A Sumac Surprise

Tiger Eyes sumac: Beauty or beast?

Planted one sumac the summer of 2009;
it didn't sucker in 2010 but is on the move now

There's a corner of my yard that I don't see very often.  It's a sliver of flat yard behind my shed that ends in a sharp slope down to my neighbor's and farther down still to our back yard.

There were two huge box elders on the slope that we had an arborist remove because they were hollowed out and leaning over our house.  That left an exposed slope that needed shoring up and fast.  I planted one Tiger's Eye sumac and 2 Gro-Low sumac.  I left them to their own devices and they not only survived but thrived in their new steep but sunny home.

Tiger's Eye is a type of staghorn sumac, which is on Wisconsin's invasive list, despite being a native plant.

So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to find that my Tiger's Eye, which isn't supposed to sucker as aggressively as the species (according to the sales spiel), has spread out down the slope with at least 4 new sprouts, a couple of them about 10 ft away.  Oopsies!

Another plant that seems to like its new home is my Caroline Moonlight baptisia, which I wasn't sure was going to do well.  Surprise, surprise,  while weeding in my mini prairie, I found baptisia seedlings.  Carolina Moonlight won't come true from seed so I'm curious to see what color flower the seedlings will produce.



Carolina Moonlight Baptisia: It didn't bloom for long
 but I really like those mellow yellow blooms



Buggy about Buglossoides!

2 Sahohime and 1 Hanakisoi blooms perfume the kitchen

You know the excitement you feel when a perennial blooms for the first time and it's a plant you've never grown before?  Well, I got a double dose of that excitement this week when both my tree peonies and Buglossoides (Purple Gromwell) bloomed.

I'm guessing you've heard about tree peonies.  I've got two in one of my perennial beds.  One is Sahohime and it has large bright pink blooms that are pretty but not very fragrant.  The other is Hanakisoi with flouncy pale pink flowers and lots of scent.  I love the scent of peonies; they are one of my favorite plants and I was waiting all year to see if these newcomers to my garden would flower this spring.  (I've grown herbaceous peonies for years but this is the first time I've tried tree peonies and I heard that it can take several years for them to start flowering.)

I had been watching and waiting as the peony
buds fattened but was still surprised once they bloomed



The other surprise bloomer is one that I doubt you've heard of.  I know I had never heard of it until I asked a worker at Flower Factory in Stoughton for a list of deer, shade, drought and alkaline clay tolerant plants.  You can imagine that the list wasn't very long.  On it was Buglossoides.   I thought the name was weird and decided to give it a try.

If only they lasted a bit longer!

I planted it below a group of spruce trees where there's lots of root competition and it's

pretty dry.  The first year, my two clumps didn't do much other than put out some thin vine-like shoots, hugging the ground and not looking particularly vigorous.  I noticed that the foliage didn't go fully dormant over winter but was totally crispy and dead-looking by spring.  I was worried it had died.  But surprise!  Not only did the foliage emerge later looking happy and lush, there were now four clumps instead of two. 



This was when my buglossoides first starting blooming;
there's a lot more flowers now
(but I can't get you a picture 'cuz I can't find my camera)

 And another surprise!  Buglossoides just bloomed and the blooms are bright blue.  True blue, not that purple that some catalogs call blue.  (I think we've all been taken in by that at some point or other in our gardening careers.) And it's a really bright hue, that blue.  (Geez, now I'm sounding like Dr. Seuss.)



Anyhow, now I'm wondering how long it'll bloom for and if it will put out vines again like it did last year.  It'd be great if it kept blooming until the yellow daylilies and sundrops bloom.  Here's hoping!



Flowers that are blue, not purple, folks!