Nature's First Green is Gold

If the poet Robert Frost is to be believed, anyway! I am not sure I agree, however, that gold is “her hardest hue to hold.” Certainly, gold flowers are abundant in early spring, and I can’t help but wonder… why?

Narrow-leaved Mule’s Ears

My instincts tell me that it is something to do with the pollinators that are emerging from hibernation at the same time. As soon as daytime temps start to reach 50 degrees (F), native bee queens will start to come out from their cozy winter dens.

California Buttercup

Right now, our hikes are simply overflowing with yellow flowers, no matter where we choose to walk. And this past weekend, Tom and I were lucky enough to witness a miracle of nature on the Burma Road Trail on Mount Diablo, not far from Castle Rock.

Fiddlenecks

There are 1600 native bee species in California, and I have no idea which one this was. They were emerging from holes in a section of the trail that was made of clay and sandstone, quite hard-packed and dry. There were hundreds of bees flying just above the surface of the path, in a frantic circular pattern. We stopped to watch, and then Tom saw a head emerging from a tiny hole in the path. We watched as a female bee dug out the rest of the mud from the entrance, then crawled out. Immediately a male bee pounced on her and mated with her for several seconds. This pattern repeated itself over and over as we watched, and we realized that the males had emerged first, and had been flying over the path just waiting for the females to show themselves.

California Golden Violet

As you can imagine, we were entranced and delighted. Our online searching has not turned up the name of this bee species, but we are hoping one of our readers might know and will share in the comments. Meanwhile, I wondered: Have certain types of native bees evolved to exit hibernation at the same time as the native plants with yellow flowers bloom?

California Poppy

I’ve looked at several studies now, and while it is true that color is what makes flowers stand out to pollinators from a distance (something is needed for the flower to stand out from the field of green), it’s the un-seeable-by-human-eyes UV patterns in the centers of each flower that attract the bee in to the pollen (and nectar). Yellow flowers do attract pollinators, but so do white flowers, and blue flowers. And pollinators are opportunists; they’ll eat whatever they can find, especially in a Mediterranean-dry climate where winter rains promote flower blooming.

Sticky Monkey Flower

In other words… no one really knows.

Western Wallflower

It’s good to have some mystery in life. It’s good to ask questions for which we do not know the answer. It’s good to ponder these mysteries and let them delight us.

Glue-seed

And it’s especially good to get out into the lovely late-winter sunshine and see what’s blooming… and what’s buzzing.

Refreshing a Pollinator Garden

I spent a happy Monday shopping for, and then installing, about 42 plants in the South Pollinator Garden, in a complete redo of the area.

Originally, this was an area where I planted a few perennials, but mostly annuals. Twice a year, I would clear out the garden and re-seed depending on the season. You can see a late summer example, above, with perennial aster and fennel, and annual zinnas. Not only was this expensive in terms of money (two large orders of seed, twice a year), it was expensive in other ways too; it always took several days of labor, plus a lot of water to germinate the seed - and it caused a lot of soil disturbance, too. On the other hand, it provided a huge amount of biomass for the compost pile, and a ton of nectar and pollen for foraging insects.

But considering the future regarding climate, I am rethinking the way I garden. I feel strongly that the word ‘resilience’ is not just important for me as a person, but also for the ecosystem in our yard. Pollen and nectar, habitat and shelter, are all crucial. But so is a reduction of inputs. And if I am constantly tearing out and replacing, that doesn’t help me or the ecosystem.

image credit: Flower Magazine

Last spring, I became obsessed with the gardens of Piet Oudolf, who designed Manhattan’s High Line, as well as Chicago’s Lurie garden. His gardens are like paintings. He uses a lot of grass and non-flowering plants which provide the effect of a gently undulating sea. Within that sea are bursts of color, which in the autumn turn to seedpods and add a different focus. Every winter, he cuts it all down, and everything regenerates in the early spring.

Of course here in California, this can be recreated; however, our dormant season is in summer rather than winter, and the planting needs to be recalibrated to fit those circumstances. Aso for our climate, which is mainly hot and dry! Using some native plants and grasses would help to ground this painterly garden style in our California reality.

Adding to the complexity of this particular garden space were the current perennials that I wanted to keep. These include a lot of spring-flowering bulbs, some vines, and some Mediterranean plants. Also, there is a small deciduous tree (a Western redbud) which provides shade over a third of the garden in summer. This space is small, about 10x10 feet, and south facing. It is bordered on one side by a sidewalk and the street, which reflects heat and makes the edges of this bed even hotter and drier.

With all that in mind, and with a list of possibilities in hand, I took a trip to a local nursery and came home with a bunch of interesting plants. Not everything I wanted was available in January (natch) but I found some good substitutions, and I will also likely add plants as the space fills in. I got three gallon-sized pots of each variety, mostly. Planting in threes works quite well in any space. If you click on the names of each of the plants below, you will be shown a picture of the plant and how it looks full-sized.

For the shady areas, I chose a fern, Dryopteris erythrosora, as well as two varieties of Heuchera (Coral Bells); Heuchera ‘Stainless Steel’ and Heuchera ‘Peach Flambe.’

In the transition area between shade and sun, I chose native Trichostema lanatum (Wooly Blue Curls).

For the sunny areas, I chose three kinds of grasses, all native: Calamagrostis foliosa (I actually got six gallons of this one), Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’, and Aristida purpurea (Purple Three Awn).

I chose five different flowers for the sunny areas, with the caveat that I will likely add a few more kinds as they become available. I really wanted some Echinacea (coneflower), Echinops, and Eryngium, but those will be a summer addition. Meanwhile, I have planted Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Margarita BOP,’ Penstemon ‘Midnight,’ Achillea m. ‘Summer Pastels,’ Achillea m. ‘Summer Wine,’ and Verbena lilacina ‘De La Mina.’

Ever since I cleaned up this area after first frost, it has looked rather bereft. Normally I would have seeded poppies and phacelia here right after clearing, but this time I left it empty for the redo. You can see the passion vine, and the redbud tree, and various narcissus, and some forget-me-nots beginning to put out foliage, but what you can’t see are all the salvias and monardellas and hollyhocks and summer bulbs etc that will begin to fill in the space in spring. Still, there are plenty of bare areas to be planted up.

Here is that same area with the 42 gallons of plants in their final locations. I rearranged these several times, but finally decided I was happy and planted them all in. I added grit to the clay soil here, and today I will go in and add some compost as a mulch. Hopefully, everything will ‘take,’ and soon I will have a much fuller and vibrant garden here, which will also be more sustainable. I shall be sure to take pictures and report back!

Pollinator Turnover

This is how the South Pollinator Garden looked on June 1. The poppies had largely finished flowering, and the Clarkia ‘Farewell to Spring’ was just starting to bloom. Everything was tall and green. But by last week, the Clarkia had begun to brown and topple, and though it still had plenty of flowering left to do, I wanted to do the summer clean-out and turnover, so that I could begin growing the flowers that will bloom all summer and right up to our first frost.

This is a massive project that I do twice a year - once around now, and then again after the first frost. As I have said recently, I’m starting to think about doing something different in this area. I’m still mulling it over, but it will surely be a winter project, so I have some time to think more about it before I make any big changes. Anyway, yesterday I spent the day clearing out the old stuff, everything I didn’t want to keep, all the annuals that were spent as well as some woody perennials that were past their prime. I filled up two green bins (mine and my neighbor’s) and added several feet to the compost pile. This morning, Tom and I went out together and moved the drip lines out of the way, cleared and righted all the stepping stones, and then spread 6 cubic feet of compost over the ground. We replaced the drip lines, made sure they were all working correctly, and then I seeded several different summer/fall annuals: Cosmos (‘Purity’), Zinnia (‘Cut and Come Again’), Cornflowers (mixed colors), Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower), and Rocket Larkspur (blue). I decided to sow these in patches of single species rather than mixing them all up and flinging them everywhere. If it works, we’ll have patches and lines of different flowers for cutting. It’ll be a bare month in this garden, as the plants grow, but the bees have lots of other food to eat right now - the other borders are full of blooms, and the beds are full of squash and pepper and cucumber blossoms.

This is how it looks now.

Quite bare, which is one of the reasons I want to rethink this area.

Meanwhile, here are some photos of the plants that survived and that I love.

Clematis ‘Arabella’ - this is a type 3 clematis which requires cutting back to the ground in winter, so that it blooms on the growth put on in spring.

a Monardella (I don’t know which kind) that reliably comes back year after year

Dahlia - can’t remember which kind, but it has dark foliage. I’m in love with dark-leaved dahlias and have added several more this year in other places.

Eryngium

This was a weekend well spent in the garden, tying up cucumber and bean vines, and adding cross-braces to the squash trellises. Meanwhile we have been getting a few cherry tomatoes a day, and the big ones are starting to break and change color. Tomato season, hooray!

"Gardeners as Superheroes"

There’s a few odds and ends that I want to share with you today. One is that our tomato crop is coming in - yay! - and I’m processing/eating/giving away as fast as we can. I shared some ‘new-to-me’ varieties a couple of weeks ago - and I promised I would show them again as they ripened. So here you go!

One is Indigo Apple, from Wild Boar Farms. It’s a small slicer, about 4-8 oz, maybe in the saladette category. A nice size, bigger than cherry but smaller than some of the big slicers like Black Krim. That makes it hard to use for canning, because it’s a pain to take the skins off smaller tomatoes. But it makes it excellent for fresh eating. And it’s delicious and very sweet! It starts out on the plant as a green tomato with purple shoulders, and then when it ripens it looks like this.

Beautiful dark shoulders and terra-cotta skin color. The inside is a bright pink, which looks great next to the dark edges of the skin.

I really like this variety and will grow it again.

Another is Blue and Gold Berries, also from Wild Boar Farms. This is a cherry tomato, and it starts out a dark purple color nearly all over. Eventually it ripens to gold. This is one of the most prolific cherry tomatoes I have ever grown, with huge clusters of fruit. However it takes a LONG time for them to ripen, and once they are ripe, there is a very short window before they are overripe. This requires swift action at a very certain time, so while they are productive and beautiful (and tasty!), the amount of fussiness required for harvesting is a deterrent to growing them again.

Another tomato I wrote about was Black Beauty, yet another selection from Wild Boar Farms. This one is nearly all black when unripe, but ripens to a rose-red with black shoulders. It’s really, really lovely. Also very prolific (all three of these are prolific!) and this one is larger than the Indigo Apple, more like 8-12 oz.

Let’s move on to non-tomato news, shall we? I had a visitor at the water fountain the other day.

This is one of those juvenile Cooper’s Hawks we’ve had flying around our yard. Isn’t she gorgeous??? You can tell she’s still young because she has some white spots on her back, which will disappear with age. I took this picture from the bathroom window, and I was breathless at the time. These birds are just so magnificent. We were wondering if they were still around, and I guess they are. I wonder how many times they’ve visited the fountain when I didn’t see them.

Next, I’d like to draw your attention to two interesting websites, both geared towards California gardeners and landscapers, but offer valuable information for those in other states, too. One is Calscape, which is a division of the California Native Plant Society. Calscape is a great resource for deciding which native plants belong where in your garden. For instance, you can search out ‘dry shade’ and get a list of plants for that kind of situation. Recently they have added a new tool with aims to provide gardeners lists of plants to meet the specific food needs of certain pollinators. So, for instance, if you want to help out particular butterflies, you find out what to plant to attract and feed them. Once you go to the site, you click on the ‘butterfly’ button at the top of the page. Then you enter your address and it will give you a list of butterflies and moths that are native to your address! When I did this, it came up with 212 species!!! Incredible. Then you can pick a species you are interested in and Calscape will give you the range for the butterfly, the confirmed food sources for them, and the likely food sources for them. These are plants that the butterfly can lay eggs on - food sources for the larvae (caterpillars). I entered Boisduval’s Blue (a butterfly I love) and found that they need lupines to raise babies. Good thing I plant a lot of those!

image credit: Ron Wolf, 2014 for Calscape

This could be a great tool for those of us who love wildlife and want to plant to attract and support them. Pretty much everyone can get behind butterflies, so I imagine this will be helpful for a lot of gardeners in California.

Another site that I am finding helpful is the one belonging to the Pacific Horticulture Society, of which I am a also a member. They have a new series of ‘digital classroom’ videos which are extremely helpful. I particularly enjoyed the one titled “Gardeners as Superheroes” which was really about soil. It’s extremely thorough, 90 minutes of good, entertaining explanation about how the water cycle works and how to improve your soil. It really is about watershed gardening, which I’ve talked about before, but it’s always good to get a reminder of what that means. The other videos are interesting, too, and there will be more in the future. While you’re there, check out their ‘recent stories’ to learn more about the way trees talk to each other, look at their travel opportunities, and upcoming events all over California. There’s some great information here. They also have an extremely beautiful publication that I really enjoy receiving.

image credit: Pacific Horticulture Society

One last thing: I usually start seeds for the winter garden now, the first weekend of August. I’m going to hold off a week or two, for two reasons: 1) It’s still extremely warm, and 2) the summer garden got going very late this year because of our cold and rainy May. If I start seeds now, I’ll want to plant them out the first week of October as I always do, and I’d rather give the summer garden a bit more time. It won’t hurt to wait a couple of weeks. However, it is certainly the time to start thinking about your winter garden. Sow all the brassicas in soil blocks or trays and let them hang out in a warm, sheltered, protected place for a couple months until they are ready to plant in the ground. I’ve planned for broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, and kohlrabi. I will also direct sow all the greens - lettuces, kales, chards, spinach etc. Also leeks, carrots, peas, and beets will be direct sown in October. I may also sow a crop of winter potatoes, and of course garlic and shallots will need to be planted sometime in October. If you haven’t started to think about this, do so now. Planning ahead and keeping good records is key to a productive space.

Why are so many flowers yellow?

I’ve been out in the garden this morning, picking some almost-ripe tomatoes and bringing them in to their usual place on the piano, to ripen. As I was doing this, I realized that an awful lot of flowers are yellow. This intrigued me and I started to wonder why that is.

We live in a time of miracle and wonder, as Tom likes to say. Remember the days when we had to go to the library to find stuff like this out? Or to the World Book Encyclopedia? We had a shelf of those that my parents bought in 1964. As a child, whenever I was bored, I would go look through them. Oh gosh, remember boredom? Does that exist anymore?

Heavens, before I croak out something like “well, sonny, back in my day,” let’s move on, shall we? What I meant to say was that you can go to Google Scholar and type in ‘why are so many flowers yellow?’ or ‘color in flowers’ and get to read all kinds of interesting scientific papers, most of which don’t really answer the question, only pose more questions, but that is why we are never bored anymore, right? All hail the Google rabbit hole.

ANYWAY. It’s actually hard to find the percentage of yellow flowers in plants. I did see that early spring plants are often yellow, which is a way to signal early food for pollinators. Wait, let me back up. Why would flowers have color to begin with?

Fossils suggest that early flowers didn’t have much pigment, but rather were a dull yellow or pale green before they evolved over 100 million years ago to produce colors. It is assumed that they evolved that way to attract pollinators. Apparently many plants have evolved colors that match the specific visual systems of different insects or birds.

You might remember that bees (and many other pollinators) have compound eyes. Our own eyes can only detect three colors - red, blue, and green. Bees cannot see red, but they do see blue and green, and also UV light - that means they can see colors we cannot see. Many flowers have ultraviolet nectar guides, a sort of pattern that we cannot see, that are like runways lighting the way down to the inside of a flower.

Bees have awful long-distance sight, so they use scent rather than sight to find nectar, but those compound eyes provide amazing up-close vision, allowing them to see these specific colors and patterns once the smell has lured them to the flower.

Color we see in flowers is the result of reflected light from various plant pigments. These pigments can be anthocyanins, compounds that make autumn leaves red, or blueberries blue. Flavonol pigments make yellow and chlorophyll pigments make green. There are flavanoid pigments that are colorless to us, but also absorb UV light and make colors available to bees and other pollinators.

Therefore, a bee balm that appears red to us might appear white to an insect. Yellow and white flowers (to us) may appear blue to insects. In the course of my research, I also learned about flowers such as borage or fleabane, which turn different colors over a season (like from pink to blue), are doing so to signal to pollinators which flowers are new and have a lot of nectar, and which are too old to produce (thank you to the University of Vermont for much of this post’s information!).

Native bees have evolved to drink from the blossoms of the plants that evolved with them, which is why it’s a good idea to have a percentage of your plants as natives. But they will readily drink from exotic species, and honeybees will forage on almost anything - it is a generalist species. However, there is evidence that bees prefer (what appears to us to be) blue and white flowers. Birds tend to prefer (what appears to us to be) red flowers. Have you ever noticed (I have!) that many red flowers seem to have yellow centers? Could that be those UV light patterns directing bees to the flower, even though it is red?

Evolution is crazy, yo.

I couldn’t find any solid information about yellow flowers in particular and why it seems that nature makes so many flowers yellow (it could just be a coincidence that I’m seeing so much yellow this time of year). But I’ll leave you with this paragraph of an abstract which I found, entitled ‘Pollinator Preferences for yellow, orange, and red flowers of Mimulus verbanaceus and M. cardinalis’ which are both monkey flowers. It is authored by Paul K. Vickery, Jr of the University of Utah.

“Red, orange, and yellow morphs of Mimulus verbenaceus and M. cardinalis were field tested for pollinator preferences. The species are closely similar except that M. verbenaceus flowers have partially reflexed corolla lobes, whereas M. cardinalis flowers have fully reflexed corolla lobes. On the basis of over 6000 bumblebee and hummingbird visits, highly significant (p < .001) patterns emerged. Yellow, which is the mutant color morph in both species and is determined by a single pair of genes, was strongly preferred by bumblebees and strongly eskewed by hummingbirds in both species. Orange and, to a lesser extent, red were strongly preferred by hummingbirds but eskewed by bumblebees in both species. Thus, strong, but partial, reproductive isolation was observed between the yellow mutants and the orange- to red-flowered populations from which they were derived. Color—yellow versus orange and red—appeared more important than shape—partially reflexed versus fully reflexed corolla lobes—in determining the preferences of the guild of pollinators in this particular test environment for Mimulus verbenaceus and M. cardinalis."

So it would seem that native bees prefer yellow, at least on those particular flowers. So interesting!

Other news:

*Tom and I watched three juvenile Cooper’s Hawks fledge over last weekend. They hung about in our yard and on the nearby power lines, together in a group, for quite a while. It was an amazing thing to see.

*Highwire coffee, a local roaster and the place I go to collect coffee chaff for chicken coop and garden purposes, has just been awarded a seal by the Rodale Institute for their organic ‘Conscientious Objector’ line of beans. We think Highwire makes truly delicious coffee and we are happy they are being recognized for the work they do with organic farmers. Their coffee bags are also compostable which is a huge bonus.

*Just another urging to go see The Biggest Little Farm if it is playing near you. Tom and I saw it again this past weekend, and it’s just such a great movie.

*Shoutout to the Merritt Horticulture students from LH1 who came by for a garden tour and talk last night. What an amazing group of people, with some amazing projects and ideas in the works, and many of them already ‘farming’ just like I do here. It was great to hang out with like-minded folks and plant nerds again. I’ve missed the Hort department and was super glad to be a part of it again for a night!

*Did you know I put ‘tags’ at the bottom of each post? This is so if there is a subject that interests you, such as pollinators, you can click on that tag and see everything I’ve ever written about pollinators. It’s not a fail-safe program; the other day I tried to find Tom’s instructions on how to build our garden trellises, and I’m still looking (you should be able to find it under the ‘projects’ tag, but clearly I didn’t tag it that way). You can also go to the Archives and search a word or a term, like ‘cooking,’ and find all the recipes I’ve talked about.

*The harvest has begun. Cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, and some hot peppers are starting to come ripe. This caused me to see that I was not prepared to start preserving the harvest. Here is your reminder to make sure that you have plenty of mason jars, lids, rings on hand; labels, pickling salt, pectin, etc. Here we go!!!