Missouri Botanical Gardens, Woodland Garden

There is so much to see and enjoy at Missouri Botanical Gardens! But my favorite part of it all has to be the woodland garden. I would have just been glad to wander around in there for hours, but The Person I Was With wanted to see the rest .

You wildflower plant geeks are gonna love this place.

Mayapple, podophyllum"Spotty Dotty"!

I love the red flowers! Do I want this one? Hella yes!

Small pond, statuary "Three Graces". Water is a bit murky but it had been raining for days.

Another mayapple! I love these things! Podophyllum plianthum Dysosma

Wow! What is this, I asked!

Jack in the pulpit, Arisaema ringens. Gorgeous!

This robin was just having the BEST time!

 Allspice, sinocalycanthus chinensis I think I have to have this shrub!

Another arum, arisaema serratum

Would you have believed this was an epimedium? epimedium latisepalum

Looks like they have trouble with four-legged critters too! I just did this very thing with a wire basket to protect a hosta that was being attacked by deer, the morning we left for St Louis. Worked, too!

I love this stream winding through the woodland garden

So does this lovely couple!

European beech, fagus sylvatica. A wonderfully picturesque tree.

And onwards to the Japanese Garden.

So many pictures (I took nearly a thousand), so many plants, and so little time! Tomorrow, the Japanese Garden.

The Garden Club is Coming!

The garden club is coming!
Words that used to send me into a flurry of cleaning, weed pulling and trying to make everything picture perfect. Tomorrow, the garden club is coming to our garden. I finally realized after years of Martha Stewartism, that they are not coming to see my perfect garden. They are coming to see spring! And that, we have. Of course, last week was the peak of the redbuds, we still had lots of daffodils, and oh yes, last week was perfect! Next week, there will be thousands of irises, the hostas will all be up, and oh yes, next week, the garden will be perfect!  But let's take a stroll around the garden anyway and see what we have to share tomorrow!

The new Arkansas Black apple tree has blooms! Ok, there is only one cluster, but that means next year there should be many.

Lamiastrum "Yellow Archangel" is a spreading ground cover that is pretty invasive, but it is beautiful in bloom. Especially with lunaria (money plant) blooming in its midst. If you look closely, you can even see the yellow oak pollen covering its leaves!

Speaking of oak pollen, here is one of the culprits. This one is right next to the house and dusts us thoroughly with gold. The oaks are beautiful in bloom, especially in the morning with the highlighting its branches. We will have to rinse off all the garden furniture and deck before company comes or all of our guests will be wearing yellow! Next week we will be covered in falling oak flowers, so it wouldn't be a perfect garden then after all!

Tiarella is pretty in frothy pink, with white violets

Giant Solomon's seal  has hung out its pretty white bells

Jack in the pulpit has bloomed--and look at that, two flowers, and they are both different! What goes on here?

 

Sweet woodruff puts on a dainty show.

Camassia is beautiful in blue.

And the dogwoods are extra beautiful this year!

Of course there are still lilacs, and viburnums, sweetly scenting the air.

Still lots of Virginia bluebells and old-fashioned bleeding heart.

Geranium maculatum, wild geranium, will be showy in the woods along with plenty of wild phlox, which is just now at its most beautiful.

Merry bells are ringing still!

Ajuga is carpeting the ground in blues, whites, and pinks with green, bronze and black leaves.

One of my spring favorites, a shooting star! (Dodecatheon).

There are still penty of daffodils, though the early ones are gone and some of the others are fading a bit but still pretty, like this reverse-color cup.

Emergence! Blue irises are always the first to open, and there will be many of these tomorrow.

Even the dandelions are beautiful. Who says they are just a weed?

There are still lots of flowers going on, on the woods walk Mayapples are knee high with fat bloom buds, and trilliums abound, with the white ones shortly to be succeeded by the nodding red "Wake Robin".

And here are lilies of the valley! These are pink but most of them are white. Another lovely perfume on the spring air.

 

 Green and gold (chrysogonum) create a tapestry under azaleas that will be open tomorrow. 

Hostas are shoving fat stalks up as fast as they can, that rude Wirginia waterleaf is getting ready to redeem itself with puffy blue clusters, heuchera have tall flower stalks, there are violets everywhere in yellow, blues, pinks, reds, whites and purples, and late tulips blooming along with the early irises!

Come on in, Garden club members and friends! There's lots of spring to see, and grilled rainbow trout for dinner!

"Bright coral bells, upon a slender stalk,

Lilies of the valley edge my garden walk.

Oh how I wish

that I could hear them ring,

But that will happen only

when the fairies sing."

--old song

Fertility Rites, Going to Seed and What a Difference A Day Makes

Spring is a wanton, wild, virile, fertile time of the year. Sex is everywhere. Birds are mating, nesting in every available tree and shrub.  Butterflies are emerging from over-wintered chrysalises, bees and wasps are pollinating everything in sight, and squirrels are chasing each other in wild leaping abandon across treetops and over roofs. Frogs and toads are singing, full of it, until every square foot of water is full of gelatinous ropes of eggs, and black with tadpoles and polliwogs. And the flowers! They are ALL about sex, flaunting their spring wardrobes, their only be-all for existence to make seeds,to fling them to the winds and chance, spreading their kind far and wide. Many of the spring flowers haven't wasted any time, either! They have already bloomed and are ready to send out seeds to conquer the world, one at a time!

Bloodroot (sanguinaria canadensis) almost at bursting point, looking out for new territory

Celandine poppy, (Stylophorum diphyllum), getting ready to claim new real estate

Daffodil seed pod--planning for the future, 5-6 years from seed to bloom! They also increase by division of bulbs, but the seeds get scattered at quite a distance and start new clumps away from their parents.  Sometimes one old clump will have neary a hundred bulbs! (background leaves are false Solomon's seal, smilacina racemosa)

This is kinda fuzzy! There are hundreds of these, adder's tongue, (Erythronium Americanum) on the march to cover as much new ground as possible, both with seeds and division of bulbs. ! Here's another that will be several years from seed to bloom; making huge colonies of plants with single leaves, that only show themselves for about a month in spring until they disappear until next year.

Hellebores have their seed pods set already! This is Helleborus Niger, the so-called Christmas Rose.

Something seems to have changed in the woods this year. More exuberant, maybe, surely more fertile. I think the woods has undergone a change in dynamics.I'm not sure just what the cause is. Possibly climate change, perhaps it's the rooting out of all that honeysuckle that used to cover nearly every square foot of the ground except where the wildflowers grow so closely interplanted that not an inch of ground shows between them.

Yellow corydalis, ( Corydalis flavula) "colonizes nicely" as they say in the seed catalogs, but it is a dainty, ferny plant that is always welcome wherever it shows up.  An old name for it is "yellow fumitory".

Or perhaps it was the dry creek and re-routing of major paths. Whatever the cause, and maybe all of the above; as I work around pulling weeds, small trees and honeysuckle bits that I've missed, I'm finding all sorts of small wildflower seedlings where there were none before. Some are more than 50 ' away from the original

stands; bloodroot, trilliums, dutchman's breeches, ginger, virginia bluebells hundreds of feet from any other colony; even tiny woodsia ferns barely an inch tall.  One hellebore seedling somehow found its way down to the bottom of the woods. It seems with the honeysuckle gone, all these plants have the freedom to go exploring and stake out new territory! I must be careful where I step so I don't crush these baby colonies. I love to see them spread like that! In a few years, they will carpet the entire forest floor.

I have planted masses of lysmachias,(two kinds), Virginia waterleaf, common daylilies and a chrysanthemum that reseeds as well as spreads by stolons, in the bottom of the woods, all together. I'll let them fight it out for territory as they are all greedy and aggressive claimers of property. If they can live together it ought to be a colorful spot! There's nothing else down there for them to crowd out except a few irises, so we'll see.

What a difference a day makes!

There are surprises every day in a spring woodland garden! As I wander around down there peeking under leaves and and peering around trees, I find all kinds of things that weren't there yesterday.

White trillium (trillium grandiflorum) I always look anxiously for these as they come up later than the other trilliums, but they always come back, and sometimes there is a new one where there wasn't last year!

Yellow trillium (trillium luteum)

Here comes Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)!

One of my favorites, hardy orchid (bletilla striata) in bud. They will be blooming next week.

The deer ate the first flowers of pasque flower (anemone pulsatilla) but they put out some more! I covered them with an up-ended flower pot tonight as the deer were lurking in the meadow Out Beyond waiting for me to leave so they could have their way with my plants! I guess the clover and lespedeza that grow in the meadow aren't tasty enough for them.

Merry bells or bellwort (uvularia)

Bird's foot violets (viola pedata), one of my favorite violets. This violet is a prairie plant and loves full sun.

Jacob's ladder (Polemonium) I wouldn't be without this pretty, dainty blue.

Tritellia (lpheion uniflorum) This is a little bulb that will spread willingly and wantonly, and last for weeks in the spring garden, well into May. Its beautiful blue flowers seem to glow in the dusk.

Woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata) Can be any shade of blue, sometimes pinkish or white. Strongly perfumed and blooms for a long time. Lots of cultivars but they still mostly look just like this wild one!

Flowering almond (Prunus glandulosa) Wonderful flowering shrub! The one that grows here came with the garden and is probably 10' across.

Viburnum Carlessi Korean Spice. Can't you just smell this? Wonderful!

Combine this old-fashioned lilac with the above viburnum and it is fragrance heaven!

Praiie Fire crab (Malus "Prairie Fire") Today it's in bloom! 

What is tomorrow going to bring? I can't wait to get out in the garden!

"With fields full of clover and the apple trees,

The rosy richness of a springtime breeze,

I forgot all the work I'd planned to do

And just loafed in the meadow till

The day was through."

--Edna B. Hawkins