{"id":2973,"date":"2020-02-10T06:59:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T14:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2973"},"modified":"2020-02-10T07:07:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T15:07:18","slug":"cafe-au-lait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/cafe-au-lait\/","title":{"rendered":"Cafe au Lait"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dahlia<\/a>Last week I was considering dahlia selections, because I want to plant lots of them in my front border come spring.\u00a0 Dazzled by the sizes, colors and configurations of the available dahlias, I was especially struck by one, \u2018Caf\u00e9 au Lait\u2019.\u00a0 The catalog quoted a description from Brides.com that characterized its color as \u201ccreamy pink, blush, peach, ivory, champagne and dusty rose.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cChampagne\u201d is simply a fancy word for a beige shade that garden merchandisers often call by another French moniker, \u201ccaf\u00e9 au lait\u201d.\u00a0 In this case, the individual who named the dahlia when it was introduced back in 1967 opted for evoking coffee over alcohol.<\/p>\n

What color is \u201ccaf\u00e9 au lait\u201d or milky coffee?\u00a0 It depends how much milk you like in your brew.\u00a0 The classic recipe for the French coffee drink suggests equal parts of espresso and milk, but generally most things described as \u201ccaf\u00e9 au lait\u201d are beige or pale tan\u2014more milk than coffee.<\/p>\n

When the term is used to describe flower color, vendors, journalists and gardeners take more than a little bit of latitude.\u00a0 The petals of a caf\u00e9 au lait-colored flower may combine peach, pale yellow, mauve, or rose tones, in addition to beige.\u00a0 In some, the beige may be only a whisper or an undertone.\u00a0 Sometimes caf\u00e9 au lait tints only emerge as petals age.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, caf\u00e9 au lait is fashionable, and I always like to stay on top of horticultural fashion.\u00a0 It appears that caf\u00e9 au lait-colored flowers are the frequent blooms of choice for cutting-edge bridal bouquets and indoor arrangements.\u00a0 They combine well with white or cream colored flowers and greens.\u00a0 Some sources suggest that they are also useful for arrangements going to people who are not traditional recipients of floral offerings.<\/p>\n

No matter what is going on with florists\u2019 flowers, my interest was piqued on the topic of caf\u00e9 au lait in the garden.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Caf\u00e9 au Lait\u2019 dahlia that started my quest is a beautiful thing, with blooms that may be six to ten inches wide.\u00a0 I think ten inch flowers only occur under ideal conditions, but six is entirely possible.\u00a0 The colors vary widely according to the quality of the photographic reproduction and the light, but the flowers clearly have peachy-yellow-beige in their coloration at some points between opening and dropping from the plant.\u00a0 This chameleon-like ability to change hues seems to happen to most caf\u00e9 au lait-colored blooms.\u00a0 One mature plant may, in fact, boast many different colors among the flowers in various stages of aging.<\/p>\n

In the world of roses, one variety was actually christened \u2018Caf\u00e9 au Lait\u2019 back in 1993.\u00a0 It is a hybrid tea and the HelpMeFind online listing describes the color as \u201ccream coffee, coffee buff\u201d.\u00a0 Though the hybrid tea rose has more actual coffee color than most other flowers of similar description, the petals have distinct peach tints, making for a very pretty overall effect.\u00a0\u00a0 The \u2018Caf\u00e9 au Lait\u2019 rose is an interesting example of what can happen when a breeder stirs the genetic soup.\u00a0 Its parents were a pair of hybrid teas: \u2018Just Joey\u2019, an apricot rose bred in New Zealand, and the French \u2018Vol de Nuit\u2019, with purple petals.<\/p>\n

I am very partial to the extremely variable \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 rose, bred in America by Dr. Griffith Buck of Ames, Iowa.\u00a0 One catalog vendor described its color as \u201ca tan-mauve blend [that] transforms colors by the day from red in the unopened stage to yellowish when fully open.\u201d\u00a0 That sounds awful, but the rose itself is quite beautiful and more than a little unusual.\u00a0 I grow it in my garden and it has the vigor for which Buck roses are famous, which adds to its charms.<\/p>\n

Dahlias and roses seem to predominate in the caf\u00e9 au lait flower world, but they are not alone.\u00a0 Strawflowers or xerochrysum bracteatum, are generally available as seed mixes for home gardens, and some of the plants bear pale caf\u00e9 au lait-colored flowers.\u00a0 Yellow strawflowers may age to that shade and since they are often used for dried arrangements, the color remains.<\/p>\n

Oak leaf hydrangea\u2014Hydrangea quercifolia\u2014bears flowers that start out white, age to pink, and eventually take on a caf\u00e9 au lait color, but most people prefer the flowerheads when they are white or pink.<\/p>\n

The caf\u00e9 au lait flowers remind me a little bit of old, sepia-tinted photographs, so I suppose that they are at once nostalgic and modern.\u00a0 If this describes your garden, then a dash of milky coffee might fit in nicely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I was considering dahlia selections, because I want to plant lots of them in my front border come spring.\u00a0 Dazzled by the sizes, colors and configurations of the available dahlias, I was especially struck by one, \u2018Caf\u00e9 au Lait\u2019.\u00a0 The catalog quoted a description from Brides.com that characterized its color as \u201ccreamy pink, … 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":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[2253,2254,2256,2251,2255,2252],"class_list":["post-2973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-cafe-au-lait-dahlia","tag-cafe-au-lait-rose","tag-distant-drums-rose","tag-cafe-au-lait-flowers","tag-fashion-colors","tag-garden-fashions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973","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=2973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2979,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions\/2979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}