My zygos are excelling themselves this year.
Jean
Whats going on in your winter garden ??
This clivia has flowered for the first time . I like the different flower.. . pic 1
Salvias are all doing well in the cold too.
Large pink bud is S. Bethelli .. pic 2
Beautiful salvia..'Black & Blue '.. pic 3
Salvia 'Megans Magic '....pic 4
Salvia leucantha. "Pink Velour "
My wallflower 'Winter Joy is flowering and I found one plant with all the flowers variegated as pics 1&2 show.
I have had the plants flower in just purple or with variations of the purple / salmon normal color. but have never seen this before. , .
Only on the one plant so I will take cuttings and see if it stays the same color.
Other pic is some of the nasturtuim "lawn "
Jean.
Lovely pics Jean and that Nasturtium lawn...Is it hundreds of seedlings?....it looks too thick to be just a couple of plants.......
I've never seen a Winter Joy in that colouration either...it might be the beginning of Jean's Joy.....
Here is a pic of my Wintersweet....Chimonanthus.......it's a very untidy plant but the perfume from those tiny flowers scents up the whole garden....a very sweet lemony perfume...
Mine is extra messy because it doesn't drop it's leaves before it flowers.....but it's worth it..
The Daphnes are just coming out too....but not wide open yet.
The plants that I ordered from Lake nursery on the 2nd of June, arrived on the 5th, so that's what I'll be doing tomorrow..
I want lots of Monkshoods in my garden...
Dianne, those are hundreds of nasturtium plants. I leave them all to grow and die where they are so there are always millions of seeds.
I let them all go mad down there as nothing much will grow there and it makes a lovely show all spring/summer.
I have not grown monkshoods before . Are they hardy ?
Might look nice in my cottage garden.
Would you believe those burgundy scabiosas are getting more flowers ?
They died back a little then decided to sprout again.
Jean.
Jean my monkshoods are not wilting in the frost at all so definitely frost hardy. They do like shade however- they hate hot dry winds.
Flowering now.
Heavens, chookie....mine are just starting to come thru....lol
The abutilons are spot flowering.
1. The volunteer nodding yellow. I like the way the petals flare open when the bloom matures.
2. The veined orange.
The sun is out so I took the time to get a few pics.
always beautiful..Japonica
windblown Cootamundra
first of the hellebores
my new abutilon. 'Ashford Red '
Jean
Love the Ashford Red, beautiful colour *and* split petals.
Here are different views of the two abutilons, plus a mixed shot of a seedling pink bloom stuck among the Bunnings dwarf yellow.
Plus the first blooms on my Dombeya calantha, which looks just like my other pink dombeya but doesn't seem to have any fragrance. Still in a pot, too.
Might be a winter flowerer; perhaps I should sniff it at night or early morning.
I've ended up with several dombeyas with almost identical pink flowers. Let me think, one, two, three (but that one has the gold dusting of pollen that gives the florets a Christmas-bell look) plus this one: 4 very similar pink dombeyas. Oh, but one has the velvety/cushioned leaves. I guess this is what happens when you grow from seed and buy plants without any blooms on them.
More abutilons!
1. Bunnings dwarf pink compared with a seedling apricot, sown in March last year and flowering for the first time now. I'd mistakenly labelled the seed as a dwarf Bella cultivar, but in fact all those seeds are from standard abutilons, not dwarf cultivars. I suppose this means I'll have to transplant it from the hanging basket it's growing in :-)
2. The dwarf pink and the self-seeded nodding yellow, which has a smaller flower than the pink but similar small leaves.
3. The same pink against the dombeya, for no reason other than it was there :-)
My Dombeya cayeuxii has seed capsules! Doubly strange given that this plant is growing in a bucket while the larger inground plant, which flowered much more heavily, hasn't set any.
I found the yellow cestrum (C. parqui, ironically called green or Chilean cestrum) growing in a local paddock. It's a declared weed across much of Australia and although I can't smell anything from the flowers now (during the day), the leaves stink when rubbed. That identifies it as C. parqui. Not one I want in my garden so it's going in the bin! But I wanted to contrast it with my own pink cestrum (a cultivar of C. elegans) which is just coming into flower now. It's too bad the Chilean cestrum stinks because the flower is quite pretty, a true yellow instead of the lime green of C. nocturnum (yet to flower).
It is pretty cestrum, shame that it's classified....does it spread quickly? I've never seen it before...
It looks pretty in the photograph but if you've had a sniff of it, you might change your mind about its appeal! It's classified as weedy, so must spread readily, presumably by seed ... as I don't want it, I haven't bothered finding out any more about it.I do know, though, that people often mistake C. nocturnum for it but if you've seen both you can readily tell them apart.
I think I have seen both, not sure though, as you say it could be mistaken for the other one, I had a yellow looking one in my last garden, it was there when I moved in. It's more than twenty years ago now, so it's a little foggy, I recall a very sickly sweet scent at night though, so it was probably the same as the one here, maybe it just looked more yellow in a sunnier situation back then. We hacked it back and mowed it down, but it kept coming back even more lol.
The smell of C. nocturnum can be overpowering on warm humid nights here, although it never was in Melbourne. Plus, one person's stinky smell might be another's intoxicating perfume! The leaves are a dead giveaway. Look at the two comparison photos: stinky has much narrower leaves. Plus, if you rub them they smell unpleasant, while the C. nocturnum leaves just smell 'green'.
Plus: flowers on arctotis cuttings given to me by a friend. Hope they strike as they're one of those plants that can strike like weeds or fail to strike at all (for me, at any rate).
Ok well the one I had in that previous garden stank to high heaven when we chopped or mowed it.
Like animals had wee ed on it (I think -it's hazy). I didn't hate the perfume but on a hot muggy night it was a bit sickening when you already feel sick from the heat.
good luck with those cuttings ...they strike easily in washed river sand. Pretty.
If the leaves stank then it can't have been C. nocturnum. I've struck arctotis before (different colours from this one) and it's been either all or nothing for me! I think the ideal time for striking is before stalks have flowered, but it's been necessary to take them now.
Here is stinky with C. diurnum.
I have the C. nocturnum here, courtesy of birds ...no foul smelling leaves, similar heavy fragrance (nice, at a bit of distance).
The C.diurnum lost most of it's leaves in the frost but I see it's coming back, very light fragrance, pretty little blooms and heavy seed set like it's rellies. ^_^ I also had the dark pink one (no fragrance) in that past garden.
We don't have blossoms on the fruit trees yet, so no early Spring here quite yet though I see the bulges on the Winter sticks.
I haven't taken any pics yet, but haven't the wattles been just lovely, this year...Gold everywhere you look.
All different species and all beautiful....must be all this water....if it gets any wetter the Bellarine might sink....
OT just like that place in the US, where all the trees have sunk into the ground...scary.
I always need a few roots on Arctotis, cestrum or no hope here....
This morning I noticed the first bright pink blossoms on my Donut peach and the mini nectarine.....the blossoms will all follow soon, then the leaf curl...I don't spray anymore, it's a waste of time....it doesn't affect the fruit....and new leaves grow very quickly....
This message was edited Aug 16, 2012 5:14 PM
Wanted to show my abutilon seedling. The pale yellow one is just over a year old from dwarf "Bella" seed. The leaves are dwarfed but the bloom is much smaller and doesn't sit upright like my red dwarf cultivar (a shop-bought plant, photo 2). So I turfed it out as I have too many pretty abutilons to waste any time/space/water on that insipid one! Last photo is a comparison with another seedling, this one just under 18 months old. I mistakenly labelled it as a Bella cultivar but in fact it's seed from a standard abutilon. The colour and veins are lovely though, the flower nods, and the leaves seem to be halfway in size between the dwarf and the standard. Anyway, that one's a keeper.
That pink is pretty and the veining very attractive...It will be interesting watching how tall it gets....
It won't be able to grow much at all because it's only in a pot, a very small one at that. In fact, all the abutilon seedlings are in pots but there's still a noticeable difference in leaf size between the dwarf cultivars and the standard abutilons. So the dark pink seedling should retain its medium-leaf size but its true height is unknown. In contrast, this inground abutilon, an unnamed standard acquired as a plant, is so tall it's trying to out-compete the brugmansias! I do like abutilons; the only thing they lack is scent.
Actually, that last pink abutilon has one of the larger blooms on a standard abutilon.
Here's my purple shrimp plant, beginning to flower. You can just see the purple flower about to emerge from the pink bract.
Here is the shrimp plant (seedling, I think) I brought into the sunroom so that I could enjoy it over winter:
1. This shows the marbling on the leaves.
2. Close up of the purple flower with the white markings; reminds me of a tongue the way it hangs out.
3. Closeup of the green pattern on the bract.
It's a lovely little plant.
Here's another pink abutilon seedling, growing in a hanging basket because I'd mislabelled it as a dwarf cultivar. It's not, though: you can see that the two leaves (at left; there seems to be a lettuce seedling at right) are standard sized.
these are mine.. :)
Ganziania, Buddlia, Stargazer
Very pretty Natalie.