Chilean escape [part one]

 Who hasn't looked at pictures of Torres del Paine and wondered, can they really be that spectacular? That certainly was one of the things that motivated us in creating this trip for Denver Botanic Gardens. The first few days, cloudy weather prevailed--we only caught a few glimpses of this peak or that. Needless to say I was nervous!

But on our last day the clouds lifted, and this remarkable mountain range in Chile's slice of Patagonia revealed itself in all its glory. I can't imagine how many pictures we all took of the towers from various angles...

Anarthrophyllum desideratum

But this was a botanically focused trip. Although I'd been to Patagonia twice before, it was always in parts of Neuquen and Rio Negro where the scarlet gorse didn't grow. We saw dozens of fabulous clumps our first few days, alas! All of them in seed. But our last day our wise guides took us up several thousand feet into the foothills of Sierra Baguales where they were blooming gloriously! Whew!

Oxalis enneaphylla

In among the scarlet gorse we found lavish clumps of this gorgeous Oxalis--which you musgt admit, contrasts rather harshly! Fortunately, they grew a few feet apart from one another!

Embothrium coccineum

I had hoped we'd find Chilean firebush...I needn't had worried. Some places it was hard to photograph a vista without it cluttering the foreground! It was everywhere, and in our second half of the trip, it grew into handsome trees. We found out it was the pioneer plant that colonized lava flows after volcanic eruptions! It would be worth living next to a volcano just to have this pop up all over one's garden!

Alstroemeria patagonica

Another Southern Patagonian plant that had eluded me was this diminutive lily: I am not sure I can live without it henceforward! It was too cute for words. We found it several places--growing by the hundred!

Pure bliss for a miniature plant lover like me!

Calceolaria uniflora (darwinii)

Another South Patagonian plant I've always yearned to see was this. How shocking to see it growing in masses, all over the grasslands for miles! I think this is something one might succeed with in Colorado--at least at higher elevations!

Acaena magellanica

I know there are those who recoil at the thought of bidi-bidis (as they're known in New Zealand). I am a huge fan--and though we saw dozens if not hundreds of "choicer", rarer plants on the trip, I can't resist sharing this photo!

Azorella monantha

And I'm a sucker for any azorella--this was by far the commonest in the area we visited.

closer up

and even closer

Chloraea magellanica

As luck would have it, we were in Chile at the height of orchid season--we found them in abundance in all areas of the country, several genera. I was particularly taken with this lurid colored species we saw again and again.

Lama guanicoe

And there were critters too! We were lucky to travel with knowledgeable birders (and two of our super guides were keen birders to boot)....I'll spare you my blurry pictures of birds, but it was hard to miss with guanacos!  I wish my camera was handy when a Patagonian gray fox sauntered right in front of us...one of our party even saw a Kodkod (Leopardus guigna).

Alejandra Diaz

We had three outstanding guides, and Alejandra was the botanist who accompanied us through both segments of the trip. As a practicing ecologist, her knowledge not just of plant species, but their role in the landscape gave us a rich context. Her fluent English, patience and charm made a special trip even better!

Here is the crew who made the trip happen. Aside from all local guides, all were from Colorado except Christine Marshall and John Cowley (seated far upper left) two true connoisseurs from California. I don't think I've traveled with a more congenial, friendly or appreciative group--and I've travelled with a LOT of people! 

This is a perfunctory taste of the first few days of our trip. To do it properly would lead to Tolstoyan lengths of prose, which neither you, nor I, have time for! If you are indeed DESPERATE for more pictures, I've uploaded quite a few (a lot more to do) on my I-Naturalist account you can access at the very bottom of this screen.

But hang in there--we'll fly soon in another Blog post to the enchanting Chilean lake district. Surely one of the worlds most dazzling tourist destinations that doesn't seem to have been discovered much yet...perhaps I should keep mum?

Life is full of mysteries...Serendipity is an operative principle of the world.

Saxifraga candelabrum: THANK YOU Marceau Coppée

 I photographed this on a steep slope with limestone outcrops (some almost forming a wall) on June 16, 2018 in the vicinity of Napahai--a beautiful lake not far from "Shangri-La" formerly known as Zhong Dian (中甸县). This was on a trip to the mountains of northern Yunnan sponsored by the North American Rock Garden Society (prompted by Harry Jans: be made us do it!)...I promptly forgot about this--and was only reminded a year ago when I wrote a blog post about gesneriads...wherein I noticed the plant above. Or rather, I noticed another specimen of the same taxon growing on the same cliff. Since I know you were too lazy to click on the hyperlink I reproduce the picture below:

Corallodiscus lanuginosus (left) and mystery plant (right)

I didn't think at the time that I'd taken any other pictures of the plant...and would have left it at that (supposing it was Sinocrassula that is). I have a pretty hefty library of Plants of China at home--I have a hunch this mystery plant may be featured somewhere in one of those books--but life gets hectic, and I dropped the thread. I have a sliver of time today--perhaps I'll sleuth through my floras and see if I can determine the species (unless one of you beat me to the punch and put it in a comment below: it's a race!) [Marceau Coppée won the race] But this post isn't just about this charismatic little rock plant altogether. It's about serendipity....I wouldn't have posted the picture above a year ago had Vojtech Holubec not contributed seed of Coralodiscus lanuginosus to the NARGS seed exchanget--a plant that has haunted me much of my life. That contribution resulted in my blog post. Eventually life moved on.

Daphne calcicola at Adrian and Samantha Cooper's mind boggling garden

Then yesterday David and Jan Palmer--extraordinary plantspeople from Portland--came for a visit and brought with them a beautiful plant of a yellow Yunnanese daphne, D. aurantiaca to be exact, David brought the plant back from Yunnan--not far from where I saw it myself in 1999 when I went to China my first time to visit the extraordinary World Horticultural Exposition, which I have blogged about before in one of my longest and best blog posts, which you (no doubt) also missed! But I digress!

Androsace bulleyana (front) and Daphne calcicola (back) just outside Napahai Botanic Garden.

The Palmer's wonderful gift, and our conversation about David's expedition to Yunnan (at practically the same time as my first trip!) got me to thinking about my own twisted and wonderful experience with the yellow daphnes: I actually saw Daphne aurantiaca in 1999 growing in a woodland not far from Lijiang in the submontane (had to use that word--it was Word of the Day yesterday) of the Jade Dragon Mountains.

Daphne aurantiaca in the Cooper garden

Somewhere in my vast, unscanned library transparencies, (I linked a website that explains what those are--since they are rapidly becoming as antique as magic lanterns) I have a slide image of Daphne aurantiaca I took on that magical mountain 26 years ago. I have been pretty obsessed with yellow daphnes ever since--as I have with Corallodiscus and several thousand other plants come to think of it. The Palmers gave me a plant of this LAST Thanksgiving weekend--which I hope is still in our greenhouses at work (must check), but I shall monitor this one with eagle eyes and hope to plant it out in what I hope will be a magical spot next April...we'll see...

What this post is REALLY about is the mystery of cognition, and recognition. We are bombarded with so many stimuli, and most of us are juggling so many balls that we drop quite a few. All the time. But if you live long enough, you may eventually realize you photographed a stunning mysterious plant on a cliff in Yunnan you forgot about. But 7 years later you snap to attention and make it a priority to figure out!

And I realized also that the day on Napahai was one of the most magical and fantastic days in my long and very lucky life. I've never got around to blogging about it, but I shall make up for that in the coming weeks! My only celebration of the Coopers' garden (which I have been so lucky to visit not one but twice in May!) was to blog about their cactus greenhouse. That would be like visiting Denver Botanic Gardens and only noticing the Christmas lights, he said sardonically.

Sometimes fate has to nudge us again and again to make us snap to attention. Out of this little cluster of coincidences, I have a hunch some pretty cool things may transpire...

Come ride with me to Serendip (not Sri Lanka, btw, but to another land of discovery!).

Thanksgiving! A few of the blessings in my life.

                                             Myself, Jan, Ryan Keating and Adam Black

From a recent much too brief hike at Roxborough State Park the day after our local Rocky Mountain Chapter's wonderful Symposium. Adam was the terrific Keynote speaker--I am so grateful to have him as a friend. Ryan has been a blessing: he built the crevice garden at my home--not to mention dozens of other gardens I admire--starting with Yampa River Botanic Park's incredible crevice garden he created over a decade ago that goes from strength to strength. He helped transform Chatfield Farm's crevice garden into one of the most extraordinary gardens I've ever seen--full of treasures as well as fine rock work. And great new things are in store for Ryan and Adam--that I'm sure of! And Jan has my back, quite literally here: a blessing for me in my life every day.

I can't believe this is the only picture I took with Scott and Michelle Beuerlein on our visit to Cincinnati. Scott organized the Symposium on Native Plants I spoke at last Saturday: it was his 40th symposium he'd organized in just over a dozen years or so--practically all of them sell-outs (this one sold out months ago--almost 300 attendees!). An ordinary human would be wiped out--but Scott and Michelle took Sunday off to tour Jan and me around Cincinnati--a city I've come to love. Scott is casting a long, long, long shadow on American Horticulture--his interviews in that magazine alone are riveting, as are his other essays. And you should follow his Rants! How fortunate I am to have treasured friends like these across our continent (and beyond). Much to be thankful for! (By the way, if you go to Cincy, reserve a day for Union Station: that stunning monument of Art Deco is chockablock full of museums, restaurants--and yes, trains! I caution against their gift shop, however, which robbed me of nearly $100!)

At our e Rocky Mountain Chapter meeting, Steve Aegerter received recognition from the North American Rock Garden Society--he's helped transform our chapter, which had been sputtering, into a dynamo once again. Our symposia had limped along for decades with 50 or so attendees--THIS year at his command we charged people to attend and had 97 attendees (we did have lunches and plant sales and more goodies Steve cooked up.). Steve is the very embodiment of "bon vivant"--as the screen behind him demonstrates. He and his wife Kathy have become two of our closest friends (along with another couple nearby) with whom every few weeks we enjoy Gin and Tonics and delicious repasts in one another's gardens in the golden light of afternoon.

I am lucky to work at an extraordinary place full of fantastically talented people. Chief among these is the fellow with the black hat--definitely the wrong color. Mike Kintgen has been a terrific friend, exemplary colleague and joy to me. These two gentlemen brighten my life day in week out!  

On Dia de los Muertos early this month most of my clan ZOOMED together to honor my eldest nephew, Andoni Taylor, whom we lost this past spring. I hastily assembled this Ofrenda (you can't believe the masterpieces my beloved nieces put together) with tokens symbolic of Andoni's passion for music, food, photography and so much more, as well as Indian pottery and bells betokening his father whom we lost three years ago on December 1, 2022. This is the first Thanksgiving (except for 1978) we are not spending with any of Jan or my closer families. We shall have a postponed Turkey day Saturday with dear friends from Oregon, and we're girding ourselves for a transcontinental trip to Chile in five days--don't feel too sorry for us!

                            A random shot of the Colorado foothills I took last August

I am grateful for too many things: this blog post would stretch on for several miles if I were to speak of the many people, places and tokens that grace my life day in, day out. But having been born and having lived MOST of my life in Colorado has to be one of the greatest. My two charismatic and adorable children I am sad not to be with today...

Earlier this week I noticed that Prairiebreak had over two million site visits. As I travel around the country I am always surprised when friends or strangers thank me for some post they've read or tell me that they follow my blog.  I too resent the various oligarchs who own these media I patronize all too frequently. I know idiots abuse Facebook, Instagram, and probably Blogspot and all the rest. I hate to admit it, but Social Media are for me a delight and solace. I don't anticipate taking vows in a monastery to giving them up any time soon. So I guess I should be thankful to them--and to you, whoever you are, who has made it to the end of this post. Have a blessed Thanksgiving...

Last of the Mohigans, I mean blooms

MUCH bigger than any other Rabiea I've ever grown, this astonishing beauty with flowers almost 3" wide greeted me on my return from Cincinnati. I hope I can determine which species it is and that it proves cold hardy (this is its first winter out in the cold here!). Our first hard frost was several weeks ago, and it's been chilly ever since at night, often dipping below freezing--this doesn't seem to mind! November 24, mind you!

Diascia integerrima 'Coral Canyon'

Davis Salman told me once he thought this was my best introduction to horticulture. I am surprised not to see it in gardens more.

Gazania linearis 'Colorado Gold'

Another of my intros--it blooms pretty much non-stop.

Escobaria vivipara

Sometimes seedpods are as pretty as flowers! This demonstrates why this is sometimes called the "nipple cactus"

Salvia greggii

This looked much better last week--dozens of flowers on my big clumps of "Autumn Sage"--which can start blooming in May some years!

Iberis sempervirens

There are a few cultivar names for the autumn re-blooming candtufts. Not sure which one this is.

Blumenbachia insignis

This of us who grow this (not many) have a love-hate relationship with it. Such delicate flowers--but the stinging hairs are a nuisance. I grew Blumenbachia hieronymi for years at Denver Botanic Gardens where it was perennial--this is a self-sowing annual. A perfect plant for masochists..

Daphne cneorum

I'm surprised we don't have more rebloom on the dozens of daphnes in the garden (I once counted over 60 taxa). But then my soil is very sandy, I water sparingly and my plants are all a tad....let's just say tough!

Galanthus elwesii v. monostrictus

 A treasured memento from Montrose--a visit I shall never forget about this time of year. I recorded it in a blog post: check it out.  Every plant seems to harbor a memory (or more).
 

Viburnum farreri 'Nanum' 

Hope this will still bloom next March! I don't think this has bloomed precociously for me before...
 

Crocus laevigatus 'Fontaneyi'

And a special treat for me was finding this--weeks after my other fall crocus were finished. I grew this species for years as a young man in Boulder. There it always bloomed between Christmas and New Year. That was a different clone than this--glad nevertheless to have this widespread Greek crocus that is found on so many of the islands. Amazing that it adapts to our high altitude steppe climate: of course much of my career has focused on demonstratng that these Mediterranean waifs have steppish hearts! 

Antirhinum cv

Chrysanthemum cv.

Origanum dictamnus

Primula denticulata

And there is even a single Petunia blossom lingering almost to December...Saturday night's low in the teens will doubtless put an end to THIS nonsense!

Salvia 'Windwalker'

There were other plants with flower too--such as Malephora crocea--only I was photographing when it  was in the shade and closed. Oh well, you get the drift: it may be early winter but plants are as persistent as gardeners and just want to show off!

The ineluctable appeal of women botanists

 I have read biographies of Linnaeus, of Asa Gray, Thomas Nuttall, of Aven Nelson..and come to think of it quite a few other such gentlemen over the decades. They were all good reads. 

Why is it I find biographies of women botanists so much more interesting? Alice Eastwood's Wonderland: The Adventures of a Botanist, by Carol Green Wilson had me spellbound from start to finish. Her rescue of type specimens from the Academy of Science in San Francisco was of course practically Indiana Jones in its excitement--but there is something more to her story than what men had to put up with.

I picked up a copy of The Forgotten Botanist on my last visit to Tucson (where the mountain looking down on the city is named for her--and where she has not been forgotten). Again it is a page turner, and of course her husband kept getting credit for her work. 

This last weekend we'd just seen Lucy Braun's (and her sister Annette's) graves at Spring Grove cemetery. I'd actually seen them a half dozen year's earlier one August--but this time I managed to take a picture the graves as well as of the enormous white oak which towered here long before European settlement of this area.

Our Cincinnati host, Scott Beuerlein, is standing in front of the ancient oak...

That picture doesn't give the right scale. Here's one that conveys the magnificent oak's size better. We'd just seen Lucy Braun (and her sister Annette's) graves at the fringe of the oak's crown.

Scott's wonderful wife, Michelle, gives a much better sense of the size of this specimen. There were dozens of graves in the shadow of the oak--it took us a while to find the Braun sisters. 

Later Sunday afternoon I had the distinct pleasure of watching a movie about Lucy Braun at Cincinnati's fantastic Union Station--a gigantic Art Deco masterpiece filled with museums, restaurant, wonderful ice cream parlor and much more--including a theatre where documentaries are shown. 

Like the books I've read about women botanists, this documentary was more stirring than similar pieces I've seen done about men. I suspect knowing the enormous challenges professional women faced in the past (and no doubt still do) adds a layer of concern and engagement to the account of their lives. Or are women just more interesting?

Click on the image above to have a chance to learn about a great American botanist. And her sister to boot--an important entomologist.

And if you've managed to read this far, I have another blog post about another extraordinary woman who also led an amazing life in Academia and beyond: Mary Rippon. 

A tale of two (or three) from A to Z(abelia)

Abelia x grandiflora cv. at Dallas Botanic Garden in October

I am not sure what rock I've been hiding under, but I was entirely ignorant of the autumn flowering abelias until this fall (or late summer) when I was in the mountains of Central China in late August when we encountered the parent of the hybrid shown above growing on steep ravines. I was transfixed!

 So transfixed I apparently didn't photograph them! What we saw in China was Abelia chinensis, which looks very much like this hybrid, which represents a cross between chinensis and A. uniflora (the latter apparently lost to cultivation). As Jan is demonstrating above, it has a bewitching fragrance....

Everybody who walked by the spectacular hedge alongside the building where I spoke seemed to want to poke their nose in these. Some botanists have tried to lump these taxa under Linnaea, Twinflower--the circumboreal groundcover of subalpine coniferous forests, but the lumping doesn't seem to have stuck. 

We hit this at the perfect time: there are never enough showy late summer blooming shrubs, are there?

When I came back to Denver Botanic Gardens anxious to teach my colleagues about this gem, and of course we were growing it already....when I went out to check the specimens I was underwhelmed--they were no match to Dallas' hedges. And of course the extensive literature about these plants (I blush that I knew nothing about it hitherto) pretty much says it will be marginally hardy in Denver. Next spring I intend to attempt as many different clones (and there are a lot of them) in various parts of my home garden in order to see if that's true!

Zabelia tyaihyoni

There is another plant, once known as Abelia mosanensis, of which we do boast good specimens at the gardens. There is a great deal one can write about this fantastic plant, but the International Dendrological Society does it much more succinctly and better than I could. Do click on that link and you'll find a wonderfully tangled taxonomic mess (almost every website miss-spells the name, by the way!) Except for mine and the I.D.S.!

To recap just a tad--this shrub is extremely rare in northeast South Korea where it's considered at risk of extirpation. Who knows what's happening in North Korea with it.

The Zabelia at Waring House, DBG (Not as floriferous--it had been pruned hard the year before)

It's surprisingly new to cultivation, and still rare in gardens, which is strange since it's a tough customer, and quite graceful and not too big for most gardens. Most significantly, it is EXTREMELY cold hardy (possibly Zone 3), very attractive in form and blossom. And the flowers are also extremely fragrant and produced for a long time. No one seems to mention that the seedpods are rather pretty, and it has wonderful fall color....speaking of which, here is my specimen at home:

It took on some reddish tints a week or so later. I planted this five or so years ago--it took some doing to find a mail order source. Last spring I was admiring it from this spot, taking in the rich fragrance when I noticed something similar in our neighbors' garden: you can see a yellow shrub at the top of this picture: turns out, they'd planted one several years before me and I'd never noticed it until this year--it's twice as big as mine and was part of the source of the rich scent I was noticing. I was torn: should I be pleased at their good taste (where the hell did they find it? No one sells it around here), or pissed I'd been "trumped"...in the old sense of that word, of course!