Kind of Blue

It’s spring time, and looking out across the nursery I can see frothy waves of fresh green, spiced with yellow, orange and red flowers.  Apparently Robin Williams once said “Spring is nature’s way of saying “Let’s Party!”.”  As the new leaves popping out from their dark parent branches gently assault my eyeballs, I totally get what Robin Williams was saying.  Walking through the greenhouses here, it’s easy to get sort of blasé about all the flowers: sure, that’s a nice yellow; okay, that’s a pretty vibrant red, mmm hmm.  And then there’s something like Bicolor Sage.  It has a pow all its own, but in a good way.  And it’s something of a relief after all the fireworks of the reds and yellows, and even pure whites.  Here are some of the best blues for your garden to soothe your senses, maybe while listening to some John Lee Hooker. 

 Oops!  Wait, wait, wait.  I told myself I wasn’t going to do that.  I wasn’t going to do some kind of cheesy “blue flowers/blues music” type of thing.  So here they are, with no distractions: the straight-forward blues.



Bicolor Sage



Bicolor Sage is a low-growing sage with electric blue flowers set against dark bronze foliage.  Either full sun or part shade will keep this salvia blooming throughout the warm season.

The blue blooms of Bicolor Sage are vivid and cool even when no longer on the plant. 

Bicolor Sage blooms on a Datura leaf





Plumbago is a low, mounding shrub with light, clear blue flowers.   

Plumbago auriculata

 Here in Austin it usually stays between one foot and three feet tall.  I’ve heard stories about Plumbago becoming large, six-foot shrubs in San Antonio.

Salvia transylvanica

This salvia gets up to 30 inches tall and 18 inches wide.  It produces light blue flowers as soon as it warms up in the spring, and it will re-bloom if cut back after the first flush.

          

Mealy Blue Sage

Salvia farinacea is one of those workhorses of the garden.  It just keeps going and going.  It needs at least part sun to bloom, but once it does start to bloom, it’s spectacular.  ‘Mealy Blue Sage’ is fairly drought-tolerant. 



Blue Eyed Grass



Syrinchium angustifolium is a short plant that shines up at you in the spring.  It only gets about 10 inches tall, so it would work well in the front of a bed, or even as a border. 

Starry Eyes

Nierembergia gracilis is another low growing perennial that blooms all summer.  It’s drought tolerant to the point of being easily over-watered. 



Shrubby Purple Skullcap



           

Scutellaria wrightii only gets 10 to 12 inches tall by 18 inches wide.  It pretty well covers itself in purple-blue blooms all spring and summer, which stand out against the light grey foliage.  Very drought tolerant, this plant is a good candidate for a xeriscape bed.  Or even a zeroscape bed. 

            



Gregg's Mistflower

This is cocaine for butterflies.  Eupatorium greggii grows quickly up to 24 inches and blooms its crazy head off all summer.  It sports medium sized, pincushion flowers that you may not even see in the spring because they’ll be covered in butterflies. 

          

Po' Lightnin'

Here, with absolutely no reference to ‘the blues’ or ‘feeling blue’, nor any relevance to this blog entry at all, is a picture of a statue of Sam ‘Po Lightnin’ Hopkins, who just happens to have been one of the best blues musicians in Texas. 

Ha.

Nerd!

Keanu Reeves looks like an Asian man, and then he looks like a teenage girl, and then he looks like an older, balding guy in coveralls.  Wearing some kind of outfit that constantly changes the way he appears, he stands in front of a group of civic-minded businessmen and tells them about the dangers of  “substance D”. 

Last night I started to watch A Scanner Darkly, which features a cartoon version of Keanu as a cop in a drug addicted, futuristic society in which nearly everyone is addicted to “substance D”. 

The drug, Keanu claims, comes from a plant he identifies as Clerodendron ugandens, which sounds remarkably like a plant called Clerodendron ugandense, which I have planted by my kitchen door.  I guess I just didn’t realize it was such a dangerous plant.  Then Keanu shows his audience a picture of “Clerodendron ugandens”, and the picture he shows is actually of Plumbago auriculata.  Plumbago is also a pretty flower, but it’s no Clerodendron.  I spent the next 20 minutes thinking about Clerodendron and wondering what else he was going to mis-identify throughout the movie.  And this is the problem with being a plant-nerd.



The dangerous and apparently addictive Clerodendron ugandense



Plumbago auriculata

I am a plant-nerd.  I have been for years.  Moreover, I love being a plant-nerd.  I like being around other plant-nerds.  I like the language (all those obscure Latin names and lanceolate thises and alternate or opposite thatses).  I love how plant-nerds remember places and times by what was either leafing out or blooming.  But there’s a drawback to this hyper-awareness of plants.  The process of plant identification can get in the way of, for example, watching a movie.  And, be warned, it can get annoying to non-plant-nerds.

About fifteen years ago I lived with three other guys while we all went to school.  At some point, a copy of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition showed up, which I guess is not that unusual in a house full of college-age guys.  I remember one of my roommates flipping through it one day and making some comment like “Gee, look at this young woman.  She looks like she comes from a nice family, and she’s probably a great cook as well.”  Granted, my memory of the comment may be a bit fuzzy.  In any case, he turned the magazine my way, and there was this woman in a bikini with a hibiscus behind her.  Fifteen years later, I have no idea is she was a brunette or a blonde.  I don’t remember what the bikini looked like.  I do remember wondering if that was a ‘Lord Baltimore’ hibiscus behind her.  Plant nerdness strikes again.

This is an advertisement for a Crinum called 'Elizabeth Traub'.  Trust me, there's a flower in the picture.

My wife and I decided to watch the original ‘Star Trek’ series.  For over a year we watched Captain Kirk smirk his way across the universe with Spock and Bones.  Whenever they found themselves on Albyron-6 or some such thing, and if it was supposed to be a tropical planet, I was always amazed at the foliage they had to hack through.  Apparently there are a lot of Philodendrons and Pampas Grass in space.  And if it's a really alien planet, the Philodendrons are painted silver.  Consequently, I missed some of the plot lines, though that doesn’t really matter with Star Trek.  Here’s the plot to three-fourths of the Star Trek episodes: the Captain and crew encounter some kind of weird, alien life-form- Spock says “logically”-  Captain Kirk seduces any female alien that looks even remotely human- the entire ship allllllmost either blows up or dissipates into pure energy- Captain Kirk gets a far-off look in his eye and comments that by learning about the aliens, they actually learned about themselves.  Throw in a few Ficus trees, and you’ve got a show. 

The Captain contemplates a dangerous Philodendron.

Pretty much wherever my wife and I go on vacation, we wind up in a plant nursery somewhere, looking past that seasonal annuals or the tomatoes for that plant that we just can’t find around Austin.  This has led to us once carrying a nearly thirty-gallon tree back to Elgin from Medina.  Or holding our luggage in our laps because the back seat was full of perennials.  Or nearly causing a wreck because we’re trying to identify a rose on a fence as we zip past at 70 miles per hour.  Or keeping plastic baggies in our pockets whenever we go on a walk because you just never know when a few errant seeds might happen to fall off a really interesting plant. 

So this is the dark side of plant nerdiness.  Go ahead, put some marigolds in your front bed, or some petunias in a pot.  Those are just gateway plants.  Soon enough you’ll be planning your weekends around whatever is coming into bloom.  Now you’re a plant-nerd. 

Enjoy!