Rhododendron and
Azalea News

Gardens

Rhododendron lindleyi...a real favorite

Want something really special for your garden...and one to enjoy for many years to come? Jim Gerdemann of the Siuslaw Chapter indicated his choice in the Victoria Chapter newsletter, Macrophyllum, in June 2003.  What it is?

Rhododendron lindleyi is one of my favorite species and believe it is one of the most beautiful.  It is easy to grow and blooms from seed or cuttings when young.  Although usually epiphytic in the wild, it grows well in a well-drained sandy loam soil in a garden.

native to Nepal and may grow to 5 feet

R. lindleyi is in the subsection of Maddenia and is native to Nepal, S.E. Tibet, and Manipur...and may grows as tall as five feet. It has large trumpet-shaped flowers that are white...often tinged with pink.  The flowers have a strong, sweet-spicy fragrance.

If it is such a great plant why isn't it grown more often?  Why is it so seldom seen in gardens?

Believe there are several reasons:

• It is generally assumed to be very tender and not hardy on the central Oregon coast.  I have grown it for 22 years and...only once...in 1990 were the plants severely damaged.  They froze back nearly to the ground...but quickly recovered and bloomed the following year.  Do not believe I have ever lost a plant from freezing.

• It is difficult to obtain as few nurseries carry it.  This is certainly true.

• The growth habit is different...open growing with few branches.  Attempts to make it grow into tight-rounded plant are usual futile.  It wants to produce stems from the ground with few side branches.  This generally earns it pejorative descriptive words such as "straggly" or "leggy".

I think a clump of upright stems with leaves and flowers at the top adds variety and interest in a garden.  A garden with all of the plants having the same growth habit tends to look monotonous...especially when not in bloom.

tips for selecting location...

• Select a protected location.
• Avoid frost pockets.
• A slope where there is good cold air drainage with well-drained soil is ideal.
• Some overhead protection to reduce heat radiation to the sky will help prevent damage on cold nights.
• Avoid full shade, as it tends to make plants less hardly.
• Mulch placed around the plants will help to protect the roots and lower portions of the stems from extreme cold.

So try something new this spring. You can report your satisfaction later this year…and years to come. Enjoy a new challenge from Jim.

Calla or Ethiopian Lily...a true companion plant.

"Z" is for Zantedeschia and belonging to the family: Araceae.  How's that for starting out to tell you about one of a garden's best companions!

Colleen Forster from the Fraser South Chapter wrote about this familiar plant and shares important background for you to appreciate it more.

The Calla or Ethiopian Lily has long been grown as a florist flower, popular at weddings and funerals alike, and easily recognized as the elegant, white trumpet-like spathes.  Originating in several parts of Africa, the hardiest species, Z. aethiopica, can be grown in the garden in rich humus soil in full sun, with ample summer water.

characteristics...

Have seen wonderfully established clumps about 3 feet across in Vancouver gardens, on west walls under the overhang to ensure some shelter from too much rain in winter.  Growing from tuberous rhizomes, the glossy, arrow-shaped leaves stand upright to 3 feet, and a long succession of large, white blooms from late spring through summer emerge among them.

The "bloom" is actually a modified leaf or bract up to 10 inches long, and the true flower is merely the yellow spadice arising from its center.  This species can also be grown in pots as a marginal aquatic in water up to 12 inches deep.  Selections have been made for more compact forms, as in Little Gem and Apple Court Babe, only 18 and 24 inches tall; an extra hardy, stout-growing type...Crowborough; and the unusual Green Goddess...with bright green and white handkerchief-like flowers.

potted varieties...

There are now more and more colored forms available, but these should be grown as potted plants or lifted in fall, as they are not all hardy.

The Golden Calla, Z. elliothiana, sports 4-in. blooms in a color range from cream to yellow through orange to deep rust and crimson.  Leaves are heart-shaped...often spotted white...and stand 2 to 3 ft. tall.

The Pink Calla, Z. rehmannii, has more linear leaves and has 2 to 4-in. blooms from blush thru pink to deepest royal purple.  Wow!  These make excellent accent plants for patios or conservatories...or may be planted in borders and lifted for winter.

The rhizomes of all can be divided in fall for plants to share...or plant again about 4-in. deep.  Be careful to provide good air circulation to avoid fungal diseases...especially in cooler weather...and use caution when handling. The sap can cause skin irritation and all parts are poisonous to eat.  The blooms make excellent long-lasting cut flowers and have no fragrance to compete on the dinner table.

an aquatic specimen...

A closely-related plant...the Bog or Water Arum (calla palustris)...is native to Europe, Asia, and parts of North America, and is useful as a small, marginal aquatic specimen.  This is smaller in all ways than its African cousins, standing only 10-in. tall and having more open flattened white spathes 2-in. long.  Also being hardy to Zone 4, it has a much wider range of adaptability.  In Northern Europe, the roots were ground up for flour and used in breadmaking as a wheat substitute.

And, so, we are able once again to bring a bit more of the tropics to our gardens with a plant that serves several good purposes...and will reward our efforts for many years to come.

Happy Planting!

Beauty all around

When spring starts creeping around the corner in March, we throw open the windows to air out winter's lingering perfumes, and thoughts of repair this...and repair that...and, oh, something new is needed here and there come to mind.  And we want to execute! The same goes for our gardens.  We have new visions...some small and some considerable larger!

Who else but Bobby Ogdon, of the Fraser South Chapter, could explain his wants...over his needs...in a more charming way.  Bobby has acquired a most unusual love for rhododendrons and is always so anxious to share this love with others.  Here is one of his shared experiences in an article he penned for the chapter, titled It Wasn't Much to Look At,  Stay with his story to the end.

"It wasn't much to look at, but it worked!

I needed (isn't it amazing how our wants become our needs!)...a greenhouse.  If I was to make any progress in my understanding of the genus Rhododendron, I needed a place to learn.  I scrounged a stockpile of old patio doors and windows along with a jumbled assortment of discarded dimension lumber.  Some of these materials were left lying around my acreage.  Others were from neighbors...only too happy to forego a trip to the dump.

comparison with neighbor not always wise...

Windowsill propagation of rhodos is great in theory...but in practice it has many downsides.  Everyone knows rhodo propagation is best done...in a greenhouse.  Besides, I needed a multitude of plants to fill my garden and there weren't enough windowsills in the entire neighborhood.  My immediate neighbor, Bill Bisset, the chief gardener for the Corporation of Burnaby, had finished constructing an awesome greenhouse at considerable expense.  His excitement was contagious...but his bank account wasn't.

Bill's glass palace was large, expensive...had heating and cooling...plus a variety of adult toys.  Measuring twenty by forty feet, it had two aisles separating custom-made benches.  Built onto the end of his garage he was able to use natural gas for the forced air heater and electrical power for lighting and cooling.

I cursed its size on the sweltering August day I helped pour the concrete for the foundation and pathways.  I knew I could not compete with Bill's expensive building tastes.  Instead, I hoped to approach his rate of success in propagating.  But, where he preferred seed propagation, I chose to start with cuttings.  Since I had a propagation box given to me by Dr. Finley, I planned to build a temporary greenhouse around it.  Little did I know that temporary...would mean twelve years.

structure's dimensions...

I waded into the amassed pile of materials.  Central to the structure were the two six-ft.-wide patio doors.  A standard wooden entry door added to the patio doors gave me a 15-ft. south-facing wall.  The 8-ft. east wall had an aluminum framed 6x4-ft., window.  The north wall was a mix of various lengths of cement festooned shiplap previous used as forms for the foundation of Bill’s greenhouse.  The west wall abutted an old workshop beside a carport from which to scab power at a later date.

adaptability...adaptability is the key word...

The nearly flat roof presented a problem: specifically...how to allow the entry of light while maintaining strength.  I could not afford to emulate Bill's design. It was too expensive...and required more than a modicum of engineering.  Instead, I settled on translucent, corrugated fiberglass panels available at any building supply store.  Special aluminum nails with rubber washers attached the panels and were supposed to prevent the ingress of water.  A single electrical outlet from the workshop allowed the cutting box to function.  Now...I was in business.

Frank Lloyd Wright's approved design?

It was Frank Lloyd Wright, the renowned architect, who espoused "form follows function".  From the above description, you need not ask about the form.  Just imagine.  The final product was about as eccentric as a camel...the only animal that appears to have been designed by a committee.  But, however unattractive, the camel is functional, with its webbed hooves, reluctant thirst and double eyelids for protection from the hamsins, the infamous desert sand storms.  These characteristics combine to make the camel a perfect choice as ship of the desert.

evaluation...not very good!

No self-respecting camel would relish being likened to my first greenhouse!  Even a camel could never be that ugly.  Yet, like the camel, it was perfectly suited to its purpose: housing a cutting bed and later a seeding box.

The roof began to leak when the rubber washers disintegrated from the UV rays.  The nearly flat roof also needed to be shoveled during any slight snowfall.  The multi-colored and many textured siding and shiplap would eventually be painted to ease neighborhood grumblings about the "local eyesore".  My greenhouse was high maintenance. It was too hot with no means of cooling.  I was constantly moving materials in and out according to the weather.  At best...I was able to extend the growing season a couple of months.

now, hear the conclusion of the whole matter...

But...soon I was offering rooted rhodo cuttings to my friends and neighbors.  They often questioned where I got them...as if anything of value could come from that place.  Still, I had the last laugh.  My greenhouse worked!

Explain the word "hormone"

Bruce Palmer, of the Eureka Chapter, has a very sensitive feeling for the right use of words.  His contribution to the Eureka newsletter is always most interesting, introducing and explaining words to his fellow chapter members.  This is a good one: hormone!

Even though the word derives from the Greek "hormaein", to excite, very few hormones are concerned with sex.  Hormones cause enzymes to build or break down proteins.  Everything in a cell is a protein...or is made by enzymes, which are specific proteins, so any substance that can control an enzyme's action has great significance in a cell.

In animals, hormones are typically secreted by specific cells in discreet organs and exert their influence somewhere else in the body.  The growth hormone in humans, for example, is secreted by the cells in the pituitary gland in the brain...but influences in different ways all over the body. "Hormone" was put in quotation marks in the last column on phototropism because the generally accepted definition doesn't fit plants.  Plant "hormones" are not typically secreted in specific cells or organs...and usually affect the cells in which they are secreted as well as surrounding cells.

effect of hormones in gardens...

The most obvious, current effect of plant "hormones" in our gardens is the bolting and flowering in foxgloves, delphiniums, columbines, lupines, teasels and lots of other garden plants and weeds.  These plants sit around for months or years...then suddenly put up one or more long stalks and flower.  This process of elongating to produce a flowering stem is called bolting.

We know the direct cause of the bolting...but a lot of the details remain a mystery despite extensive research.  Changes in day length and temperature cause increases in the amount of Gibbellins in the plant cells.  Gibberellins (from the Latin for the fungal lumps, Gibbe, in rice where the substance was first isolated) are growth "hormones" in plants that cause increases in cell division and elongation.  Exactly how this works isn't very clear, in part because every time we turn around someone has isolated a new type of gibberellin.  At last count there were more than 65 different gibberellins known in plants and fungi.  Botanists and horticulturists keep hoping to get a clear handle on this problem so flowering and fruiting can be controlled more exactly.  When that happens, maybe we won't have to worry every yea that our flower show will be too early or too late!

Early bloomers

From the North Island Chapter comes a few words of wisdom for springtime and your friends...the rhodies.

Have you notice that some rhodies don't seem to care about the weather...rain, snow, wind.  Many people are praising their old R. 'Rosa Mundi' (or is it R. 'Christmas Cheer'?). Both are very old R. caucasicum hybrids, both bloom very early and are very hardy and dependable.

Another early bloomer...with bright yellow flowers...is R. lutescens.  P.J.M. is loaded with bright pinky-mauve flowers, and many of the smaller-leaved, purple-flowered plants are showing color.

Warren Berg's delightful little treasures: Patty Bee with small-rounded foliage...frilly, bell-shaped pink flowers...will spread sideways to twice its height.  Hardy to -10° F.  And, Wee Bee, another bright, dainty dwarf, hardy to +5° F has leaves which are thickly scaled with funnel-shaped flowers with vivid red lobes and strong red rays through the center, shading to strong pink the throat.

A splendid thought for Spring!

Emily Dickinson, a favorite American poet...wrote...and it has brought joy for millions after her death.  She asked the question...

"Creator!
Shall I bloom?"

This may be the question we can ask ourselves about ARS membership.  Be sure and read the section on Ideas for Chapter.