Tidbits - 2

I'm Ilona Ontscherenki and am lucky to co-chair this year's Friends Annual Plant Sale together with Sue Acheson. We are done with the ordering (check out the on-line plantlist for the full list, but here are some more of my particular favorites:

Whatzit with these weird plant names?

Why is it that some of the coolest plants don’t have decent -- or any -- common names? I’m thinking about Mahonia bealei, kerria japonica, leucothoe axilaris (and I can’t type the umlaut over the last ‘e’ in leucothoe even), or kirengeshoma koreana (or palmata)? Would more people plant them if they had cute, easy-to-remember names? I don’t know, but if you’re not afraid of trying something that’s a bit of a challenge to pronounce, you’ll have some really cool plants to show off in your garden this year. (I suggest practicing on my last name before going to shop for these, to kind of loosen up.)

I bought all of the above plants at our past plant sales because I’ve seen them show off in the Arboretum and just had to try them. They are all fantastic in part shade, too, and most are deer resistant. Need I say more? Well, I will, just so you get a better idea of how terrific they are to grow:

Mahonia bealei -- If you have been to the Haggerty Center at the Arboretum anytime since last winter, I’m sure you’ve stopped and admired this gorgeous plant up against the wall of the center, along the walk to the entrance from the parking lot. It’s about six feet tall now and had the most beautiful lemon yellow sweatpea sized flowers for several months. Those are now changing to dark purplish blue berries. The evergreen leaves look like beefy holly leaves, but have sharper points, which makes this a great plant to get when it’s smaller because those leaves are a pricky challenge in larger plants. The one I planted last year was maybe 2 feet tall, but it settled in beautifully, put on some nice new growth and had arguably even more amazing bloom this winter. (On a square inch basis, it’s definitely the winner -- see my photo.)

Kerria japonica -- This shrub has lovely arching branches that bloom a cheery golden yellow for several weeks early in the spring (it’s just finishing up at tax time). All summer, it’s an attractive, pest and care free wonder in the shade garden, and then in the fall, it repeats it’s yellow show, this time in its leaves, holding them for a long time into the late fall and giving quite a striking pop against all the leaf litter.

Leucothoe axillaris -- Done pursing your lips on this one? I didn’t come close to knowing how to pronounce this name for decades, plus I only seemed to notice it at the end of winter looking icky in places where it had been planted in too much sun and suffered winter sunburn (which shouldn’t happen to anyone anymore, but if it has to, should be limited to a nice beach in the tropics). Well, if you plant this in the shade and tolerate some slight winter burn in late winter, if it happens at all, you will be rewarded with a mounding, multi-toned, evergreen shrub. Deer resistant like the other beauties in this article and native to the northeast. Small white flowers light the up the 3-5 foot shrub in the early summer and a new cultivar, Scarletta, turns maroon in the fall.

Kirengeshoma koreana or palmata -- This subshrub does have a common name - waxbells - that I bet you haven’t heard much. So don’t use it! It’s much more cool when someone points and asks ‘what’s that?’, to stroll over to this lovely, mounding shrub and casually say ‘oh, that’s my kirengeshoma palmata’. In August, when almost nothing else is doing anything in your garden and this darling 3 footer is full in flower with creamy lemon blooms in that shady nook you’ve found for it, you’ll be the envy of all your friends. I was one of those without one before the plant sale. Now I have both the koreana and the palmata (very similar in habit and both carefree, deer resistant and delightful). And yes, the name now does fall trippingly off the tongue ....

== Ilona