( If you are reading this anywhere but my blog, you can find the original post here. )
It was 102 in the shade at 6:15 pm one evening this week. Mid-August and much of the garden looks like a child defeated by a spelling test - head down on the desk, hair mussed, shoulders slumped, face hidden. Despite the brown-edged leaves and wan-faces of many of my favorite garden plants, I know they?re doing their very best to hang on - this is not their preferred season. Photo: Rudbeckia hirta ?Autumn Colors?.
For some flowers, however, hot, dry late-summer North American sun and soil is just what they were built for. These are the sunflowers of late summer and their many good garden kin - all members of the family Asteraceae. Photo: Sunflower (Helianthus sp.) volunteers along a roadside.
In amongst the downtrodden and heat-stressed, these sun-lovers flash colors of vibrant yellow, orange, white and purple. They seem to stand up smartly, lift their cheerful faces and spread their rays ever more happily with each new heat wave. Photo: A variety of colorful Echinacea hybrids in the Chico home garden of Jeff Armstrong.
Variously called the aster, sunflower or daisy family, the Asteraceae?s most obvious characteristic is that widely recognized daisy-like ?flower? which is in fact an ingenious bouquet (referred to as an inflorescence) of many much smaller flowers all bundled together and offered out to the world of pollinators (and gardeners) with a hot-summer flourish and invitation: TA-DA! Come and help me set seed, won?t you? Photo: A bank of gregarious if a bit unruly Helianthus sp. at McConnell Arboretum & Botanical Garden at Turtle Bay in Redding.
Inflorescences of the Asteraceae can range from 1/2 an inch to 2 feet across and is composed of two different types of flowers: the many small, fertile tubular flowers which altogether form the central disk or cone are called disk florets. These are ringed by what appear to be outer petals, but which are in fact each elongated petal-edges to the small individual sterile flowers, known as ray florets, edging the whole bouquet of a flower. Photo: An enormous sunflower (Helianthus annuus ?Mammoth Russian?) getting ready to go to seed.
Along with the orchid family, the Asteraceae family is one of the largest of the flowering plant families including upwards of 26,000 species. It includes the cheerfully unruly sunflowers themselves - Helianthus - as well as, for instance, dandelions and thistles. While not all plants of the aster family might be welcome in all gardens, the mid-sized and more showy plants of the family make excellent choices for any garden size or style. My top choices among these - for this time of year - include Echinacea, Rudbeckia, Helenium and Gaillardia. Photo: A native California Helenium bigelovii with visiting butterfly.
These four genera are all herbaceous perennials, native to meadows and seeps of much of North America. They all benefit from sun, well-draining soil, and moderate to low summer water. They do not need a lot of fertilizer. While they can all start blooming in early summer, with regular deadheading they will often bloom right through to frost, and it is this late-summer season - when other plants are done or paused - that these flowers really come into their own. All outstanding cut flowers and available in a satisfying range of colors, these ray flowers are quite literally like handfuls of cheerful (not overbearing) sunshine. They are easy to grow and easy to look at in our challenging late-summer conditions when other plants in the garden just try to endure. Photo: Echinacea purpurea ?Mystical Pink Mist? in the home garden of Jeff Armstrong.
And their fun does not stop there. As a result of producing many flowers all together, members of the Asteraceae produce abundant pollen and so attract a wide range of pollinators when in bloom; likewise, they produce abundant seed (think of sunflower seeds) and so if the seed heads are left in place through fall and winter, they attract a large number of birds to the winter garden, continuing their cheer through another season. Photo: Another prairie plant native to the American central and south west and referred to as prairie coneflower, or Indian hat, is Ratibida. Shown here is Ratibida columnifera, which does not like wet feet in winter, but with good drainage and full sun will produce diminutive blooms all summer.
Echinacea
The genus Echinacea - commonly known as coneflower - is in fact what originally inspired this piece. The strong presence of the pure white or deep purple species Echinacea with their proud rigid stalks, alternate leaves in conservative numbers and tidy arrangement hold such an elegant position in a garden border, container or arrangement, who could not be swayed by them? Photo: Luminous Echinacea ?Tiki Torch?
Approximately 5 species of Echinacea are native to a wide range of Central and Eastern North America. Incredibly winter cold and summer heat hardy, these meadow and prairie plants are prized for the medicinal aspects of their roots as well as the striking beauty of their flower forms with their distinctive high-held, orange-to-brown-to yellow tinged prickly cone, and their bold outer rays which range from being held straight out to being gracefully recurved. Photo: The hybrid Echinacea ?Pink Double Delight? in the home garden of Jeff Armstrong.
?Echinancea is derived from the Latin meaning hedgehog,? gardening friend Jeff Armstrong told me. A couple of seasons ago, Jeff who together with his wife Cheryl owns Nutrilawn in Chico, shared that he had quite a collection of coneflowers in his home garden. ?We (people who collect coneflowers) are referred to as ?cone-heads??, he admitted with a smile as we walked around his burgeoning collection this summer. Photo: A close-up view of a coneflower?s cone shows the spiky nature that led it to be associated with hedgehogs by early botanists. In Latin, the root echinos? means ?hedgehog? according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
While the iconic species Echinacea purpurea do hold a central place in Jeff?s garden, he is also completely taken with the more whimsical offerings of the new hybrids. Cone flowers have reportedly been used by Native American tribes as a medicinal plant for centuries, but specialty breeding of the species was likely first done soon after specimens were collected by Europeans in the 1600s. After a double-form of the flower was found in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, breeding for a much larger range of color and form has exploded in the US and Europe over the past decade. Photo: Novelty hybrid Echinacea ?Green Eyes? in the home garden of Jeff Armstrong.
?We love them for their color, their long flowering period and the wildlife they call into the garden!? The Armstrong?s cut, admire, photograph (and Jeff continues to look for new cultivar selections) all summer long. Photos: Above, Echinacea ?Flame Thrower? and below, Jeff Armstrong in his home garden beside some of the Big Sky series of hybrids. While coneflowers are low maintenance once established, Jeff does plant his in gopher cages and stakes a custom-welded rebar ring around each one so that staking after they are already overgrown is not a problem. He cuts his plants back in late-winter or early-spring before they resume growth for a new season and gives them an annual balanced 10-10-10 feed at the same time.
Rudbeckia:
Rudbeckia are closely related to the Echinacea and Echinacea purpurea is often referred to as synonymous with Rudbeckia purpurea. While Blackeyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta) might be the best known of the Rudbeckia with their exuberant rivers of bright yellow petals framing deep chocolate to black cones in in high summer. Also referred to as ?coneflowers?, Rudbeckia often sport a high-domed cone similar to Echinacea. The petals of Rudbeckia are in my eyes more delicate and a bit softer in appearance than that of the more rigid Echinacea, and while there has been some hybidizing for greater range of color, for instance the decidedly red color of a new variety known as Rudbeckia hirta ?Cherry Brandy?, I find the simple elegance of the native species very pleasing.Photo: Rudbeckia californica along a seep in far Northern California.
The genus Rudbeckia includes species that are both much taller and others that are much smaller than most Echinacea. While the original plants might not last as long and spread out in the same way of an Echinacea planting, Rudbeckia generally self-sow their seed quite happily. Photos: Above: Rudbeckia maxima in a lovely cut-flower arrangement with lavender. R. maxima grows to an eye-catching 8 - 10 feet and is a graceful addition to the back of a large border. It is remarkable for its glaucus grey-green, broad leaves and sculptural chocolate brown cones. below: Rudbeckia hirta.
With more than 15 species of Rudbeckia, there are a handful of species native to California and worth recognizing when you meet them in the wild.Photo: The elegant simplicity of Rudbeckia fulgida ?Goldstrum? forms rivers of golden color in late-summer sun-drenched gardens.
Helenium & Gaillardia
Helenium and Gaillardia and perhaps lesser know and loved genera than Echinacea and Rudbeckia, but both include species that are so darned persistent and cheerful through western summers that they are hard not to love. Photo: Helenium sp. massed and effectively backed by Phormium.
Helenium includes somewhere around 40 species of annuals and perennials that prefer slightly more damp conditions than these other sun-lovers. Varieties native to Northern California are often found in damp meadows, seeps and at woodland edges, but the specimens in the home garden can suffer-through droughty conditions (also known as benign neglect in the garden) with relative aplomb. Photo: Helenium ?Moerheim Beauty?.
Because their foliage can be very scruffy on the bottom half of their 2 foot stalks, I find that Helenium are better mixed in with other plants around their feet particularly. Because they both like some regular irrigation, Helenium pair nicely with California fuchsia (Zauschenaria sp.).
Also known as sneezeweed, Helenium have much shorter rays than the other genera mentioned, and these rays are frequently multi-colored, have a ruffled-edge appearance and help up in a more perky and less recurved way in general.
The close to 30 species of Gaillardia, also known as blanket flower or Indian blanket, are naturally found in dry, sharply drained hillside and meadow locations of much of North America and South America. They grew all along the Eastern facing rocky ridge where I lived and gardened in Northern Colorado - their cheery little faces popping out in the heat of summer, which is when I first became a fan. Photo: A planting of Gaillardia grandiflora which has increased threefold since its original planting 3 seasons ago.
Again, some hybridizing has occurred to expand color and form in the varieties and some showy doubles include Gaillardia pulchella ?Red Plume? from the Plume Series of hybrids. Gaillardia are truly drought-tolerant and do not like wet feet in winter. Photo: Close-up of Gaillardia grandiflora with a satisfied visiting bee.
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In a North State Garden is a weekly Northstate Public Radio and web-based program celebrating the art, craft and science of home gardening in Northern California. It is made possible in part by the Gateway Science Museum - Exploring the Natural History of the North State and on the campus of CSU, Chico. In a North State Garden is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell - all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In a North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here. Weekly essays are also posted on anewscafe.com a regional news source that is simultaneously universal and positively North State.
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