Category: plants

Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for March

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I’m traveling today, so I must confess that I took these photos before I left. However, this plant has bloomed non stop for the last six months, so I’m sure it is blooming today too.

Since we arrived in Rwanda in September, I have been telling people that this is a poinsettia, a shrub that can also get really large in frost-free climates. But after identifying our orange and white Mussaenda frondosa last month, I realized that it is a Mussaenda erythrophylla.

M. erythrophylla is native to tropical West Africa and is also known as Ashanti blood, red flag blood, or tropical dogwood. It can reach heights of 30 ft. (about 9 m.). Below, it’s growing up into our acacia tree.

The bracts of this plant glow so red that I’ve had a hard time getting good pictures of it. It will bloom all year long.

The plant cannot well tolerate temperatures below 40°F.  It prefers full sun, but will bloom in part shade.  It needs moderate amounts of water.

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Garden for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. Click the link to see what’s blooming in other GB’s gardens today.

Clipped weeping fig

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Near the same corner with the pelican tree, there is a pharmacy with several nice topiary of Ficus benjamina (weeping fig).

Still a strange pageant . . .

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While researching Dr. Seuss the other day, I realized why this acacia tree on our street had so grabbed my attention back in November.

Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman was one of my favorite books as a child; I was always surprised by the dog party at the end. [Click here for the image.]

During one of my landscape design classes, another student recalled a lecture by a famous landscape artist (I think it was Martha Schartz) who said that the garden we really want is the one that reflects the places we knew before the age of five. I don’t know how accurate her paraphrase was, but the idea is something to think about. And the landscapes of our early years will have to include those we saw night after night in storybooks.

I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant. . . .
Yet  the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
‎‎– Czeslaw Milosz, from “And Yet the Books“

From there to here, from here to there

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Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), took the art of Surrealism and the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, combined them with childhood memories of early cars and machinery in New England and then the flora of his adult home in southern California, and created the famous illustrations for his over sixty books.  (His Green Eggs and Ham is the fourth best-selling English-language children’s book of all time.)

His strange plants and landscapes — tops of mops, spikes, and feathers; elongated, twisty trunks; improbable angles, odd hills and rocks — form a visual vocabulary that we all understand and use routinely.  These are just a few of the many, many snapshots I found by typing in “Dr. Seuss” and searching Flickr.com.

Photo by Randy Robertson, labeled “Dr. Seuss Plant Silhouette.”  All three photos via Flickr.com, under CC license.
“Dr. Seuss Bush” by Shawn Henning.
“Dr. Seuss Trees” by Allan Ferguson.

A 2010 article from the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, has a list of plants that also look Seuss-y, here.  Among others, they recommend weeping sequoia, Nootka cypress, and contorted hazelnut.

If you want to visit a Dr. Seuss-style landscape, the blog SPOTCOOLSTUFF has 10 “Places That Look Dr Seuss-ish” around the world, here.

ADDENDUM: Today is also the NEA’s Read Across America Day, here. And The Washington Post is calling for Seuss-inspired verse about current events, here.