Aquilegia
Joan Katherine Shaw
A naturally occuring
hybrid of Aquilegia at DargonGoose
Farm, 2004
ne of the joys of spring is discovering a
newly emerging plant that turns out to be a complete surprise. Perhaps
five years ago, we began seeing a plant here and there of white
aquilegia in the perennial beds close to the house, some of them dwarf
(a
sample of a full-size white from this year pictured above).
I had never planted white aquilegia, but several years before
this, perhaps ten years ago, I had
planted in this bed three Aquilegia
caerulea (Rocky Mountain Columbine) and, later, a dwarf pink
variety. The Rocky Mountain Columbine spread
nicely, the pink less so. I assumed the white specimens arose from some
genetic mix of the two. Then, a year or two later, we discovered
another stranger among the aqueligia, one with a deep purple, almost
black, very double blossom. It appeared to have piggy-backed in a pot
of Mahonia
aquifolium (Oregon Grape) that
we'd planted in the
south copse under an old Siberian elm tree.
Though interesting, these plants appeared to me to be
incredibly ugly. Rather than the usual deeply mounded foliage with
divided
leaves, creating
a pillow-like foundation for the flower stalks above, this new variety
had rather tall, bare stalks, smallish blossoms with stingy sepals. The
flower petals within the sepals were almost painfully jammed together.
Moreover, the blossoms resolutely faced toward the ground (samples
pictured below left). The only way one could appreciate these
relatively tiny flowers
was to bring some of the cut ones into the house and gaze at them at
the breakfast table with the blossoms a few inches away from one's
eyes. What was worse, the variety turned out to be agressive to
an amazing extent. They blanketed the south copse inside of three
years, then began their northward migration a year or two later.
We now have them just about everywhere and they keep us all busy
pulling them out by the roots.
Hybrids
in Plenty
his dark purple variety has now
hybrized so well with the Rocky Mountain
Columbine that I was hard put this morning to find a truly double one
to photograph. The gangly growth and small flowers remain in many of
these naturally occurring hybrids, but often they've
evolved into dark, sometimes two-toned columbines blessed with the
generous
mounds of attractive ferny foliage beneath. Many of them have
moderately
long spurs.
Aside from the purples, we now enjoy a kalediscope of spurred plants
that range from two-toned pink
varieties through red and yellow to various blues and whites. Some of
the whites are yellow-tinged, as the one shown above; others are tinged
with blue or rose. In addition, I've added new named varieties,
including the
spectacular 'Swallow tail' from High Country Gardens,
(pictured below right), a half-dozen pink dwarfs, and the
harlequin-colored 'Remembrance' from Klehm's Song Sparrow Farm.
High Country Gardens describes 'Swallowtail,' as a 2000 Green Thumb
Award Winner, first offered (I assume in seed form) in 1996. Sally and
Tim Walker of Tucson, Arizona, gathered the original seed from a colony
they'd found in a remote mountain range in Pima County, Arizona. The
plants offered by High Country come from a five-year effort in building
up stock from a few packets of the Walkers' se
ed. I can
attest to the spectacular show
of this variety. We planted six of them last year and enjoyed a few
flowers on each, but this year we had a bumper crop. Assuming some of
last year's flowers seeded and produced first-year plants, we should
see even more next year.
The unusual characteristic of this variety is the long spurs -- look at
them! These spurs on columbine species are where the nectar is found
and I marveled at how long the tongues of a moth -- or a bee or a
butterfly? -- can be to reach down inside them. Melanie (my
biologist daughter) tells me that a moth's tongue is rolled up in a
spot under its ... ah ... chin? That is, rolled up where its chin would
be if it had a chin, and that these tongues really can reach to
incredible lengths.
I planted three of the bicolored
'Remembrance' (shown below left) last spring in a spot that turned out
to be in a
"sprinkler shadow.' I feel fortunate that two of them survived
and offered us a few flowers this spring (pictured below left). 
Note the
backward projecting spurs showing
on the flower in the upper right hand corner of the photograph. These
plants should look pretty good once the group thickens up a bit -- one
hopes, next year. A soaker hose will keep them happy in between
watering by the field sprinklers, and so I hope the lost plant can be
made up by self seeding. Although, there's no guarantee they'll all
come up true to the original, given the number of other varieties there
are scattered around them.
Aside from the three groups I've added to the beds, there are other
naturally
occuring hybrids -- a pink on pink variety shown below right with some
double blues behind them. These rose hybrids are close to the color of
the dwarf pinks I'd planted some years before, but did they descend
from the dwarfs in some way? Who knows! These
light pinks are scattered throughout the perennial beds in various
manifestations -- longish spurs, short, barely discernible spurs,
longish sepals, short, wide sepals, and so on. The color, though, is
more or less consistent. The double blues behind them could
very likely be the result of crosses between Rocky Mountain Columbine
and the dark purple doubles we found among the mahonia. 
I'm
at a loss as to where the two-toned red and pink aquilegia came
from ( shown below left). They look like Rocky Mountain Columbine
except with longer, incurved sepals and
petals
that are also longer and separated. The spurs are a tad shorter, too.
Colorful though. I successfully transplanted one group of this
variety from one bed to another last year in an effort to spread the
wealth and keep the variety as pure as it can be in a species that
seems to hybridize so freely as aquilegia.
And now
for an explanation of what has
happened to me for the past seven months.
Down Time
he long hiatus in my
DragonGoose Farm's garden talk was caused by a seven-months period
of down time for two total knee replacements. I've been told by
people who have gone through this themselves that it will most likely
take a good year before my knees feel completely normal, so I wasn't
too discouraged about my maddeningly slow inroads on spring cleanup.
But – all things are possible, regardless of infirmities: I had, and
still have, good help.
I was also
relieved to see I could manage some work myself this early spring, less
than three months after surgery. With much careful crouching and
rolling around on a fairly high-wheeled stool (shown below right), I
managed to prune down the mass of groundcover roses (Rosa 'Meidiland
Alba') in front of the parlor, and even to pull the thick mats of
leaves from around them with a long-handled shrub rake. This was in
early March. It took four days, a few hours each day, but I did get it
done – something I never believed I'd be capable of a couple of months
before.
For those of you incapacitated with arthritic knees, I encourage you to
look into replacing one or both with full or partial transplants. I
understand it's better to go into this replacement earlier than later
and, even though I haven't fully recovered yet, I'm infinitely better
at this point than I was even five years ago.
Incidentally, I found this
high-wheeled stool in the Gardeners
Supply
online catalog ($59.95). It's heavy for me to pick up and rather hard
to steer when
moving it from bed to bed (I attached a couple of dog's choke collar
chains to the back to pull it), but it's high and easy on weakened
knees -- to both sit down on and get up from. These were
important considerations in my own case before and right after surgery.
And though I now have less
trouble getting up and down, I wouldn't do without it.
Drought Report
adly, the drought appears to be
hanging on here in Cache Valley, Utah, in spite of the promising
snowfall in February. March seemed to have been short in the
precipitation department, too, and March is usually Cache Valley's
wettest month of the year. A few squally days are all we had in April,
but it did give us enough rain here on the farm to have kept the ground
moist below the surface, at least in the area with shade part of the
day. This will be Utah's seventh year of drought. One hopes it might be
followed by the Biblical seven years of plenty, though the
climatologists tell us the state would need some miraculous rain this
season to bring the reservoirs and lakes up to normal.
Still hoping for rain,
Joan
Katherine Shaw
May
2004
Photos by Joan Katherine Shaw
Fall With
No Rainfall
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