Lady Bird Would Roll In Her Grave

Believe me, I do not invoke the name of the great lady lightly. But Lady Bird Johnson -- the woman behind the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 -- would no doubt consider it the saddest of days if she'd seen these two innocent words married into one terrifying phrase:

VEGETATIVE ADVERTISING.

I just saw it for the first time at The Human Flower Project, an excellent source of human/horticultural tidbits, in a blog entry titled That's No Garden, It's A Billboard. The subject is the easing of highway landscape restrictions that could allow corporate logos to be spelled out in plants. "If a company pays enough, California drivers could be whizzing by flowering signage."

Ponder this composite pix by Christopher Flynn and you'll see why vegetative advertising is a phrase to be feared.

It's not happening yet -- this pix has been photoshopped -- but according to the L.A. Times, the director of the California Department of Transportation (CALTRANS) is hoping for a change in the rules re:freeway advertising.

photo credit: Christopher Flynn

 

One of the best places to keep track of this story is at Scenic America. To get up to speed, here's some background. And if you're somehow involved or can offer us some insight, do post...

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Last Of The Season's Wildflowers

This just in from the Nature Conservancy's Rob Taylor, who lives in the Wallowa Mountains town of Enterprise, Oregon: the last flower still standing in the Zumwalt Prairie is blue gentian.

Behold the bottle gentian, Gentiana affinis, native to prairies and sub-alpine meadows of the American West.

photo credit: Rob Taylor, Nature Conservancy

 

Earlier this summer, Rob took me on my first trip into the Zumwalt, where he woks as a field scientist. The region has subsequently stolen my heart. Check out this link to see why.

Send pix of the last wildflower standing in your area to Talking Plants!

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Flower Phobia Cured By Fall Color

Back in June, while visiting the romantic garden of my friends Len Porter and and Peter Goldblatt, I confronted a chronic weakness I would have to overcome. Call it Fear Of Flowers.

I've justified it for years despite abuse from esteemed colleagues (just ask Nina Totenberg). I've even gone to great lengths to intellectualize it; consider this excerpt from my book, Plant This! :

As for choosing plants by their flower -- well, given the fickle nature of beauty, I trust this ornamental feature least of all...Which is not to say I'm perverse enough to covet a garden without bloom. But when you balance their capacity for transcendence with their utter unpredictability, flowers can break your heart. Obsessing over them is much like throwing yourself into an unstable relationship that has no real substance only dizzying sex.

Fine, so grow plants for their flowers...

On the whole, I still stand firmly by the idea that flowers are the icing, not the cake. But that's still no excuse for a plant lover like myself to cop out when it comes to choreographing color. On this first day of October, with nary a leaf turning crimson or yellow, I'm more grateful than I've been all year for the flowers now in bloom.

My hands down late season favorite is Leonotis leonuris. Other than its color (the same as my house), I also love the different stages of flowering on any given stalk. I spent a small fortune on a large Monrovia plant several months back; time will tell whether it'll be as robust next year.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

For my favorite color, orange, I've got the tender perennial lion's tail (above) and the low-growing, self-seeding annual Begonia sutherlandii. I'm also trying a variety of unusual, orange-tinged dahlias from Cistus Nursery here in Portland.

For magenta, I rely on that ever-blooming, always-scrambling, black-eyed Geranium 'Ann Folkard'.

And for blue, I vote with the hummingbirds: hardy salvias including S. patens, surely the truest bluest of flowers, and that towering giant for the back of the border, S. guaranitica.

Don't hold the composition and light against me as you behold this little confection I threw together for Rosh Hashana dinner (which was complete with kasha varnishkes). Along with the Leonotis, I added a one-two punch of a plant, Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

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The Rosh Hashana Mystery Plant

Happy Jewish New Year! In a few hours, it'll be 5769.

While I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly observant Jew, my Conservative upbringing makes me constitutionally incapable of working on the High Holidays (happily, I can garden). Since Rosh Hashana begins tonight, I won't be blogging tomorrow which gives you an extra day to help me identify this (native?) southern Illinois plant.

I'm hoping this isn't a weed because it was the only plant of integrity growing among morning glories and other invaders but hey, I've been sucker-punched before. Its stems and leaves are fuzzy, it grows in full sun nowhere near water and the soil's thin and powdery gray (truly). Figure 8" tall.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Among the changes now ushering in 5769 is a huge improvement in the way we can interact on Talking Plants. Next time you leave a comment, you'll be asked to sign in as a member of the NPR community. Don't balk; it's painless. Fill out your profile, do the confirmation e-mail dance, and voila: in addition to posting, you'll be able to comment on all NPR stories and connect with community-minded NPR staff.

There's also a blog re-design in our future which may enable you to post pix directly to Talking Plants instead of having to go away and post in the TP Flickr pool. You can hardly stand the excitement, right? A toast, then, towards community and connection in the New Year...

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Acres Of Sunshine

A ray of light and enlightenment from Flora: Four years ago, looking for a less costly product alternative to the soybean/corn grind, Dave Burt decided to try his luck with sunflowers, plants far better suited to his lean, mean soil.

Today, bird seed is his most lucrative crop.

Though demand and storage issues prevent him from expanding his sunflower operation, the man's poised to make some radical changes. That's a whole 'nother story but I daresay a remarkable one that fills this reporter with grade A sunshine.

To be continued...

Greetings from Flora, Illinois!

photo credit: Dave Burt

 

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Where Fossil Fuels And Fertilizers Rule

I'm on assignment in southern Illinois, spending time with an insightful and open-hearted farmer named Dave Burt. He's likely to be the first person I'll be profiling for a future Morning Edition series with the working title, AMERICAN MOXIE: HOW WE GET BY.

Dave's intelligence and compassion are inspiring: his love of the land where his grandparents farmed is incredibly touching and his understanding of the global marketplace positively mind-boggling. But I won't lie. The ways in which he and other farmers around here make a living depresses me.

This part of the world is all soybeans and corn; you can drive for miles, seemingly days, and see nothing remotely resembling an ecosystem. Instead, the landscape is dominated by "Roundup Ready" crops completely dependent on chemical fertilizers and the mega-vehicles needed to sow, reap and move product to "market".

Making a living as a farmer here is stressful and high risk. The soil is stingy, the weather often brutal, the prices of everything sky high. If not for customers like ADM (Archer Daniels Midland), many of these hard-working, self-employed Americans would go broke.

That said, as I look at the monstrous trucks and tractors involved in these farm operations and the Rocky Mountain-high tons of chemicals needed to sustain this way of life, the idea of minimizing one's global footprint -- whether by eating locally or reusing paper grocery bags -- seems merely quaint and faddish in the face of such entrenched, overwhelming odds.

Like I said. Depressed.

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Can You Answer This Riddle?

From Oregon to Maryland, coast to coast, with stops along the highways of the midwest, it's now electrifying roadsides, brightening streams and illuminating woodlands. Though it sings the same notes first introduced by the daffodils of spring, it's the last brash wildflower of the year. Last hint, its botanic name rhymes with How'd Your Day Go.

The answer is?

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Pruning Raspberries

It's easy. Relax. You've never been in better hands. Her name is Cass Turnbull and she's on intimate terms with anything that's ever needed pruning.

Cass is the founder and current president of PlantAmnesty, an organization I have been a member of for at least 13 yrs. I can just about recite its mission statement from memory but in the interest of accuracy, it reads:

To end the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs caused by mal-pruning.

What first attracted me to PlantAmnesty was its name. You gotta figure that an organization promoting plant (vs. human) rights knows better than to take itself too seriously. Not that topping trees and other pruning atrocities aren't cause for alarm, but since its founding in 1987, Plant Amnesty has consistently found ways to smarten us up about trees and shrubs and make us laugh in the process.

Sexy, wholesome and easy to grow, raspberries simply need space, sun and pruning advice from PlantAmnesty.

photo credit: Barbara Galasso

 

A case in point, from the most recent PlantAmnesty newsletter which features the art of pruning raspberries:

...the people from PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants) want me to let you know that fruits (and maybe nuts) are the only plant parts that actually want you to eat them.

C'mon, that's funny!

This is all to say that Cass's current column takes the mystery out of pruning raspberries. Here's the quick and dirty:

1)If you've got good old-fashioned plants, simply remove the old, dead canes. Those are the ones that are grey and woody, NOT bright, fresh green. First-year raspberries canes neither flower nor fruit.

2)If you've got "ever-bearing" or "fall-bearing" raspberries, simmer it down to one word: OY. As Cass writes,

My advice to you is to just do what's "obvious" by looking at the patch. Cut out the "finished" tops, and the completely finished, dead-looking canes to the ground. Or forget the cutting in-half part and just cut the completely dead ones out. Leave the live-looking ones. That oughta work.

Your two cents?

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300 Downed Trees And Counting

The good news is that all of the Houston Arboretum's staff is safe and sound after Hurricane Ike. The inspiring news is that volunteers armed with gloves, tools and tons of good will are helping clean up debris.

Which leaves us with the somewhat sad news that lots and lots of big oaks have bit the dust along the Houston Arboretum's Alice Brown Trail.

Post oaks and willow oaks are the big losers at the Houston Arboretum. Invasive species will likely be the winners. With so much shade lost and ground disturbed, it's inevitable that the problem plants the Arboretum always faces -- particularly Chinese privet -- will take advantage of the lincreased sunlight and the chaos.

photo credit: Lori Hutson, Houston Arboretum

 

The Arboretum is a 155 acre sanctuary native forest where hummingbirds are feeding and birds once again singing after the storm. But the hiking trails are still unpassable. If you're in the neighborhood and would like to help out, contact Lori Hutson.

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A Rainforest Still Grows In Galveston

Several days after Hurricane Ike hit the greater Houston area, communication still remains spotty with Galveston. I did try to contact the folks at Moody Gardens to see whether their Rainforest Pyramid sustained damage; inside is a collection of some 2,000 plant species plus 175 animal species and pools of fresh water fish.

By all reports, the Rainforest Pyramid at Moody Gardens in Galveston sustained very little damage during Hurricane Ike.

photo credit: Bryan Dawson

 

Jerri Hamachek is a spokesperson from Moody, currently in NY. She told me that despite the catastrophic hurricane, "we've been pretty fortunate. I've seen photos of the Rainforest Pyramid and there's some glass breakage but it didn't collapse. And there's been no breach of our 1.5 million gallon aquarium." That would have been disastrous.

What does concern Hamacheck are the indoor pools of fresh water fish, particularly whether there was enough flooding to have stranded them outside their pools. I haven't heard anything further about that. The few staff members still on site have enough on their hands -- particularly with all those free-range parrots -- without me pestering them for news of kalanchoe and koi.

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