logo and box design is killer! Get it? Killer packaging? Heh... 

My first indication that it probably wasn't a good idea to buy these was by their location in the store. I didn't get a picture of it, but these guys were kept inside the store with the houseplants. That may not seem so bad, but our store's houseplant section has no windows and almost no natural light. That's not a great place for plants like these, that naturally grow outdoors in full sun in bogs. Not only were these plants kept in cavernous darkness, those awesome looking boxes the plants are packaged in were taped shut. That's one way to keep store employees from over watering your merchandise!

Despite all these warning signs, I couldn't help but think of my purchase as a rescue operation and bought them anyway. Once they were freed from their death boxes, the plants looked a bit better off:

Potting the Plants - Special Considerations

I had my plants, I had my container, I had my soil substitute; time to have fun!

My first step was to make the galvanized pail suitable for plant growth by adding some drainage holes. The bucket I bought was rather thin, and using a spade bit to drill a hole was probably not the best way to go. I applied too much pressure and ended up with the mangled and bent opening you see in photo #2:

The screens I had on hand from my grandma's collection of bonsai pots. Any sort of small screen will do, really. The length of copper wire makes sure the screen stays with the pot until you decide to move it.

When it comes to carnivorous plants, regular old potting mix is not suitable; it's far too fertile and too rich. These plants are used to growing in very nutrient-poor bogs and swamps that don't ever really dry out. The media I'll be using is a mix of 40% sand and 60% sphagnum peat. There's no need to be all precise about it, an old pot is good enough to measure out approximate quantities of each.

One of the simple pleasures of working with plants is running your bare hands through a pile of potting mix. It recalls the memory you have of digging in a mud hole when you were three years old - but without one of your parents yelling at you for it. Getting yourself covered in dirt is fun and necessary here!

Business as Usual

Once you've got the soil mixed up, the process of potting carnivorous plants is essentially the same as potting up any other common plant. As always, take care to note the correct potting depth.

Here's the finished product:

No it doesn't look like much, but keep in mind these plants are some sub-prime offerings. These are plants, however, and the proof isn't in how well they look the day you get them, but how well they grow after you've had them for a bit. 

One Week Later...

Okay, so they don't look all that great. That's kind of what I'd expected to see, even if I was hoping for better. I wasn't entirely surprised, especially since plants encounter stress when making a transition from being kept indoors to moving outside.

But you didn't think I could really leave it at that, did you?

I Bought More Plants...

When searching for carnivorous pitcher plants, there are typical places you think to look, and then there are atypical places to look. I would consider Amazon.com an atypical place to find carnivorous plants, but lo and behold: they were there. Joel's Carnivorous Plants is a storefront on Amazon.com that has at least a half-dozen plants available at any given time. All of the items I saw had very positive reviews, so I figured I didn't have anything to lose. There's not much I can say without sounding like an advertisement, but rest assured that I do endorse buying plants from Joel.

Lets let the pictures do the talking:

Plants were shipped bare-root, but packed well. Complete instructions were included, as well as pots and moss for planting.

This flytrap cost me about twice as much as the one I got from the box-store-that-won't-be-named, but it was at least five times as big, and it had a big root system on it.

Dionea muscipula, the humble but awesome Venus Flytrap

Sundew, Drossera nidiformis. A bit smaller than the flytrap, but still quite healthy. 

This one traps insects by curling the end of the leaf like a mitten to trap prey.  

And this is the Sweet Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia rubra. 

If you look at the stem of the pitcher plant, you can see a dark section that indicates the mass of captured bugs.

 The finished product, which I'm quite happy with! As the summer progresses, I'll take some more photos to see how well they grow and fill out the planter.

Carnivorous plants are not more difficult to grow than anything else, they just need attention paid to their different needs.

A Note About Watering

This is a lesson I learned the hard way: Don't water sand and peat mix from above! Watering from above causes water to pool up near the surface. The peat, being quite a bit less dense than sand, will float when water is applied from above. Over time, all the sand sinks to the bottom and the peat will rise to the top, making an anaerobic layer near the crowns of the plants that will encourage rot.

The proper way to water is from the bottom. Place the planter in a larger saucer / bowl, add water up about a third of the way up the pot and just let the soil soak it up. Most carnivorous plants are bog-dwellers, so never let the saucer completely dry out.

Other Resources

International Carnivorous Plant Society

North Carolina Native Carnivorous Plants

So what are you waiting for? Try them for yourself!