{"id":168,"date":"2009-09-21T04:41:10","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T12:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=168"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"traveling-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/traveling-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"Traveling Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

TRAVELING PLANTS
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 1960, naturalist Gerald Durrell wrote a hilarious book called A Zoo in My Luggage. <\/em>Over thirty years later, Italian author Umberto Eco wrote a very funny essay entitled “How to Travel With a Salmon.”\u009d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>Aside from a few hitchhiking spiders, I have never come home with any kind of zoo in my luggage or traveled with a salmon , but I almost always return from domestic trips with a small botanical garden packed among the souvenirs and dirty laundry.\u00a0 It’s hard to separate the urge to travel from the urge to collect.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This year I arrived home from Central New York State with an assortment of specimens for my home garden.\u00a0 The following is the rundown:
\nThe Aster: <\/strong>Big, brawny New England asters grow all over the ditches and hedgerows at this time of year, making a nice contrast with the ubiquitous goldenrod.\u00a0 Breeders have made great use of these purple-flowered natives, producing hybrid asters in a wide variety of shapes and colors.\u00a0 Some of the purple ones on our property in Central New York are such a deep rich color that I have always longed to bring home a plant or two.\u00a0 This year I finally took the plunge.\u00a0 The soil in my New Jersey garden is a little richer than the asters are accustomed to, though the clay is just as heavy.\u00a0 I hope they will find a congenial home among their domesticated cousins.
\nThe Unknown Mint: <\/strong>My daughter is always finding interesting specimens for bouquets and this year she found a gangly, purple-flowered member of the mint clan.\u00a0 It is not peppermint, spearmint, apple mint or lemon mint, but it has a very recognizable minty aroma and configuration.\u00a0 We haven’t made a positive ID yet, but we brought home a rooted division from a big roadside clump.\u00a0 Since mints tend to grow in an absolutely undisciplined fashion, I will pot it up in a large container and see if I still love it next spring.\u00a0
\nRosa Moyesii:\u00a0 <\/strong>This is a handsome rose species that originated in China.\u00a0 It only blooms once a year, producing hundreds of single, bright red flowers on a mature plant that can be eight feet tall and wide.\u00a0 The hips are red-orange and flask-shaped, often making an even more vivid impression than the blooms.\u00a0 Two weeks ago when I was walking along a central New York highway, some of those hips caught my eye.\u00a0 They were attached to a shrub that was growing in a hedgerow on the edge of the road’s shoulder.\u00a0 I took a foot-long cutting, which I eventually divided in half, stripping off the lower leaves of each piece.\u00a0 Now they are rooting in a glass filled with water and willow twigs.\u00a0 The willow contains a natural rooting hormone, so I have high hopes that the cuttings will “take”\u009d.\u00a0 My husband felt it necessary to ask what I will do with two eight foot rose bushes.\u00a0 He should know better.\u00a0 I will do what I always do with large specimens–give one away and keep the other under control somewhere in our home garden.\u00a0\u00a0
\nRte 129 Iris: <\/strong>For years I have walked by an abandoned farmhouse near our summer cottage.\u00a0 The house has been falling in on itself for the last decade or so, and last year a storm finished the job.\u00a0 Unlike most of the neighboring properties, the lot has no “posted”\u009d signs carrying the name of the owner.\u00a0 It is completely overgrown with self sown trees, underbrush and all kinds of wild vegetation.\u00a0 The old front yard is covered with lily-of-the valley plants that probably escaped from the original garden.\u00a0 In the midst of those lily-of-the-valley is a row of iris.\u00a0 I have never been there at the right time to see them blooming, but the leaves look very healthy.\u00a0 The farmhouse has been unoccupied and the property untended for at least forty years, so the iris could have been planted anytime from about 1900 to 1960.\u00a0 The road has been widened since the garden was made and the iris bed is no longer on the front edge of the property, but in the county’s right-of-way by the shoulder of the road.\u00a0 I didn’t have to trespass to take my division.\u00a0 Like all collectors, I hope that I have just saved a rare old species.\u00a0 We will see when next spring rolls around.
\nGreat Big Purple-Flowered Plant: <\/strong>From time to time plants that have been dislodged–usually by flooding–from other places float up onto our beach and take root.\u00a0 I suspect that is how we acquired a large clump of a big-leafed plant with purple, bell-shaped flowers.\u00a0 From the looks of the flowers, I suspect the plant is some kind of campanula, though I have yet to identify it.\u00a0 It grows about four feet-tall, with large clumps of basal leaves and roots that go down to China, making it impossible for me to dig and divide our robust specimen.\u00a0 I took a cutting instead, which is rooting in a glass jar right next to the glass jar full of Rosa moyesii.\u00a0 If it takes, I will overwinter it in a big pot and return it to central New York next summer, where it will take up residence in my summer garden.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don’t have the time or money to go plant hunting in wild places halfway around the world, but I still feel a bit of the plant hunter’s thrill when I see an interesting specimen.\u00a0 Tolerant though he is, my husband sometimes complains about having to pack up my collections of cuttings and divisions. \u00a0I tell him that it’s a lot easier than traveling with a salmon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TRAVELING PLANTS \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 1960, naturalist Gerald Durrell wrote a hilarious book called A Zoo in My Luggage. Over thirty years later, Italian author Umberto Eco wrote a very funny essay entitled “How to Travel With a Salmon.”\u009d\u00a0 \u00a0Aside from a few hitchhiking spiders, I have never come home with any kind of zoo … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}