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here.
In this issue:
Artistic skill nets more squash
No-mulch annuals?! Reprise
A composite season rushes in
Celebration of native bloom
Look ma, clean fingernails!
Hold your nose, pass the fish
Summer summary! It's the too-much season so in this issue we
pass on short reports about all this: Magnolia scale, alpine
strawberries, hydrangea wilt, mildew, high-phosphorus fertilizer,
weevil beating, gardener's injuries, hawthorn rust, clematis wilt,
gaura, ladybugs, lily bulb rot, cicadas, and late blighted
tomatoes
This issue Sponsored by:
What a pretty face! Early American
explorers found Gaillardia and hundreds more dramatic
flowers, each species new to the Old World. You can
imagine yourself as one of those early viewers, by
looking out over your own garden right now.
Mulch Tests
Above: We've conducted many mulch tests for our own
edification. They can make a bed look a bit odd in spring as we
mulch one half of a plant group with one mulch, one half
with another...
Below: These 11 perennials (leopardsbane, Doronicum
caucasicum) were equal plants in 4" pots when we planted them in
April. We mulched some of the plants with hardwood mulch, some with
cocoa hulls, the rest with fall leaves, then treated all of them
the same in all other ways. Here they are on the first of August.
The four front row plants have woody mulch and are about half the
size of those behind, which were mulched with cocoa hulls (four in
the middle row) and fall leaves (three in the back row).
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to read the complete issue illustrated here.
Early, heavy bloom...
Above: Liatris and Shasta daisies
don't always overlap but this year the Liatris was ahead
of schedule.
...in the kingdom of the sunflower
Above: Composite flowers are those
whose "real" flowers -- the structures that can
produce pollen and seed -- are massed on one head.
See them in the center of this sunflower head, each
destined to become an oil-rich seed? All of the sunflowers
(Helianthus spp.) are New World natives, unknown in
Europe before the Columbian exchange.
Below: Europe and Asia had their
own Compositae, such as blue globe thistle. See how each
of the blue stars is a separate flower on this tall
globe thistle? It's Echinops exaltatus, a Russian
species, which is probably why it's among Janet's
favorites. Yet to Europeans accustomed to this pretty
plant, the beaming face of a sunflower or blackeye Susan
was newer and more exciting.
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to read the complete issue illustrated here.
American native high-summer bloomers
Every one of the blackeye Susans
or yellow coneflowers (Rudbeckia species) are North American
natives. Above, left: Tall green headed coneflower
(Rudbeckia laciniata) and blackeye Susan (R. fulgida).
Above, right: False sunflowers (12 Heliopsis species) all come
from the New World.
Below, left: Gloriosa daisies
(Rudbeckia fulgida variants, sometimes lised as a separate
species, R. gloriosa). below, right: Coreopsis species number 140+,
all from the New World or Africa.
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here.
Below, left: Although yellows are
big among the New World Compositae, there are
plenty of pinks, blues, purples and whites, too. Mauve
and white come from the Joe Pye "tribe" of this big
family (Eupatorium and closely related species). That
tribe has about 500 species, mostly native to the
Americas.
Above, right: Blazing stars
(Liatris species) are composites in the Eupatorium tribe, and all
40 of them are native to North America. If you think of them as
spike flowers, rather than sunflower relatives, take a closer look
at the individual buttons of flowers along that spike -- each is a
cluster.
Below: Purple coneflowers
(Echinacea spp.) are all North American natives. Most are
pink.
This issue Sponsored by: A Lansing Gardener
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