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Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: Celosia

October 15, 2012October 16, 2012 Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments

This Bloom Day, I’m most taken with this stand of Celosia argentea. The annual self-seeded all over the garden, and we transplanted a number of the babies to this spot at the southeast end of the two parallel retaining walls (see garden plan here).

Eventually, some very tall Heliconia rostrata will grow up here (you can see one leaf in the front of the photo above), but this is a nice filler until the transplanted roots really take off.

I believe my plants are a red-leafed Celosia argentea var. argentea, which is commonly know in Africa as Lagos spinach. (Although I may have var. spicata, similar to ‘Flamingo Feathers.’) Harvested before it flowers, the plant is an important leaf vegetable in tropical Africa and Southeast Asia. In Nigeria, it is called soko yokoto, which means ‘make husbands fat and happy.’ In Swahili, it’s called mfungu.

To prepare it, boil (don’t steam) the leaves and tender stems for five minutes, and then drain away the cooking water (which eliminates the oxalic acid and nitrates). It is said to taste like spinach and contains very good levels of protein, vitamins A, C, and E, calcium, and iron.

The genus Celosia is a member of the amaranth family. The name comes from the Greek word kelos, meaning ‘burned’ — referring to the flame-shaped and colored blooms. Most sources I looked at gave the genus’s probable origin as Africa.

To see what’s blooming in other garden bloggers’ gardens, check out May Dreams Gardens.

A-s-c-l-e-p-i-a—

October 13, 2012April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure9 Comments

I walked by the White House a few weeks ago to look through the fence at the famous vegetable garden. Then I took a further look around and realized that all of the ornamental beds and pots on public view, on all sides of the house, were planted out in red wax begonias.

Just wax begonias combined with dusty miller.

And I thought, “seriously?”

Wh Hse - in a pot — Yes, this — just this, all around.

I know they’re tough and look neat and give reliable color and my feet were hurting from too much walking, but how dull.

The kitchen garden looked fine and huge kudos, but next year, would it not also be educational for D.C. schoolchildren to learn to spell ‘Asclepias tuberosa‘ — as they tuck them in around the fountains with maybe some native switchgrass and goldenrod* — or even the family to which it belongs, ‘Apocynaceae‘ (formerly thought to be ‘Asclepiadaceae‘), and its subfamily, ‘Asclepiadoideae.’

Or maybe just the word ‘perennial,’ which I have to let spellcheck fix every time I write it.

American plants at British Museum — Why do we have wax begonias at the White House, while the British Museum currently has this? (“North American Landscape: Kew at the British Museum”)

* and even some scarlet rose mallow (Hibiscus c-o-c-c-i-n-e-u-s), which was planted at the Old Executive Office Building and looked great. (Addendum: I’m now thinking it could have been this.)

A little more Bloomsbury

October 9, 2012 Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

I didn’t make it to the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens on this trip*, but the British Museum was (and is, til November 25th) holding an exhibit, “North American Landscape: Kew at the British Museum” on its West Lawn. Admission is free.

The website, here, has a video of the installation and a slideshow of the plants featured.

I loved these flower finials atop a rather stately iron gate on Montague Street, not far from the British Museum.

Looking on Google’s satellite image for the street, the gates seem to be the entrance to a large shared garden on the inside of the entire block.

*and here and here.

Perspective, western prairie

September 27, 2012May 2, 2017 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

Sweetwater Co., Wyoming, 1930s, A. Rothstein, Library of Congress “Highway U.S. 30, Sweetwater County, Wyoming” by Arthur Rothstein, March 1940, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Eternal prairie and grass, with occasional groups of trees. Frémont prefers this to every other landscape. To me it is as if someone would prefer a book with blank pages to a good story.

– Charles Preuss, Exploring with Frémont

Preuss was a mapmaker who accompanied John Frémont on two of his explorations of the American West in the 1840s. Together, they mapped the Oregon Trail and discovered Lake Tahoe.

Frémont — who was later the first Republican candidate for President — always played the iconic hero-explorer; Preuss, at least in his diaries, was a grumbling realist. “My pants are torn,” was the gist of his comments for the day the Frémont planted an American flag on what he believed was the highest place in the Rocky Mountains.

There’s a funny account of Preuss, here, on This American Life: “The Homesick Explorer.” And here.

Vintage landscape: tobacco flower

September 25, 2012April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

“George Barbee, 13 years old topping. . . . Nicholas County, Kentucky” by Lewis Hine, August 1916, via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.