D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July
2008
A Chartreuse and Spiny Little Garden of Horrors
The prickly pleasures of gardening with cacti and succulents.
My attraction to succulent plants is as long-standing as my fascination with things that are oddly beautiful. Among the potted plants that grew on my mother's stucco patio, decades before "outdoor rooms" proliferated throughout Houston's poshest neighborhoods, was an overflowing mound of graptopetalum paraguayense or ghost plant. Of course, its name alone had great appeal to the child me. I also liked the plant's puffy rosettes and grayish blue "leaves" tinged with pink. Brushing against this "spook" made its fleshy leaves tumble to the ground, but caused no planticide. Once the leaves had been relocated to warm soil, baby ghosts could loom up from the carnage.
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Two succulents, an agave (right)
and a yucca, artfully demonstrate their predisposition to root inside
rocky crevices. (Photos by Vivian Savitt) |
Enthusiasm for succulents grew stronger when my Aunt Zel introduced me to sempervivums, specifically her "cobweb" plant (sempervivum arachnoideum). Looking as if a spider web had been stretched across a crown, the plant was presented to me as — eeks! — a heaping bowl of spider nests. Soon I was calling sempervivums "sempervivians," and the malapropism endures to this day.
A primer on cacti and succulents will tell you: "All cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti." Any plant that stores water in its roots, leaves or stems is a succulent.
My garden at Ditch Cottage includes a collection of perennial succulents, especially euphorbias. Most of them have been in the ground three years now without any fuss. The largest is a four-foot-high shrub, E. characias wulfenii, that creates a jolting splash in spring with its elongated domes of chartreuse bracts or flowers. I had seen the plant in those sumptuous, anything-can-grow, California gardens, and also knew that Gertrude Jekyll propagated wulfenii in her famous English garden at Munstead Wood.
Acclaim from California and England doesn't necessarily portend well for gardening here in the wilderness. But I admit to being an ex tempore gardener where oddly beautiful plants are concerned. As long as the water requirements pass muster and the requisite shady or sunny spot is available, I'll go for it. The fact that succulents produce seeds eaten by a variety of wildlife is better still.
I use heaps of Euphorbia myrsinites (gopher spurge) as a perennial ground cover that takes summer's exhausting heat with utter nonchalance.
E. myrsinites also offers those punchy chartreuse bracts in spring, but has cool blue-gray foliage yearlong. Another charming characteristic is the way its stems flop out like a kinetic doodle.
Mixing succulents with cacti is generally a winning combination; just be careful about spacing — allotting room to showcase an outstanding size or shape.
One of my street-side beds, a veritable Hades, contains the aforementioned ground cover as well as agave parryii (Parry's agave), hesperaloe, sempervivum and Opuntia santa-rita (Santa Rita prickly pear). I included two caesalpinia gilliesii (also called poinciana or bird of paradise bush), a deciduous shrub that can reach 10 feet in height. Next year, the opuntia will probably lose its distinctive purple presence in the bed because of overcrowding.
Transplanting the succulents in this bed will be easy compared to the opuntia cactus, whose tiny spines I hope to avert with reinforced garden gloves, lots of newspaper and my kitchen tongs.
Right now I am most excited about the presence of Sedum telephium "calli" in my garden. Close in form to the frequently planted and easily grown Sedum spectabile (a.k.a. showy stonecrop or autumn joy), the "calli" variety produces dense clusters of bright red flowers instead of the usual pink hues. When I first saw this sedum photographed in Piet Oudolf's garden in The Netherlands, I was stirred to dance! Oudolf, a Dutch horticulturist and designer, is known for his "naturalistic" planting style.
Last year, a neighbor gave me an unknown species of euphorbia with soft piney leaflets. She had found it growing in an untended cemetery near Silver City. With a short, fluffy mounded form, chartreuse blooms and xeric inclination, the species made a showy front-of-the-border display in her yard.
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Euphorbia myrsinites (foreground right) shows off its new and spent stems at Ditch Cottage. Behind it, embraced in aquilegia flowers, stands Euphorbia characias "wulfenii." |
Although I have propagated the plant for one year, it remains unnamed. When time permits, my botanist friend Dr. Richard Felger shall pursue the identify of the mystery plant. He estimates that there are 1,500 to 2,000 species in the genus Euphorbia. The identification process moves more quickly if one can provide a specimen with its flower or fruit intact.
Richard, who moved here from Tucson a year ago, has more than 100 publications in botany, ethnobotany and new food crops. My favorite of his many books, People of the Desert and Sea: Ethnobotany of the Seri Indians, was published in 1990, but is now out-of-print. His 2007 Dry Borders: Great Natural Reserves for the Sonoran Desert (University of Utah Press) is still available.
He has conducted research in deserts worldwide and has been active in international conservation. We met while I was working for the World Wildlife Fund-US, during my visit to his green sea turtle conservation project in Baja, Mexico.
In the late 1990s Richard's field research brought him in close contact with the Seri Indians again. Over time, the Indians began to refer to him in the Seri language as "the guy who cuts the tops off plants." His experiences were highlighted in a special issue of Journal of the Southwest.
"Cactus conservation has become critical," Richard cautions. "They are one of the most endangered major groups of plants." For him, "Rule Number One is don't take cacti from the wild. Cactus and succulent enthusiasts can get good plants from reputable growers," he adds.
Those of us who want to expand our knowledge of these amazing plants can check out the 2009 convention of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America that will be meeting in Tucson, April 10-15.
For book people, there's an outstanding assortment of reading material at the Rainbow Gardens Bookshop in Tucson that Richard recommends. Primarily a mail-order operation, Rainbow Gardens can be visited by appointment only on weekdays. Call them toll free at (866) 577-7406.
Plants for the Southwest (www.lithops.net), is a remarkable nursery and my favorite Tucson diversion. Featuring nine greenhouses with plants from around the world, the stock is nursery propagated, almost all of it from seed. One of the owners was a plant propagator at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. You can also expect to find an exceptional assortment of pots and garden objects, many by regional artists. (50 E. Blacklidge, 520-628-8773, boscoe@lithops.com)
Closer to home, I find many surprises at Buffalo Bill's Exotic Cactus in Truth or Consequences (1600 S. Broadway, 894-0790). And one local cactus kid who sells to the public is Mark Cantrell at Lone Mountain Natives (538-4345).
If you haven't tried to use succulents and cacti in your garden, consider giving them a try. A lime green or spiny plant can amplify your gardening experience to an entirely new realm.
Southwest Gardener columnist Vivian Savitt gardens at Ditch Cottage in Silver City.