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jeffreyeric

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So far jeffreyeric has created 151 blog entries.
23 01, 2025

Chilean Myrtle

2025-01-23T10:44:25-08:00Categories: Blog|Garden Plants>trees|Climate|Nora Harlow|Tags: |

Luma apiculata, sometimes known as Chilean myrtle, is a small to mid-sized, usually multitrunk or low-branching, evergreen tree. Leaves are small, leathery, dark green, and broadly oval with a short, acutely pointed tip. Bark is smooth and grayish tan, turning cinnamon brown with age and peeling to reveal patches of white beneath. Masses of fragrant, creamy white, mid-summer flowers with showy, brushlike, pinkish white stamens are followed by edible, purplish black berries in fall. Limbed up and out of flower, trees can resemble a manzanita or a madrone, to which they are not related. Luma apiculata is

23 01, 2025

Pineapple Guava

2025-01-23T10:44:25-08:00Categories: Blog|Garden Plants>shrubs|Nora Harlow|plant names|Tags: |

Pineapple guava may hold the record for the longest lasting resistance to a plant name change, a resistance recently rewarded with a reinstatement of the original name of Feijoa sellowiana. This evergreen, subtropical South American shrub or small tree was given that name in 1859, renamed Acca sellowiana in 1941, and returned to its original name in 2019. Many gardeners and horticulturists --along with much of the nursery industry-- never made the switch. Pineapple guava (Feijoa sellowiana) pruned as a small multitrunk tree Feijoa sellowiana has thick, leathery, elliptical leaves, glossy dark green on the upper surface

23 01, 2025

Leucospermums

2025-01-23T10:44:25-08:00Categories: Blog|Garden Plants>shrubs|Nora Harlow|Tags: |

Outside of South Africa, where almost all are endemic, leucospermums are best known for their otherworldly cut flowers. Gardeners in other mild-winter, summer-dry climates likely purchase the flowers without realizing that they might be able to grow them. Leucospermum 'Scarlet Ribbon' (L. glabrum x L. tottum) Most leucospermums are upright, evergreen shrubs or small trees 3-15 feet tall, usually with a single main stem. Some sprawl, much wider than tall, either branching from a single stem or sending up multiple stems from an underground rootstalk. Leaves are linear to oval or wedge-shaped, thick and somewhat leathery, usually

23 01, 2025

Babianas

2025-01-23T10:44:25-08:00Categories: Blog|Garden Plants>perennials|Nora Harlow|bulbs|Tags: |

Babianas are deciduous, mostly winter-growing, spring-blooming, bulblike perennials native to southern Africa. Best massed in the garden, these are diminutive plants with an outsized floral effect. Growing naturally on well-drained silts and clays, granite-derived gravels, and rocky or sandy slopes and flats, they need sun, good drainage, fairly mild and moist winters, and a dry summer dormancy. Babiana framesii is native to the mountains of the winter-rainfall northwestern Cape, South Africa. Appearing in mid- to late fall or winter, usually with the first rains, babiana leaves are lance- to sword-shaped, linearly ribbed or corrugated, often softly or

23 01, 2025

Cedros Island Verbena

2025-01-23T10:43:12-08:00Categories: Blog|Garden Plants>perennials|Nora Harlow|subshrubs|Tags: |

Cedros Island verbena puts on quite a show. Tiny, five-petaled, star-shaped flowers with a faintly sweet-spicy fragrance are tightly packed into round-topped, inch-wide clusters. Clusters are continuously refreshed as older flowers discreetly disappear and new buds open at the tips of short spikes. The small, deeply divided, bright green leaves on wispy-looking but sturdy stems lend a delicate, almost lacy effect. Glandularia lilacina 'De La Mina' flowering with muhlenbergia and ceanothus Cedros Island verbena (Glandularia lilacina) was formerly known as Verbena lilacina and is still popularly known by and marketed under that name. The plant is native

23 01, 2025

Lotus hirsutus

2025-01-23T10:43:12-08:00Categories: Blog|Garden Plants>perennials|Nora Harlow|subshrubs|Tags: |

Most longtime gardeners know this low, velvety, gray-leaved subshrub as Dorycnium hirsutum, by which name it is still often referenced today. Described by Linnaeus as Lotus hirsutus, it was recently returned to that genus, but the name change has been slow to receive wide acceptance. Lotus hirsutus (Dorycnium hirsutum) with Aloe striata in Ruth Bancroft Garden Assuming that the plants I’ve seen and grown over the years are all the same species, Lotus hirsutus seems to be quite variable. The plants in my garden today are mostly upright and mounding, two feet tall and three to four

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