Tropicals & Tender Perennials: TROPICAL PLANTS AND GARDENS #131, 1 by Hikaro_Takayama

Hikaro_Takayama wrote:
Well, that's the general idea. ;-) I also want to get some of the more interesting native plants growing as well, including Arundinaria gigantea, Pawpaw (have one of each) and such. I'd also like to get a hold of some native roses (Rosa carolina and Rosa virginia). The Carolina, or Meadow Rose used to grow all over the place around here, along just about any road out in the country, but between the State spraying and mowing everything within 6 ft of the road side and the farmers spraying and plowing everything further out than that, they have all but disappeared.... I also knew were there were quite a few Virgina Roses growing in an abandoned rock quarry, but high demand for road construction gravel caused the owner to reopen it, and the place where the roses were growing has been strip mined for limestone. }:-( If I'd have known they were going to do that, I'd have snuck in and dug them up and at least TRIED to get them to grow at my parents' house. There are still some Meadow roses growing in the corner of my grandma's property, but I don't want to dig them up, so I'm going to see if Plant Scout has any mail order outfit selling bushes of either R. carolina or R. virgina....

Anyways, here's one more pic that I took today of my largest Dwarf Palmetto (those who live in Florida are probably wondering why I'm planting "weeds") and another Yucca recurvifolia. This particular plant was purchased and planted in 2006, and has survived outside every winter since then. It was going into a decline due to where it was planted getting overgrown by the tree canopies, so I dug it up (along with the mystery hybrid yucca) in 2011, since I was hoping to move that year. That didn't happen, and both these yuccas spent the entire winter of 2011 outside in 3 gallon nursery pots with absolutely no protection whatsoever and suffered no leaf damage (the previous three years they all but died back to the ground and/or were eaten by rabbits, which was part of the reason they were going into decline), which would indicate that insufficient sunlight was weakening them against the cold winter temperatures as opposed to a lack of innate hardiness. Again, when I planted this thing in the ground, it has been steadily growing and has a 3" trunk already....