These two striking cultivars of copperleaf, an evergreen and ever variegated shrub native to the Pacific Islands, were the plants of choice to add colour in the shady corners around the buildings of the resort I stayed in when I was in Lanzarote. It looks like it wasn’t the best of choices though, as they tend to show very easily the damage drought (or inefficient irrigation) can cause, with crispy brown leaf edges and tips. However, water is really precious on an arid, rocky island, and the plants look fine enough with their bold colours, so it’s not a big deal. From a distance they almost look like poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima), which is another Euphorbiacea, but their floral structures are pretty different: in the top photo you can see numerous short spikes of female flowers, while in the bottom one a few long spikes of male flowers, all produced by the plant at the same time.
Not these ornamental varieties, but the actual wild species has been used in a variety of medicinal ways in its native range, which I don’t doubt were useful, but I don’t think I would try to use an Euphorbiacea that way due to the possible toxicity. Maybe I’m cautious because a tiny petty spurge (Euphorbia peplus) almost blinded me when I was little…
As a bonus you can see some more of the black and highly functional crushed lava rock mulch known as lapillo in the background of the middle photo, which features the very red A. wilkesiana ‘Macrophylla’. This substrate is readily available on a volcanic island and perfect to retain the moisture provided by the irrigation system while allowing very good drainage and circulation of humid air, fundamental for this species to thrive.
After a very gloomy January day I find myself looking at photos of sunny, late-summer afternoon at Glasgow Botanic Gardens, so here’s a showy cultivar of what is commonly known as knotweed, or bistort, the third Persicaria which features on my blog after the common slender knotweed (P. decipiens) and the just as colourful red bistort (P. amplexicaulis). P. affinis shares part of its range in the Himalayas with the latter, but is also native to Pakistan, where it is found on rocky slopes, riverbanks and pastures, generally in presence of moisture and in partial shade.
It has been introduced in temperate areas for its ornamental value as a fully hardy, perennial, semi-evergreen groundcover which forms dense mats and puts on a beautiful floral show through late summer and autumn, with spikes that gradually change colour as the blooms open. As the first frosty nights arrive, when the persistent flower spikes are already spent, the leaves turn a bright red before disappearing for the winter rest. In its native area the flowers have also been used medicinally to treat fevers, but if you plant it in your garden you can leave them to the bees and the rest of wildlife, which will benefit from this source of pollen and nectar in the season when everything starts going dormant.
A few days ago I received some plants from @agavex, precisely, three cuttings of Rhipsalis pilocarpa, Cactaceae and one Hawortia attenuata ‘Clariperla’, Asphodelaceae, and I’m so happy with them! The former is native to moist tropical lowlands in Brasil, while the latter is native to much more arid South Africa. I hope they will enjoy a Scottish windowsill as they are already used to living in the British Isles.
I have already placed them in pots to develop roots in one case and better roots in the other, and will post an update in a while, probably when I see new growth, or maybe before, because that could take months now. Have a look at the blog and shop, they are definitely worth your time and money!
In the end it took me just over a year to post an update, but this is what the plants look like now. I lost one of the three Rhipsalis cuttings during the first winter, but the other two have grown a lot and I didn’t really expect to see a flower bud already! The Hawortia has gotten at least twice as big and seems to be enjoying living here too.
The single flower bud on my Rhipsalis has finally opened up! It’s in a really awkward position, tiny and white, so I tried to take photos with my 10x hand-held botany lens, but they are far from clear.
Second in the series of native and introduced plants of Lanzarote comes the Australian pine tree, which I hadn’t seen in probably ten years -since the last time I was in southern Italy- and that I found to be extensively used in the landscaping of the area I visited. After a first, quick look, the tree could indeed be taken for an exotic looking pine (Pinus), but despite the name and similarities Casuarinas are actually Angiosperms! Native to SE Asia, Australia and New Zealand, it is generally found in semi-arid situations, in well-draining, alkaline soils and often on sand dunes and beaches. Aside from being the reason why it is so successful on the seashores of Lanzarote, this resilience is also what gave the tree the characteristic conifer-like look. Green, thin and deciduous twigs perform the role of leaves and are peculiar in their segmentation reminiscent of horsetail (Equisetum), after which the species is named. This kind of structure is an adaptation to perform photosynthesis more efficiently in dry, windy and sunny conditions than a broad leaf might be able to. Like conifers, the tree is wind-pollinated, but the dry, woody structures it produces are not cones, they’re fruits. As they open, they release tiny winged seeds, quite easy to miss unless they fall in your cup (ahah!). If given the chance in the right place, the Australian pine tree can be rather invasive and smother native vegetation by shedding a thick layer of twigs -much like it happens in conifer forests- which also hinder germination with allelopathic biochemicals.
If managed well, the tree can also do the opposite, and aid crop plants and smaller fruit trees: like species within the Fabaceae, it can fix nitrogen in the soil through the association with bacteria while it provides dappled shade when the sun radiation is too intense and acts as windbreak against drying hot air. In its native area it has been used as a medicinal plant to treat skin imperfections and gastrointestinal problems, but also as a tanning agent and widely as high-quality fire wood.
The third entry for the series about Lanzarote’s flora is not only a succulent, but also one of the few species of non-herbaceous Asteraceae which grow to a shrub or tree-like form. I was really hoping to see this plant, known as verode, and right upon arrival I spotted a sizeable colony growing on some sloping wasteland next to the resort where I was staying, so it was a good start to my botanical mission. Endemic to the Canary Islands, this curious plant shows some local variations across the archipelago, but generally develops a short, stout, woody trunk supporting a widely-ramified canopy of articulated branches with an apical tuft of leaves, giving it a very characteristic shape and place in the landscape.
I suppose if the seedheads still retaining the white silky pappus typical of Asteraceae weren’t present, verode could be taken for an Euphorbia, E. balsamifera in particular, but that’s another case of convergent evolution of two unrelated plants sharing the same environment and being faced with the same challenges and limiting factors. Even if I had not known about it, I could have probably guessed, as I own a small K. articulata and have become familiar with what a succulent Asteracea could look like (to be noted is that both species are alternatively listed as Kleinia and Senecio). Like most members of this family, its copious amounts of scented flowers are very important for wildlife in a place where resources are scarce, but due to its ornamental qualities it has also been introduced to other areas of the world where its light and temperature requirements are met and can be grown successfully as a houseplant in a very bright position.
One of my favourite features in my local park is the view over the Polmadie burn from the small Jenny’s bridge, located at the junction between the burn and the river Clyde. After I moved to Glasgow I started observing the park changing through the seasons and recording the species I found there to familiarise myself with my new surroundings. When I began writing this blog, it naturally ended up being the source of inspiration for many of my posts. You might remember a homestead design project I made a while ago, when I imagined a house in one area of the park and designed the main outline of a food forest following a holistic approach to land management and home food production. More recently, I mentioned the park again when I wrote about the highly invasive triad made up of Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera), Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) and giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), the damage they were causing there and the announced re-designing of the entire area. Two months into the project and from what I can see at least half the trees in the park seem to have been felled. The view you see above has not been touched yet, so I thought it would be a good idea to complete this photographic series now and make sure I remember the Polmadie I got to meet on my first day living in Glasgow.
It’s been some time, but in September I wrote a few posts about some different Impatiens species, and the last was an unusual one, so here’s another to continue on that tangent. Creeping balsam is a tropical evergreen perennial native to Sri Lanka where, as the common name suggests, it either grows sprawling over the ground or climbing up trees in the dappled shade of the rain forest. Its red succulent stems covered in tiny fleshy leaves bear numerous yellow hooded flowers, in the shape characteristic of the genus and highly successful at attracting pollinators. In Scotland and all cool-temperate areas it could only be grown at its best under glass in a humid environment, while it is a beautiful ground cover option for shady areas for the lucky ones who own a tropical garden -although it might be a better idea to place it in a hanging basket to control its spread and avoid the risk of another Impatiens going full on invasive where it shouldn’t! The photos of this beautiful little specimen are obviously from Glasgow Botanic Gardens.
It’s been well over a month since the end of my horticulture course at Glasgow Botanic Gardens, and after having spent one full day there weekly for about three months I really start missing watching that beautiful place change slowly through the seasons. Some of the last photos I took there were of the enchanting show put on by the airy Japanese anemone in the herbaceous border at the beginning of autumn. Although I have a feeling it might actually be a hybrid of A. hupehensis, the former curator introduced it as above as part of a demonstration on how to divide clump-forming and rhizomatous herbacous perennials. He kindly gave away small suckers to some of my colleagues with gardens -the times I hate living in a flat with no balcony…the plant structure and the flowers are so beautiful, even in pink.
This species is native to central China, where its wild form grows in damp, open woodland, thriving in the semi-shaded clearings between trees, where a layer of leaf litter and snow is deposited annually. The Japanese anemone is quite hardy, and with shelter and mulching provided, will do well in most damp, but well-draining, semi-shaded areas of a garden, flowering from late summer to late autumn and withstanding well the first frosty days of the cold season. The abundance of flowers, which come in white, pink and purple, is also enjoyed by wildlife, as the plant is often visited by bumblebees and hoverflies in a period where many other flowering species are already going dormant. Due to its height, about 1 m or just over 3 ft, it’s definitely a good addition as a focal point in a bedding display if not much space is available, otherwise it could fill a whole border in an informal garden setting.
Within the resort where I was staying in, on the southern coast of Lanzarote, I found the winner of the category ‘showiest flower of the holiday’, and I was so happy it was a yellow one! Cup of gold is a stunning, vigorous liana native to
Mexico, Central America and northern South America, where it grows on well draining soils in sunny locations, scrambling over anything which might support the weight of its heavy, heavily branching, woody stems. I’ve seen only three plants in total, two of them were grown as round, free standing, 2.5m/~7ft tall shrubs, while the last was beginning to send a few stems creeping up a wall, but it can grow extensively to completely cover walls or porches in warm, frost free parts of the world.
The flowers are large, trumpet-shaped and a warm, golden yellow, with five prominent maroon markings in correspondence with the main veins. They are reminiscent of those of two other large-flowered Solanaceae, the moonflower (Datura inoxia) and the angel trumpet (Brugmansia suaveolens), and all three species share the fact they’re highly toxic, with various effects, and are manipulated for this reason. Maybe I just didn’t notice more of these plants while walking around, but maybe it’s just not that common there, although its resistance to salty winds makes it an excellent candidate for ornamental planting in coastal areas.
Bonus: two of the photos feature a white-banded digger bee (Amegilla quadrifasciata), a solitary, burrowing bee widespread from the Canary Islands through the Mediterranean and Southern and Central Europe to Central and East Asia. With its striking coloration I think I’d remember having seen it before in Italy, but I don’t think I had. Also, S. maxima is generally pollinated by nocturnal bats in its natural range, but bees are happy to oblige in their absence.
Yesterday I wrote about an uncommon, yellow-flowered Solanacea present on Lanzarote, the golden cup vine, so today I’ll write about an invasive, yellow-flowered Solanacea present far too much. The tree tobacco is a large, generally evergreen, fast-growing shrub native to rocky cliffs in Bolivia and central and north-western Argentina, from which it was introduced to be used as an ornamental plant around the end of the XVI century, landing first in Europe and now widespread around the world, thriving in all Mediterranean and sub-tropical areas. I personally observed it in various locations across Italy, and in both Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, where it was ubiquitous.
The tree tobacco is incredibly adapted to withstand flooding and subsequent drought in an arid climate and young plantlets begin flowering and setting seeds very soon in poor soils, wasteland and particularly along the sites of human activity like roads and seasonal canals. These are all areas where movement -of water, air and bodies- occurs, aiding in seed dispersal. The tubular flowers, adapted for pollination by hummingbirds and moths in its native range, haven’t discouraged other creatures from performing the same role elsewhere, when the plants haven’t directly resorted to self-pollination, as it happened in the Mediterranean. Due to its extremely vigorous habit, resilience and potential to pose a serious threat to endemic vegetation, eradication efforts have been carried out in various locations, as in the northern islets of Lanzarote, in Portugal, France and in Sicily.
Nicotiana glauca is another species to add to the list of toxic and lethal Solanaceae I mentioned yesterday which have also been traditionally used as medicinal plants by Native Americans.
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